Tag: copyright
350+ American songwriters and managers support Copyright Office proposal regarding MLC’s policies for US streaming royalties
Unpaid Taxes Could Destroy Porn Studio Accused of Copyright Trolling
Over the past decade, Malibu Media has emerged as a prominent so-called “copyright troll,” suing thousands of “John Does” for allegedly torrenting adult content hosted on the porn studio’s website, “X-Art.” Whether defendants were guilty or not didn’t seem to matter to Malibu, critics claimed, as much as winning as many settlements as possible. As courts became more familiar with Malibu, however, some judges grew suspicious of the studio’s litigiousness. As early as 2012, a California judge described these lawsuits as “essentially an extortion scheme,” and by 2013, a Wisconsin judge ordered sanctions, agreeing with critics who said that Malibu’s tactics were designed to “harass and intimidate” defendants into paying Malibu thousands in settlements.
By 2016, Malibu started losing footing in this arena — and even began fighting with its own lawyer. At that point, file-sharing lawsuits became less commonplace, with critics noting a significant reduction in Malibu’s lawsuits over the next few years. Now, TorrentFreak reports that Malibu’s litigation machine appears to finally be running out of steam — with its corporate status suspended in California sometime between mid-2020 and early 2021 after failing to pay taxes. Last month, a Texas court said that Malibu has until January 20 to pay what’s owed in back taxes and get its corporate status reinstated. If that doesn’t happen over the next few weeks, one of Malibu’s last lawsuits on the books will be dismissed, potentially marking the end of Malibu’s long run of alleged copyright trolling.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The guy who wrote Minecraft’s ending says Microsoft doesn’t own the copyright
![](https://assets2.rockpapershotgun.com/minecraft-house-ideas-hobbit-hole.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/minecraft-house-ideas-hobbit-hole.jpg)
I knew Minecraft had an ending, but I didn’t know that ending consists of an unskippable 9 minute long poem. I also didn’t know that last month the author of that poem, Julian Gough, placed it into the public domain, which according to him he’s legally entitled to do because nobody at Mojang or Microsoft ever successfully got him to sign a contract.
He now says Microsoft are stonewalling any attempts to contact them about whether or not they own the copyright, and that this silence killed a piece he’d written for an unnamed “global news organisation” because they didn’t want to risk drawing the ire of Microsoft’s 1700 strong lawer team. That piece was actually an edited version of Gough’s blog post from last month, where he explained the situation and submitted the poem to the public domain – while making multiple references to the poem being written by the universe, and also how taking psychedelics lead him to conclude that not allowing himself to be compensated would be a “blockage of the flow of love”. It’s a trip.
Artists Opposing AI Image Generators Use Mickey Mouse to Goad Copyright Lawsuits
Yet “The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted.” So…
In response to concerns over the future of their craft, artists have begun using AI systems to generate images of characters including Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Given Disney’s history of fierce protection over its content, the artists are hoping the company takes action and thus proves that AI art isn’t as original as it claims. Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney…. “Legally there should be no recourse from Disney as according to the AI models TOS these images transcends copyright and the images are public domain.”
Bourdages tweet quickly racked up more than 37,000 likes and close to 6,000 shares.
In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.
“More shirts courtesy of AI,” he added. “I’m sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC won’t mind, the AI didn’t steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original….”
Just two days after sharing the images, however, Bourdages stated on Twitter that he had suddenly lost his access to Midjourney.
The article notes that Bourdages reiterated his point in a later tweet. “People’s craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Music industry sues yet another US internet service provider for copyright infringement
Telegram Shares Users Data in Copyright Violation Lawsuit
An Indian court earlier had ordered Telegram to adhere to the Indian law and disclose details about those operating such channels. Telegram unsuccessfully argued that disclosing user information would violate the privacy policy and the laws of Singapore, where it has located its physical servers for storing users data. In response, the Indian court said the copyright owners couldn’t be left “completely remediless against the actual infringers” because Telegram has chosen to locate its servers outside the country. In an order last week, Justice Prathiba Singh said Telegram had complied with the earlier order and shared the data.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Copyright, cost, and ageing code: why some games disappear from Steam
![](https://assets2.rockpapershotgun.com/devotion-header.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/devotion-header.jpg)
Somewhere in the region of 8,000 games have been removed from Steam since its inception, from the mass banning of “fake games”, to publishers removing their own titles due to licensing disputes, pending re-releases, personal disillusionment, server shutdowns and political scandals. Valve even took down one of its own games. Released in 2004 with Steam AppID 92, Codename: Gordon is a Flash-based 2D side-scroller set in the Half-Life universe, developed by Nuclearvision and published by Valve. It was removed due to a hard-coded link to the now-defunct developer’s domain, which Valve regarded as a security risk.
But removed isn’t always the same as gone, and exploring Steam’s deleted items is an adventure through modern gaming history. I spoke to some developers of delisted games to find out more.
This Copyright Lawsuit Could Shape the Future of Generative AI
Twitter’s copyright system seemingly broken as full-length movies are posted on platform
![photo illustration Twitter logo is displayed on a smartphone screen](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/02ibirECGXmA1Lwv9epj3oy/hero-image.jpg)
Cracks are starting to show on Twitter as users have begun to post entire movies on the platform, with many yet to be taken down. A sign that the social media giant’s copyright violation policy is not properly being enforced.
One Twitter user went viral this weekend after posting the entirety of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2-min long chunks, totaling over 50 tweets. As reported by Forbes, the account has been suspended, however, the media itself did not go down with it for quite some time. Other users posted the 1995 film Hackers and the 2009 film Avatar, both of which have also been taken down.
While the more notable movie threads have gone viral, leading to their takedown, some films like Need for Speed, and Japanese superhero film Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever are still available to view on Twitter, as of the time of this writing. Even TV shows are being posted, like this episode of Spongebob Squarepants that was shared.
“Twitter will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as a profile or header photo, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted video or image uploaded through our media hosting services, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials,” it says on its website.
It shouldn’t be surprising to know that the sharing of full movies, is in fact, a violation of Twitter’s copyright policy. However given recent events within the company, it seems the platform is running with a skeleton crew at the moment. One of Musk’s ideas after taking over was to introduce long, 40+ min videos for Twitter Blue subscribers, but that might have to be put on the back burner for now if the site’s automated copyright enforcement system can’t be fixed.
As another headache in the mounting amount of problems for Twitter, the broken copyright system opens up the site to even more potential legal action. As of this writing, Twitter is currently facing several class action lawsuits along with potential legal action from the FTC. On the bright side, users can enjoy some episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation before Twitter goes belly up.