From the article linked below:

Simone Rose, Wake Forest law professor, said Righthaven finds people posting copyrighted pictures without permission and then sue. As the defendants are often unable to afford a court battle, they tend to take a settlement.
....."It's sort of like legal robbery where they find loopholes," Hill said.

I've read several articles recently about these Righthaven attorneys. Here's the latest:

http://www.myfox8.com/news/wghp-story-copyright-suit-110222,0,5323431.story

The term predatory comes to mind.




.

So is clipping a photo or article out of a newspaper and hanging it on the community cork-board also highly illegal?

Actually that falls under the fair use act. Those lawsuits are BS. That lawyer will be getting disbarred or sued now. I feel bad for those people is his extorting.

i'm not a big reader but does this mean these people could stumble upon one of my chops with a copyrighted image and sue me? Is it copyrighted if i alter and manipulate it... if it's unrecognizable?

This is robbery.

wow, that is completely crooked. Post a newspaper clipping on your site for something that holds no threat to the origins of the clipping, and BAM, get fined $150k.

Hopefully i don't get sued for copying a bush out of some guys photo one day

Not if its for personal or educational use (fair use). Its part of a gray area. There is not set amount of how much you must change the image to make it yours.

Now in a contest for money on this site, you could be held accountable for using a copywritten image.

Every image on the internet is copywrite protected. Some waive the rights to a pic and make it public domain.

One example of ownership is:

If I take a picture of you, I own the rights.
If I work for a comapny and I take pics of you, the company owns the rights.
If you pay me to take a picture of you, you own the rights.

Your absolutley right, it is robbery, its someones personal property you took and manipulated for your own use then passed it off as your own.

If you use a image, just state that in the description, that way credit has been given to the owner of the image/art.

Another example. Chop of the day is a copywritten and no one knew it was. Contest pays $50 to the winner. Every image submitted would be infringement. All contestants and the website would be liable for infringement.

I could legally bring suits against everyone on the site who submitted a image and the site itself on behalf of the original artist without him even knowing about it. You would pay my settlement fee to avoid the court cost. If it did go to court, as long as I could prove proof of ownership to the artist I would win the case.

This is what that POS lawyer is doing.

People on ebay do this all the time. They find a auction of you making something with a company logo on it without a licensing agreement. They send you a letter saying they have the companies interest in mind and are requesting you send them all the products you have, list of who made the products for you, and all sales of products. They then pull a number out of their azz and say this is the damage you caused the company, Please pay us this amount with a cashiers check made out to the company listed. You pay that, they send it to the company, they give them a cut for the actions.

I have been keeping an eye on these jackals for a while.

http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the link, Charlie. Nice to see someone fighting back against them.

Wow you guys are a little paranoid News papers use copyrighted images all the time with out permission. If they get called up on it they either give a retraction statement or they pay a very very little fee. I have worked for the newspaper industry for a very long time and well they don't get called up on it...on a bad news day they would just find an over seas paper and reprint the story word for word and image for image...all the bloody time.

Its too big to police and its to difficult to prosecute...

Chill out my PSC brothers and sisters, this is like the voting threads...comes up all the time, people get all flustered, start worrying about there chops and the same thing happens...
NOTHING
So chill my friends and step out side and enjoy the day and the next day and the next day and the next day.....

The great and powerful BLURKER has spoken.

Webmaster Alert: Start Following the U.S. Copyright Public Catalog to Search & Scrub
A fantastic tip came in today from American Justice Dot Org. Webmasters who are concerned about past and recently purchased copyrights by Righthaven can search the U.S. Copyright Public Catalog.
View the Public Catalog page
Type "Righthaven" into the Search box
Select "Keyword" in Search By
Choose "100 Records Per Page" to show in the drop down menu.
Click "Begin Search"
The results display all copyrights that Righthaven has purchased to date. As of February 17, 2011 there are 151. With this information, you can search and scrub your domains of infringing content.

Now, if there was only automated software to do all of this for you...

Found on http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/

There was also something about the Righthaven people being wrong when they went to court against two people... during the trial that came out, so after that came out, in that trial they asked the judge to give them time, so they could change their lawsuit - this time to make it to the right people... and that was granted..................

??????????????????

Eh............ I am taking my neighbour to court on something, the neighbour says it should not be me, but somebody else and I can say ..... wait, wait, I will chainge that and come back with the right people....

How often can I do that - should the court not just have said sorry dude, you should have done your homework better?

Great well yeah I guess that's true...but powerful...mmm...not to sure...let me go ask the wife...(Insert footsteps fading of into the distance noise here)...(Insert echoed voice here)...Hey honey am I powerful...you know powerful...like in great and powerful...oh ok then...thank you...(Insert footsteps getting closer noise here)...um well I can be some times but not all the time so I guess the answer is
"Great and sometimes Powerful"
K glad we gots that sorted out...so what we talking aboot again????????

I also forgot to say these are the US laws, dunno if they apply over seas but I doubt it. And they would need your name and address to bring a suit against you. So like was stated earlier, don't worry about it.