3 Count: Appealing Monkey

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1: PETA Takes Infamous “Monkey Selfie” Lawsuit to Appeals Court

First off today, Ashley Cullins at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that the attorney representing Naruto, a crested macaque, have filed an appeal to the 9th Circuit arguing that copyright in the famous “monkey selfie” he took should revert to Naruto imself.

The story began in 2011 when photographer David Slater lost control of his camera and Naruto snapped a now-famous image of himself with it. Slater attempted to enforce what he perceived as his rights in the image but was rebuffed with others claiming that the image was public domain since it was taken by an animal.

PETA sued Slater on behalf of Naruto claiming that Nartuo held the copyright but the district court judge dismissed the case, finding that a monkey does not have standing to pursue a lawsuit. However, now the attorney representing Naruto has filed an appeal saying that the district court erred in its judgment. In particular, the appeal argues that the lower court leaned too heavily on advice from the U.S. Copyright Office, which is not binding in court, and ignored other non-humans that can hold copyright, in particular corporations.

2: PS Vita Has Been Unlocked Opening the Door to Homebrew and Piracy

Next up today, Matthew Humphries at Geek reports that both the PS Vita and the PlayStation TV have been cracked, allowing users to run their own software on the devices whether or not they are authorized by Sony.

The hack was created by Team Molecule and is named Henkaku. It can be launched by visiting a website from the device and it gives the user full access the the system’s hardware. However, it has to be reinstalled every time the system restarts though it’s possible that, with the unfettered access, others may be able to prevent that.

Though the hack does make it theoretically possible for users to play pirated games, it does not have that feature at this time. However, it’s also very likely that Sony will break the hack in future updates of its firmware, as console makers have done with similar hacks in the past.

3: Illegal Streaming is Dominating Online Piracy

Finally today, Business Insider reports that a study from piracy tracking firm MUSO finds that streaming websites are dominating the piracy landscape, being responsible for 73.7% of all traffic to pirate domains.

The study involved monitoring some 14,000 of the largest piracy sites, including some 141 billion visits across 200 million devices. They found that streaming sites were the runaway leader in piracy and that torrent sites were just 17.2% of the total visits. Direct download sites made up the difference.

The news comes just weeks after the alleged owner and operator of Kickass Torrents, one of the most popular BitTorrent sites, was arrested in Poland. He is facing possible extradition to the United States.

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.