Now, when you go to righthaven.com, you are greeted with the image above. Any guesses as to what this is about?

Interestingly, Google appeared in court, and spoke out against Righthaven on Friday, Vegas Inc. reports. It says:

Righthaven, in asking the 9th Circuit to overturn Mahan, argued that in the 9th Circuit, there’s “almost a per se pronouncement against a finding of fair uses in cases of 100 percent unauthorized replication.”

“That simply is not the law, nor should it be. Indeed, adoption of any such per se rule would wreak havoc on businesses like Google, whose ability to offer innovative and useful services to the public depends on the adaptability of the fair use doctrine,” Google’s filing said.

I’m not sure how long this is going to go on, but clearly Righthaven is not going down with a fight, as it continues to appeal cases it lost in the name of fair use, and on grounds that it’s business model itself is suspect, or in other words, has a “lack of standing”.

It ended up going for $3,300. That’s unfortunate for Righthaven, seeing as how they’ve been ordered to pay about $60,000 more in court.

For Righthaven, commonly referred to as a “copyright troll,” having to auction off its domain was rather ironic, as the “company” sought the domains of other sites in its quest for copyright infringement “justice”. As courts tended to rule on the side of fair use in these cases, things got financially worse and worse for Righthaven, which brings us to why it has let its domain go for just over three grand.

While it’s not an incredibly high amount, especially considering the amount Righthaven owes, how much value does this domain really hold anyway?

Is the buyer (which is unknown) looking to capitalize on that awesome brand power of the Righthaven name?

(hat tip to DomainNameWire)

If you’re not familiar with the story, the irony here is that RightHaven itself has sought the domains of other sites, which it deemed in violation of its copyrights. For more backstory on RightHaven, see our previous coverage here.

After losing in court a number of times (losing out to fair use), Righthaven has been unable to pay its own fines and legal fees, delaying payment to avoid bankruptcy. Earlier this month, a judge ruled for Righthaven’s copyrights to be auctioned off. On Monday, the domain name went up for auction.

At the time of this writing, there are six bidders, and the auction goes on until January 6. There was reportedly an initial minimum bid price of $100. It’s currently at $1,300.

Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson (along with his wife) is due in court on January 6, the same day as the auction is scheduled to end.

In UGO’s post, the Spielberg Face is described as such:

When a character looks up and catches something unexpected, that’s the face. When a character watches something otherworldly take place in front of their eyes, that’s the face. When a character stares outward, mouth slightly agape and has a revelation that will change them forever, that’s the face.

Considering Spielberg’s mighty list of movies — under the “Director” label, Spielberg is credited with 50 movies — there’s plenty of content to pick these faces from. Fast forward to the end of 2012, well, almost, anyway, and we find someone has taken the idea of UGO’s post and created a video highlighting the same Spielberg Face phenomenon.

According to SlashFilm.com, the video was made by Kevin Lee of Fandor.com, and it features over nine minutes worth of various actors making the “Spielberg Face,” and it is required watching for all movie buffs, or, at least it should be:

Another story for another day, apparently.

As for the video itself, it’s narrated by Lee, who also provides a transcript for those who are considering adding subtitles to the video. An excerpt:

Expressive close-ups of faces reacting to events offscreen. This is a common device in Hollywood filmmaking, perhaps due in part to Spielberg’s influence. Sometimes these shots even make explicit homage to his movies. This is not to say that Spielberg invented the technique. The expressive close-up existed as early as the days of D.W. Griffith, and has long been a staple of both international and classical Hollywood filmmaking.

As you can see, a great deal of effort was put into the making of this video, which takes full advantage of fair use. The question is, under a SOPA-controlled Internet, would this video be available to the masses like it is now?

You can see our past coverage of the Righthaven saga here. The last time we checked in, Righthaven received a huge dose of irony, as a defendant sought Righthaven’s own assets.

