3 Count: Poison Pill

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1: U.S. Court Orders Up to $97,500 in Damages for Sharing ‘Adult’ Films via BitTorrent

First off today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that the adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings secured three sizeable default judgments, with the judge ordering the defendants to pay up to $97,500 each for sharing pornographic content on BitTorrent.

Strike 3 is the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States. The company routinely targets individuals it believes are sharing content that they own via the BitTorrent file-sharing network. Most of these lawsuits end in a settlement, but the defendants failed to respond in these three cases.

The three defendants were accused of sharing between 35 and 130 works without permission. Strike 3 could have asked for the maximum statutory damages, $150,000 per work. Instead, it opted for the statutory minimum for non-willful infringement, $750 per work. However, that still equals $97,500 in damages in the largest case. Strike 3 also won a permanent injunction barring any further infringement.

2: Italy Demands Google Poison DNS Under Strict Piracy Shield Law

Next up today, Ryan Whitwam at Ars Technica reports that the Italian government is ordering Google to start “poisoning” its public DNS servers to comply with the country’s Piracy Shield law.

The Piracy Shield law in Italy requires DNS providers to block access to pirate websites. Recently, the country’s communication regulator expanded its reach to international companies, including Cloudflare and other public DNS service providers.

Now, the Court of Milan has ruled that Google is also bound by the law and failed to block pirate websites after being notified. As a result, Google could face sanctions of up to 10,000 Euros ($10,800) per day.

3: YouTuber Removes GTA 6 Map Mod And Blasts Take-Two Over Copyright Strike

Finally, today, Ethan Gach at Kotaku reports that Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA5) modder Dark Space has pulled down his most recent project following a copyright strike filed by the game’s developer, Take-Two Interactive.

Fans of GTA5 have been waiting for more news about the game’s sequel, GTA6. In the meantime, Dark Space created a mod for GTA5 that created a GTA6-like map for the game. He published the mod for free and uploaded a YouTube video showing his work.

However, Take-Two Interactive ordered that video removed on copyright grounds. Dark Space made a follow-up video decrying the copyright strike and saying that he has taken down links to the mod to prevent further copyright actions.

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