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1: EU Backs Fans Watching Soccer on Cheap Decoders

First off today, a ruling by the EU’s highest court may change the way fans all over the continent view soccer matches. The case centers around a British pub owner, Karen Murphy, who was sued by the England’s Premier League after she used a cheap Greek decoder to view league matches in her pub. The decoder cost a fraction of what it would have cost to subscribe to Sky TV, the broadcaster with the UK rights. That prompted the suit from the league. Though a lower court ruled against Murphy, the higher court said that a local law barring the importation and sale of such decoders could not be justified and that the matches themselves do not qualify for copyright protection, though pre-game material, overlays and other elements might. The decision now goes back to the lower court, which has to take the advisement and apply it.

2: Legal Expert Says Anti-counterfeit Deal Should Be Scrapped

Next up today, a Douwe Korff, professor of international law at London Metropolitan University, was recently hired by the Greens in the EU Parliament to study the human rights implications of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). He concluded that the agreement may negatively impact free speech and personal excpression by not allowing trivial or otherwise beneficial infringements. However, the EU Parliament has asked its own legal committee, the JURI committee, to look into the legality of ACTA as well.

3: Century 21 Canada wins lawsuit against Rogers subsidiary Zoocasa

Finally today, in a story that I missed when it first broke, Century 21 Canada has won its lawsuit against Zoocasa, a real estate searching site that Century 21 accused of scraping content from their Web presence. According to the ruling, the scraping was a violation of both copyright law and Century 21′s terms of service. The court ordered Zoocasa to stop misusing the site and to pay $1,000 in damages.

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 5 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: Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011

First off today, an article on Techcrunch over the weekend told us that maybe music executives aren’t as clueless as some people seem to think. According to the piece by Michael Arrington, he had a “Surprisingly candid lunch conversation last week with a big music label executive” and found out that the record labels are fully aware of what is happening to their business but that they are aware that they well have to alter their business models, but not until 2013.

According to the article, the math, predictions and other tools just say that there is too much money in the current model to engage in a shift of policies until at least 2011, probably 2013. CD sales, licensing deals, etc., though waning in their revenue potential, are still big income makers and will continue to be for the next few years at least.

What exactly will happen when and if the record labels change their business model is unclear.

2: Hulu Goes Medieval on Boxee

What started as a gentleman’s disagreement between Hulu and Boxee has now degenerated into a game of Whac-A-Mole. Recently, Hulu asked Boxee, a service that makes it easy to get online video to your TV, to disable access to Hulu at the request of Hulu’s content partners. Boxee complied and the matter seemed resolved in a very gentlemanly way.

However, Boxee decided it wasn’t done. It then re-added support for Hulu, this time using Hulu’s RSS feeds, in turn prompting Hulu to block Boxee from accessing their content. Boxee, then, modified their side to ensure that Hulu continued to work on their service.

Why Boxee did this is unclear as is what, if any, action Hulu plans on taking.

3: Re/Max says local agency’s logo too similar to its own

Finally today, in a trademark story from my native South Carolina, real estate agency Re/Max has filed a trademark dispute lawsuit against Charleston, S.C.-based agency Rehava saying that their logo is too similar to their own, even though Rehava’s logo doesn’t use any of the same fonts, colors, images or anything else in common with the Re/Max logo.

Rehava says the challenge to their trademark filing is a form of “harassment” and that they intend to fight the challenge, even though it will likely be expensive.

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.

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.