Pathetic act of desperation by Vegas publisher

With the ad business going a lot further south than the Nevada desert, newspaper publishers looking for new revenue streams may take to feeding off small bloggers to stay afloat, milking the bloggers to death with copyright enforcement suits.

Not as an afterthought or as a device to protect their franchises, but as a standalone business model.

Poynter’s Adam Hochberg reports this morning on the death star named Righthaven which, with its partner, Darth Vadar-like Stephens Media Group (publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal), is recruiting more publishers to join what some are calling a shakedown.

The Las Vegas Sun (an independent newspaper distributed within the Review-Journal) and Wired also recently covered the copyright clampdown.

Can a nine-paragraph reprint in a blog with just a handful of viewers really cause “irreparable harm” to a copyright owner?

We’d expect such nonsense from Las Vegas, but in this case what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas — it’s coming to a blog near you.

Read on.