3 Count: Buttered Popcorn

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

1: Popcorn Time Chaos Leads to Shutdown

First off today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that the most popular fork of Popcorn Time has shut down following a rift among its developers that put the project’s site in limbo.

Popcorn Time is a streaming application that is often referred to as the “Netflix for pirates” because it allows easy streaming of BitTorrent films, including copyright infringing ones. However, the group behind the project recently split and the site went down.

The developers originally said they were going to try and work through the issues but, after failing to do so, said that they are cancelling the project permanently, taking the servers offline and wiping them. While other variants of Popcorn Time are still available, the most popular is now offline permanently.

2: Popcorn Time Creators Back Away from Copyrighted Content with ‘Project Butter’

Next up today, Owen Williams at The Next Web reports that the creators of the aforementioned Popcorn Time fork have launched a new project entitled “Butter”, which it hopes will improve legitimacy of their efforts.

Instead of being a video streaming application aimed at accessing copyright infringing content, Butter is meant to be the core of Popcorn Time, only the parts that make the application function and only connected to legitimate sources.

However, the application is open source and will be available for other developers to make clones of Popcorn Time with. Originally the developers were going to work on Butter and Popcorn Time simultaneously but have since decided to shutter the latter project.

3: Beyoncé Isn’t Dirty Enough to Have Ripped Off ‘XO,’ Judge Rules

Finally today, Tim Kenneally at The Wrap reports that at Beyonce has won a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against her by musician Ahmad Javon Lane in 2014, who accused Beyonce of basing her hit song XO on his song XOXO.

The judge in the case granted Beyonce’s motion to dismiss saying that the two songs, other than their similar titles have “virtually nothing in common” and that the songs are even different thematically.

According to the judge, Beyonce’s song is “tame and metaphorical” while Lane’s is graphically sexual. The judge also said that there wasn’t enough musical similarity between the two songs to move the case forward. There is no word if Lane intends to appeal

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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