3 Count: Perjudiced Ruling

It was with extreme prejudice...

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

1: Jay Z Dodges a Revival of ‘Big Pimpin’ Copyright Fight

First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Jay Z has not only secured a dismissal of the Big Pimpin‘ lawsuit, but the judge has dismissed the case with prejudice, barring the case from being refiled.

The lawsuit was filed by Osama Fahmy, an Egyptian who is their to the composer of Khosara Khosara, a song from a 1960 Egyptian Film. The song was sampled for the hook in Big Pimpin’ and Fahmy had claimed that the song was used without proper license. This prompted him to sue both Jay Z and the song’s producer, Timbaland.

Jay Z not only argued that he had licensed the song but also that Fahmy didn’t have proper standing as he was not an exclusive rightsholder. The court sided with Jay Z, ruling that Fahmy had assigned all of his economic rights to the original song to a third party and, thus, had no standing in the lawsuit. This caused the judge to not only dismiss the case, but to do with with prejudice, barring it from being refiled.

2: Fansubbers Take Anti-Piracy Group BREIN to Court

Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that the Free Subtitles Foundation, a Dutch group that supports the creation of fan subtitles for popular films, is preparing to file a lawsuit against the Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN over the group’s aggressive stance against the creation of unauthorized subtitles.

The group has raised of $15,000 to file the lawsuit and has said that it is seeking the answers to two key questions. First, whether unauthorized subtitles are an infringement of the original work and whether or not BREIN’s actions violates the rights of those who seek to create such subtitles.

BREIN has long maintained that fan-created subtitles are a copyright infringement and have worked to shut down groups and sites that specialize in them. This has created tension with fan subtitle creators, who feel that they are working to make culture and knowledge more accessible across language boundaries.

3: ​SoundCloud Gets Its Own Radio Feature With Launch Of “Stations” On iOS And Android

Finally today, Sara Perez at TechCrunch reports that audio-hosting service SoundCloud has launched its own radio service in a bid to compete with Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify among others.

SoundCloud recently announced plans to offer paid subscriptions to its service and has been working hard to strike deals with various copyright holders to grant them licensed access to music. This radio service, most likely, is the first major step in the direction of paid music streaming service.

The station’s operate akin to Pandora where the user searches for a track or a term and then accesses a station based upon it. SoundCloud has long offered “related tracks”, showing it knows the relationship between songs, but has just now began to turn that information into an actual radio-like experience.

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.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

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