Righthaven Takes On Drudge Report

from the copyright-fun dept

We recently noted that MediaNews, the second largest newspaper publisher in the US, had apparently signed up with Righthaven to start suing blogs and other websites for using any content from the Denver Post. It looks like for its second lawsuit over Denver Post content, Righthaven has gone big: it's suing Matt Drudge, the operator of the famed Drudge Report, because he used a photo from the Denver Post. This is a bit different than the usual Righthaven lawsuits over copies of articles -- and perhaps an even tougher claim. Drudge may have a decent fair use claim on a single photograph, though that may depend on a lot of other details. Still, all this is doing is making me wonder why anyone would ever want to use any Righthaven connected publication as a source ever again.

Filed Under: copyright, drudge, matt drudge, photos, trolling
Companies: drudge report, medianews, righthaven

Are British Papers Going To Start Demanding Payments From Drudge?

from the this-is-a-local-paper,-for-local-people dept

While some British newspapers have realized that Google (and other sites that send them traffic) are helpful to them, there are still plenty that feel like Google should be paying them, for some reason. It's a strange argument: Google sends them traffic and readers, yet should be paying for that "privilege"? If the papers can't figure out how to monetize the traffic Google and other sites send them, that's their own problem. Now comes word, though, that The Drudge Report sends UK papers more than three times the amount of traffic that Google does -- so will the papers start making noise about suing Drudge for a cut of his ad revenue? The editorial director of a UK news outfit illustrates the backwards mentality some papers have by saying "You are just paying an awful lot of bandwidth and an awful lot of server costs to serve those people." Well, if that's such a concern, why have a web presence at all? That would drive bandwidth and server costs down to pretty much zero. Instead of seeing international visitors and the additional traffic they generate as a burden, they should be seen for what they are -- an opportunity to further grow revenues and profits.

Filed Under: britain, media, newspapers
Companies: drudge report, google