3 Count: DMCA Persona

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

1: Atlus Hits Emulation Group with Copyright Claim Over Persona 5

First off today, Allegra Frank at Polygon reports that video game developer Atlus has filed a series of copyright claims agianst the developers behind RPCS3 emulation software after the RPCS3 devs began promoting its compatibility with Atlus’ game Persona 5.

RPCS3 is emulation software that is designed to play Playstation 3 games on PCs. Though emulation software itself is not usually considering to be infringing (as long as it uses all-new code) Atlus alleges that the promotion and specific compatibility with Persona 5 makes it an infringement of their copyright because it has to circumvent their digital rights management (DRM) protections.

As a result, Atlus has filed copyright notices against both RPCS3’s website and their Patreon account. Both remain active but all references to Persona 5 have been removed.

2: Google Isn’t Violating Copyright, Says Court, Even if its Thumbnails are of Pirated Photos

Next up today, David Meyer at ZDNet reports that Germany’s federal court of justice has ruled Google does not violate copyright when it shows thumbnails of pirates images in its search results.

The lawsuit was filed by U.S. pornography provider Perfect 10, who attempted and failed with similar arguments in the U.S. in a well-known case. In Germany, the company once again argued that users were uploading images hidden behind Perfect 10’s paywall and that Google was profiting from showing them in search results.

Their arguments seemed to be bolstered by a recent EU ruling that one could be held liable for linking to copyright infringement. However, the German court ruled that they needed to be treated different from links posted by humans and said the site was not responsible.

3: TVAddons and ZemTV Operators Named in US Lawsuit

Finally today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that Dish Network has filed an amended complaint in its lawsuit over TVAddons and ZemTV.

TVDaddons and ZemTV are libraries for add ons used with the Kodi streaming player. Kodi is an open source streaming platform to create players similar to Roku or AppleTV, but it is frequently used, through the use of add ons, for the purpose of piracy.

Whe Dish Network filed its lawsuit earlier in the year, they didn’t know the names of the actual operators of the sites. As such, they were listed as “John Doe” defendants. Now Dish Network has learned the identity and has filed an amended complaint, singling out Adam Lackman the operator of TVAddons and Shahjahan Durrani as the person behind ZemTV.

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.