3 Count: Copilot Lawsuit

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1: Microsoft is Being Sued over Github Copilot Piracy

First off today, Craig Hale at TechRadar reports that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI over GitHub’s new artificial intelligence programming tool named GitHub Copilot.

The lawsuit was filed by programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick. He alleges that Copilot was trained on open-source software and, when prompted, often closely reproduces such code. However, he alleges that it doesn’t follow the terms of the licenses, including attribution and a copyright notice.

The lawsuit has been filed as a class action and is seeking a minimum of $2,500 per violation, an amount that could total to $9 billion in total damages when factoring in Copilot’s 1.2 million users.

2: Vir Das, Netflix Among Four Booked for Copyright Infringement

Next up today, The Indian Express reports that, in Mumbai, comedian vir Das, Netflix and others have been booked by the Mumbai Police under the nation’s copyright act following a complaint from a producer alleging infringement of a 2010 agreement.

The producer in question is Ashwin Gidwani, who claims to have entered into an agreement with the parties involved to produce a show named History of India VIRitten. However, he alleges that the parties ignored that agreement and move forward with a show entitled Virdas for India, which used many of the same concepts and elements.

It is unclear what Gidwani wants as far as compensation, but the case targets nearly all involved with the creation of the show, including Netflix itself, which has been served legal papers in the dispute.

3: Pirate IPTV Service Must Pay $15.7m But Court Rejects ‘Overbroad’ Injunction

Finally today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that Dish Networks has one a $15.7 million judgment against a pirate IPTV provider, though the court has denied an injunction that could have resulted in the service being shuttered.

The lawsuit was filed against two sets of defendants. Atlas Electronics, a Michigan-based retailer of pirate IPTV services and their owner made one group. The other was iStar, the manufacturer of the devices sold by Atlas. However, none of the defendants mounted a defense, resulting in a default judgment against them. That judgment included $100,000 in damages for each of the 157 infringed works, totaling $15.7 million.

However, it was not a complete victory for Dish, as the judge declined to issue an injunction against Verisign and other domain registrars to transfer key domains over to them. Saying that it was inappropriate to issue injunctions against parties not involved in the case, that request was denied.

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