Stephens Media continues pursuit of ‘parasitic’ bloggers

Las Vegas-based Stephens Media and Righthaven amended a copyright agreement after a federal judge forced the two companies to make public their agreement to sue “parasitic” bloggers who use news stories produced by Stephens Media owned newspapers.

The deal between Stephens Media — which owns the Times Record in Fort Smith, Press Argus Courier in Van Buren and numerous weekly newspapers in the Fort Smith metro area — and Righthaven was announced in May 2010. Stephens Media President Sherman Frederick initially reported that Righthaven, now assigned the copyrights to material produced by Stephens Media, would begin to sue any individual or organization engaging in unauthorized use of the content.

In announcing the deal, Frederick wrote: “We grubstaked and contracted with a company called Righthaven. It’s a local technology company whose only job is to protect copyrighted content. It is our primary hope that Righthaven will stop people from stealing our stuff. It is our secondary hope, if Righthaven shows continued success, that it will find other clients looking for a solution to the theft of copyrighted material.”

Righthaven is partially owned by a company whose investors include Warren Stephens, who owns the investment group that owns Stephens Media. WEHCO Media, the Walter Hussman company that publishes the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Chattanooga Times Free Press and numerous other papers, is also a Righthaven client.

As of May 6, Righthaven had filed at least 275 copyright infringement lawsuits, and collected $472,500 in settlements, according to a website that tracks the effort. Righthaven’s practices have been controversial because they issue a lawsuit before politely asking a blogger, non-profit or others to remove the content.

U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt recently agreed to a request by Laurence Pulgram, an attorney for the Democratic Underground, to unseal the agreement between Stephens Media and Righthaven. The argument of Pulgram and Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, is that Righthaven does not legitimately own the copyrights and has no standing to sue.

Writing in an opinion posted on the EFF website, Opsahl noted: “In short, the ‘assignment’ is a sham, Righthaven’s claim has been baseless from the outset. Stephens Media, which has struggled to hold the litigation at arms length, is the true and exclusive owner of the copyright and the only entity with standing to bring a copyright claim. … So why didn’t the public know this until now? Stephens Media and Righthaven have gone to great lengths to conceal their scheme, starting long before they challenged our request to unseal their business agreement.”

According to this story at Wired.com, Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson said the agreement had been amended to reflect that Righthaven holds the copyright.

“Following such an assignment, the parties intended to permit Stephens Media to continue to display or otherwise use the assigned content through the grand of a licenses from Righthaven,” Gibson was quoted in the Wired.com article.

No hearing date has been set, and EFF has until May 20 to file a response to terms of the amended agreement.