Reply #16: Not specifically left of center sites, Free Republic got stung too

[Brother Buzz]

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Free Republic was sued for copyright infringement in the 1990s by the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in a case that was closely watched because, at the time, it wasn’t clear if copyright law applied to the nascent Internet sphere.

In 1999, a federal judge sided squarely with the newspapers, finding freerepublic.com had no “fair use” exemption to post thousands of the newspapers’ stories online so readers could comment on them.

On July 20, the freerepublic.com message board was filled with “here we go again” comments after users of the site learned it had been sued again, this time by Righthaven. In the new Righthaven case, the stories weren’t posted directly by freerepublic, but by users on its message boards.

<snip>

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/04/some-targets-righthaven-lawsuits-fighting-back/