That’s because Righthaven has had a hard time coming up with the money it’s been ordered to pay. It was recently ordered to pay one fine of about $34K, in addition to various other smaller ones. But now, The Las Vegas Sun is reporting (hat tip: Ars Technica) that Righthaven has ordered to pay a much larger fine in a different case – a whopping $119,488 in attorney’s fees and legal costs. Ouch. Steve Green, writing for the publication says, this is the largest fee they’ve been ordered to pay, but will likely “be dwarfed by an upcoming award in Righthaven’s failed suit against the Democratic Underground.

This is a case we’ve looked at in the past. Back in the summer, a Las Vegas judge dismissed it.

In fact, Righthaven has been dealt a number of blows throughout the year, as referenced throughout that aforementioned previous coverage.

Things are looking pretty bleak for the company that is commonly referred to around the web as the “copyright troll”.

Do you think a publication should charge others to link to their content? Let us know in the comments.

Central European News (CEN) is a media organization that provides various services like news, images, research, and more to various media outlets, for money.

PressGazette’s Andrew Pugh ran an interesting story about the Huffington Post linking to sources like The Daily Mail, which had paid for content from CEN. CEN decided to send payment invoices to The Huffington Post, and the Huffington Post paid them. So then, CEN encouraged other content providers to follow their lead, and send the Huffington Post invoices as well. The thinking here is that other publications would be compensated for The Huffington Post linking to them.

Interesting position, but as it turns out, the Huffington Post didn’t mean to pay, as was revealed in an update to Pugh’s original post. They use CEN as one of their photo providers, and do pay for those services, and mistook these invoices as being related to that. So anyone who wishes to bill the Huffington Post for linking to their content might think twice about the probability that they’ll actually receive payment.

The real question here is: should The Huffington Post (or any site/blog) have to pay an original content creator to link to their content? Now, keep in mind: The Huffington Post LINKED to that content. It did not publish that content. It’s a link, referencing the content, not a copy of the full article.

According to the logic expressed by CEN, as conveyed in Pugh’s piece, it’s a violation of copyright if a publication even uses the original content as a starting point. So, by this logic, for example, if Publication A was the first to report on the death of Gaddafi, it would be a violation for publications B, C, D, E, and F, to report that Publication A was in fact reporting this news. Publication B could not say, “Publication A is reporting that Gaddafi is dead, but we have yet to confirm this.”

So, if one publication was able to get a source of their own with that information, but nobody else was able to, publications B, C, D, E, F, etc. would not even be able to mention that one publication was reporting on the death. The world would have to already be reading publication A to even know about the death, or at least reading publication G, H, I, J or K, which are paying Publication A for the rights to reprint.

Nevermind that it’s entirely possible that Publication A is not even a service that charges publications for reprints, because it’s entirely possible that publication A could be just a blog, or even somebody’s Google+ account. News is not only reported by traditional means anymore. That’s just the way it is.

Let’s look at one of the Huffington Post examples referenced in Pugh’s piece:

You can see that while the piece is not an incredibly lengthy, in depth piece, it does link to five different pages to pull together its story. This is in and of itself an indication that the piece is not a total rewrite of one article, but is drawing on references from various sources (including the Huffington Post’s own content). If you actually click through to those other articles, you can also see that this is not a straight re-write of any one piece.

As often as the law (as least in this country) has ruled on the side of fair use, I have a hard time believing Huffington Post would be legally in the wrong here, though I am not a lawyer by any means, and CEN is obviously not based in the U.S.

It seems like CEN wants people to pay to link to their content, but if you’re paying, why wouldn’t you just post the whole article. Impeding linking would be a dangerous precedent to set on the web. If sites are required to pay every time they want to reference a piece of information, it’s bound to not only create more situations where content providers just go uncredited, but it’s also likely to stifle a lot of valuable content from being created in the first place.

If one publication has information that is indeed new, or shares some insight that has not been expressed previously, but only makes sense in the context of another piece of information that has already been published by a different publication, they need to reference that piece. It simply doesn’t make sense to have to pay to point to freely available information, in my opinion. Feel free to disagree. That’s the way the web works. The web is based on links. Without links, it’s not a web.

While the HuffPost piece in question may not be some hugely important piece of content, who decides where the line is?

Where do you think the line is? Tell us what you think.

