3 Count: Blade Stunner

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: Web pirates placed in ‘slow lane’

First off today the UK, which has repeatedly balked at the idea of disconnecting file sharers, may have come up with something of a creative new solution. Rather than outright cutting off access to those sharing files, the culture secretary has a compromise, putting file sharers in the “slow lane” by throttling their access down.

This would allow alleged pirates to continue surfing the Web and using their connection, but would impede their ability to download movies or music, legally or illegally.

A researcher interviewed for the article said that, “The sign of a good compromise is one that going to annoy both sides. I think ISPs will have an issue with it and so will the music labels.” On that front, I don’t think there is any doubt.

2: Adobe Acquitted of InDesign Copyright Violation

Next up Adobe, the makers of the well-known layout and design program InDesign has had an appeals court rule that their product is not an infringement of an earlier text book design application known as K2, which was made by Science Typographers (STI) in the early 90s.

To make a long story short, expert witnesses that analyzed the code found that there was no similarities between the products, despite a rather convoluted series of deals that could have given Adobe access to the original application and some non-copyrightable similarities between the two.

It is unclear if the makers of K2 plan on filing another appeal.

3: Web Series Tied to ‘Blade Runner’ Is In the Works

Finally today, if you’re a fan of the classic 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner”, you are in for a treat. Ridley Scott has announced that he is producing a series of Web videos based on the movie called “Purefold”.

While that’s great news for sci-fi fans, Creative Commons fans will also be excited to hear that the series is planned to be released under the CC-BY-SA license (the same license this site is under), making it available for remixing, sharing and other copying.

If this pans out, it would, according to the New York Times, be the first time that a major Hollywood director has embraced such a scheme.

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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