The legal thug hired by the Las Vegas Review-Journal is at it again, suing eight more Web sites that used newspaper material without permission. But this time the newspaper may have met its match. A site named EMT City has decided to fight back in court. EMT City is being sued because — take note of this — a commenter cut-and-pasted Las Vegas Review-Journal material onto the Web site. The administrator said: “I was offered to settle this case out of court but have decided to fight the case on the principal that I did not cause the alleged violation and that websites should not be held accountable for the actions of a third party.” The administrator goes on to say that there is no case law of yet in this type of situation, and “I am going forward to hopefully create case law to protect this site, and all other forums on the internet.” The administrator hopes to raise $10,000 to help in the legal fight. More here.

Question: What do you make of the actions by the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue small bloggers for using its material and then offering to settle out of court?

The Cramer case does suggest that there maybe a need for a national blogging association to focus on this narrow issue of fair use. Bloggers across the spectrum need to come up with a solid definition of fair use and then be prepared to defend the rights to fair use through a sort of legal defense network. The fact of the matter is that the Review-Journal is nothing more than a bully. It’s going after these websites because they KNOW that most of these folks don’t have the money to defend a lawsuit.  The bigger media blogs like Hot Air (owned by Townhall), Red State (owned by Eagle Publications) and of course, Daily Kos are safe. But where are small and medium sized blogs to go for protection/Adam’s Blog. More here.

Question: Do you think bloggers should band together in some way to stand up to legal attacks like the one Clayton Cramer is facing at the hands of the Las Vegas Review-Journal?

Re: Clayton Cramer shuts down blog over Las Vegas Review-Journal lawsuit/Huckleberries Online

Sisyphus: That’s pretty damn frightening and appears somewhat abusive. And its self defeating. People will refrain from using the source. Cramer actually sent them traffic. But this will have a horribly detrimental chilling effect on disseminating info on the tubes.

• Also: More copyright lawsuit filed over Review-Journal stories/Steve Green, Las Vegas Sun
• Death of a Blog: Where have you gone Clayton DiMaggio/Dennis Mansfield
  

DFO: I agree with Sisyphus. Dunno what got under the saddle of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But it obviously doesn’t realize that Cramer was doing it a favor by driving traffic to its online Web site. Almost all the online papers and radio Web sites appreciate the links that Huckleberries provides as a result of the additional traffic. The Las Vegas Review-Journal is stuck in 20th century thinking and doesn’t understand the importance of blogs in the emerging media. Amazingly, the Review-Journal has won Freedom of the Press awards from the Nevada Press Association.

Clayton Cramer has a post up announcing he’s shutting down his blog permanently. (Link here.) He says it’s because he was sued for copyright infringement from a newspaper web site, even though he linked back to the site and normally followed Fair Use guidelines. (Link here.)  It’s a cautionary tale for all bloggers. I’ve been following Clayton for quite a while, back in the days when he was Southern Idaho’s most-read blogger (I think he’s still the 2nd most read in the area), and while I didn’t always agree with him, I did like his writing. I think it’s fair to say that he’s the only Idaho blogger whose work has been cited in a couple of recent SCOTUS decisions/Bubblehead, The Stupid Shall Be Punished.

Question: What do you make of this development in Idaho cyberspace?