3 Count: All Apologies

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 lawyers toss “a skunk in the jury box,” apologize

First off today, day two of the Jammie Thomas trial took an interesting twist as an expert witness for the plaintiffs said that he found evidence of an external hard drive on her computer, indicating that perhaps Thomas had stored the music there. However, the evidence had not been properly introduced into the trial, giving the judge and defendants time to analyze it, and the judge threatened to strike all of the witness’ testimony.

However, after a recess and a few apologies from the record labels attorneys, the judge agreed to only strike the portions of the testimony that pertained to the external hard drive, thus avoiding a potential disaster for the record labels.

The trial is continuing today.

2: Harry Potter publisher denies plagiarism claim

Next up today, JK Rowling’s UK publisher Bloomsbury have strongly denied plagiarism accusations that were filed against them in by the estate of Adrian Jacobs.

According to the Accusation, Rowling had copied “substantial parts” of Jacobs’ 1987 book “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard — No 1 Livid Land” in her 2000 book “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”.

Bloomsbury has said that “This claim is without merit and will be defended vigorously,” indicating that they plan to litigate it and seek a judgment in their favor.

3: Scribe: ’60 Years’ is ‘Rye’ parody

Finally today, the “Catcher in the Rye” lawsuit has taken another turn. Fredrik Colting, the now-unmasked author of the upcoming book, “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye”, has said his book is a parody of the original, not an unauthorized sequel.

In their court filing, Colting and his publisher described the book as “a transformative commentary and criticism, a fair use of minimal elements from ‘Catcher'”

Obviously, without seeing the book it is very hard for anyone to offer much commentary, but it appears that there is more to this case than what was initially said.

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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