The Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review-Journal have long taken opposite sides in issues, political and otherwise, and never made a secret of their willingness to wage battle.

Despite being delivered together in an unusual business arrangement, the two duke it out often.

Today is no exception. In a major front page story, the Sun lays out what it purports to be the Review-Journal's “attack-dog” copyright battle plan and its use of copyright enforcement partner Righthaven LLC:

In a strategic campaign that is attracting growing interest nationwide in legal and media circles, Righthaven -- without warning -- has sued at least 86 website owners in federal court in Las Vegas since March for copyright infringement.

Such aggressiveness is unusual in the newspaper industry because most newspapers have acted like watchdogs -- playing nice but firm with copyright infringers by asking them to take down their stories and replace them with links that direct readers to the source newspaper. That softball tactic avoids wasting money and time on lawyers and lawsuits, and turns copyright infringers into allies who drive traffic to newspaper websites.

But from the get-go, Righthaven hits copyright violators with lawsuits seeking $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of their website domain names.

Righthaven's legal initiative has critics calling it a frivolous-lawsuit-and-shakedown campaign aimed not at gaining justice for Righthaven, but at putting money in its pockets -- charges denied by Righthaven and its entrepreneurial CEO, Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson. “We own the copyright. To call it a 'shakedown' is to ignore 200 years of copyright law.”