3 Count: Slender Man Lawsuit

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1: Renowned Hacker Arrested For Cracking Denuvo Anti-Piracy Tech

First off today, Nathan Grayson at Kotaku reports that the Bulgarian hacker known as Voksi has been arrested and has his home raided over his contributions in hacking the Denuvo anti-piracy system.

Denuvo is an anti-piracy system for PC-based video games. Though the technology held fast for years, Voksi, along with his REVOLT hacker group, found a way through the system. Suddenly, cracked versions of Denuvo games began appearing within days or weeks instead of months or years. This prompted Denuvo’s parent company, Irdeto, to file a case against Voksi and cooperate with the Bulgarian Cybercrime Unit to locate him.

Though Koksi declined to be interviewed, he did say in his original post about the arrest that his cracking days were, almost certainly, behind him.

2: Sony Faces ‘Slender Man’ Lawsuit After Sending Cease-and-Desist Letters

Next up today, Jeremy Fuster at The Wrap reports that Sony Pictures is facing a lawsuit from Phame Factory over the “Slender Man” character.

Sony acquired the rights to the Slender Man character after striking a deal with the meme’s original creator. Phame is working on a film entitled Flay, that has been repeatedly compared to Slender Man. Sony sent Phame a series of letters warning them against using their intellectual property, prompting Phame to file the lawsuit asking the court to rule that their work is non-infringing.

Phame is also challenging the validity of Sony’s copyrights in Slenderman saying that the works involved are either public domain or that they otherwise lack the requirements to be protectable. Sony has not responded to the lawsuit.

3: ‘Purple Rain’ Fan Sing-Along at Prince Memorial Restored to Twitter Following Takedown

Finally today, Colin Stutz at Billboard reports that Universal Music filed and later rescinded a copyright claim on a video of fans singing the Prince song Purple Rain after the musician’s death in 2016.

The video, which was uploaded by journalist Aaron Lavinsky, captured fans gathered in Minneapolis to sing the song the night of Prince’s death. He uploaded the video to Twitter last week but Universal Music filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to have the video taken down. This led Lavinsky to protest the decision publicly, which resulted in an outcry against the removal.

However, Universal rescinded the notice within a few days, resulting in the restoration of the video. Interestingly, this type of issue might not have happened on YouTube, where the site has obtained licenses from the major record labels.

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.