3 Count: Leaky Data

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1: Zayn Malik Seeks Dismissal of Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

First off today, Mohnish Singh at Eastern Eye reports that musician Zayn Malik is seeking to have a lawsuit filed against him dismissed, which could bring an end to the recently-filed lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in September on behalf of a musician named Havyn. According to the lawsuit, Zayn’s 2020 track Better is an infringement of Havyn’s 2018 song Somebody Tonight. The lawsuit alleges that Havyn attempted to reach agreements with multiple companies involved in Zayn’s track, only to have them use his work to create Better.

However, the defendants argue that the complaint has not shown any protectable similarities between the two songs and further has failed to prove that anyone who worked on Better had access to Somebody Tonight. As such, they are seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for January 30.

2: Silenzio! ‘Anna’s Archive’ Shadow Library Blocked Following Publishers’ Complaint

Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that so-called shadow library Anna’s Archive is facing a block in Italy as the local telecom authority has agreed to a request by the publishing industry to require ISPs and others to prohibit access to the site.

Shadow libraries are large libraries of freely available books for users to download or read. They’ve drawn significant criticism because, in addition to hosting public domain and other legal works, they host a large amounts of copyright-protected content. This has led to repeated clashes with publishers, who view such sites as pirate websites dressed up as libraries.

The largest and best-known shadow library, Z-Library, shut down just over a year ago but that has led to a rise of new services, many of which use the same database. This includes Anna’s Archive, which provided access to books that were contained in the Z-Library dataset but through a different interface. This includes some 25.5 million books and 99.4 million papers. The block, which was supported by 90% of the nation’s publishing industry, aims to prevent Italians from accessing the site and should be completed within 48 hours.

3: Spotify Music Converter Puts Users at Risk

Finally today, Paulina Okunytė at Cybernews reports that Tunefab, a converter that allows users to download music from streaming services, has suffered a massive data breach that includes over 151 million parsed records and 280 gigabytes of data.

TuneFab is an application that allows users to convert streamed music, such as Spotify and Apple Music, to formats that can be saved on the user’s computer. Though a violation of the terms of service of the various streaming services, this approach is popular among many who prefer to listen to music offline.

However, a recently discovered leak shows that some 280 gigs of private data was published on the internet. This includes IP addresses, emails, device information and more. However, it does not appear to include any financial data.

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