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1: Disney, Pixar Hit With Copyright Lawsuit Over Unicorn-Covered Van in ‘Onward’
First off today, Daniel Goldblatt at The Wrap reports that San Francisco artist Sweet Cicily Daniher has filed a lawsuit against Disney and Pixar alleging that a purple van featured in the upcoming film Onward is an infringement of her real-life 1972 Chevrolet G10 van that is painted similarly.
According to Daniher, Pixar reached out to her in September 2018 to feature her van at an event at the facility. She provided the van for a confidential sum but says that in May 2019 she learned that Pixar was releasing the film Onward, which features a van very similar to hers.
She goes on to say that, after she posted about the issue on Instagram, she was contracted by the film’s producer to apologize for the incident. Daniher is suing for copyright infringement as well as other claims. She is seeking damages of $25,000 for each infringement and is seeking an injunction barring both the film itself and any promotional material for it with the van. Disney has not responded.
2: After Suing Spotify for Mistreatment, Independent Music Company Files 10 Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Against YouTube, Apple and Others
Next up today, Murray Stassen at Music Business Worldwide reports that Pro Music Rights LLC (PMR) has revealed that it has filed 10 separate copyright infringement lawsuits against music streaming services alleging that they are publicly performing songs that they manage without paying the proper royalties.
PMR previously made headlines for filing a similar lawsuit against Spotify, where they alleged that some 550 million streams were removed by the platform and that Spotify removed or “blanket-banned” the tracks.
PMR has now revealed that it has filed 10 similar lawsuits against companies such as YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Pandora and more. The company claims to represent some 2 million tracks and has a market share of about 7.4% of the performing rights organization.
3: YouTube Rippers Battle RIAA in Takedown Whack-a-Mole
Finally today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that the RIAA has been waging a war against YouTube ripping sites, working to get them removed from Google search results, but those sites have found a simple tactic to counter their efforts: Changing their URLs.
According to Google’s Transparency Report, the RIAA has filed hundreds of anti-circumvention takedown notices targeting thousands of URLs that enable users to rip audio from YouTube videos. While Google has complied, many of the sites are still listed in the search engine, only with slightly modified URLs.
Much of this is likely because there is no established way to file a counter-notice against this kind of DMCA notice but also because Google’s takedowns work on a per-URL basis, making it easy for such sites to simply shift to a different one rather than making any significant changes.
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