3 Count: Hateful Refiling

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1: Quentin Tarantino Files New Gawker Lawsuit Over ‘Hateful Eight’ Script Leak

First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Quentin Tarantino has refiled his lawsuit against Gawker over the leak of the script of his upcoming film, The Hateful Eight, adding new arguments that he hopes will pass legal muster.

Tarantino sued Gawker after the company, on one of its blogs, linked directly to an illegally-shared draft of his script for the film. However, that original lawsuit was tossed because, according to the judge, Tarantino did not claim any form of direct copyright infringement for which Gawker could commit contributory infringement.

However, the judge gave leave for Tarantino to refile and refile he has, claiming that those who viewed the script online, as part of their viewing, had to download it to their computer, committing a direct copyright infringement. Gawker has said it is still reviewing the new lawsuit.

2: Second EBR Staffer on Leave in Probe of Possible Software Theft

Next up today, Rebekah Allen at The Advocate reports that the Mayor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (MOHSEP) in Baton Rogue, Louisiana has placed a second employee on leave for possible software theft.

Parish attorney Mary Roper has been placed on leave along with MOHSEP employee Kyle Jones over an alleged attempt to sell an in-house developed application named TRACE 360, which is software to streamline disaster management tasks, as a private product.

According to government officials Jones registered a company to help government entities with disaster preparation. Roper is alleged to have sent code from TRACE 360 to her husband, which came up in an investigation of Jones’ activities. However, Roper says that she was tasked with registering the application with the U.S. Copyright Office, which prompted her to send it to her husband for technical advice. The application was registered to the city-parish in 2011.

3: DMN vs. Grooveshark Continues In the California Court of Appeal…

Finally today, Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News (DMN) reports that its ongoing battle against Grooveshark over an anonymous commenter on DMN has reached the California Court of Appeals, where judges had difficult questions for both sides.

DMN found itself at the center of controversy when an anonymous commenter accused Grooveshark, a music streaming service that relies on user uploads, of requiring its employees to upload a number of tracks every day in violation of the law. Grooveshark sued to learn the identity of the commenter but DMN resisted.

According to DMN, the information about the commenter has long since been deleted and overwritten. But despite that, Grooveshark successfully petitioned to require DMN to mirror and backup the server though it has not yet won the right to look at that backup. Grooveshark considered the comment to be defamatory but has not brought a lawsuit against the unknown commenter, instead focusing on DMN directly. Both sides faced tough questions in the court of appeals though, according to DMN, it was Grooveshark that got the brunt of the grilling, in particular over jurisdiction and scope issues.

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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