3 Count: Getting Meta

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1: Appeals Court Upholds Sanctions Against TV Streamer

First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling against FilmOn and has sanctioned the company for violating an existing injunction.

FilmOn is a TV streaming service that, akin to Aereo, aimed to use individual remotely-hosted antennas to allow customers to stream over-the-air broadcast television via the Web. However, after their rival was shuttered by the Supreme Court, they have attempted to argue that they qualify for a compulsory license under the law, even though another competitor of theirs, Ivi, failed with the same arguments.

The Second Circuit has now upheld the lower court in finding FilmOn’s arguments unpersuasive. On the issue of the injunction, issued earlier in the litigation, FilmOn attempted to claim it was unclear or muddled by the Aereo ruling. The appeals court took issue with that logic saying that, while it may qualify for compulsory licensing some day, it doesn’t today and is an infringement. As such, the court sanctioned FilmOn $90,000 and ordered it to pay $115,000 in legal fees accrued in trying to force FilmOn to comply.

2: MetArt Seeks Sanctions in Tube Site Copyright Case

Next up today, Rhett Pardon at XBiz (SFW Link) reports that the MetArt Network has filed a petition against Miami-based Sun Social Media Inc. alleging that the company has failed to appear at a required mediation and should be hit with a default judgment.

MetArt, which is a network of adult and pornographic sites, filed the lawsuit against Sun Social Media, which operates a series of free “tube” sites, alleging copyright infringement of some 44 of its films. The court ordered mediation between the two but the attorney for record for Sun Social Media did not appear, instead a new lawyer claimed to represent them did, even though he was not registered with the court.

According to the motion, since the attorney on record failed to appear, MetArt believes that Sun Social Media had no representation and, in effect, failed to appear. MetArt is seeking sanctions against the new attorney as well as against Sun Social Media in addition to the motion for a default judgment.

3: ​Embattled Copyright Lawyer Uses DMCA to Remove Article About Himself

Finally today, Joe Mullin at Ars Technica reports that attorney Marc Randazza filed a DMCA notice on behalf of XBiz, the authors of the story above, seeking to remove an article about himself from a WordPress.com-hosted site.

The article on XBiz covered Randazza’s legal dispute Liberty Media, a gay porn publisher that was his client. Randazza, now working for XBiz, was demanding that a blog called Fight Copyright Trolls remove an older version of an article written by Rhett Pardon, which is an alias for Don Parret, Xbiz’s executive director.

Fight Copyright Trolls was attempting to draw attention to how the article had been changed since it’s publication, focusing on two paragraphs that were deleted and contained details about Randazza’s settlement with Liberty Media. Community guardians at WordPress.com noticed that Randazza was the subject of the piece and pressed him on the matter, eventually prompting Randazza to withdraw the notice with the permission of XBiz.

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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