3 Count: Gundam Attack!

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1: Music Web Sites Dispute Legality of Their Closing

First off today, several of the sites who had their domains seized over Thanksgiving weekend are disputing the legality of their closures. The music blogs involved are all saying that they were operating within the bounds of the law, even being given the content that was allegedly infringing and torrent-finder.com, which was a bittorrent search engine, has said it was merely linking to torrent sites, much like Google. The domains were seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of their “Operation In Our Sites” campaign over Thanksgiving weekend. However, the seizure warrant for the domains was just released last week, and seems to have many misunderstandings about what these sites were and how they operated.

2: Maria Pallante Appointed Acting Register of Copyrights

Next up today, Maria Pallante, a former copyright attorney who most recently served as associate register in charge of the office of policy and international affairs has been named acting Register of Copyrights beginning January 1, 2011. The currently Register, Marybeth Peters, will be stepping down on Dec. 31, after 16 years in the position. Pallante will serve until a new Register of Copyrights is appointed, a process that could take many months.

3: Japan’s Gundam Robot Crushes Chinese Lookalike

Finally today, a theme park in China has promised to “remodel” an under-construction 60-foot tall statue of a robot after fans of the Japanese anime series Mobile Suit Gundam complained that the robot bore too much of a resemblance to one of their bots. The Chinese statue even bore the initials EFSF and WB on its shoulders, which is short for ‘Earth Federation Space Force’ and ‘White Base’, two well-known elements of the series. Though the theme park owners did say that the design was original they have agreed to alter it due to the complaints. Fans of the series expressed the most outrage but Sotsu Co, the company that handles the IP for Gundam, said that they were “gathering information” on the statue for possible legal action.

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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