Autistic Blogger Sued for Copying Photo From Website

My Fox 8- North Carolina ^ | 2/23/2011 | Staff Writer

[republicangel]

MAYODAN, N.C. (WGHP) — A mildly autistic man from North Carolina is being sued for $150,000 because he used a newspaper photo he took off the Internet and posted it on his blog.

[republicangel]

Righthaven strikes again...Please go to the website and read the article. The first comment is from his grandparents and tells even more of the story.

[humblegunner]

Must - not - comment ....

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

These folks, Righthaven have no clue the bad will and hate they are creating. I’d be mindful of just suing anyone and everyone, lest they end up suing someone like Jared Loughner et al... and well you get the picture.

[Steely Tom]

I should think there would be a number of ways this individual could find protective shelter under the language of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

[proud American in Canada]

Perhaps some capable lawyer will see this story and offer his services pro bono to the blogger.

Thanks for posting this.

[republicangel]

They disgust me already, but to read that they wanted to get 50$ a month from his disability check was pretty low.

[Dixie Yooper]

If you don't want anything from your website copied and used elsewhere, there are ways of posting that will not allow that to happen. If Righthaven didn't take any of these steps to prevent this from happening, they are fishing for lawsuits.

[proud American in Canada]

Yes, that was low. Sheesh!

[smokingfrog]

I think that fair use exceptions should be made in most cases when people operate a blog that is mainly a hobby and not for profit, especially if you are linking back to the original article.

[Shannon]

These folks, Righthaven have no clue the bad will and hate they are creating.

From a comment written by his grandparent:
Righthaven wanted to garnish Brian's SSI check at $50.00 per month until the $6,000 was paid to avoid going to court.

Righthaven is looking rather predatory.

[AvOrdVet]

Righthaven is looking rather predatory.

There, fixed it! ;-)

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

These folks, Righthaven have no clue the bad will and hate they are creating.

Oh, I think they know. They just don't care.

[stayathomemom]

If Righthaven didn't take any of these steps to prevent this from happening, they are fishing for lawsuits.

From the comment by the grandparents, it sounds as though this is exactly what they are trying to do.

[Ratman83]

My take on Righthaven is that the buy the copywrite after some one has posted it and then sue, but this should be illegal because the infringement happened before Righthaven had the copywrite.

[Jack Hammer]

‘...they are fishing for lawsuits...’

Yup, exactly.

[sten]

as far as i am aware, it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to insure copyrighted material clearly states such in or around the digital work.

any images i post, which i do a lot, are found using google images. there are no copyright notices on any of them

if a copyright holder does not want their images in the google cache, then they should state it as such in their robots.txt file and google would not grab them. if they did not, how is it the fault of google's users?

[Cyber Liberty]

Wow! That’s why I only host porn on my website.

[Gene Eric]

>> Must - not - comment ....

I get that, but neither can we forget.

This is an outrageous burden to place on this individual.

[mewykwistmas]

“Righthaven have no clue the bad will and hate they are creating.”

They are waaaaaaaaay past that now.

[Fire_on_High]

Almost any of those can be gotten around if you’re sufficiently determined BEFORE the “final resort” and that one is flat out impossible to block, period, end of story.