3 Count: Misjoined

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

1: Judge May Dismiss 4,576 of 4,577 P2P Defendants From Lawsuit

First off today, a DC Federal judge who is overseeing one of the U.S. Copyright Group’s many lawsuits is giving serious weight to whether or not the lawsuits were misfiled. According to a joint petition by the ACLU and the EFF, since the defendants filed in the mass lawsuit, in their view, do not have any legal reason to be enjoined in the same lawsuit, they should be broken up into 4,000+ individual cases that would, in turn, for the dismissal of the lawsuit against all but one of the defendants. The U.S. Copyright Group has two weeks to respond to this petition and the judge may still rule in their favor but does seem to be taking the issue seriously by demanding the plaintiffs defend their actions.

2: Spanish Court Dismisses File-sharing Appeal

Next up today, an appeals court in Spain has dismissed a lawsuit against the website cvcdgo.com saying that the file sharing site complies with the law in the country and is not infringing any copyrights. The site, which is currently down, linked to files on other servers without hosting any content themselves and also failed to derive any financial benefit from the sharing, elements the court says makes the site completely legal in Spain.

3: The Copyright Wars Come to “Glee”

Finally today, the popular TV show “Glee” has found itself in the center of a copyright controversy. Not for its use of music or for any kind of infringement, but for allegedly showcasing a high school glee club taking actions that would open it up to high levels of liability. It started with a posting at the blog Balkinization, which found that if a school were to follow in Glee’s footsteps they would open themselves up to huge amounts liability. On the other hand, Salon points out that the show itself is a new business model for music, being responsible for some 25 top 100 singles in 2009.

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.

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