3 Count: Something Different

Jonathan BaileyAugust 28, 2009

2 minutes read

Got any suggestions for the 3 Count. Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Isohunt judge says MPAA has yet to prove direct infringment

First off today, it has been a rough year for bittorrent trackers all over the world, but one site, Isohunt, may have scored a small legal win. The judge in their case against the MPAA, which is suing them for copyright infringement, has said that the movie studios have not proved direct infringement. According to the judge “United States copyright laws do not reach acts of infringement that take place entirely abroad,” and this has proved a difficult issue for the movie studios when dealing with the Canadian bittorrent tracker.

The MPAA has until September 15 to file a brief proving the infringement and, if it is unable to, the matter will be sent before a trial, possibly a jury. If that happens, it would be the first time that a bittorrent tracker made it to a jury trial in the U.S.

2: Who is Edward Przydzial and Did He Issue a DMCA Takedown Notice Over the Joker/Obama Image to Flickr?

Next up today, photographer Thomas Hawk has been doing research into the Obama image controversy at Flickr. To recap, Flickr took down a controversial image of Barack Obama photoshopped to look like the Joker from The Dark Knight, creating accusations of censorship. However, Flickr countered saying that they had received a DMCA takedown notice over the image.

Hawk managed to obtain the name of the person who filed the takedown, listed as Edward Przydzia in the notice, but found that the name produced zero search results and no one seemed to have that name. However, when he added an “l” to the end of the last name, he found Edward Przydzial, a photographer who has made claims to having created that particular work (the editing portion at least) and has a version of it on his LiveJournal account dated before the Flickr photo.

However, it is unclear if Przydzial is admitting or denying the filing of the takedown notice. After being asked by Hawk if he had filed the notice, he simply said that Flickr would “need a court order” to reveal the identity of the filers. I can say that is not true, I’ve had many I’ve filed against obtain my personal information, including notices sent to Google. Hawk has now said that he is done with this for now.

3: EU’s Reding backs Google in online books row

Finally today, it’s been a tough time for the Google Book Search deal. A DOJ investigation here at home, major companies aligning against it, including MIcrosoft, Yahoo! and Amazon and writers all over the world protesting the book scanning and indexing process.

However, today it gets a little bit of support. The European Union’s media commissioner, Viviane Reding, has come out in favor of the service and said she hopes to see similar corporate projects in the EU to pick up the slack that government has left behind in digitizing books. This comes ahead of an EU Commission hearing in September about the project and proposed settlement here in the U.S., that followed complaints from Germany about the project.

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.