3 Count: Pirate Banned

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1: Pirate Bay Founding Group Disbands

First off today, Piratbyran, the pro-piracy group most famous for founding The Pirate Bay, has disbanded. The group, which founded in 2003 as a response to Antipiratbyran, a Swedish anti-piracy outfit, says they no longer feel needed and that they have successfully “normalized” the use of file sharing networks. The group also suffered the death of one of their founders, which a spokesperson also partially attributed the closure to.

2: Swedish ISP Blocks The Pirate Bay Following Injunction

Next up today, Swedish ISP Black is in the center of a copyright-related storm. Last year the ISP was a bandwidth provider for The Pirate Bay before an injunction prevented them from doing so, temporarily shutting down the site. The ISP appealed the decision, the result of which was just handed down, and the court reaffirmed the original decision. However, Black interpreted the new injunction as being more broad, requiring them to block their regular customers from accessing the site, which they did. Strangely though, a representative from the Appeals Court has responded saying that is not the case and the ruling only dealt with hosting the site, not visitors accessing it. Currently The Pirate Bay remains blocked by Black.

3: Copyright Fee Crackdown Has Coffeehouses Pulling Plug On Open Mics

Finally today, in Massachusetts, more and more coffee shops are having to abandon their open mic nights or change them to “no covers” mic nights due to increasing fees from various performing rights organizations. Coffee shops, which would be required to get licenses from all three of the major PROs (ASCAP, BMI and SESAC) are no longer able to afford the 300-400 dollar per year fee for each of the agencies. Though shop owners support content creators and rightsholders, they claim that fees are simply too high and are seeking out alternatives.

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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