3 Count: Twitter Twits

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1: Court Protects Redditors’ Right to Anonymous Speech in Piracy Case

First off today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that a California judge has denied a rightsholders motion to compel Reddit to hand over data of a user, saying that the user’s right to privacy is more important than the information they might glean.

The dispute is part of a larger lawsuit between a group of filmmakers and the internet service provider RCN. The rightsholders claim that RCN failed to take adequate action to mitigate piracy on its network. To help prove that, they wanted information about a commenter on Reddit who claimed to be an RCN user that said the company was “fairly lax” when it came to copyright issues.

However, Reddit challenged the motion to compel and said that the user is not accused of any direct wrongdoing. The judge leaned toward denying the motion but allowed both sides to make arguments. However, the plaintiffs were not compelling, and the judge decided that the user’s privacy outweighed the needs of the rightsholders in this case.

2: Province Demands Twitter User Remove Post Using Government Wheat Sheaf Logo

Next up today, Adam Hunter at the CBC reports that the Saskatchewan government demanded a man delete a tweet that used one of the government’s official logos. According to the complaint, the tweet was a violation of their copyright.

The tweet itself was a parody of Saskatchewan’s new slogan “Growth that works for everyone”, and featured the logo with the words, “Growth that works for everyone who donates to the Sask Party”.

According to the government, use of that logo requires permission, even if it is for parody. However, others are challenging that notion, saying that the tweet is not a violation of copyright law and that it is disappointing that the government is prioritizing this specific issue.

3: The entire Super Mario Bros. movie keeps getting posted to Twitter

Finally today, Nilay Patel at The Verge reports that Twitter is still struggling to prevent pirated content from appearing on its server as multiple users upload full copies of the film Super Mario Bros. despite ongoing objections from rightsholders.

According to the report, at least one copy of the film has been up since April 28th and has amassed 9.3 million views. Due to the 60-minute limit of videos uploaded to Twitter, the movie is typically broken into two parts.

Other major films, including Avatar: The Way of the Water, are also available on Twitter this way. However, Twitter has severely cut back its content moderation team, making enforcement of these kinds of misuses challenging.

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