3 Count: Poisoned Brand

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1: New Zealand Election: Party Over for Kim Dotcom as PM Wins with Landslide

First off today, Toby Manire at The Guardian reports that Kim Dotcom’s efforts to break into the New Zealand Parliament have ended in disaster as his Internet-Mana party alliance not only failed to win any new seats, but lost the one it already had.

Kim Dotcom is currently facing possible extradition to the U.S. over his former site Megaupload, which was shuttered in a January 2012 raid involving both New Zealand and United States authorities. In the meantime, he founded the Internet Party, which formed an alliance with the Mana Party, a small party representing Maori tribesmen in the norther part of New Zealand.

The new coalition not only failed to secure the 5% needed to obtain a new seat in Parliament, earning only just over 1%, but also failed to hang on to the existing Mana party seat. In a speech, Kim Dotcom said that his brand was “poison” to the party and that he was responsible for the defeat.

The election comes one week after Dotcom held a town hall “Moment of Truth” event featuring Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. At the event he promised proof that the Prime Minister was cooperating with the movie studios in their case against him but his one item of evidence, an email from a Warner Brothers executive, was immediately decried as a fake.

2: Microsoft, Getty Copyright Dispute Heads for Mediation

Next up today, John Ribeiro at Computerworld reports that Microsoft and Getty are taking their lawsuit out of the courts, at least for a bit, and into mediation.

Getty sued Microsoft alleging that a new widget Microsoft had created, the Bing Image Widget, pulled copyrighted photos from the Web, including Getty’s, and displayed them on third party sites without permission. Microsoft pulled down the widget after the lawsuit was filed and has agreed to change it to only use licensed images until the matter is settled. However, Getty notes that the earlier version of the widget is still active on other sites and displaying Getty-owned work.

However, a motion about a potential injunction has been stayed until October 3rd while the two sides mediate the dispute.

3: Jamie Foxx Sued Over New Song

Finally today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Contra Records has filed a lawsuit against Jamie Foxx, DJ Mustard and 2 Chainz over the song “Party Ain’t a Party”, Foxx’s latest single.

The lawsuit alleges that DJ Mustard wrote the instrumentals to the song for a different musician, J Rand, who took the instrumentals and recorded his version of the song with his own lyrics. However, the label says that, when they sought out DJ Mustard’s help in promoting the song, he failed to respond.

Later, they allege, Foxx released his version of the song using not just DJ Mustard’s instrumentals, but also Rand’s lyrics. As such, the lawsuit is demanding $150,000 in statutory damages and also accuses Foxx of contributory copyright infringement for his role in distributing the new work.

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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