Denver • When Brian Hill, a 20-year-old blogger from North Carolina, posted on his website in December a photograph of an airport security officer conducting a pat-down, a legal battle was the last thing he imagined.

A month later, Hill received an email from a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun who was looking into a Nevada company that files copyright lawsuits for newspapers. The email informed Hill that he was one of those the company, Righthaven, was suing. Though the airport photo had gone viral before Hill plucked it off the Web, it belonged to The Denver Post, where it first appeared Nov. 18.

Hill took down the photo, but he was too late. A summons was delivered to his home. The lawsuit sought statutory damages. It didn't name a figure, but it accused Hill of "willful" infringement, and under federal copyright law, up to $150,000 can be awarded in such cases.

"I was shocked," Hill said. "I thought maybe it was a joke or something to scare me. I didn't know the picture was copyrighted."

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Frustrated clients • During the past year, as newspapers continued to grapple with how to protect their online content, Righthaven has filed more than 200 similar federal lawsuits in Colorado and Nevada regarding material posted without permission from The Denver Post or the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The company has business relationships with both newspapers. Like much of the industry, the papers see the appropriation of their work without permission as akin to theft and harmful to their business, and they are frustrated by unsuccessful efforts to stem the common practice, whether it's by a one-man operation such as Hill's, or an established one such as that of Matt Drudge.

Sara Glines, a vice president for MediaNews Group, which owns The Denver Post — as well as other newspapers that include The Salt Lake Tribune — wrote in an email that the pat-down photo had been used on more than 300 websites with no credit to The Post or the photographer.

"We have invested heavily in creating quality content in our markets," Glines wrote. "To allow others who have not shared in that investment to reap the benefit ultimately hurts our ability to continue to fund that investment at the same level."

Mark Hinueber, general counsel for Stephens Media, owner of the Review-Journal, echoed Glines' concerns, saying that cutting and pasting articles "steals the potential audience for our editorial material and traffic to our website."

Some critics, however, contend that Righthaven's tactics are draconian — and that the company hopes to extract swift settlements before it's clear that there is a violation of federal copyright law. Typically, the suits have been filed without warning. Righthaven rarely sends out notices telling websites to take down material that doesn't belong to them before seeking damages and demanding forfeiture of the Web domain name.

Defendants in these cases run the gamut. They have included white supremacist David Duke, the Democratic Party of Nevada and Drudge. But little-known websites, nonprofit groups and mom-and-pop bloggers — people who do it as a hobby — aren't exempt from Righthaven's legal actions.

According to some Internet legal experts who have been watching the cases with growing interest, the way it works is simple: Righthaven finds newspaper material that has been republished on the Web — usually an article, excerpts or a photograph — and obtains the copyrights. Then, the company sues.

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Opposing views • Whether the defendant credits the original author or removes the material after being sued matters little. None of the cases has gone to trial, and many have been settled out of court. In two instances, judges have ruled against Righthaven in pretrial motions. According to the Sun, which has tracked the cases, the only two publicly disclosed settlements were for $2,185 and $5,000.

In describing his company's approach, Steve Gibson, Righthaven's CEO, said there has been "voluminous, almost incalculable infringement" since the advent of the Internet and that years of warning people to take down copyrighted content hadn't worked. Newspapers, he said, needed a new way to address the problem of people appropriating their material without permission.

Eric Goldman, director of the high-tech law institute at the Santa Clara (Calif.) University School of Law, said reposting published material online could qualify as "fair use" if it didn't diminish the market value of the original. Other critics of the suits contend that reposting material for the purposes of discussion doesn't constitute infringement.

"Many of the defendants are ill-informed about copyright law," Goldman said. "They're not trying to compete with a newspaper. They just don't know the rules."

Goldman informally advised a company that was sued by Righthaven and settled out of court.

In an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Media Bloggers Association regarding a Righthaven suit in Nevada, Marc Randazza, a lawyer specializing in First Amendment issues, accused the company of acquiring copyrights for the sole purpose of going after defendants who couldn't afford legal help.

"Nobody can seriously believe that Righthaven, which publishes nothing anywhere, has acquired the full ownership of the articles it sues upon," wrote Randazza, whose legal group recently filed motions to dismiss two other Righthaven cases, accusing the company of making fraudulent copyright claims.

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"Viewer diversion" • Gibson denies that unwitting bloggers are a particular target and points to lawsuits such as the one against Drudge. Righthaven accused Drudge of posting the airport pat-down photo on his Drudge Report website without permission. The suit was settled out of court, Gibson said.

"The harm of viewer diversion has been achieved, whether it is being shown on MomandPop.com or ChicagoTribune.com," he said.

Glines said MediaNews "reviewed every violation and only approved actions against sites that carried advertising and were not charities."

Rachel Bjorklund wishes she had been sent a simple email rather than slapped with a lawsuit. A stay-at-home mother in Oregon, Bjorklund was sued by Righthaven last month after she posted the airport pat-down photo on her blog, ThoughtsFromaConservativeMom.com.

"My reaction was, 'Why didn't you just contact me and ask me to take it down?' That would have been no problem," said Bjorklund, who plans to challenge the suit.

Hill, who suffers from autism and diabetes and lives on disability checks with his mother, said that, at one point, Righthaven had offered to settle for $6,000 but he refused. A Colorado lawyer, David Kerr, has been defending him pro bono.

A federal judge presiding over the case criticized Righthaven this month for using the courts to settle with defendants scared of the potential cost of litigation. Shortly after, Righthaven moved to voluntarily drop the suit, saying it hadn't been aware of Hill's health problems. But Righthaven also stated in court filings that a dismissal didn't exonerate others it was suing and warned Hill against continuing to use copyrighted material.

Hill recently decided to revive his website, USWGO.com, where he posts links to various political articles and his own musings, which he had taken down after being sued. On the site, there is a notice explaining Hill's belief that material posted there, even without permission, constitutes fair use. This time, though, Hill said he's steering clear of any image or story that could cause him trouble with Righthaven.