3 Count: Ultimate Copyfighting

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1: UFC Fights Illegal Online Streaming Via Subpoenas Served to Justin.tv, Ustream.tv

First off today, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has filed a series of subpoenas with streaming services Ustream and Justin.tv to determine the IP addresses of those who streamed a recent UFC pay-per-view event illegally over the service. UFC president and spokesperson Dana White said that he “can’t wait” to go after those sharing the content illegally. This move comes after the UFC settled some 500 file sharing lawsuits.

2: Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits Now Target Private Trackers

Next up today, adult movie company Lucas Entertainment has filed a lawsuit in against 65 alleged file sharers in Texas Northern District Court. While that isn’t wholly unusual, what is different is that the lawsuit targets users of Gay-Torrents.net, a private bittorrent tracker with some 235,000 members. The lawsuit raises questions about the role of private trackers in these lawsuits and what, if any, evidence the tracker may be able to provide as they do maintain some logs of user data to track sharing ratios.

3: Celebrated authors bypass publishing houses to sell ebooks via Amazon

Finally today, many well-known authors, including Philip Roth to Orhan Pamuk, Martin Amis and John Updike are bypassing their publishers and, instead, publishing their own eBooks on the Amazon Kindle and similar services. The reason is that many of these authors signed contracts before eBooks were in existence and their deals with publishers don’t cover the new format. Because of this, they have banded together through a new company called Odyssey Editions to release the books online. Newer authors, however, routinely sign contracts that cover all electronic forms of publications, including eBooks, making their participation impossible.

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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