3 Count: Piccled Ricc…

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1: Sci-Hub blocked in the US

First off today, Barney Dixon at IPPro reports that Sci-Hub, the popular site allowing for illegal downloads of scientific research, has been ordered blocked in the United States by a district court.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Chemical Society (ACS), which represents many of the publishers whose work is featured on Sci-Hub. They sued Sci-Hub’s owner, Alexandra Elbakyan, for copyright infringement, claiming that the site is akin to The Pirate Bay for but scientific journals.

However, Elbakyan has not appeared in court to defend her site and that resulted in the court issuing a default judgment against it. That default judgment includes both $4.8 million in damages and a broad injunction that bars web hosts, search engines, ISPs and domain registrars from helping the site in any way. However, it’s unclear what impact the judgment will have as most of the services that aid Sci-Hub are located overseas.

2: Kim Dotcom Settles Case he Filed Against NZ Police Over “Military-Style Raid”

Next up today, Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that Kim Dotcom has settled a long-running lawsuit with the New Zealand police over their use of force during a January 2012 raid of his house.

In January 2012 New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom’s house over his role in operating the file sharing website Megaupload. The site was shuttered and Dotcom is facing extradition to the United States but Dotcom filed a lawsuit against the police over the tactics that were used in that raid saying that they were excessive and unreasonable.

That lawsuit has now been settled though the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement has no bearing on the other cases Dotcom is facing, including his possible extradition, but it does bring an end to this one aspect of the case.

3: Fan-made Rick and Morty game, Piccled Ricc, removed from Steam

Finally today, Julia Alexander at Polygon reports that a fan-made PC game based on the Rick and Morty TV show has been pulled from Steam following a copyright complaint from Adult Swim.

The game, entitled Piccled Ricc, was released on October 30 by developer Ata Berdyev. The game had attracted the attention of several prominent YouTubers, who posted playthroughs of the game. That attention, however, may have hurt the game as it likely led to Adult Swim filing the copyright notice on the work.

According to Berdyev, the notice didn’t just result in the removal of the game, but it also resulted in in Valve terminating his contract that allows him to publish on Steam. As a result, the rest of his games have been taken down too. However, this is far from the first time Berdyev has faced allegations of copyright infringement has he has been repeatedly accused of “asset flipping” or taking new (usually premade) graphics and placing them on top of an existing game.

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.