3 Count: World of Plagiarismcraft

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1: Elves, Pandas, and Minotaurs: Is Soul Clash Ripping off World of Warcraft?

First off today, Michael Kan at PCWorld reports that U.S. game publisher Blizzard has filed a lawsuit in Taiwan against a Chinese developer over alleged copyright and trademark violations.

According to the lawsuit, Shanghai-based Lilith Games used copyrighted elements from the popular “World of Warcraft” series in their mobile game “Soul Clash”. Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that the Chinese name for “Soul Clash”, “Daota Chuanqi” is a take on another game Blizzard makes, Dota or “Defense of the Ancients”.

At the same time Blizzard was filing its lawsuit against Lilith Games, Lilith was filing a lawsuit of its own in the U.S. against gaming developer uCool, which it accuses of copying “Soul Clash” in its “Heroes Charge” game.

2: Five Cyberlocker Operators Jailed for Spreading ‘Depraved Culture’

Next up today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that, in Vietnam, Nguyen Duc Nhat has been sentenced to 3 and a half years in jail for his role as the founder of Ryushare, a popular cyberlocker. However, it isn’t copyright that was his undoing, Nhat and three of his associates were arrested and jailed for “depraved content” that existed on the service.

Ryushare was an extremely popular cyberlocker. However, in 2014 the site suddenly disappeared amid rumors that the founder was arrested. That was later confirmed by Viatnamese authorities. However, they didn’t target the copyright issues on the site, instead authorities focused on the pornography that it hosted, including some 18,000 files that Ryushare paid four individuals to upload.

The court also learned that had over 800,000 members, about 10 percent of which paid for VIP membership. The owners are alleged to have earned over $7 million in profit since the site’s founding in 2012. More recently though, the site has reemerged, presumably under new owners, but has not achieved the same level of popularity.

3: You Can Stream Taylor Swift’s Music Again (But Not On Spotify)

Finally today, Alicia Adamczyk at Forbes reports that Taylor Swift has made her music available to stream but not on Spotify, instead favoring Tidal, the music streaming service recently purchased by Jay Z.

Tidal distinguishes itself from Spotify and other competitors as a “hi-fidelity” streaming service that focuses on higher quality streams. For that, it charges a premium, $19.99 per month as opposed to the more common $9.99 per month or below for competitors.

Swift had a very public falling out with Spotify last year when she said the service did not pay enough for the use of her music, prompting her to pull her catalog off the service. However, while most of Swift’s catalog is on Tidal now, her latest album, 1984, is not available for streaming.

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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