3 Count: Boxed In

This is daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: Content Owners Force Hulu To Kneecap Boxee

Content owners who put their shows and movies on Hulu have demanded that Boxee stop carrying Hulu-based content. Boxee, a video conversion service that allows videos on the Web to be converted to a format usable by media centers and TVs, has removed the site from its list of compatible services as a show of “good faith”.

Though there is a lot of speculation as to why Hulu’s providers wanted Boxee cut off, it seems likely that the service’s function of moving content to a TV. Hulu has worked to be “TV for your Computer” and it is likely content creators worried that allowing Hulu to be shown trivially on TVs would make it a replacement for the original programs.

2: Judge reaffirms 1918 legal doctrine in AP lawsuit

A 90-year-old legal doctrine dealing with “hot news” has been upheld in a New York courtroom. In the lawsuit, the Associated Press has sued AHN claiming that AHN copies stories from legitimate AP subscribers and republishes them without permission or attribution. To help make its case, the AP cited a 1918 ruling, which it was also the victor in, that found companies can sue when others copy and redistribute timely or “hot news” without permission.

This is, of course, counter in many ways to recent changes in copyright law that have held facts can not be copyrighted. The judge, however, did not rule on the merits of the case and, instead, only allowed it to go forward in front of a jury.

This case is very similar to a 1997 case dealing with box scores from basketball games, where the “hot news” doctrine was also upheld.

3: U2’s New Album Leaks Early Despite ‘Private Hearings’

Finally today, despite serious security measures, private screenings where cell phones were banned and many threats by the band, U2’s latest album, slated for release in just over a week, has leaked out over Bittorrent. Though some of the music could be found on bittorrent for some time, the new recordings are said to be of end user quality and may actually harm the album’s sales.

According to TorrentFreak, the album has been downloaded some 100,000 times already with, almost certainly, many times the downloads to come.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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