Thomas DiBiase runs nobodycases.com, a site exclusively dedicated to tracking so-called “no body” cases, trials and investigations. A “nobody case” is one in which a murder is suspected, but no body has been found.

In June, DiBiase posted a story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a Nevada man being sentenced to death for killing his wife who was never found. That put DiBiase in the crosshairs of Righthaven — a company formed last March  to acquire the rights to newspaper articles, and then sue blogs and other websites that post or excerpt those articles.

The company has so-far sued over 160 defendants for cribbing articles from the Review-Journal, which is owned by Las Vegas-based Stephens Media. Righthaven’s lawsuit against DiBiase seeks $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of the nobodycases.com domain name.

“Righthaven’s efforts to restrict what information is available to help police, prosecutors, and grieving families catch murderers is not only unlawful and an affront to the First Amendment, it’s just shameful,” DiBiase said in a statement Monday.

The EFF, in a counter suit lodged late Friday, maintains that the reposting of the article is a fair use (.pdf) of the material, because the site is not commercial and is meant to be a clearinghouse for “no body” crimes and investigations.

In September, the EFF similarly decided to defend Democratic Underground, which Righthaven is suing for a user of the site posting four paragraphs and a link to a 34-paragraph Review-Journal story. In both cases, EFF has counter sued.

What’s more, EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl said the group is fighting Righthhaven’s bid to require forfeiture of its targets’ domains.

“There is just no basis in copyright law for the domain name to be a remedy for infringement,” he said, adding that he thinks those allegations are helping Righthaven secure settlements, which vary in the range of $5,000 to $10,000.

Of the 167 cases lodged since March, Las Vegas-based Righthaven has settled more than 60 and has lost only one, which was based on a fair use defense.

We wrote last week that Righthaven was exploiting a loophole in copyright law and only suing sites that have not registered a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown agent. The $105 filing fee more often than not would prevent a lawsuit in the first place.

Failing to designate an agent means that a site forfeits its “safe harbor” defenses to copyright infringement.

In DiBiase’s case, the safe harbor could not apply anyway because the article in question was posted by him, not a third party.

Righthaven did not respond for comment.

Photo: EFF

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Authors: David Kravets

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