3 Count: DOJ’s J-O-B

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: Justice Department sides with Cablevision against Hollywood

First off today, the Cablevision case has taken a somewhat unexpected turn as the Department of Justice has filed a brief with the Supreme Court asking them NOT to take up the case and let the lower court ruling stand. If that were to happen, Cablevision’s networked DVR, which works by having servers at Cablevision record shows as opposed to a set top box, would enjoy the same projections as VCRs and other similar devices.

While this is a definite turn for the DOJ, which under the previous administration had almost unabashedly tried to expand copyright, the DOJ does emphasize how narrow the appeals court ruling was, indicating that it does not provide a carte blanche for Web 2.0 companies that want to provide network TV services as the Cablevision DVR is limited to the one person that records a show.

The Supreme Court is expected to make its decision known soon.

2: Russian Police Make Arrests In First Ever BitTorrent Raid

Next up, Russia, once thought to be a safe haven for Bittorrent trackers, has executed its first police raid on a bittorrent site, temporarily shutting down the tracker Interfilm.

According to Russian officials as well as copyright groups, a famous loophole that allowed AllofMP3 to remain open for quite some time is no longer valid and they fully expect that charges will be brought against the trackers operators.

As for the site, it is back up and running, operating on the famous Dutch host LeaseWeb, which in and of itself has been the subject of bittorrent shutdowns in the past.

3: Downloading 3322 Copyrighted Movies is Okay in Spain

Finally today, a criminal court in Spain has acquitted a man who admitted downloading well over 3000 movies because he had not made any profit from his file sharing and had no plans to do so.

This has become something of a standard policy in Spain, where the law makes it perfectly legal to share files non-commercially and has helped to make Spain one of the most popular countries for file sharing.

On the flip side, bittorrent trackers, especially those who earn revenue from their file sharing, have been found guilty in Spain and have often moved to other, more bittorrent-friendly, countries.

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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