3 Count: The Oracle Speaks

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

1: Oracle and Hewlett Packard Head Back to Court

First off today, Jay Greene at the Wall Street Journal reports that Oracle Corporation has filed a lawsuit against Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), an enterprise-focused company that was spun out of Hewlett-Packard, for copyright infringement.

According to the lawsuit, HPE teamed up with Tetrix Computer Company, which provides third-party support for Oracle’s Solaris operating systems, to sell systems to customers and provide support. Oracle had previously won a $57.7 million judgment against Tetrix over allegations that the company illegally obtained and distributed Solaris patches to their customers. In the lawsuit against HPE, Oracle is alleging that HPE should have known about Tetrix’s infringement and that HPE profited from it.

Oracle has been very aggressive about suing third-party support providers and, in addition to its victory over Tetrix, has also won a victory against Rimini Street, a similar support provider. The lawsuit also marks the latest legal volley between Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, which have sued each other repeatedly over executives switching companies and Oracle ending support for some high-end HP products.

2: Pirated ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Blu-Ray Leaks Online

Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak reports that Blu-ray-quality copies of the most recent Star Wars film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has appeared on piracy sites two weeks before the Blu-ray was scheduled to be released to the public.

The copies of the film have been found on multiple BitTorrent and streaming sites and is already topping lists of the most commonly shared files on those sites. According to a photograph provided with the release, the leak originates from the REPLiCA release group and looks as if it is a retail copy of the disc, not a screener.

Though copies of the film have long been on pirate sites, most have been captured via camcorder and were of low quality. This represents the first high-quality release of the film, which will be available legitimately on Blu-ray and DVD April 5th.

3: ​‘Bloody Stupid’ Facebook Rules Remove Video of Dancing 5­-Year-­Old

Finally today, Leah Fynn at the Sydney Morning Herald reports that, in a case that has echoes of the Lenz case in the U.S., a father in Dunedin, New Zealand has had a 53-second video of his daughter dancing to a song removed from Facebook on copyright grounds.

The video, which featured the 5-year-old girl dancing to a song from the film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, was removed by Facebook shortly after it was uploaded due to a copyright issue. It’s unclear if the takedown was from a formal takedown notice or if it was automatically detected by Facebook.

The case mirros a similar one in the U.S., where a mother posted a video of her child dancing to Prince’s Lets Go Crazy only to have Universal Music file a takedown notice against it. Lenz, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a lawsuit against Universal that has led to a ruling that copyright holders must consider fair use before filing takedown notices. However, in New Zealand, there is no fair use exemption, only a much more limited fair dealing one, and it is unclear if the video would qualify for the exemption.

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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