are Copyrights in question registered before infringment?

[Lettered]

I noticed in the articles (which I dare not quote verbatim ) that Righthaven appears to be seeking $150,000 statutory damages.  My understanding is that statutory damages are NOT recoverable unless the material was registered before infringment began, or registered within a certain amount of time of publication.

Does this mean that each and every newspaper article has been registered before infringment began?  

Maybe its all so quick (publication to infringment to getting caught) that they still have a window to register in time to sue for statutory damages?

Or are they asking for something that they arent entitled to?

I can hardly imagine any news organization going to the trouble and expense of registering copyrights for each and every article they print.  

just curious . . .

[Oscar Michelen]

There's no way to tell and its just more likely that they are not registered.  Then if they register the entire paper as whole, they would face the same  "compilation" issue Getty and the other digital warehouses face

[YetAnotherRiddickVictim]

The registration has to occur within 90 days of first publication.

For example, here's an article on a sports-betting law suit:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/apr/09/copyright-lawsuit-filed-over-sports-betting-conten/

The article was published on November 10, 2010 and the copyright registration was filed on February 7, 2011... just within the 90-day limit.

It's a pretty clever strategy. Every day, spider Google and other databases for key phrases from your 60-day-old content. Hand off the the top hits (if there are any) to a paralegal who checks them to make sure the infringement exists and meets certain minimum standards. Pick the low-hanging fruit from that batch and file individual copyright applications for the attendant articles. Then file boilerplate suits with the right blanks filled in. Collect settlements galore from people without the resources to fight you or who decide it's cheaper to pay you to go away than to fight and prove they're right.