3 Count: Boarding Facebook

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: RIAA, MPAA Copyright Warnings: Facts and Fiction

First off today we have Torrentfreak doing some clearing of the air on matters related to the MPAA and RIAA warning letters that some ISPs are now sending out. In their article they work to clear up the fact that not only is no one going to be disconnected via this method (something pointed out repeatedly here) but also that this has been going on for some time.

Indeed, they are right that it is unclear what exactly IS new about the “new” plan. Especially since millions of those letters have been forwarded out already on Comcast alone since fall of last year.

2: Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine

Next up today, Google and the record labels have launched a hail mary play to sell music in China, a country where 99% of all music is pirated. Google has created a new music search engine that allows people to stream and download music for free, with the blessing of the labels.

The service is not available to users outside of China and is seen as a bid to compete with Baidu, which dominates the Chinese market and has offered free MP3 search for quite some time. Google will split the advertising revenue with its partners and the record labels, thus turning Chinese piracy into at least some revenue for the major labels.

3: Pirate Bay Adds Feature to Share Torrents on Facebook

In a move that is going to put Facebook in a bit of a bind, The Pirate Bay has begun using Facebook Connect share torrent files via the social networking sites. By clicking a link on The Pirate Bay’s site, you can post any torrent you are downloading to your profile and, thus allow anyone following you to download it too.

The Facebook TOS forbids the posting of copyright infringing material but, since torrent files themselves do not include any infringing information, just details about where to obtain such information in some cases, it is unclear what, if anything, Facebook will do.

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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