3 Count: Photographic Memory

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1: Ed Sheeran sued for $20m by songwriters behind X Factor winner

First off today, Nigel M. Smith at The Guardian reports that musician Ed Sheeran is being sued for $20 million over his 2014 hit Photograph and the lawsuit has been filed by two well-known songwriters, Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard.

According to the songwriters, Photograph is a “note-for-note” copy of their 2009 song Amazing. That song was released as a single by Matt Cardle, the winner of the 2010 X Factor competition. Though Amazing did go on to be a successful song, with over a million streams on YouTube, Photograph was a major hit the summer of 2014 that sold over 3.5 million copies and over 200 million streams on YouTube.

Representing Harrington and Leonard is attorney Richard Busch, who recently achieved notoriety for leading the estate of Marvin Gaye to victory in the Blurred Lines trial. The lawsuit claims that the choruses of the two songs are identical, the same 39 notes precisely. The similarities have not gone unnoticed as several on YouTube and social media have posted about the overlap between the songs.

2: Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Is a Ripoff, New Lawsuit Claims

Next up today, Tim Keneally at The Wrap reports that North Carolina filmmaker Matthew Fulks has filed lawsuit against Beyonce claiming that the trailer for Lemonade and the subsequent HBO film are infringements of his short film Palinoia.

According to the lawsuit, Beyonce’s label, Columbia Records, had access to Palinoia since one of their executives received an email linking to the film. The lawsuit goes on to claim that his work has many similarities to Lemondae including “visual and auditory elements, visual and auditory sequences, themes, format, mood, setting plot and place.”

The lawsuit also names Columbia Records as a defendant and is seeking unspecified damages.

3: This Happened When a Guy Streamed a Movie to Facebook Live

Finally today, Jeff John Roberts at Fortune Magazine reports that a student from Valparaiso University in Indiana was caught streaming a film illegally via Facebook and has had become the subject of a police report.

The incident involved BlueSky Cinemas, an Indiana theater that speacializes in Indian films. A student attending a screening of the film A…Aa used his phone to stream the event via Facebook Live. An anti-piracy team detected the stream and notified theater management of the infringement and the theater took action.

A report from the theater said that the student was arrested but now it appears that the theater just filled out a police report online. The theater also said that they caught the culprit red handed and that video was deleted from the device.

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.