3 Count: OWN Battles

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1: Oprah Winfrey Is Sued for Stealing Idea Behind ‘Iyanla: Fix My Life’

First off today, Scott Collins and Pamela Chelin at The Wrap report that Otisa Strickland has filed a lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey and her OWN TV network alleging that the show Iynala: Fix My Life is a “carbon copy” of a her idea.

Strickland, who is representing herself in this case, says that the show is virtually identical to her previous pitch named The Agency, which also involves a counselor that travels across the country to help people with their problems. She claims that Oprah had access to the idea because, in 2011, she had claimed copyright infringement on a different OWN show, In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman.

In that case, the judge found that there was no significant similarity between Strickland’s work and the OWN show. As for Iynala, the show debuted in 2012 and is entering its sixth season.

2: German Museum Wins Copyright Lawsuit Against Visitor Who Uploaded Photos to Wikipedia

Next up today, Artform reports that, in Germany, the Mannheim’s Reiss-Engelhorn Museen has one its lawsuit against a visitor who, without authorization, took photographs of some of the museums exhibitions and posted the images to Wikipedia.

The museum sued because, under Wikipedia’s license, the images immediately became available for free commercial use. The Stuttgart Regional Court ruled that the museum has the property rights in the works and the works are by artists who can not claim copyright infringement themselves. As such, the court found that the unnamed visitor had infringed the museum’s rights.

Though it was the second court to rule in favor of the museum, the Berlin Regional Court did so earlier this year, the decision is still not legally binding.

3: MPAA Reports Pirate Sites and Hosting Providers to U.S. Government

Finally today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has responded to a U.S. Trade Representative request and provided their list of foreign sites and hosting providers that they feel are “rogue” when it comes to issues of piracy.

For hosts, the MPAA lists Private Layer, Altushost and Netbrella, which have presences in various countries. Among websites, the filing targets BitTorrent players such as The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent and Rutracker among others. With direct download sites, the MPAA lists Allmyvideos, Rapidgator and mentions the Russian social network VK, a repeated target of their criticism.

The letter also mentions domestic service CloudFlare. Though the company can’t be listed on the USTR’s annual notorious markets report, the MPAA claims that CloudFlare is used by many criminal sites hide the source of their traffic and otherwise protect their sites.

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.