3 Count: Spawning Pool

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1: Film Studios Appeal iiNet Copyright Decision

First off today, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has begun its arguments in the appeal of its case against iiNet, the Australian ISP it has sued for allegedly encouraging bittorrent usage and piracy. AFACT, which lost in a lower court, says the judge in the case failed to apply the correct test and that the ISP is at least partially liable for not taking adequate action to stop infringement. The appeal is expected to last four days.

2: Hackers Release New Version of iPhone Jailbreak App

Next up today, following the new DMCA anti-circumvention exemptions, a new version of the iPhone jailbreaking application, JailBreakMe.com, has been released. The app, which is run by visiting the site on the iPhone’s internal browser, works on the iPhone 4 as well as previous models and has sorted out issues involving MMS messaging and FaceTime. Though jailbreaking is legal from a copyright standpoint, it may still void your warranty and may violate your terms of service.

3: Judge Rules Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are Derivative Characters

Finally today, the judge in the case which pitted two nerd icons, author Neil Gaiman and comic book creator Todd McFarlane, has sided with Gaiman. Gaiman sued McFarlane saying that three of the characters in McFarlane’s Spawn series, Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany were all created by Gaiman when he guest wrote an issue. McFarlane unveiled slightly modified versions of the characters for later issues, prompting Gaiman to sue. According to his contract, Gaiman retained copyright in all the characters he created in his book and the judge in the case agreed with him that the revised characters are merely derivative of Gaiman’s work.

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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