3 Count: Zombie Coupons

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: US outlines secretive international piracy deal

First off today, the Obama administration has finally made public a summary of the controversial and very secretive ACTA treaty. The treaty, which currently has 37 countries in negotiations, focuses on large scale importing and exporting of copyright infringing goods.

Most of the language in the summary deal with border checks, criminal enforcement and large-scale framework issues. However, there is a section that deals with digital piracy though no language has been added to it as of yet. As the section says, “This section of the agreement is intended to address some of the special challenges that new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights, such as the possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers in deterring copyright and related rights piracy over the Internet.”

It appears that ACTA is still very early in the negotiations and it may be several years before we see anything firm come from it.

2: DMCA Coupon Flap Ends — Nobody ‘Won’

In a case back from the dead, Coupons.com has lost its bid to reopen its 2007 lawsuit against John Stottlemire, who posted code on his site that enabled users to print an unlimited number of legitimate coupons.

The two parties had settled shortly after the suit was filed but Stottlemire, perhaps in a misguided boast, claimed to have “kicked their ass” and that, in turn, caused Coupons Inc. to attempt to reopen the case on the grounds that Stottlemire had breached the confidentiality clause of the settlement.

Though the court did agree that Stottlemire had breached the agreement, it was ruled to be inadequate to reopen the case, leaving the various issues of the case unresolved for now.

3: NORML official contests UGA stance on bulldog logo

Finally today, the pro-marijuana organization NORML and the University of Georgia are in a dispute over a t-shirt and logo depicting a bulldog, the UGA mascot, smoking a joint while studying under an arch.

The university claims that this is a violation of their copyrights and has taken action against the organization within the college discipline system, blocking access UGA’s NORML chapter’s site, demanding return of the t-shirts with the logo and removal of the image from their site.

There appears to be a great deal of dispute as to who was in contact with who as the university claims to have given NORML every opportunity remove the work in question while the organization claims they never heard from the school.

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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