3 Count: OK Google…

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1: Snapchat Videos and Pictures Stored on a Third Party Website Posted Online

First off today, Charles Arthur at The Guardian reports that as many as 200,000 users of the service Snapchat have had their photos leak and videos leaked online.

Snapchat, intended to be a service for private photo/video sharing, erases images after they are viewed. It also alerts a sender if a user screenshots a photo and takes other steps to prevent images from being forwarded or shared outside the service. However, unauthorized third-party apps and services often connect to Snapchat and allow users to save and share received photos.

One of those services, Snapsaved.com, claims that it was hacked and that the photos came from it. Reports say that the leak, which measures about 13GB in size, is mostly mundane photos but that there is a large amount of nude and sexual images in the leak, including many involving underage participants.

2: Next up for Oracle v. Google — the US Supreme Court?

Next up today, Rachel Kin at CNet reports that Google has appealed its case with Oracle to the Supreme Court, hoping that it will overturn a mixed series of lower court rulings and find in its favor.

Oracle sued Google in 2010 alleging that, when developing its Android mobile operating system, it used patented and copyright components of its Java programming language. Key to the case is some 37 Java APIs, which are the instructions that teach other applications how to interact with Java. Google admits to copying the components to ensure that other apps written for Java would work on Android but claimed that APIs can’t be copyrighted. The lower court agreed but the Appeals Court overturned that ruling, siding largely with Oracle.

Now Google is asking the Supreme Court to take a look at the issue and determine if APIs can be copyrighted. According to Google, allowing such copyrightability would stifle innovation on the Internet and could have made much of the prior progress in computing impossible.

3: British Lawmaker Publishes Detailed Report on Copyright Education

Finally today, Richard Smirke at Billboard reports that Mike Weatherly, the UK Prime Minister’s intellectual property adviser, has filed a report outlining how he feels the nation should move forward on the subject of copyright education.

The report includes a variety of suggestions including creating mechanisms for measuring the understanding of intellectual property rules and having the BBC create a copyright education program that includes online, on-air and face-to-face elements.

The report also calls for the appointment of an IP Education Coordinator that would be tasked with championing the importance of IP to the UK economy. The report cites the Copyright Alliance in the U.S. as an example of an organization that has been successful in bringing together various stakeholders for the purpose of education and awareness.

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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