3 Count: Taking Lumps

This is 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 or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: Work continues on Copyright Act

In a turn of events that has left many scratching their heads, the New Zealand government is now denying that there are any plans to scrap their government’s copyright law, as reported previously, and that work on amendments to it were resuming, including attempts to patch up the controversial 92A amendment, which would have requires ISPs to ban file sharers after they were accused a certain number of times.

The story of New Zealand scrapping their copyright law was widely reported, including on this site and the Copyright 2.0 Show, however, it appears that the story was mistaken and it is business as usual for New Zealand, at least for a while.

Thanks to commenter Eo Nomine for the heads up on this one!

2: E.U. to Hear Proposal for Cross-Border Net Copyright

The EU is starting work on a Europe-wide copyright regime for music so retailers, online and off, can easily sell music across borders. Currently, many countries have different standards for for royalties and licenses, making it difficult for sites to operate across country borders. This new proposal would, hopefully, fix that and increase competition among retailers and lower costs to consumers.

Currently rights groups seem to be biding their time but stores are already hailing the initiative and have expressed a great deal of interest at lowering these barriers.

3: Coldplay Accused of Plagiarism — Again

Finally today, in the “some people just can’t catch a break” department, Coldplay is being accused of plagiarism yet again, this time by Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam.

However, what makes this accusation interesting is that he is claiming Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” is a plagiarism of his song “Foreigner Suite”, which Joe Satriani is already in court claiming that it is a plagiarism of his music.

The fact that multiple bands are claiming that the song is a plagiarism of their work likely weakens the plagiarism argument, showing that the melodies are fairly typical. Islam has not said if he plans on filing suit over the matter.

If this gets much worse, I’ll need a chart to keep track of who is accusing Coldplay of plagiarizing what from where.

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.

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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.