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1: Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

First off today, the EFF is reporting that, in the past few weeks, some 40,000 copyright infringement defendants, mostly sued as part of “speculative invoicing” cases have been dropped due to a variety of enjoinder and jurisdiction issues. The defendants, who were largely suspected of sharing content via p2p networks and had been sued as “Doe” defendants, have had their cases dropped though they could be refiled individually. However, the business model for speculative invoicing largely requires the use of massive lawsuits to be economically viable, making the prospect of suing large numbers of copyright infringers at once much more difficult.

2: Canberra Mulls a Wider Safe Harbour

Next up today, in Australia Attorney-General Robert McClelland has announced he is making three inquires into copyright reform. The first aims to expands safe harbor protections to content providers such as Google and Yahoo (similar to how it is in the U.S) and not limiting it to ISPs and other telecommunications providers. The second aims to allow for exemptions to their anti-circumvention rules, which forbid the breaking of digital locks for virtually any reason. The final announced inquiry is a “clearly defined” inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission to look at the current state of the law in the country. Copyright holders in Australia have lobbied hard against the first two proposed changes, making it likely that there will be a battle over these inquiries upcoming.

3: Olympics-Sochi 2014 Mascot Gets Frosty Reception Over Copyright

Finally today, one of Russia’s mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games has been accused of being a copyright infringement. Specifically, a chubby polar bear, which came in second during public voting, has been called an act of plagiarism by Viktor Chizhikov, who designed the brown bear cub mascot for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Specifically Chizhikov said, “It’s exactly the same as mine: the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the smile, though it’s askew.” There is no word about possibly legal action, such action would be unlikely anyway, but this controversy follows another that saw a version of Grandfather Frost, Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus, be disqualified at the last minute due to fears of him becoming property if the International Olympic Committee.

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.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

1: World, Get Ready for the DMCA: ACTA’s Internet Chapter Leaks

First off today, Ars Technica reports on a new leak of the “Internet Enforcement” section of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is a trade agreement being negotiated in secret by the U.S., EU, Australia, Canada and others. If the leak is authentic, the treaty aims to port United States’ DMCA to other countries including safe harbor provisions for hosts and, most controversially, anti-circumvention legislation that prevents the breaking of digital locks. The treaty however, is far from final and the leak has not been confirmed.

2: Thousands of authors opt out of Google Book Settlement

Next up, even as we await a written decision on whether the judge plans to approve the Google Book Search settlement, thousands of authors, including many big names or their estates, have already opted out. The list includes Rudyard Kipling, TH White, James Herriot, Nevil Shute and Roald Dahl among some 6,500 others that took the opportunity granted recently to opt out. The Google Book Search settlement, if approved, would allow Google to scan, display and sell copies of in-copyright but out-of-print books in exchange for a revenue sharing deal with the Author’s Guild and the publishers.

3: Luger’s Death at Olympics Leads to ‘Deplorable’ Copyright Claims by IOC

Finally today, the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during a practice run before the opening ceremonies has also turned into a copyright dispute. The International Olympic Committee has been filing takedown notices against video clips of the accident despite potential fair use issues with the clip. The clip, predictably, became a very popular video on the Web shortly after the accident and remains a video of high interest today.

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.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

We also have updates on the Google/Viacom case as well as a new independent group that becomes the fifth largest music rightsholder.

Also, in weird copyright news, we have a political leader that has been arrested in relation to a famous warez group, an engineer allegedly fired for his copyright opinions and plagiarized poetry at the Washington Post.

Remember, as usual, this week’s linkroll is a “raw” link list. Some stories are duplicated, some do not point to their original sources and some may not be accurate. A great deal of refining goes into producing the show notes for the Copyright 2.0 Show.