3 Count: Bite Out of Apple

This is the first in a new daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form above or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: Mac clone maker wins legal round against Apple

Hackintosh maker Psystar has won a skirmish against Apple. The judge in the case is allowing Psystar’s counter-claim, which originally accused Apple of anti-trust violations but was since modified to accuse Apple of copyright misuse. Apple originally sued Psystar because the company was putting Apple’s operating system, OSX, on non-Apple-licensed machines, a violation of Apple’s license.

Psystar counter-sued, however, the first attempt was thrown out as Psystar was unable to support an anti-trust claim. They now have been allowed to move forward with a copyright misuse claim, which, if successful, could bar Apple from enforcing portions of its license.

It is the first victory, major or minor, for Psystar since the beginning of these legal wranglings and may not be as big of a victory as some think as Psystar is yet to actually prove the allegations, they just earned the right to try.

2: Torrent Site ‘Franchise’ Eliminated by BREIN

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN (pronounced “brain”) has successful shut down over 90 Bittorrent sites hosted in the Netherlands. All of the sites involved had the same owner and came down in a pair of takedowns, the first removing 75, the second another 19.

This follows other, better-known actions by BREIN, including the pushing of Bittorrent sites off of LeaseWeb, a popular Dutch ISP.

3: Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them?

Finally, music bloggers using Google’s Blogger platform have found themselves in the midst of a “whodunnit” as their posts new and old, have begun disappearing from their site without any notice or warning. Though many suspect the RIAA and Google’s DMCA takedown procedure, the lack of notification is out of character for Google.

An interesting side note in this article is that Copyright 2.0 Show whipping boy Web Sheriff is apparently preparing to open a U.S. branch of its business. Meaning we’ll probably be talking about them a lot more in the coming weeks.

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 below or send me an email using the contact form above. I hope to hear from you.

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