3 Count: No Class
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1: YouTube Won’t Face Copyright Class Action Over Anti-Piracy Tools, Judge Rules
First off today, Bill Donahue at Billboard reports that YouTube has won a major victory in court as a judge has denied class action status to an ongoing lawsuit filed by music composer Maria Schneider over the company’s Content ID policies.
YouTube offers a system named Content ID that works to, among other things, filter out potentially infringing work before they are published on the site. However, Schneider alleges that YouTube limited access to the tool to only certain copyright holders and ignored “ordinary owners”.
Schneider had been seeking class action status for the lawsuit, wanting to team up with other rightsholders in a similar position. However, that class action is now decided defeated, as the judge in the case has denied class action certification across the board. The order doesn’t end the case, but means an upcoming trial will focus on the copyrights and arguments regarding Schneider herself, as the judge says other potential class members have very different cases.
2: The Proxy Bay is Offline Following City Of London Police’s Recent Intervention
Next up today, Chris Cooke at Complete Music Update reports that The Proxy Bay, a site that enabled users to visit The Pirate Bay when the site is ordinarily unavailable or blocked, went offline following a confusing series of events.
The move follows an action by the City of London Police, which filed a takedown notice with GitHub, the host of the site, to seek its removal. However, that downtime was short-lived as someone filed a counternotice regarding the site, which resulted in it being restored. It is unclear if the person who filed the counternotice was actually involved with the site.
But then the site went down again for no discernible reason. That said, after this piece was originally written but before publication, The Proxy Bay appears to be back online and using its GitHub URL, raising even more questions about this downtime.
3: House OKs bill strengthening PH Intellectual Property Office
Finally today, RG Cruz at ABS-CBN reports that, in the Philippines, the House of Representatives has voted 267-0-1 to increase the powers of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) by giving the organization new powers to fight piracy and counterfeiting.
The new bill grants the IPOPHL the ability to take down a website that, after a report from a rightsholder, was found to have the primary purpose of infringing copyright or facilitating copyright infringement. The measure also allows the IPOPHL to visit businesses that are suspected of violating intellectual property rules.
In addition to the new IPOPHL powers, raises the fines that can be imposed by the Director of Legal affairs to a minimum of P 100,000 ($1,800) and a maximum of P1 million ($18,000) as well as increasing the additional fine per day for a continuing the violation.
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