3 Count: Not in Mexico

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Roku Device Sales Blocked in Mexico on Piracy Concerns

First off today, Andrea Navarro at Bloomberg reports that a Mexican court has blocked sales of Roku devices after the court learned they could be modified to allow users to play pirated content.

The order was obtained by Cablevision, a cable provider, which claimed that Roku boxes could be trivially hacked to receive pirated content rather than the normal legitimately-streamed content such as Netflix and Hulu.

The product remains on sale on Amazon but the product has already been pulled from the shelves of major retailers throughout Mexico over the court ruling.

2: Court Grants Subpoenas to Unmask ‘TVAddons’ and ‘ZemTV’ Operators

Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that Dish network has been granted a subpoena to try and identify the the people who operated the TVAddons website and the ZemTV add-on for Kodi.

The move is part of Dish Network’s lawsuit against ZemTV, which is an add-on for the Kodi open source media player. Though Kodi players themselves are not illegal, functioning as open source versions of Fire TV or an Apple TV. However, they are often modified through add-ons, such as ZemTV, to enable streaming of pirated content.

Dish Network filed a lawsuit against the makers of ZemTV and the TVAddons website that distributed it. The lawsuit directly contributed to the closure of the TVAddons website, which remains offline as of this time. Despite that success, Dish does not know who is responsible for either the site or the add-on, prompting them to seek a subpoena to unmask them. That subpoena has now been granted.

3: Entertainment Industry Sends U.S. Trade Office a NAFTA Negotiation Wish List

Finally today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that, as President Trump signals that he will work to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, representatives from the entertainment industry in the U.S. have sent their wish list on copyright to the U.S. Trade Representative.

While that list includes increased screen quotas and increased foreign ownership of broadcast networks among other things, it’s the copyright aspects that will likely be the most controversial. There, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is calling for increased penalties for piracy in other countries, specifically statutory damages and criminal sanctions.

The Director’s Guild takes it to the next level saying it wants a repeat infringer policy to block repeated pirates from accessing the internet. However, neither the MPAA or the Director’s Guild want a repeat of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying that the safe harbor protections in it are too broad.

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.