New breed of copyright troll targets bloggers

It’s no secret the news media loves blaming bloggers for all of its real and imagined woes. Rather than acknowledging the power of blogs sending traffic to traditional media sites, old media feels that blogs are “stealing” content. So, it should come as no surprise that a new form of copyright trolling has evolved.

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

“We believe it’s the best solution out there,” Gibson says. “Media companies’ assets are very much their copyrights. These companies need to understand and appreciate that those assets have value more than merely the present advertising revenues.
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0uSk6QU6X

I think it’s time that blogs started assessing the value of traffic sent to news sites by calling attention to new items. By adding opinion the benefit of additional knowledge, the blog more often than not adds value to the item and generates more interest in the original article.

Since the average blog is more or less like this one, a lawsuit would be catastrophic. We don’t make a profit. Small bloggers will never have the funds to go to trial and will settle. Even though it’s perfectly legal, this amounts to a shake down.