3 Count: A Bit Late

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

1: Major Book Publishers Sue Hotfile For Copyright Infringement

First off today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that several book publishers, including Pearson Education, John Wiley and Sons and McGraw-Hill have filed a lawsuit against the now-defunct cyberlocker service Hotfile,

The move comes one month after Hotfile settled a similar lawsuit with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which resulted in the service agreeing to pay $80 million in damages and shuttering its doors.

The publishers have now filed their own lawsuit, focusing on 50 books allegedly shared on the service. The damages from this lawsuit could reach up to $7.5 million though it is unclear if Hotfile has any resources with which to pay such an award. The publishers’ lawsuit makes many of the same arguments that were successful for the MPAA, including the lack of a repeat infringer policy to disable the accounts of those who had multiple copyright complaints filed against them.

2: James Cameron Wins Yet Another ‘Avatar’ Theft Lawsuit

Next up today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that director James Cameron has won another lawsuit over his hit film “Avatar” as a judge has tossed a lawsuit filed by Bryant Moore, who alleged that Avatar was an infringement of his screenplay.

The lawsuit was the third against Cameron to get dismissed, following the same fate as two others who were tossed on various grounds.

In Moore’s case, he had alleged that Cameron had learned from his script from a production assistant that had helped Cameron on one of his films in the mid 1990s, “True Lies”. The judge, however, ruled that the similarities between the scripts were simply too broad to be protected by copyright and, as such, that there was no merit to the case.

3: Columbia Journalism Review Takes down Photo after Copyright Complaint

Finally today, Sydney Smith at iMediaEthics reports that the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) unpublished a photograph after Jon Fobes, the Cleveland Plain Dealer photo editor, complained and said that the photo was both his and used without permission.

The CJR used the photo as part of a story entitled “This Used to be a Newsroom” and was a story about the recent layoffs at the Plain Dealer. The CJR claimed it had received the photo from a CJR retiree but the actual photographer, Fobes, claims that he took the photo and was never asked if it was acceptable to use it.

The CJR removed the photo shortly after Fobes commented on the piece and tweeted to the CJR staff. Fobes, himself a photo editor, who has a key role in clearing the rights to images that are published in his paper, said the misuse of his photo by another publication “pissed” him off, thus why he wouldn’t license the photo to them despite offers to pay.

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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Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

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