3 Count: Mega Rebirth

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1: Dotcom Raid Anniversary Marked by New File-Sharing Website

First off today, Joe Schneider at The Washington Post reports that, exactly one year after a raid resulted in the closure of Megaupload and the arrest of its founder, Kim Dotcom, the staff of the original site have launched Megaupload’s successor, MEGA.

MEGA is different from Megaupload, which was mostly a simple cyberlocker service, in that it provides client-side encryption (so no unencrypted files are uploaded to the service) and large storage limits, including 50 GB for free.

MEGA is already reportedly at 1 million accounts but the service has been beset by problems caused by the rush of interest. Kim Dotcom has promised that they are working on resolving the issues.

2: Copyright Suit Pits Fair Use Against Unlicensed Distribution

Next up today, Jon Mello at PC World reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have signed onto an amicus brief in the ongoing case pitting the Associated Press against new aggregator Meltwater and are asking the court to rule against the AP’s interpretation of fair use.

The AP sued Meltwater claiming that the aggregator resold AP reporting at a much cheaper price, calling it a “parasitic” service that distributes excerpts from AP stories (among others) to their subscribers. The AP had said that this was not transformative enough to qualify for fair use but the brief alleges that such a narrow interpretation of fair use would also eliminate time shifting.

The AP has a long history of conflict with new aggregators having even battled with Yahoo! and Google over their news services until they both secured licenses.

3: Disney World Horror Fantasy Raises Knotty Copyright Issues

Finally today, Brooks Barnes at The New York Times reports that filmmaker Randy Moore is raising some interesting copyright and trademark questions with his new movie “Escape from Tomorrow”, which was shot (without permission) largely in Walt Disney theme parks.

The film, which is a horror movie about a father who goes insane while visiting the park, was careful to leave out a lot of copyrighted works, such as music, but still left in a lot of other copyrighted and trademarked items including artwork, logos and so forth.

Disney has not yet responded to the film, which premiered at Sundance, but John Sloss, an agent working for the film said “Bring it on” when a reporter mentioned the potential threat of a Disney lawsuit.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will 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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