3 Count: Buying a Lemon

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1: Arizona Beats Back Copyright Challenge to Car-Dealer Data Law

First off today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that the State of Arizona has beat back a copyright challenge to a new car dealer data law as the 9th Circuit has rejected an appeal from software developers.

The law makes it so that developers of dealer management system (DMS) applications cannot restrict their customers from sharing data with authorized parties. DMS applications help dealers manage all of their data, including information about their customers, their stock and more.

Two DMS developers challenged the law, hoping to protect a business model where customers pay for data portability. However, the 9th Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling, dismissing any copyright element of the case. According to the court, not only do the software companies not hold a copyright to the data, there is no evidence that the law would result in copyright infringement of their software.

2: Court Acquits GMA Execs Accused by ABS-CBN of Copyright Infringement

Next up today, BusinessWorld reports that, in the Philippines, a court has acquitted a pair of GMA executives over allegations that they had infringed the copyright of a competing network’s footage.

The long-running case began in 2004 when GMA used footage captured by ABS-CBN as part of their coverage of a hostage victim returning home. ABS-CBN filed the copyright infringement complaint, kicking off a process that has lasted over 15 years.

However, GMA said that they used the footage under a license from Reuters, to which ABS-CBN provided the film. As such, the courts opted to acquit the executives involved, saying that the prosecution had failed to prove their case.

3: Denuvo was reportedly slowing down ‘Shadow Of The Tomb Raider’

Finally today, Andy Brown at NME reports that the video game Shadow of the Tomb Raider has received a significant performance increase, one achieved by simply dropping the Denuvo anti-piracy DRM.

Tomb Raider, like many major release video games, was released with digital rights management (DRM) software to reduce piracy. However, gamers have long complained that such systems cause games to perform worse, even on high-end systems.

Square Enix, the developers of the Tomb Raider series, removed Denuvo from the most recent two Tomb Raider games and tests of Shadow of the Tomb Raider indicates that players can see up to 30 more frames per second in performance. This is the latest in the trend of developers dropping Denuvo from their older releases.

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