3 Count: Quick Takedown

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1: Prince George’s Considers Copyright Policy That Takes Ownership of Students’ Work

First off today, Ovetta Wiggins at The Washington Post reports that Prince George County’s Board of Education is weighing a new policy that will attempt to claim copyright ownership over works by both employees and students, including many created outside of the classroom.

The school district, which is located in a county in Maryland, is weighing the policy as part of a broder initiative to provide guidelines on the “use and creation” of copyrighted works created by students and employees.

The Board Chair said that it was not the intent of the district to take ownership over student works. Legal experts, however, say that the language needs to be revised if that is the case.

2: Google Cuts Copyright Deal with French Publishers

Next up today, Zach Miners at PCWorld reports that Google has reached a settlement with newspaper publishers in France, agreeing to create a €60 million ($81 million) fund aimed at helping French newspapers innovate digitally.

France, like several other countries in the EU, has seen its newspapers challenge the legality of Google News, saying that the indexing, linking and displaying of snippets is an infringement. The settlement is similar to another such case in Belgium, which saw the newspapers reach a similar agreement with Google.

France had been looking to implement a “link tax”, which would have forced Google to pay a fee for including French newspaper content in their index. The tax was mediated by the French governments on behalf of the nation’s publishers.

3: Russia Wants To Fine Websites For Poor Copyright Takedowns

Finally today, Enigmax at Torrentfreak writes that Russia’s Ministry of Culture has proposed a draft law that will penalize sites that do not execute takedown notices quickly. Such sites could face fines, suspensions and server confiscations.

The amendment would als require hosts to copy the allegedly infringing file and provide the information of the account holder to the copyright holder.

The draft law was signed by the President of the Russian Federation and ends with a note that it will become law “90 days after its official publication.”

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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