3 Count: Ancestry Battle

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1: Court Dismisses Yout.com DMCA Circumvention Lawsuit Against RIAA, For Now

First off today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that Yout.com has had its lawsuit against the RIAA tossed, though the court is leaving room for it to be refiled with additional information.

The lawsuit was filed by Yout last year after the RIAA filed notices against the site that resulted in it being removed from search results. According to the RIAA, the site enables users to circumvent copyright protection measures on YouTube to download videos unlawfully. Yout, however, claims that it doesn’t circumvent any protections and filed the lawsuit in hopes of getting the court to declare it lawful.

However, the judge has tossed the case, saying that there was far more information coming out in hearings than was put in the original complaint. As such, the court is giving Yout 28 days to refile the case with additional details.

2: Tencent Wins Copyright Infringement Case Against Douyin

Next up today, Jiaxing Li at KrASIA reports that Doyin, the Chinese name for TikTok, has been successfully sued by video game maker Tencent for allegedly allowing and enabling users to upload videos of the game Honor of Kings.

This was actually the second such lawsuit between the companies, with Tencent emerging victorious in the previous one as well. This time around, Douyin’s parent company, ByteDance, is ordered to pay RMB 600,000 ($92,000) in damages.

ByteDance has promised to appeal the decision. However, other companies are also making similar claims against them, alleging that the service is enabling and encouraging sharing of copyright protected content.

3: Ancestry.com’s New Terms Allow it to Use Your Family Photos for Anything

Finally today, Jaron Schneider at PetaPixel reports that Ancestry.com has updated its terms and conditions and the new language allegedly gives the company the right to use uploaded family photos for any purpose it likes, forever and without limits.

Ancestry, for its part, claims that the changes are only meant to encompass the expected services of the site and not anything outside that. However, lawyers, photographers and genealogists alike have expressed concern over the broad language in the terms of service and are asking Ancestry to clarify.

Ancestry did say that the license can be terminated by simply deleting the user-generated content from the service. However, as others noted, if others posted or shared the same image, Ancestry could still hold all the rights to it.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

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