The last time we checked in with the Righthaven saga, righthaven.com had just been sold in a domain auction, as Righthaven struggled to pay legal costs and fines.
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.”
Attorneys for Google, in their brief Friday, argued that’s not true and provided a long list of court cases finding fair use, even when 100 percent of a work was copied without authorization — including in search engine search results.
…
“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”.