3 Count: Omi in a Prison
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1: Local YouTube Star Sentenced to 5½ years, Ordered to Forfeit $30M in Large-Scale Cable Piracy Case
First off today, Jeremy Roebuck at The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that YouTuber Omi in a Hellcat, whose legal name is Bill Omar Carrasquillo, has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for his role in a pirate streaming service that he ran.
Carrasquillo was well known for flouting an ostentatious lifestyle that included many expensive cars and a large house in New Jersey. However, much of his wealth came from a pirate streaming service, entitled Gears TV, where subscribers paid $15 per month to receive access to unlicensed content.
That came crashing down in 2019 when investigators raided the business and seized much of Carrasquillo’s assets. Carrasquillo pleaded guilty to several charges last year but had been awaiting sentencing. That sentence was handed down yesterday, with the judge ordering him to five and a half years in prison, as well as forfeiting some $30 million in assets.
2: DNS Resolver Quad9 Loses Global Pirate Site Blocking Case Against Sony
Next up today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that the DNS resolver has lost an appeal that it had hoped would prevent it from being forced to comply with a German site blocking order.
The case began in 2021, when Sony Music obtained an injunction ordering Quard9, as well as other services, to block access to a pirate website. However, Quad 9 fought that injunction, with a regional court denying it in December 2022. According to Quad 9, as a simple DNS resolver, they should not be held to the same standards as those that actually host or provide access to infringing content.
That decision was appealed to the Regional Court of Leipzig, which has also upheld the injunction. Furthermore, the court said that Quad 9 should have acted when the copyright holder alerted them to the presence of pirated music. Quad 9 has already announced its intention to appeal this decision with the Dresden Court of Appeal.
3: Musk Suspends “Overzealous” Rightsholders for “Weaponizing” DMCA on Twitter
Finally today, Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica reports that Elon Musk has announced that Twitter will be suspending any accounts they believe to be “engaging in repeated, egregious weaponization,” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The announcement came after a public dispute between Norway-based photographer Adrien Mauduit and fellow Twitter user named Massimo. Massimo shared a video uploaded by Mauduit and, though he attributed the original source, didn’t use Twitter’s retweet functionality and, instead, reuploaded the video.
According to Massimo, when he tried to work the issue out with Mauduit, he demanded money. This prompted Massimo to accuse Mauduit of “blackmail” and take the dispute publicly. Musk, seeing the tweets, suspended Mauduit’s account and promised to the same to anyone that he believed was misusing the law.
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