3 Count: That’s So Meta

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1: Ninth Circuit Boosts Efforts to Sue Overseas Copyright Infringers

First off today, Edvard Pettersson at Courthouse News Service reports that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a copyright infringement lawsuit that was filed against the Vietnamese company VNG Group.

The lawsuit was filed by the California company Lang Van Inc. Lang Van is a music production company that releases through a variety of platforms. It accuses VNG Group of releasing the Zing MP3 app, which features music owned by Lang Van even though VNG, according to the lawsuit, do not have license to use.

VNG group claimed that the court didn’t have jurisdiction over them, noting that they are located in Vietnam and the bulk of their business is there. The lower court agreed, dismissing the case. However, the Ninth Circuit has now overturned that decision, noting that VNG uploaded their app to the U.S. app store and clearly targeted the United States with its marketing. This sends the case back down to the lower court for a possible trial.

2: Meta Sues a Site Cloner Who Allegedly Scraped Over 350,000 Instagram Profiles

Next up today, Igor Bonifacic at Engadget reports that Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, has filed a lawsuit against a website scraping service named Octopus alleging that it has enabled widespread scraping and copying of Instagram profiles.

Octopus sells software that others can use to carry out website scraping operations. According to Meta, Octopus deliberately bypasses copyright protection tools they have in place on their site, thus making the product a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In addition to Octopus, Meta has filed a separate lawsuit against an individual named Ekrem Ateş, which they accuse of scraping and republishing data from some 350,000 Instagram profiles. Meta claims to have repeatedly taken action to stop Ateş, including sending him a cease and desist letter.

3: Lawsuit Says Meta Stole Hundreds of Songs from Swedish Music Label

Finally today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that Meta is on the other side of a legal case, this one filed by the Swedish music label Epidemic Sound. Epidemic Sound alleges that Meta is unlawfully offering their music for use in Facebook videos.

Epidemic Sound is best known for providing tracks to YouTubers and other video makers. However, they claim that Meta has repurposed at least 950 of their tracks for their own music library. This is a library that Facebook and Instagram users can use when editing videos for those platforms.

As such, Epidemic sound is seeking unspecified damages as well as an injunction barring from Meta doing any further distribution of their wrongs.

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