3 Count: No-Tell Airtel

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1: Airtel Is Accused Of Spying. Indian Coder Who Exposed This Gets Legal Notice From Israel.

First off today, Tonmoy Goswami at Storypick reports that and Indian blogger attempting to expose a local cell phone service provider for inserting code into user pages without permission received a series of copyright threats over his attempt to blow the whistle.

On June 3rd Thejesh GN posted about the issue, including snippets of code and screenshots of the insertion on Github. However, shortly after doing so, an Israeli company named Flash Networks claimed to be the owner of the code and both sent a strong cease and desist letter to Thejesh and a DMCA takedown notice to Github to get his postings removed.

Airtel has responded to the incident saying that they were not involved in the cease and desist letter in any way and that the code is used for tracking data and nothing more. In the meantime, the story itself has gone viral with major news outlets both in and out of India reporting on it.

2: ‘Orphan Black’ Production Company Must Face Copyright Lawsuit in California

Next up today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that the production company behind the popular TV series Orphan Black will have to face a copyright infringement lawsuit in California, despite the company being based out of Canada.

The lawsuit was filed Stephen Hendricks, who claims that Temple Street Productions, the producers behind the show, had based it on screenplay he wrote and shared with the Temple Street co-president David Fortier in 2004. Temple Street, however, challenged the lawsuit saying it should not have been filed in California as the company is Canadian. However Hendricks was able to show that Temple Street has enough of a base in California, including a subsidary company and an office, to make it an “exceptional” case and allow the lawsuit to stay in the U.S.

The judge did not rule on the merits of the lawsuit, but simply allowed it to proceed past this challenge on jurisdiction. The BBC, which airs the show, is also a defendant in the lawsuit.

3: Elsevier Cracks Down on Pirated Scientific Articles

Finally today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that scientific journal publisher Elsevier has filed lawsuits against two sites that it accuses of illegally distributing copies of their articles and publications on the Web.

The publisher filed suit against Library Genesis and SciHub, two sites that make journal articles available to the public free of charge. In the case of Elsevier, the publisher normally provides access to its works through its ScienceDirect portal, which universities typically pay a subscription fee for. However, some who use ScienceDirect upload the articles elsewhere to make them available for those without access to the portal.

Elsevier claims that they are losing revenue because of these sites, which are particularly popular in developing nations such as Iran, India and Indonesia. The lawsuit was filed in New York and seeks an injunction against the sites, which Elsevier is widely expected to obtain.

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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