MediaNews Group Severs Ties with Righthaven

One Utah Blog ^ | September 8, 2011 | Ken Bingham

[CedarDave]

The Denver Post is reporting that MediaNews Group, its parent company along with the Salt Lake Tribune, will not be renewing their contract with the controversial drive-by litigation group Righthaven. According to the report MediaNews Group stopped working with them “some time ago”.

John Paton, who was appointed as MediaNews chief executive Wednesday, sent a message on Twitter later in the day that MediaNews had terminated its relationship with Righthaven “some time ago.”

MediaNews Group’s relationship with Righthaven dealt almost exclusively with one image that of the TSA agent performing a patdown that became a symbol of the “Don’t touch my junk” movement. This image had gone viral because of the national debate over the enhanced pat-downs and both MediaNews Group and Righthaven thought they had a potential goldmine. They began suing bloggers by the scores including Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report. In the beginning most settled including Drudge until Righthaven made the fatal tactical mistake of suing a mildly autistic blogger from North Carolina.

[CedarDave]

A good read, especially the part about Righthaven going after Brian Hill of North Carolina. They threatened (illegally) to seize his Social Security disability check, go after his mother who cares for him, and otherwise make him a pauper. The whole episode gave a black eye to the Post and the news group. And the court cases are making the Post/news group dizzy and the lawyers rich.

[CedarDave]

FYI ping.

[Free Vulcan]

Any opinions on how successfully someone could sue them under RICO?

[Texas Fossil]

After the agreement was exposed between Righthaven and Stephens Media showing the copyright assignments were nothing but a sham and Righthaven did not really own the copyrights in question Judge John L. Kane of the Federal District of Colorado took notice and stayed over 40 cases pending his decision. Most likely it will not go well for Righthaven nor MediaNews Group since their agreement was nearly identical to that of Stephens Media. They will undoubtedly be dragged into multiple counter suits and may be left holding the bag if and when Righthaven files for bankruptcy. MediaNews may think they have washed their hands of this but they are about to find their little experiment with Righthaven to be a very costly one.

hee hee hee Sounds very much like SCO. My these things take a long time to play out. MediaNews is not doing this out of remorse or bad publicity, but from fear of financial loss from countersuit.

[CedarDave]

Not a lawyer so no opinion. However, a summary of Righthaven related court cases can be found at the link below.
http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/

The most successful litigant so far appears to be the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) representing the Democratic Underground The link takes you to a summary of the lawsuit/counter lawsuit progress.