3 Count: Android Pirates
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1: Pirate Admits to Helping Illegally Distribute $17 Million of Android Apps
First off today, Mariella Moon at Engadget reports that The Department of Justice has has secured a guilty plea from 22-year-old Aaron Blake Buckley of Moss Point, Mississippi for his role in distributing some $17 million worth of pirated Android apps.
Buckley was accused of running the site Applanet, which made paid apps available to users for free. The site was seized by the DOJ in 2012 as part of a new crackdown on app piracy. Buckley’s partner in the site, Gary Edwin Sharp II, pleaded guilty to his role in January.
Buckley was also accused of operating another site, SnappzMarket, whih was far smaller than his efforts at Applanet. He has now pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright infringement and one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and will be sentenced at a later date.
2: Beyonce Accused of Stealing Swiss Artist’s Work for Fiery Hold Up Video Clip
Next up today, Ebony Bowden at The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Beyonce is enjoying the success of her latest album, Lemonade, but several news outlets are claiming that some of the work in one of the album’s music video may be less than original.
In her video for the song Hold Up, Beyonce was filmed walking down a street smashing in a car window and a fire hydrant with a baseball bat. However, many feel the sequence bears a strong resemblance to a 1997 installation entitled Ever is Overall by the visual artist Pipilotti Rist, in which Pipilotti walks down the street smashing car windows with a giant flower.
Pipilotti has not commented on the similarities and there is no indication that any legal action is imminent. In the meantime, Lemonade is currently at the top of the charts and recently broke records for being the most-streamed album debut of all time.
3: Blizzard Agrees to Meet with Team Behind Shut-Down “Pirate Server”
Finally today, Kyle Orland at Ars Technica reports that Blizzard has agreed to meet with the operators of the Nostairius server, which was an unauthorized World of Warcraft server that played the “vanilla” game, meaning the game as it existed before expansion packs.
Blizzard, which owns World of Warcraft, ordered the server closed. However, the closure drew backlash from the gaming community as over 250,000 people signed an online petition calling for Blizzard to either allow the server to continue or set up their own “legacy” servers.
Now Blizzard is agreeing to meet with the operators of Nostairius to discuss the future of such legacy servers. However, Blizzard, in their only public statement, said that the closure was necessary to protect their intellectual property that they stand by the decision to shut it down.
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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