Friday, December 10, 2010

Miami Beach blogger Matt Drudge sued

Miami Beach's most famous and reclusive blogger is being sued.

Matt Drudge, publisher of the ultra-conservative blog Drudge Report, has been sued for copyright infringement according to the Las Vegas Sun:
Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC on Wednesday filed its second copyright infringement lawsuit over Denver Post material, this time suing a big target: Drudge Report operator Matt Drudge.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Nevada, charges a Nov. 18 Denver Post "illustration" called "Transportation Security Administration agents perform enhanced pat-downs" was posted without authorization the same day on the Drudge Report website as well as the drudgereportarchives.com site.
According to the Sun, Righthaven is seeking "damages of $150,000 as well as forfeiture to Righthaven of the drudgereport.com and drudgereportarchives.com website domain names."

Specifically Drudge is being sued for his use of a Denver Post photograph of a TSA agent patting down a passenger at Denver International Airport.

The Sun story doesn't specify which Post photograph Drudge posted on his blog but my guess is that it's the first photo in this Denver Post slide show.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm mystified as to why Righthaven would go after Drudge. Photographs from the Denver Post slide show are all over the Internet.

Drudge, who shuns publicity to the point of obsession, has lived on Miami Beach for a number of years. (Random Pixels once spotted him in a Miami Beach Publix buying kitty litter.)

He owns a home on the Venetian Causeway.

Public records show he bought the home in Oct. 2003 for $1.4 million. In 2009 the home had an assesssed value of $817,828 and this year that dropped to $739,281.



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