3 Count: Google Driven

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1: With Torrent Sites Facing the Heat, Pirates Get Creative With Google Drive and Other Services

First off today, Manish Singh at Gadgets 360 reports that a review of DMCA takedown requests sent to Google shows that pirates, increasingly frustrated by the crackdown on torrent websites, are turning to Google Drive and similar file sharing sites for piracy.

According to their analysis, Google Drive has received nearly 5,000 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests many with hundreds of links to pirated material they wanted removed. Sometimes these files are simply full movie uploads available for download and, other times, they are links to unlisted YouTube videos that can’t simply be accessed via YouTube search.

Google had previously introduced hash matching as a means of reducing piracy on Google Drive but the analysis shows that the feature isn’t putting much of a dent in the amount of infringing material being shared.

2: Warner Bros. Haunts Author With Counterclaims in ‘The Conjuring’ Legal Fight

Next up today, Ashley Cullins at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Warner Bros. is taking the legal fight to author Gerald Brittle, filing counterclaims alleging fraud and conspiracy in the ongoing legal war over The Conjuring films.

Brittle sued Warner alleging that The Conjuring films were based on his book about ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren. Warner, however has contended that they worked directly with the Warrens and did not base the movies on any of Brittle’s work. However, Brittle’s lawsuit recently survived a motion to dismiss and that has prompted Warner to file the new counterclaims, alleging that Brittle has acted improperly.

According to Warner, they would have offered to option Brittle’s book for $150,000 but that Brittle chose to mislead the studio by changing positions as to what stories and books were allegedly part of The Conjuring franchise. Further, the studio says that the dispute is in arbitration but that, since the court refused to stay the case pending the outcome of arbitration, they had no choice but to raise the fraud and conspiracy issues.

3: Game of Thrones Season 7 Pirated ‘More than a Billion Times’

Finally today, Sky News reports that, according to the internet tracking company Muso, the latest season of Game of Thrones was pirated over 1 billion times, an amount that far outstrips the live audience for the franchise.

Episode seven, the season finale, was reportedly illegally viewed 120 million times in just 72 hours after its release. Comparable, legal viewing was estimated at about 31 million people per episode. Illegal streaming made up approximately 85% of the views while torrent and direct download piracy made up nearly 15%.

The high amount of piracy follows not just the extreme popularity of the show, but also due to leaks of the earlier episodes in the series that caused many of the episodes to appear illegally online ahead of their official debut.

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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