3 Count: Beyoncé Again

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1: Beyoncé Named in $20 Million Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Over ‘Formation’

First off today, The Fashion Law reports that the estate of New Orleans-based rapper Anthony Barré, who performed under the name Messy Mya, has filed a lawsuit against Beyoncé alleging that the singer illegally sampled Barré’s work on her track Formation.

According to the lawsuit, Barré was not only denied revenue from the sampling but also notoriety and prominence. As such, they are now seeking more than $20 million in royalties and damages in connection with the sampling.

Beyoncé has not responded to the lawsuit.

2: Six Major Movie Studios Battle Digital Piracy

Next up today, the Irish Examiner reports that six major film and TV studios have filed a lawsuit in Ireland seeking the blocking of a handful of well-known movie streaming piracy sites.

The lawsuit, which was filed against 9 internet service providers (ISPs) in the country aims to compel the ISPs to block access to the sites. The order wold be similar to ones previously filed in the country against BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

The case has been fast-tracked as the defendant ISPs took a neutral position on the application to do so. Negotiations over setting up a protocol for cooperation between ISPs and the studios appears to have broken down, with the matter making its way through the courts instead.

3: Search Engines & Copyright Holders Ready Voluntary Anti-Piracy Code

Finally today, Andy at Torrentfreak reports that, in the UK, search engines, most importantly Google, have reached a voluntary agreement with rightsholders to have them do more to reduce the presence of pirated content in their index and decrease the visibility of copyright infringing pages.

Google has long been criticized by rightsholders for failing to do enough to stop copyright infringement. Rightsholders cite that they sent a billion takedown requests last year just to keep up with the rate of infringing material appearing in the index. This led to some discussion about a legislative solution in the UK.

Though details of the deal are scarce since they were negotiated in private, both sides have said it will come to fruition on June 1st of this year. Exactly who was involved in the negotiations is unclear.

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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