Off topic: Newpaper has a new business plan: sue bloggers who post their articles

Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/

Basically, since traditional newspapers are losing money, the plan is to sue bloggers who repost articles, forcing them to settle:

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

...Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act — up to $150,000 for a single infringement — to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.

What do you think? Fair to sue, or does it go too far?