3 Count: River City Ransoming

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1: Rimini Street: Dispute with Oracle is Contract Law, Not Copyright

First off today, Rebecca Hill at The Register reports that the case between Rimini Street and Oracle is continuing with Rimini Street asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to lift an injunction against it saying that the actual dispute between the companies has more to do with contract law than it does copyright.

Rimini Street is a company that provides third-party support for Oracle products. Oracle sued them for copyright infringement for Rimini’s improper access and storage of Oracle software on their own servers. Rimini has admitted to some of the infringement saying it was innocent infringement, however, it has appealed an injunction that bars the company from accessing non-public parts of Oracle’s site.

Rimini Street says that the injunction should be lifted because its clients have paid for licenses from Oracle and those licenses allow third parties to create testing environments. As such, Rimini claims that the dispute is actually a contract law matter and the injunctions should be set aside as it prevents them from serving their clients, which they are legally allowed to do.

2: DMCA takedown removes River City Ransom Underground from Steam

Next up today, Kyle Orland at Ars Technica reports that a DMCA notice has removed the game River City Ransom: Underground from Steam but the issue isn’t the game’s license, but rather, it’s music.

River City Ransom: Underground is a game released by Conatus Creative in February of 2017. It is a crowdfunded follow up to the 1989 game River City Ransom, for which Conatus got the license. However, composer Alex Mauer claims that the company did not get the license to her music and, as a result, she has filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice agains the game on Steam, getting it removed.

Conatus has promised to work to get the game restored on Steam but says that it remains available on other platforms, notably GOG.com. The notice is similar to ones that Mauer has filed against videos for the game and against Star Mazer DSP, a similar crowd-funded sequel. In that case the developers were able to crowdfund a legal campaign against Mauer and eventually won a restraining order against her.

3: Hollywood Docket: VidAngel Claims Hollywood Studios Want to “Kill Filtering”

Finally today, Ashley Cullins at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that VidAngel has hit back at film studios saying that their efforts to stop their new streaming service shows that they want to “kill filtering” and that the issue isn’t about copyright infringement.

VidAngel is best known for its movie filtering service that, previously, worked by having users purchase a DVD for $20 and then sell it back for $19 when they were done viewing it. The courts issued an injunction barring VidAngel from operating this way. The company then returned with a new model that charges a monthly subscription fee but looks for legitimate licenses on Netflix and other services.

VidAngel has asked the courts to lift the injunction on its new service but the movie studios have hit back saying that VidAngel is not filtering streams from third parties, but rather, still streaming the films from their servers. In a now-withdrawn motion VidAngel said that the new system does not change any of the alleged infringement that took place under the old model and the studios’ opposition is a clear indication that they simply don’t want any filtering of their films. VidAngel withdrew that motion on Monday and a hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 31.

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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