We've reported numerous times both on the show and on the blog about Righthaven, a company that buys copyrights on newspaper stories and images and then sues bloggers who repost them either in part or in full. Recently, they've suffered setback after setback, having several cases dismissed, and being hit with attorney fees in dismissed cases, and court penalties.

As of yesterday, things have become much worse for Righthaven, as US District Judge Roger Hunt ordered the company to pay nearly $120,000 in court and attorney fees in a failed lawsuit. The Las Vegas Sun's Steve Green reports:

On Monday, The Author's Guild filed a lawsuit against several universities who have announced their intentions to make available electronic copies of so called "orphan works," books for which no copyright owner can be found. Law professor and blogger James Grimmelmann talks to Bob about the sticky legal issues that orphan works present.

Update: According to Vegasinc.com, Righthaven has warned that it might have to file for bankruptcy. The warning came in an emergency request for a stay on an order that it pay $34,045 in legal fees to blogger Wayne Hoehn, who successfully defended himself against a Righthaven lawsuit. (original article continues below)

Over the past year, we have reported a couple of times on a company called Righthaven, which buys certain copyrights on newspaper content and sues bloggers and aggregators who repost said content, either in part or in full. This week, several news outlets have reported that Righthaven is facing an existential crisis. Where did Righthaven come from, and how close are they to extinction?

Typically, when companies file lawsuits are filed against people for infringing on their intellectual property, they don’t actually name the defendents. Instead, they sue a group of John Does, and subpoena the identities of the defendants from their internet service providers. This practice has always been controversial, and defendants are starting to challenge this method of identification in court.

In 1976 Congress changed copyright law so that any musician who wrote a song after January 1^st, 1978 could apply to reclaim rights to those songs after 35 years.  So in 2013 there’s a long line of 1978 hitmakers who stand to regain their valuable songs and albums.  Duke professor James Boyle explains to Brooke why the windfall for Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Funkadelic and others is being fought tooth and nail by the record industry.

Song: Minute By Minute

Artist: The Doobie Brothers

Song: I Will Survive

Artist: Gloria Gaynor

Over the past 9 months, writer, director, and editor Kirby Ferguson has been releasing episodes of Everything is a Remix, a video series about how appropriation, borrowing, and adaptation are inherent in, well, everything we as a culture create. The third installment of the four-part series just came out last week, so we thought we'd ask him a few questions about the project and his personal opinions on copyright and fair use.