3 Count: Spare Time

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1: Major Publishers Sue Shopify, Alleging Copyright Violations

First off today, Suzanne Smalley at Inside Higher Ed reports that five major textbook publishers have teamed up to file a lawsuit against Shopify over allegations that the ecommerce platform is enabling rampant piracy.

The publishers, Macmillan, Cengage, Elsevier, McGraw Hill and Pearson, allege that Shopify “plays host, enabler and protector” of textbook piracy sites and back that claim up by saying that they have sent takedown notices nearly every week for four years, but that Shopify has refused to take any significant action.

At issue is pirate sites that, according to publishers, use the Shopify platform to sell pirate ebook copies of textbooks. The publishers allege that they have sent more than 32,000 URLs that have cost them as much as $315 million in lost sales. Shopify has not responded to the lawsuit nor commented on the case.

2: Movie Studios Sue Free Streaming Website Primewire For ‘Mass Online Copyright Piracy’

Next up today, Christina Tabacco at Law Street Media reports that a half dozen movie studios have filed a lawsuit against the free streaming service Primewire alleging that the service is engaged in widespread piracy.

That allegation is backed by Primewire’s own website, which acknowledges that streaming pirated movies is “risky” and encourages users to use a VPN. However, the lawsuit does not identify the individuals behind the company, saying that they are unknown at this time.

In total, the lawsuit is seeking both injunctive relief and damages for alleged copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement.

3: Dev loses copyright appeal over forensic software after judges rule suite was owned by his employer

Finally today, Garth Corfield at The Register reports that a UK developer has lost his appeal to try and claim ownership of software he created while employed for the company MD5.

While at MD5, developer Michael Penhallurick write a Virtual Forensic Computing (VFC) suite. However, Penhallurick claimed that he wrote portions of it on his spare time and, as such, held the copyright to the work. However, the Court of Appeals has ruled against him, saying that the work was owned by MD5 and payments that he received after his retirement were for continued support rather than royalties.

Penhallurick sued after those payments stopped and tried to claim that MD5 was committing copyright infringement. However, in the absence of a clear contract, the court interpreted the situation favorably to MD5, claiming that Penhallurick was paid to write the software and that no further royalties were owed.

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