3 Count: Transparent Twitter

Jonathan BaileyJuly 3, 2012

2 minutes read

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

1: U.K. Home Office Won’t Block O’Dwyer Extradition in Copyright Case

First off today, Zack Whittaker at CNet reports that Richard O’Dwyer, the UK citizen facing possible extradition to the U.S. over his role in running the site TV Shack, may have lost one of his avenues to avoid extradition. Home Secretary Theresa May has said her office will not block the extradition. May has the ability to override any court decision on the matter but has decided to not intervene in the case, leaving the appeal, which is to be heard soon, to be the final word on the matter. TV Shack was a site that provided links to copyright infringing streams of TV shows and was twice seized by the U.S. before O’Dwyer was arrested to face charges in the U.S. The case has caused controversy as many believe, if he is to face charges, they should be in the UK.

2: Crown Hires Legal High Flyer to Handle Dotcom Case

Next up today, David Fisher of the New Zealand Herald reports that the New Zealand government, reeling from setbacks in its case against Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom, has hired outside counsel to take over the case. Christine Gordon, widely regarded as one of the country’s best lawyers, will represent the Crown at an upcoming hearing in an upcoming judicial review of the case. Dotcom was arrested and his site shuttered following raids both in New Zealand and in the U.S. and Dotcom is facing possible extradition to the United States for alleged criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. However, setbacks in New Zealand including improper warrants and restraining orders have hampered the government’s case and now the judge is demanding that the Crown turn over evidence obtained in the U.S., evidence that the Crown says can not possibly be turned over in a timely fashion due to its size. The extradition hearing is scheduled for August 6.

3: The U.S. is Nosy: Twitter Releases First Transparency Report

Finally today, Sarah Jacobsson at PCWorld writes that Twitter has released its first transparency report, detailing government requests for user data, content removal and copyright infringement notices. On the copyright front, received some 3,300 DMCA notices but that many of them were misfiled non-copyright complaints, leading to a low compliance rate (less than 40%). Most of the notices involved tweets though a growing number involved media hosted by Twitter including avatars, backgrounds and, most prominently, images hosted through Twitter’s relatively new photo sharing service. Twitter’s report follows Google, which has been providing a transparency report for years but recently added DMCA information to it and revealed that it receives over 1 million DMCA notices per month.

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.