Sherman Frederick is a great fan of Righthaven, the copyright troll spun out of the Las Vegas Review Journal where Frederick was CEO. Righthaven isn’t faring well in the courts these days, and Frederick is lashing out at critics of his cherished conceit of making a fortune suing bloggers for quoting small snippets of text.
Here’s where it gets good. His extended ad hominem in the Review Journal makes extensive use of poorly cited quotations from GametimeIP, a blog that — in Frederick’s view — supports his position. These sorts of quotations are precisely the sort of quoting that Righthaven is suing over, with one important difference.
Righthaven doesn’t actually have the right to sue over quotations from the Review Journal, because, as judges have ruled, the agreement that assigns “just enough copyright” to sue people is ridiculous and has no basis in law or reality.
On the otherhand, GametimeIP’s author Patrick Anderson does, in fact, hold those rights, and he’s putting them up for sale. Presumably, anyone who buys them could then sue Frederick on the same grounds that Righthaven used. And if Frederick won the case, it would establish that the sort of quoting Righthaven decries is fair use. If Frederick loses, well, he loses — DMCA damages run to $150K per act of infringement.
Frederick also believes that linking without permission is illegal. In the event that he wants to link to this post, he should be aware of our linking policy.
Righthaven Cheerleader Wanted by Irony Police