3 Count: Criminal Plagiarism

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1: Plagiarism also a crime under Cybercrime law – DOJ

First off today, Purple Romero from Rappler writes that, under the Philippines new Cybercrime law, plagiarism, when it rises to the level of copyright infringement, is a crime and receives elevated punishments. The reason for this is because the intellectual property code in the country is considered a “special law” and is subject to increased penalties under it. The bill, which is now taking effect, has drawn a great deal of controversy over its outlawing of libel online, making it a criminal offense punishable by up to 12 years in prison. Attempts to halt the legislation’s effect, which was signed on Sept. 12, have faltered as the Supreme Court has refused to issue a temporary restraining order. The country’s legislature was recently hit with a plagiarism scandal after it was revealed that Senator Vicente ‘Tito’ Sotto had reused content from U.S. bloggers and from a speech given by Robert Kennedy in his own speeches on an unrelated bill.

2: WikiLeaks’ And Pirate Bay’s Web Host PRQ Raided By Swedish Police

Next up today, Andy Greenberg of Forbes writes that the Swedish host PeRiQuito AB (PRQ) has been raided by local police though the reasons for the raid are unclear. PRQ, which was founded by two of the three Pirate Bay founders, has earned a reputation for hosting controversial sites including Bittorrent trackers, Wikileaks and even pedophile sites. PRQ did host The Pirate Bay, though it doesn’t any longer, and is still one of the hosts used by Wikileaks. This is the third time that the host has been raided, the first time was in 2006 as part of evidence gathering against The Pirate Bay and the second time was in 2010, a raid that targeted a file sharing network named “The Scene”. Currently several Bittorrent sites are offline though PRQ says that it has nothing with the seizure.

3: Judge Decries “Excessive” Copyright and Software Patent Protections

Finally today, Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica reports that Judge Richard Posner has written a new blog post decrying what he sees as “excessive” patent and copyright protection. On the patent front, he took special interest in the software industry noting that most software improvements are “incremental” but are still, often, eligible for patent protection. On the copyright front, Posner said that the term of copyright is excessive, creating an orphan works problem, and that fair use must be expanded. Posner is best known recently as the judge that tossed the Apple v. Motorola patent case in June. When he’s not blogging, Postner sites on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

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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