3 Count: I Don’t Know… Third Base

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

1: Web Company Says Judge’s Ruling Turns it Into ‘Copyright Police’

First off today, Andrew Chung at Reuters reports that a court has ordered U.S. content delivery network CloudFlare to cease providing services to the revived Grooveshark, causing the existing site to go offline.

The original Grooveshark shuttered last month in a settlement with the record labels. However, after it went offline, an imitation site sprang up and was targeted by the record labels for legal action. One judge granted an injunction barring U.S. companies from providing services to the site, to which the domain registrar provided causing the site to close temporarily.

However, CloudFlare, which works as an intermediary between the host server and its visitors, said it was an automated service and not applicable to the injunction. Further, they argued that them shutting off access to the site would not close it and would put an undue burden on them as a provider. The judge disagreed, noting that CloudFlare’s service greatly helped the site, and ordered CloudFlare to terminate the account. Afterward, the site went offline, though for how long remains to be seen.

2: Amazon Pulls Out of MIC Coalition Over Its Alleged Focus on Music Pricing

Next up today, Ed Christman at Billboard reports that Amazon has left the Music Innovators, Consumers (MIC) coalition, splitting with partners such as Google, Pandora and NPR.

The coalition was founded in response to the introduction of the Fair Play, Fair Pay bill, which aims to overhaul how music royalties are handled in the U.S., including providing royalties for musicians when their songs are played on the radio. Currently, only songwriters receive such royalties.

Amazon was a founding member of the coalition but has now left siting differences in opinion on the direction of the group. According to Amazon, they were interested in transparency of pricing but they feel that the group is getting lost in the issue of rate-setting. According to Amazon, greater transparency would let them stream a larger amount of music but the rate-setting isn’t meaningful to them as most of their music is licensed through direct deals, not statutory licenses.

3: Abbott & Costello Heirs Sue Play Over ‘Who’s on First?’ Routine

Finally today, Josh Saul at The New York Post reports that heirs to Bud Abbott and Louis Costello, best known as the comedy duo Abbott & Costello, have filed a lawsuit against the Tony Award-nominated play Hand of God over the play’s use of the duo’s iconic Who’s on First sketch.

In the original sketch Abbott attempting to tell Costello the names of the players on his baseball team, who have names like “Who” and “What”, causing confusion between the two. In the play, a boy with an sock puppet, reenacts the bit to impress a girl. The heirs of Abbott and Costello claim that this use of their material is an infringement of the original work.

The case comes on the heels of another battle involving the theater, one involving the play 3C, a parody of the TV show Threes Company, was ruled to be a fair use of the original source material.

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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