Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits

[Firefox Wins]

There is a lawyer suing bloggers and syndication sites now:
...up to $150,000 for a single infringement...  
^^^

Steve Gibson has a plan to save the media world’s financial crisis — and it’s not the iPad.

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07...http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-fo

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

Obviously, that's what he says.  Even if it's true, it's not like it'll last for a long time.
It cannot be readily compared to filesharing as the article seems to.  Filesharing is used to get the end user content for free, that they'd have to otherwise pay for.
News, on the other hand, can easily be re-worded or paraphrased by bloggers which do not infringe copyright.  After this guy has picked all the low hanging fruit, assuming he's successful of course, people will smarten up and there won't be much more profit (if any) to make.

[Firefox Wins]

It cannot be readily compared to filesharing as the article seems to....
Agreed Zinga, that didn't help.

• Sites should be careful to avoid re-posting entire articles, even with a link to the source. So far more than 30 defendants have settled out of court, so he is making at least some money, for now.
  

ps.
If anyone is interested in more info:
Mike Masnick @ techdirt.com seems to love this story, here is a link to 9 more articles including "Judge Considering Innocent Infringement Provision For Cat Blogger Sued By Righthaven"