Ars Technica freelancer Eriq Gardner was recently sued over a photo that appeared in a piece he wrote for us last year. The flimsy lawsuit was quickly dismissed, but the company behind it lives on—and has sued 50+ people in Colorado for their use of the same photo. Now, the federal judge overseeing all these cases has made it clear that he sees through the company's "lawsuit as revenue generation" strategy, and that he's not interested in enabling it. Righthaven is already backing down.
The company at issue here is a Las Vegas litigation firm that finds allegedly infringing newspaper posts and images online, contracts with the newspaper in question for control of the the copyright, and files federal lawsuits against its targets. Since its inception, Righthaven has made the obviously outrageous demand that the entire domain name for the site in question be locked and then turned over to the company. This has never happened, but the threat of massive damages and of losing one's Web address seem calculated to force people into settlements of a few thousand dollars.
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