3 Count: Tenenbombed

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1: Oy Tenenbaum! RIAA wins $675,000, or $22,500 per song

First off today, the Tenenbaum verdict is in and it is not pretty if your name happens to be Tenenbaum. The jury awarded the RIAA $22,500 per song or $675,000 for the entire settlement. The jury award could have been anywhere from $750 per song to $150,000, making the award on the lower end of the spectrum, but still very high in value.

Tenebaum was sued for sharing files over various P2P file sharing networks and admitted liability during the course of the trial. That left the jury only to decide on the damages awarded. The next step for Joel, most likely, is to ask the judge to reduce the damages and, according to him, if that fails, he’ll likely file for bankruptcy.

A donation campaign was started to help Joel pay his award but it has since then been altered, after an outcry, so that the funds will go to pay for defense expenses.

2: Day 26 Accused of Copyright Infringement

R&B Band Day 26 has been sued for copyright infringement, but this one is a little different than most musical plagiarism lawsuits. The band is not accused of lifting a riff or a few notes, but rather an entire song.

According to singer Kirby Shields, his song “I’m Just Getting Started” is identical to the bands April, 2009 release “Just Getting Started” and he has filed suit against the band and various labels affiliated with the group to prove it.

Day 26 was formed on Season 4 of MTV’s “Making of the Band” and “Forever and a Day”, the album that contains “Just Getting Started” is the band’s second release.

3: isoHunt Loses Appeal in Preemptive Strike Against CRIA

Finally today, bittorrent tracker ISOHunt, which had preemptively sued the CRIA, the Canadian answer the RIAA, lost its appeal to have the case decided on a summary judgment and that, in turn has set the case up to be presented to a full trial.

isoHunt had sued the CRIA in hopes of getting a declaratory judgment ruling that the service was non-infringing. However, the judge felt the issues were too complex and too important to not present at a full trial and the appeals court agreed.

isoHunt now has to decide if it wishes to proceed to a full trial or take some other action at this point. However, they did not seem very surprised by the ruling, which had been widely expected.

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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