3 Count: Second Wave

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1: Attention Movie Pirates: New Wave of Lawsuits Coming

First off today, if you thought the challenges by the EFF, ACLU and Public Citizen were going to slow down the U.S. Copyright Groups litigation campaign against file sharers accused of swapping “The Hurt Locker”, among other independent films, you would be wrong. The group has signed up some 15 law firms from across the U.S. and have said they expect an “explosion” of lawsuits in the first week of August. In a related story, the groups mentioned above, which have been ordered by the court to draft a letter with the U.S. Copyright Group to send to those who have been sued by the group to inform them of their rights, are not seeing eye-to-eye with the USCG, prompting them to file a motion to compel the judge to accept some of their language in the letter.

2: Nintendo Doesn’t Want To Criminalize Obsessed Fans

Next up today, video game company Nintendo, in answering a question from a shareholder, said that they don’t wish to “criminalize” people who make fan creations based on Nintendo intellectual property but that they can not “give tacit approval to any and all the activities.” This kind of answer is actually fairly common from large companies that wish to encourage fan creations but don’t wish to close the door to them taking action against those who go to far or, as Nintendo said, “diminish the dignity of our intellectual properties.”

3: Mystery Shrouds Closures of Blog, Forum Platforms

Finally today, in an update to the Blogerty closure reported on last week, it appears another site, ipbfree.com, has been closed down in a very similar fashion. Once again, the host was compelled to pull the site, along with all the accounts, though no clear reason was given and the company can not talk about it. Once again the site, which was a host for forums, claims to have followed copyright law and not have any other significant abuse issues. Both sites are down for good according to their owners.

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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