Somehow This Is Legal

This is how I feel.

So there's this law firm that is reserving their special place in hell early. They're buying up images that have gone viral and then tracking down and suing not just those who use those images (in blogs or personal websites) without written permission but the people who are commenting on them.

Somehow this is legal.

My hope is that the Internet, now that it knows about this, will act as a super hero, will take these guys down, and make this very obvious trap illegal. But that might not happen, since there's this loop hole that financially benefits the government. This isn't what America is all about, guys. I could very, very easily get sued (and possibly settle) for thousands of dollars for posting a picture on this blog without written consent of the owner of that image (assuming the owner is Righthaven), even though I'm not gaining anything financially from the blog or the image. Blogger's refusal to "monetize" my site could give me a leg to stand on in court, but ultimately still isn't doing me much good. And they can apparently do this without first contacting the hoster, blogger, individual and asking them to remove the image. They can just serve you out of the blue. Fucking assholes.

I think this Farker summed it up pretty well:

Jesus, now I desperately want to find places that will let me post the goatse pic, and tubgirl and lemonparty, and all the rest of the rogue's gallery. Then when they sue me, I insist that it goes to court so that they can plead with the jury to give them royalties because they own those pictures and want to protect their interest in them. I wanna blow up the pic of goatse man to wall-sized and introduce it as an exhibit, then make their experts stand next to it while they testify that AssholeLawyers.com owns this fine image, and they deserve payment any time someone posts it. Then when I lose they can get in line behind about twenty credit card companies and Sallie Mae for their big fat wad of negative equity that is my current estate.

This, and I really want them to sue 4chan. Really really really want them to. The word "epic" would be dwarfed into invisibility by the epic nature of the attack that would follow. –dahmers love zombie

TOE HAIRS! God, I'm weird.

Just to be safe, I might just start posting pictures of my cat, even if the post has nothing to do with cats. *Sigh*