3 Count: Seeking Clarity

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: Judge Curbs YouTube Suit On Copyrights

First off today, a Federal judge in one of YouTube’s ongoing copyright disputes has thrown out some of the damages that the plaintiffs has asked for. The case, which involves music publishers and Britain’s top soccer league among others, has seen punitive damages be thrown out and that the plaintiffs could not seek damages on foreign works that were not registered in the U.S.

The judge, however, did allow for damages on live broadcast footage uploaded to the service.

The case is moving forward and the plaintiffs are saying that they now have “clarity” on their case and are moving forward with what is left.

2: Judge Rules P2P Legal, Sites To Be Presumed Innocent

Next up, a judge in Spain, while refusing to grant an injunction against a file sharing site in the country, has become the first judge to say that P2P file sharing is completely legal. Saying that, “As a mere transmission of data between Internet users, do not violate, in principle, any right protected by Intellectual Property Law.”

According to the judge, adding a work to a file sharing network does not make a copy of the file and the distribution portion of the Spanish copyright act mentions specifically the need for something tangible.

With that in mind, the judge refused to grant an injunction and set the case for a full trail to be held at a later date. What this may show though is that Spanish copyright law could be in serious need of updating if it isn’t available to address digital content, one way or another.

3: Did Black Eyed Peas Steal Freeland’s ‘Mancry’?

Finally today, a bit of a plagiarism brouhaha is forming between The Black Eyed Peas and Adam Freeland. Freeland accuses the band of using a portion of his 2007 song “Mancry” in their recently-released song “Party All The Time”. A YouTube video, which has been embedded in the article above, puts the two tracks side by side.

Personally, I have a very difficult time making a decision on this one. Though I hear the similarity between the two, not only is the alleged plagiarism just a few notes, but since The Black Eyed Peas used it in the background of other elements, its hard to get to hear it very clearly.

I’m going to turn this one over to the music theorists that know much more about this than I.

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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