3 Count: Got Back

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1: Musician Claims “Glee” Stole His Version of “Baby Got Back”

First off today, Jordan Zakarin at The Hollywood Reporter writes that musician Jonathan Coulton is claiming that the TV show “Glee” used his cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s song “Baby Got Back” in its show.

Coulton, best known for his comedic covers and other novelty songs, claims that the show used the audio from his cover without permission and did not attribute him as the creator. Also according to Coulton, he spoke with the producers at Glee who said that they were within their legal rights and would not be altering the song or removing it from iTunes, where it is available for sale.

Coulton claims that the show just used his music and overlayed the vocals of the musicians in the show, highlighted by the fact that the song features a duck quacking to cover up obscenities and a line in the song. Coulton has said that he has his lawyers looking into the matter but is not optimistic about having legal recourse.

2: Mega Passed Its First Copyright Takedown Test

Next up today, Eric Limer at Gizmodo reports that Mega, Kim Dotcom’s follow-up to the shuttered Megaupload service, has received its first takedowns and has removed the files with efficiency.

THe anti-piracy service LeakID filed five DMCA-like takedown requests to Mega last week over infringing copies of episodes of Naruto. The service removed all files within 48 hours.

Mega’s encryption means that other copies of the episodes may still be on the server but Mega can not detect them. However, files that are shared publicly, meaning the file and the encryption key are both shared, can still be seen and downloaded by anyone, including rightsholders, and marked for takedown.

3: Twitter Gets More Transparent With A New, Dedicated Site Reporting 6,646 Copyright Complaints And 1,858 Gov’t Info Requests

Finally today, Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch writes that Twitter has updated its transparency report, calling it “V2” where it highlights how many takedown notices the company and its 200 million users see.

According to the report, in the latter half of 2012, Twitter received some 3,268 copyright takedown notices, 53% of which resulted in material being removed. In end, some 7,205 user accounts were affected including 5,557 tweets being withheld and 1,648 pieces of media being withheld. The numbers are actually a slight decrease from the first half of the year.

Twitter has said that they are planning on expanding the page with more information including granular information about the takedown requests.

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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