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1: ‘Hellraiser’ Rights Could Revert Back to Creator Clive Barker in 2021
First off today, Brad Miska at Bloody Disgusting reports that Clive Barker has filed a lawsuit in California to seek to reclaim the rights to the original Hellraiser story, thus setting him to regain control of the characters for future films.
The process is what is known as copyright termination, which allows original creators to reclaim any copyrights that they transferred or granted an exclusive license regarding. While not applicable for works by an employee, Barker wrote the book The Hellbound Heart independently and licensed it separately.
If successful, Barker would regain control of the work on December 19, 2021, some 35 years after the original agreement was signed. The termination would only give him control of the original story and not the later sequels, but the current rightsholders would not be able to make a new film after that date without Barker’s permission.
2: Facebook, Twitter Yank Trump Post With Faked CNN Video Over Copyright-Infringement Violation
Next up today, Todd Spangler at Variety reports that Facebook and Twitter have both removed a video shared by President Trump. The video, which was fake, was doctored to show imitation CNN logos and captions that indicated a “Terrified Todler [sic] Runs From Racist Baby”
After the video was uploaded Twitter applied a “manipulated media” tag to the tweet. However, shortly thereafter, it was pulled down completely due to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice.
The original video from 2019 was from CNN but it showed a pair of 2-year-olds in New York with the headline “These two toddlers are showing us what real-life besties look like” and featured footage captured by one of their fathers. It is unclear who filed the DMCA takedown notice to get the fake version removed.
3: Pirated Editions of John Bolton Memoir Circulate Online
Finally today, The Associated Press reports that former national security advisor Jon Bolton’s upcoming book has leaked online and pirated copies of it are available ahead of its scheduled release tomorrow.
To book, entitled The Room Where it Happened, is a memoir of his time working in the Trump administration. It was also the subject of a lawsuit by the Trump administration to attempt to prevent its publication. However, after a judge ruled that sales of the book can move forward, preorders for the book sent it to number one on Amazon and other bestseller lists.
However, ahead of that release, pirated copies of the book have begun to appear on various websites. The book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, has said they are working to remove the pirate copies but did not specify what action they are taking. It is also unclear how the book was leaked onlne.
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