3 Count: Super Ruling
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1: Judge Sides with DC Comics in fight Over Superman
First off today, Anthony McCartney of the Associated Press reports that DC Comics will retain its rights to its iconic Superman character. A judge ruled on Wednesday that the heirs of Superman’s co-creator Joe Shuster signed away their right to copyright termination 20 years ago when they agreed to an annual pension from DC. The heirs of Shuster had fought to terminate the agreement between Shuster and DC, which was signed in 1938, in hopes of reclaiming the copyright to the character. Though copyright law allows for such terminations, Shuster’s sister accepted higher annual payments in a new agreement in 1992 and the pre-1978 rules no longer applied. The ruling comes just ahead of the new “Man of Steel” film, which is scheduled to be released in 2013.
2: The Pirate Bay Ditches its Servers, Sets Sail for the Cloud
Next up today, Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica reports that The Pirate Bay has announced a change to its infrastructure that it feels will make it “raid proof” and invulnerable to being shut down. According to a blog post on the site, The Pirate Bay has ditched its traditional server structure and is instead using virtual servers at multiple hosts spread across the world so that a raid at one hosting location would not impact the overall performance of the site. However, other experts have noted that the load balancer that switches between the machines is still vulnerable and could result in the site being taken offline.
3: BuzzFeed Lawsuit Over Celeb Snaps Raises Copyright Questions
Finally today, Jeff John Roberts at Gigaom reports that BuzzFeed has been sued by the Florida-based photography agency Marvix Photo over allegedly republishing nine images on their site, including photos of Katy Perry and Kathy Griffin. Marvix is suing for the maximum allowed under the law, $150,000 per image, and, bringing the total amount of the lawsuit to $1.35 million. However, many have accused Marvix of “copyright trolling” or scouring the Web looking for infringements so they can score quick settlements. The case was filed in Los Angeles, which is where BuzzFeed is located.
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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