Then, even the publisher of MediaNews Group, which employed Righthaven’s services said the whole thing was a “dumb idea”.

For more background on the Righthaven saga, view previous coverage here.

Now, PaidContent is reporting that the legal team of Wayne Hoehn, which was a defendant against one of Righthaven’s suits – in fact, the would be recipient of the $34K, is asking a Nevada federal judge for permission to take ownership of Righthaven’s assets.

The irony here is that Righhaven has sought the domains of publications it deemed offenders of copyright infringement in the past.

Jeff Roberts reports:

In weekend filings, lawyers for Wayne Hoehn asked a Nevada federal judge for permission to seize Righthaven’s “bank accounts, real and personal property, and intangible intellectual property rights.”

Apparently, Hoehn’s team is also trying to get the court to find Righthaven in contempt for ignoring orders to pay that money.

Righthaven has filed over 275 suits, and if Hoehn’s team gets its way, it may have just filed its last. If things were already looking bleak for Righthaven, this doesn’t paint a much brighter picture.

Now even MediaNews Group, which has employed Righthaven’s services in relation to its newspapers like the Denver Post (it has about 50 of them) is saying the whole thing was a “dumb idea.”

Wired, who interviewed CEO John Paton, quotes him as saying: “The issues about copyright are real. But the idea that you would hire someone on an — essentially — success fee to run around and sue people at will who may or may not have infringed as a way of protecting yourself … does not reflect how news is created and disseminated in the modern world….I come from the idea that it was a dumb idea from the start.”

The publisher terminated its relationship with Righthaven in August, and Paton just assumed his new role last week, replacing Dean Singleton.

It will be interesting to see if Righthaven’s other partners, namely Stephens Media (which publishes the Las Vegas Review Journal), follow the lead of MediaNews Group.

Judges have been ruling on the side of fair use in recent Righthaven cases, essentially rendering the company’s services ineffective. Though the appeal process must still play out, things aren’t looking incredibly bright for the future of this copyright “protection” strategy.

For more background on the ongoing Righthaven saga, read our previous coverage.

Now, Righthaven says it might have to file for bankruptcy, according to a report from Vegas INC:

The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit.

This fine was issued last month after a judge had already previously ruled that Hohen, a war veteran, was within the rights of fair use when he posted an entire article from the Las Vegas Review Journal to his site to generate discussion about it.

The judge was quoted as saying:

“Righthaven did not present any evidence that the market for the work was harmed by Hoehn’s noncommercial use for the 40 days it appeared on the website. Accordingly, there is no genuine issue of material fact that Hoehn’s use of the work was fair and summary judgment is appropriate.”

“While the work does have some creative or editorial elements, these elements are not enough to consider the work a purely ‘creative work’ in the realm of fictional stories, song lyrics, or Barbie dolls. Accordingly, the work is not within ‘the core of intended copyright protection.’”

The ruling also noted that fair use is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately for Righthaven, recent cases have ruled on the side of fair use in the defendants’ favor, though Righthaven continues to appeal.

For some reason, that seems hard to believe, considering the amount of fight and persistence Righthaven has shown thus far. They have lost a number of key suits only to keep appealing. Once, a case was thrown out only to be immediately refiled by Righthaven.

Judges have tended to rule on the side of fair use, and Righthaven has had to pay legal fees for the defense.

Righthaven appears to be waiting to see how its appeals turn out before proceeding further. CEO Steve Gibson is quoted as saying, “It certainly seems to be prudent to see how all of these cases come out in the wash.”

“The cases continue to show that their business model is not a viable business model,” Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has defended people against Righthaven, and has been very vocal in its opposition of the company, is quoted as saying.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how the Righthaven story progresses. It should have major implications for fair use. Some have all but declared the company’s quest dead. The aforementioned Wired report by David Kravets says Righthaven is on “life support.”

Jeff Roberts at Paid Content says, “The Righthaven model now appears moribund.”

Righthaven also got rid of in-house lawyer Steven Ganim, who participated in 53 Righthaven suits. That doesn’t exactly send out positive waves for the company.