Stephens Media is Suing Bloggers. TAKE NOTE.

Most people know that Stephens Media owns West Hawaii Today, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, and Big Island Weekly, basically a monopoly of the Big Island's print media. Stephens also own newspapers nationwide.

What Big Island bloggers need to know is that Stephens Media's Las Vegas Review-Journal has partnered with Righthaven, a legal extortion operation, to file 81 (as of July 20) lawsuits against bloggers or website operators who have reposted part of all of LVRJ articles. No "take-down" or warning letters are sent before the lawsuit is filed. As the attorneys representing one of the people sued by Righthaven put it, "This strongly suggests that these suits were filed, not for the legitimate purpose of enforcing copyrights, but rather, to coerce several settlements as part of a massive cash grab facilitated by judicial process."

The most ominous quote, for Hawaii bloggers, is from the WIRED article (check out the picture of Righthaven's CEO. His picture can also be found in the dictionary, under "smug a$$hole" I'm informed, and believe):

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.

More information here, here, and here. The "Stop the LVRJ/Righthaven Witch Hunt" Facebook page is here.

So don't re-post articles from WHT or HRH, don't quote from their articles, and (in my opinion) don't even link to them. Isolate the bastards.