The new owner of righthaven.com has made it clear that he or she isn’t a fan of the Righthaven LLC no-warning copyright infringement lawsuits.
The website today displayed a heavily-redacted letter dated Wednesday and addressed to Chris Dodd, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The letter appeared to be critical of the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America.
The website said it was "Redacted per SOPA/PIPA" — a reference to Wednesday’s protests by the Internet community against anti-copyright piracy legislation dubbed "SOPA and PIPA" (Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act).
The movie and record industries favor SOPA and PIPA to deal with trafficking in their stolen online content, but web companies, like Google and Facebook, oppose the legislation on grounds it may inhibit free speech.
Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas has itself been accused of threatening free speech with its newspaper copyright infringement lawsuits. Righthaven denies those charges and says the 275 suits it filed since March 2010 were needed to deter rampant copyright infringement.
After Righthaven’s litigation strategy backfired on the company and drove it to near-financial ruin, its website was seized and auctioned for the benefit of a creditor.
The website boingboing has identified the righthaven.com buyer as Stefan Thalberg of Zug, Switzerland, though Thalberg hasn’t yet commented.
The new righthaven.com website includes a "no jellyfish" logo and in the page source identifier it has suggested it’s opposed to Internet service providers that — like jellyfish — lack the spines or backbones to fight censorship.
Wednesday’s letter to Dodd concludes with the line, "Righthaven.com – Proudly unaffiliated in any way with Righthaven LLC."