3 Count: Roblox Dance

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1: Creator of Charli XCX’s Apple Dance Sued Roblox Over Unauthorized Use

First off today, Nicole Carpenter at Polygon reports that TikTok star and choreographer Kelley Heyer has filed a lawsuit against Roblox over the sale of her Apple dance as an emote.

The dance rose to fame on TikTok as a routine set to Charli XCX’s song Apple. According to Heyer, Roblox approached her to license the dance officially, but Roblox released the emote before any deal was finalized.

The emote is no longer available on Roblox as I was removed in November 2024. According to the lawsuit, it sold over 60,000 units, representing an estimated $123,000 in sales. She also noted that the dance was correctly licensed in Fortnite, which added it in December.

2: Meta Says It’s Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No “Economic Value”

Next up today, Frank Landymore at Futurism reports that attorneys representing Meta have argued that the millions of pirated books the company used to train its AI systems have no “economic value” and should be fair game to use.

The argument centers on Meta’s claims that each individual book only adjusted their AI performance by a tiny fraction of a percent. As such, there is no market for licensing individual works for AI usage, making them worthless.

This is not the first time AI companies have made this argument. OpenAI made a similar argument before the British Parliament last year. However, despite claiming it didn’t matter, Meta had a policy about not discussing using LibGen to train their AI systems. They said that such media coverage may “undermine our negotiating position with regulators.”

3: Ed Sheeran’s Plagiarism Court Case Forced Him to Hand Over His Old Phone as Evidence. Now He’s Got a New Single Out of It

Finally, today, Daniel Griffiths at Music Radar reports that Ed Sheeran is preparing to release his Sixth album, entitled Play, which features a single directly responding to the multiple copyright infringement lawsuits filed against him.

In recent years, Sheeran has faced allegations that his songs infringed on other creators’ works. Though he successfully defended his work in every case, the allegations and legal battles have changed how he writes music. Most notably, he now records all songwriting sessions to show that the songs are coming from him.

He has also teased a new single, Old Phone. The song deals with an older phone that he was forced to dig out and turn over as part of one of the cases. Sheeran ceased using smartphones in 2015 and found the experience emotional. Play is due to be released sometime later this year.

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