Scandal erupts over Righthaven lawsuits

  Perhaps you've been following the recently developing story of the Las Vegas Review Journal,owned by Stephens media, suing little bloggers for big bucks.
  Why?
  Because they quote from their papers. Even if the bloggers link back to the source, if even one word is quoted, the newspaper chain is claiming copyright infringement and suing bloggers who make little or no money reporting the news.
  Blogging has always been a grassroots endeavor to link around the web. That's why the web is called a "web": the basically understanding has always been that the "webbing" people do through their blogs is what makes the WWW an interesting place, helps it survive and thrive.
  Legally blogging about stories around the web should be covered by "fair use" laws, but Stephens Media is not acknowledging that, and suing little nonprofit bloggers for thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The vehicle Stephens Media is using is called RightHaven, oddly enough.
  No takedown requests have ever been issued. The bloggers just are sued from thin air.
  Amazing in this day we have a situation like this.
  What is also amazing is that this smells funny and somehow tracks back to the president of the United States.
  For further information, go here and read this thread. Here's a bit of info from that thread:

This RightHaven founder Steven Gibson is definitely a "Chicago Guy"...so I did a little digging in the public domain.....

Steven A. Gibson

Born: Chicago, Illinois, December 11, 1963

School: Chicago-Kent College of Law

Degree: J.D.

City: Chicago

State: IL 

Year: 1990

Honors: IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law. Cum Laude 1990.

Prior to establishing his own firm, Mr. Gibson was an associate at Sidley Austin LLP a Chicago Law firm...

  There's more info here. Wired did a profile here (try to ignore the position of his hand. It's truly disturbing.) Here's an article by a little blogger who has been sued.
  It is certainly mystifying why a media company would go about business on the web this way. What's happening is that bloggers are shutting down their connections to any website who is capable of treating readers this way. Indeed, a plugin has been created to block Firefox from even visiting these websites.
  Certainly this isn't a profitable business model. Because Righthaven is basically blackmailing little bloggers who have no money, they settle for fairly small amounts, at this point. Thus this issue has NOT come before a judge.
  The Las Vegas Sun has done an excellent job covering this issue.