3 Count: Hello and Goodbye

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1: Brazilian Judge Orders Adele Song Removed Over Plagiarism Claim

First off today, Luciana Novaes Magalhaes and Manuela Andreoni at Reuters report that a judge in Rio de Janeiro has ruled that the Adele song Million Years Ago must be removed from streaming platforms due to similarities between it and a local artist’s earlier song.

Toninho Geraes, a songwriter well-known in the country, filed the case. He claims that Adele copied his song, Mulheres, when creating her 2015 song. Mulheres was a popular song in the country during the 1990s, causing many in Brazil to draw comparisons between the two works.

Both Adele and Geraes have contrast with Universal Music. However, Geraes has been trying to terminate his agreement for some time. In this case, the judge has ordered Sony and Universal to cease distributing the Million Years Ago in the country, including via streaming services. Failure to do so would result in a fine of 50,000 reais ($8,000).

2: Italian Court Orders Cloudflare to Assist in Combatting Piracy

Next up today, Branislav Pekic at Advanced Television reports that a Milan court has ordered the content delivery network Cloudflare to block access to suspected pirate websites or face daily fines for the failure to do so.

The soccer league Serie A filed the case. They allege that Cloudflare was failing to take adequate actions to prevent piracy on its network. In addition to operating its content delivery network, which many pirate sites use, it also operates DNS and proxy services that can be used to bypass other content blocks.

If Cloudflare fails to comply with the order, it will be fined €10,000 ($10,000) per day. Cloudflare, for its part, has fought being forced to take such action, arguing that it is a mere middleman and not responsible for blocking or removing pirated content.

3: Warner Bros. Comes Under Fire For Reportedly Plagiarising Charlie The Unicorn In Deleted Multiversus Tweet

Finally today, Sam Woods at The Gamer reports that Warner has drawn fire for using audio and ideas from a popular 2008 YouTube video.

Warner was promoting new content for its game MultiVersus. Part of that announcement featured a new Reindog skin entitled Charlie. They used audio and elements from the 2008 video Charlie the Unicorn as part of the announcement. This prompted Charlie’s creator, Jason Steele, to accuse Warner of using his content without permission.

This resulted in a community note being posted on the original announcement and the post being deleted. According to Warner, the game has “significantly” underperformed, which isn’t likely to help them turn things around.

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