RIGHTHAVEN CALLED INTO QUESTION

Marc Randazza was kind enough to send over the amicus brief his law firm filed on behalf of the Media Bloggers' Association in response to one of Righthaven's lawsuits. You should read the whole thing (it's embedded below). I'll repeat: you should read the whole thing. It rips apart Righthaven's entire strategy and shreds it to pieces, accusing the company of champerty among other things. Here's just a snippet:

If the Las Vegas Review-Journal (hereinafter, the "LVRJ") or its parent company, Stephens Media LLC (hereinafter, "Stephens Media"), were the plaintiffs in these cases, this argument would not apply. But Righthaven's exercise in champerty seeks to make an end-run around the rule of law limiting the right to sue for copyright infringement to creators and those legitimate enterprises that make creativity possible and protectable. Nobody can seriously believe that Righthaven, which publishes nothing anywhere, has acquired the full ownership of the articles it sues upon. The assignments it secures -- only after finding "infringed" articles to sue over -- contain mysterious (and heretofore unexamined) language about a "right of reversion" which, on frank consideration, demonstrates how transparently illegitimate these "assignments" are. TECHDIRT