3 Count: Without Comment

Jonathan BaileyMay 21, 2012

2 minutes read

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Music Downloading Damages Left Intact by U.S. High Court

First off today, Susan Decker at Bloomberg Businessweek reports that The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, has declined to hear an appeal by Joel Tenenbaum, letting stand the $675,000 jury verdict against him. Tenenbaum, along with 12,000 others, was sued by the RIAA for illegally sharing music online. Only Tenenbaum and one other, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, took their cases to trial and both lost and were subject to high damages. Also in both cases, the judge has reduced to damages after the jury verdict however, the Appeals court reinstated the damages, saying that the RIAA would be eligible for a new trial if damages were reduced again. Tenenbaum appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which has now declined to hear the case. In the Thomas-Rasset case, there have been three new trials on damages due to damage reductions by the judge, which Tenenbaum, claimed lead to endless litigation and an undue burden on them.

2: Record Companies Score Infringement Victory Over “Russian Facebook”

Next up today, Megan Geuss of Ars Technica writes that two Russian record labels have won a critical appeal against vKontakte (VK) a local social networking site. The labels accused VK of encouraging and enabling copyright infringement by file sharing services to integrate with user-uploaded media libraries. VK is the most popular social network in Russia and will now likely either have to shutter or cut back on its file sharing operations. VK has some 135 million users, mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe.

3: George Clinton, Black Eyed Peas Settle Lawsuit Over Use of Clinton’s Music in ‘Shut Up’ Remix

Finally today, the Associated Press reports that musician George Clinton has settled his lawsuit against the band The Black Eyed Peas. Clinton filed the suit in 2010 alleging that the band used his song “(Not Just) Knee Deep” in one of their remixes of their song “Shut Up”. The deal was reached following mediation. The judge had already limited the damages Clinton could recoup saying that he had failed to show how much he had lost or the band had gained from its use of the song. The judge cancelled an upcoming trial on the matter while both sides finalize settlement papers.

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.