• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 30, 2010

Copyright enforcement outfit Righthaven has filed three more lawsuits against sites that allegedly reproduced articles from newspapers in the Stephens Media chain, including its flagship publication Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The newest cases -- against the advocacy group Wind Action, executives connected with the site Vegastopdogs.com, and Mark Chavez, who allegedly operates the sports site thelobolair.com -- join five other copyright lawsuits filed by Righthaven since March.

All of the cases allege that the defendants infringed copyright by reposting on their own sites all or portions of news articles. For instance, the complaint against Wind Action alleges that the group's site, Windaction.org, copied articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal such as "Windmill Plan Unites Neighbors," which originally appeared in the paper on March 21.

As with the prior lawsuits, Righthaven doesn't appear to have contacted the Web sites to ask them to remove the material before going to court. Also as with the prior cases, many of the articles link back to the original sources.

WindAction executive director Lisa Linowes says she first learned of the lawsuit after receiving a phone call from Online Media Daily. Likewise, Vegastopdogs.com operator Tony Karpinski says he learned of the litigation from Online Media Daily.

Linowes says the site would have removed the pieces if anyone had complained. "We would have taken off the articles in a nanosecond," she says.

While many companies ask other publishers to take down potentially infringing material, the law doesn't require content owners to do so before filing suit. The federal copyright statute also provides for damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 per infringement.

Linowes says she considered posting the articles to be a fair use of the material. Wind Action -- which advocates against the use of wind as an energy source -- sends snippets of articles and links in a weekly newsletter to people who subscribe (for free). The organization also posts articles in their entirety on its site, along with links to the originals. Linowes says windaction.org posts complete articles in order to preserve a record of them in case they are removed from the original sites.

But while displaying excerpts might be a fair use -- especially if the sites add original commentary -- legal experts say it would probably be difficult to convince a court that posting entire articles is a fair use.

"It's unlikely that there's any kind of fair use defense for simply posting an entire article, regardless of the motivation or beliefs about the law," says Sam Bayard, assistant director of the Citizen Media Law Project.

Linowes says that since launching the newsletter in 2006, she has received only a handful of complaints from news organizations, and in each case, removed the articles.