3 Count: State By State

Jonathan BaileyAugust 13, 2014

2 minutes read

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

1: Torrentshack Resurrected After Hollywood Takedown

First off today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that, less than a week after the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) secured the closure of Torrentshack, a popular BitTorrent tracker, the site has been restored from a backup at a different domain.

FACT had threatened the administrator of the site with legal action if he failed to close down. He not only transferred control of the domain to FACT, but also closed down the server. However, before taking it offline, someone who had access downloaded a recent backup of all of the site’s files and ported it to a new domain.

The new operators warn that they have no funds and are struggling to get the site back up and running, but that they will continue to work on it. It is unclear what, if any, impact this will have on operator of Torrentshack and if FACT will take action against him over the site’s revival.

2: Juicy J and DJ Paul Sued Over Three 6 Mafia Samples

Next up today, Andrew Flanagan at Billboard reports that rappers Juicy J and DJ Paul of the Three 6 Mafia have been sued by Reggie Boyland, a rap label owner, over samples that appeared in songs by the Three 6 Mafia.

Specifically, Boyland claimed Three 6 Mafia sampled music by 8Ball & MJG, a rap duo whom he claims to control the songs of. He points to five examples of samples being used without permission and has filed suit seeking unspecified damages and an injunction against further sale of the infringing works.

There is no evidence that 8Ball & MJG are involved in the lawsuit. The duo collaborated with Three 6 Mafia in 2005 for the song “Stay Fly”, which is not part of the lawsuit.

3: Study: Washington, Hawaii, Florida and Vermont Have the Most Active Pirates

Finally today, Gabriela Vatu at Softpedia reports that a new study by Movoto has found the U.S. states that had the most active pirates and also tracked what the most-commonly pirated movie, TV show and video game was for each state.

The study looked at some 4 million nodes and 3 million unique IP addresses across the 300 most popular torrents. It found that those in Washington state, Hawaii, Florida and Vermont are the most active for pirating (per capita) and South Dakota, Iowa and West Virginia had the lowest rates.

The study also looked at what was the most popular content in each state, finding a lot of variance between the states when it came to their choice for pirated movies an TV shows. However, on the video game side, “Watch Dogs” was dominant for most of the country making it all the more odd that my home state, Louisiana, would choose “Scribblenauts Unlimited”.

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.