If you haven’t been following the story, Righthaven LLC is apparently a sleezy company that makes its living off suing people without the resources or will to fight back.

Wired Magazine has an extensive story about RightHaven LLC and their “business” plan. In an interview with RightHaven’s CEO, Steve Gibson, his business plan is to buy the copyrights to newspaper content and then turn around and sue bloggers for copyright infringement.

Here’s the article mentioned above:

Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act — up to $150,000 for a single infringement — to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.

Now he’s talking expansion. The Review-Journal’s publisher, Stephens Media in Las Vegas, runs over 70 other newspapers in nine states, and Gibson says he already has an agreement to expand his practice to cover those properties. (Stephens Media declined comment, and referred inquiries to Gibson.) Hundreds of lawsuits, he says, are already in the works by year’s end. “We perceive there to be millions, if not billions, of infringements out there,” he says.

And EFF explains:

The basic pattern: Righthaven has brought over a hundred lawsuits in Nevada federal court claiming copyright infringement. They find cases by (a) scouring the Internet for parts of newspaper stories posted online by individuals, nonprofits, and others, (b) buying the copyright to that particular newspaper story, and then (c) proceeding to sue the poster for copyright infringement. Like the RIAA and USCG before them, Righthaven is relying on the fact that their victims may face huge legal bills through crippling statutory damages and the prospect of paying Righthaven’s legal fees if they lose the case. Consequently, many victims will settle with Righthaven for a few thousand dollars regardless of their innocence, their right to fair use, or other potential legal defenses.

The company is suing everyone in sight, left and right, small and large. It goes after people who blog part-time with no ill-intent. It pumps out lawsuits and hopes most stick. It’s like the Nigerian scam artists who send out millions of emails and hope just a fraction of recipients send money.

The purpose of the domain seizure threat is to further scare defendants into quickly settling. Imagine if you’ve spent years and years building up a legitimate operation on your domain, quoted an article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and then were threatened with a seizure of your entire domain. You’d at least consider settling.

To make matters worse, Righthaven doesn’t send cease-and-desist orders to give bloggers a chance to remove the infringing content. No, Righthaven goes straight to a federal lawsuit, again hoping to scare bloggers into settling in the face of imminent legal costs. More evidence that this is more about money than protecting copyrighted content.

Well, now the company going after Sharron Angle in Nevada. And what do you know? They want $150,000 and control of her campaign domain. That sounds, um, familiar. Like basically the same thing they demand in every one of their template, blast-threat demands.

(The company has even sued an individual for using material from an article that was based on his own work.)

Angle will have the resources to fight the case, especially considering her domain name is at risk. I’m not sure how this would fall under Fair Use (Angle included full credit to the Las Vegas Review-Journal), but I do know that campaigns have a long history of reprinting articles from mainstream sources. So we’ll see.