3 Count: Notorious Markets 2022

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1: US Government Publishes its Latest Copyright Watch Lists

First off today, Chris Cooke at Complete Music Update reports that the United States Trade Representative has released its annual list of “notorious markets” that identifies countries that, according to it, are failing to take adequate action to prevent copyright and other kinds of intellectual property infringement.

Seven countries appear on the priority watch list, which is the highest tier in this report, includes Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia and Ukraine were removed from that tier this year. In addition to those seven, some 20 nations were placed on the lower-tier Watch List including Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Thailand to name a few.

The list works to push countries with weak intellectual property laws or enforcement to make improvements. For example, Saudi Arabia was removed from the Priority Watch List following actions within the country’s government to step up enforcement of intellectual property laws.

2: Man Who Lost $90m Pirate IPTV Suit Slams DISH in Response to New Lawsuit

Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that Jason LaBossiere, the former operator of the pirate IPTV service SetTV has hit back at DISH Network, accusing the satellite giant of attempting to bully him into a settlement to help their bottom line.

LaBossiere was first in court over SetTV, an illegal IPTV service that he ran with his co-defendants. The defendants were orders to pay some $90 million in damages and were ordered to comply with a permanent injunction. However, DISH claims that LaBossiere violated that injunction and is operating three separate IPTV services.

That evidence is based largely on recorded conversations with LaBossiere where he admitted to being involved with ExpediteTV. However, he claims the service was meant to be legitimate and that, if it is streaming DISH content illegally, he is not involved in that. He further claims not to have heard of the other two services he’s accused of operating.

3: Hollywood’s Fight Against VPNs Turns Ugly

Finally today, Ax Sharma at Wired reports that a group of film studios is currently embroiled in a legal fight with major virtual private network (VPN) providers and that the tone of that fight has gotten extremely ugly in recent weeks.

The case pits the studios against both ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access (PIA). The companies allege that the services enable piracy by protecting infringing users and even market their products in such a way as to encourage the behavior.

However, in addition to the copyright infringement, the studios are also highlighting other alleged crimes committed by VPN users including hacking, harassment and the distribution of child pornography among others. However, the VPN providers want these allegations stricken from the record as they are “irrelevant” to the copyright issues in the case itself.

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