3 Count: Ex-TED

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1: U.S. Industry Bodies Urge Gov’t to Support EU Digital Copyright Reforms

First off today, Billboard reports that a group of over 20 music industry organizations, including the Recording Industry Association of America, the Songwriters Guild of America and both of the major performing rights organizations, have signed a letter asking the U.S. government to support Article 13 of the proposed EC Copyright Directive.

Article 13 aims requires online service providers that act as a music distribution service to either negotiate a free-market license to stream the music or take meaningful steps to prevent it from appearing on the service. The industry groups claim that this will force sites such as YouTube to negotiate more fair deals to stream music and close the “wage gap” that sees YouTube paying significantly less for music than other music streaming services.

The letter was sent to the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, the U.S. Mission to the European Union and the Department of State.

2: Zara Slapped with Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

Next up today, Nicole Malick at The Fashion Law reports that fashion company Zara has been hit with a lawsuit filed by Nuance Industries that accuses Zara of copying one of their textile designs.

According to the lawsuit, Nuance “widely disseminated it’s Design 1651 fabric to various companies. However, Nuance claims that Zara, rather than licensing it, simply created a lookalike design and began selling it.

Nuance is seeking unspecified damages and to disgorge the plaintiffs of any profits. Nuance further claims that Zara did not respond to a cease and desist letter sent in June this year.

3: TED Accused of Using the DMCA to Silence Talk Criticism

Finally today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that a YouTuber who goes by the name Bearing claims that he was hit with a false copyright notice by TED, the organization best known for its TED talks and conferences.

According to Bearing, he produced a video critical of one of those TED talks, namely a talk entitled Enough with the Fear of Fat by Kelli Jean Drinkwater. TED filed a copyright notice with YouTube demanding the video be removed claiming that it violated their terms of use and their Creative Commons License.

However Bearing, who has filed a counter-notice, claims that his video was a clear fair use and that he was targeted because he was critical of Drinkwater’s views. He notes he used less than 1/3 of the original TED video and that it made up around one-fifth of his video when he was done. Next, TED will have to decide if and how it will respond to the counter-notice.

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.