Copyright infringements
In 2010, Stephens Media contracted with the litigation firm Righthaven LLC, giving it the power to enforce the company's copyrights[5] when online violators went beyond the bounds of fair use.[6] More than 141 lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.
In a column published in the RJ shortly after the lawsuits began, former publisher Sherman Frederick, said the primary goal with the partnership with Righthaven was to deter theft of the company's copyrighted materials.[7] He said if the company was successful, he hoped Righthaven would find other media clients. Eventually, WEHCO Media, which owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Chattanooga Times Free Press, signed on with the firm.[8] MediaNews Group has also used Righthaven to file a copyright infringement suit.
The aggressive enforcement of the Stephens Media copyrights by Righthaven was being closely watched by other publishers, as is the debate it has generated.[9] Critics of the relatively new practice have coined it 'copyright trolling', and argue that the purpose of such enforcement is to make a profit.[10] In the Poynter article, former Stephens Media general counsel Mark Hinueber said the goal was to make sure the company's intellectual rights were protected. "We were seeing our entire work product in some stories just being right-clicked and cut and pasted into blogs, where people were selling Google ads around them and making money."[9] The Las Vegas Sun thoroughly documented Righthaven's activities and the response. The Sun’s outside law firm, Lewis and Roca, defended several of the Righthaven suits.
Targets of the Righthaven lawsuits included bloggers, political forums, major political parties, and several of the newspaper's own sources including NORML, DailyPaul.com, InfoWars, Free Republic, and others.[11][12][13] On August 25, 2010, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that they would make efforts to assist Righthaven LLC defendants to the best of their ability.[14]
Righthaven's lawsuits came under increasing judicial scrutiny, which led to Righthaven being found in June 2011 to lack standing to sue for alleged infringement of copyrighted material to which it holds only a limited license, as such a license does not confer the right to sue for infringement. Sanctions against Righthaven and its attorney, Steven A. Gibson, of Nevada law firm Dickinson Wright, were being contemplated by one judge. Righthaven later had its assets seized to pay judgments levied against it in lawsuits it filed against those whom it said infringed on the copyrights of clients. As a result, copyrights which had been "sold" by Stephens to Righthaven were "sold back" to Stephens for $80,000 to pay legal fees.[15]
