3 Count: Spotted Again

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1: Spotify Faces Two New Lawsuits From Music Publishers

First off today, Janko Roettgers at Variety reports that Spotify has been hit with two separate lawsuits that allege the streaming service failed to obtain permission or pay royalties to stream thousands of songs currently in its catalog.

The lawsuits were both brought by Nashville-based music publishers, the first by Rob Gaudino and the second by Bluewater Music. The first lists some 106 compositions while the latter lists 2399 songs that they allege Spotify has not secured permission to stream.

The move comes after Spotify settled a pair of lawsuits over music compositions, the first filed by the National Music Publishers Association and the second a class action lawsuit flied by songwriters. However, both Gaudino and Bluewater Music say the terms of those settlements are “woefully inadequate” and have opted to file their own lawsuits instead.

2: Infringement Suit Over ‘Rastafarian’ Photo Clears Hurdle

Next up today, Andrew Denny at the New York Law Journal reports that a Manhattan judge has denied a motion to dismiss filed by “appropriation artist” Richard Prince, meaning he will likely have to face the lawsuit over his controversial 2014 “New Portraits” exhibition and the Gagosian Gallery.

The exhibit featured enlarged photos taken from Instagram with added commentary by Prince underneath. One of the photos involved was entitled Rastafarian Smoking a Joint and was by photographer Donald Graham. Graham filed the lawsuit claiming copyright infringement but Prince had filed a motion to dismiss claiming that it was a fair use.

However, the judge felt that a fair use would be too fact intensive to address with such an early motion. As such, the judge denied the motion to dismiss but did agree to dismiss Graham’s attempts to claim punitive damages, which are barred under the Copyright Act of 1976.

3: IPTV Service Raided By Police & Shutdown, Operator Arrested

Finally today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that UK-based BulkyIPTV has gone dark following the arrest of its owner.

BulkyIPTV is one of a recent trend of premium IPTV services that, for a small fee per month, will stream channels not normally (or legally) available online. The service went dark yesterday and users began to post about the outage in an online group. Shortly thereafter, the service’s operator posted saying that he was arrested and that everything relevant had been seized. He then said he was archiving the group and deactivating his account.

There has been no announcement from any police about the arrest and seizure but Torrentfreak noted that the operator made little effort to stay anonymous online, with his name and information easy to find publicly on the internet.

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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