3 Count: Purple Lawsuit

Prince's litigious ways continue even after death...

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

1: Prince’s Estate Sues Over YouTube Videos

First off today, Zack Huffman at Courthouse News Service reports that the estate for the musician Prince has filed a lawsuit against Kian Andrew Habib, a YouTuber who posted several videos of Prince concerts.

According to the lawsuit, the estate filed a copyright notice with YouTube and got the videos in question removed. However, Habib filed a counternotice to get the videos restored, which prompted the estate to file the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, the videos had advertisements on them and featured performances of many of Prince’s songs, including Nothing Compares 2 U and Take Me With U among others. The lawsuit is seeking an injunction against the re-upload of the videos as well as unspecified damages. Habib has not responded to the lawsuit.

2: Piracy sites Tamilrockers, Tamildb.net Booked for Releasing ‘Ippadai Vellum’ Without Permission

Next up today, Scroll reports that, in India, two local piracy websites have become targets for a lawsuit filed by the Tamil Film Producers Council, over their sharing of popular films without permission.

According to the lawsuit, the action-adventure film Ippadai Vellum was leaked on the sites Tamilrockers and Tamildb.net before it debuted in theaters, causing harm to the film. The council also accuses the sites of releasing other popular Indian films either before or immediately after their release.

In one particularly egregious example, Tamilrockers even went as far as to produce a “piracy poster” for a film announcing its debut on the site the day after it’s released in theaters. The poster even said it was the film’s “official piracy partner”.

3: Hong Kong Media Giants Push Piracy Block

Finally today, Corinne Reichert at ZDNet reports that Hong Kong-based media companies TVBO Productions and Television Broadcasts, have filed a motion in Australian Federal Court to have several alleged pirate sites blocked by local ISPs.

The two companies operate a subscription TV service in Australia and claim to have suffered significant losses due to piracy in the country. At particular issue is set-top boxes, similar to “fully loaded” Kodi boxes, that enable easy piracy of their content. However, according to the complaint, these lawsuits target non-English speakers, in particular consumers of Chinese and Indian content.

The case mirrors a similar lawsuit filed by Roadshow Films, an Australian company, and various U.S. companies last week. The lawsuit further argues that these streaming boxes should be treated similar to PCs because they are using technology similar to web browsers to access the infringing content, the only difference being that the browsers are limited to just viewing pirated content.

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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