3 Count: Don’t Be Shy

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Karol G Faces Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism Lawsuit Over “Don’t Be Shy” With Tiësto

First off today, Jose Martinez a Complex reports that musician Karol G is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit from another musician who claims that her 2021 collaboration with Tiësto, Don’t Be Shy, is an infringement of his earlier work.

The lawsuit was filed by René Lorente, who claims that Karol G and others took elements from his 1998 song Algo Diferente when creating Don’t Be Shy. The lawsuit specifically alleges that musical, lyrical and structural elements were copied.

Lorente is seeking some $3 million in damages and alleges he has suffered “mental anguish, humiliation, damage to reputation and embarrassment” due to the alleged infringement.

2: MPs Criticize UK Government’s Handling of Copyright Policy Related to AI

Next up today, Ella Creamer at The Guardian reports that, in the UK, a group of MPs have criticized a government proposal that would make all copyright-protected work available for use by AI systems for the purpose of training.

The proposal came from a culture, media and sport committee report that was published earlier this week. It proposed an exemption to copyright for AI systems, that would allow them to freely use books, music, photographs and other works for training. According to the committee, that proposal was first made by the Intellectual Property Office in June 2022.

However, the government has since changed its course and MPs have said that they believe the current framework, which allows for free use of copyrighted works to train AIs for non-commercial use, but requires licenses for any commercial use, strikes a good balance.

3: Google Removes ‘Pirate’ URLs from Users’ Privately Saved Links

Finally today, Ernesto Van der Sar at TorrentFreak writes that, according to a recent email, Google has begun removing allegedly copyright infringing links from private saved link collections, not just search results.

Google has removed billions of URLs from its search results and is by far the largest recipient of such takedown notices. However, those notices are almost exclusively targeted at their search engine, as rightsholders aim to have infringing links being more difficult to find.

However, according to a recent email from Google, at least one person had a link removed from his Google Saved collection as a “downstream” impact of it being removed from Google Search. The Google Saved feature allows users to save links in the Google app, though it doesn’t impact synchronized favorites across browsers. TorrentFreak was able to confirm it is impossible to save links that have previously been excluded from Google Search on copyright grounds.

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