A Las Vegas company, Righthaven, has been involved in a series of
lawsuits attempting to redefine the murky fair use doctrine.247 Similar to the
arguments made by publishers in other countries, claims by wire services and
publishers in the United States allege that aggregators infringe their copyright
and steal their product.248 Righthaven acts as a shell company by transferring
the copyright of the content from its client to Righthaven when the client’s
content has been possibly infringed.249 Righthaven then files lawsuits againstthe alleged infringers.250 Righthaven has argued that fair use “has been very
stretched by advocates of reproductions.”251 However, U.S. District Judge
James Mahan took issue with Righthaven’s strategy in a recent case
concerning the repost of an article from the Las Vegas Review–Journal, a
Righthaven client, by an immigrant-and-refugee-rights organization.252 Judge
Mahan questioned whether any harm was done because there was “no market
for the copyrighted work” as Righthaven was not publishing it.253