3 Count: X2 – The Appeal
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1: Appeals Court Denies Jack Kirby Estate’s Bid to Overturn Marvel Copyright Ruling
First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the estate of comic book legend Jack Kirby in their bid to terminate their copyrights with Marvel.
Copyright termination allows creators or their heirs to terminate contracts and licenses after a certain period of time, to protect artists from being exploited by unfair contracts signed early in their career. However, the law does not apply to works made for hire, which is what the lower court and the appeals court ruled Kirby’s work was.
Kirby’s estate filed termination notices with Marvel for many of Kirby’s creations including Thor, X-Men and others. However, Marvel sued the estate seeking declaratory judgment that the works were made for hire and do not qualify for termination. Both the lower and the appeals court agreed, saying that, while Kirby was not a full-time employee, the nature of his work with marvel was one of employment as he was closely affiliated with the company.
2: Sky’s Court Ordered Piracy Filter Blocks TorrentFreak
Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that UK ISP Sky temporarily blocked access to his site after the court-ordered blocking of the TV torrent site EZTV went awry.
According to Torrentfreak, EZTV altered their DNS settings to include Torrentfreak’s IP address, causing it to get picked up when Sky updated it’s filters. After a fourteen-hour block, EZTV removed Torrentfreak’s IP address but attempted to add Facebook’s. When that didn’t work, they re-added Torrentfreak’s IP after an hour or so.
Though Sky has not expressed an interest in fixing the issue, EZTV.it has said that it will remove the IP address from its DNS records, which should allow service to return to the site soon.
3: Pirate Party: IT Minister Breaks Copyright Laws
Finally today, The Local in Sweden is reporting that the Swedish Pirate Party has filed a complaint against IT and infrastructure Minister Anna-Karin Hatt alleging that Hatt has several infringing images on her Instagram account including artwork from several movies as well as Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.
The complaint was filed with police in the country but has little chance of prompting an investigation. Instead, The Pirate Party filed the complaint to demonstrate how, in its view, “Everyone breaks copyright law all the time.”
The complaint was also filed to time with the celebration of the 10-year anniversary of The Pirate Bay.
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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