3 Count: Edgar’s Victory

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1: Children’s Author Who Sued John Lewis Over Christmas Ad Loses Case

First off today, Sarah Shaffi and Sarah Butler at The Guardian reports that children’s author Fay Evans has lost her copyright case against the UK retailer John Lewis over a Christmas ad that Evans alleged infringed her work.

According to the lawsuit, in 2019, John Evans released a holiday advertisement featured a dragon named Excitable Edgar, who struggled to control his fire and struggled to find acceptance among humans. Evans claimed that the commercial, as well as the subsequent book, was an infringement of her 2017 work, Fred the Fire-Sneezing Dragon, which featured a similar story.

However, the court has now dismissed the lawsuit, saying that there is no evidence anyone at John Lewis or their advertising agency accessed or had access to the book in question. With no proof of access, the judge ruled that there can be no copying and, thus, no copyright infringement.

2: National Promises to Re-Cut Documentary Taken Down for Copyright

Next up today, Thomas Coughlan at the New Zealand Herald reports that the New Zealand National Party has said that it is re-editing a campaign ad after a trailer for it was removed from YouTube following a dispute over copyright.

On Monday, the party uploaded a trailer for a documentary about a local scandal. The full video was slated to be released at 7PM local time that day. However, the trailer used footage from Newshub, whose parent company, Warner Brothers-Discovery, sent a cease and desist letter to the party over.

The planned release for the full video did not happen, and the trailer was pulled down following the letter. The party has said that they are now reediting both the trailer and the full video to afford any copyright issues.

3: Cloudflare DNS Must Block Pirate Sites, Italian Court Confirms

Finally today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that, in Italy, Cloudflare has lost an appeal over the requirement that the company block pirate websites through its DNS resolver.

Last year, an Italian court ordered that internet service providers in the country should block a variety of pirate websites. Cloudflare, however, offers a public domain name service (DNS) resolver that allows users to bypass those blocks. This prompted a challenge from the record labels, with the lower court agreeing that Cloudflare had to block the sites as well.

Cloudflare appealed that verdict, saying that site blocking was detrimental to a DNS resolver and that it would require monitoring user activity. However, the appeals court rejected those arguments, noting that Cloudflare already blocks some content through its DNS resolver and that monitoring was not necessary and, in fact, would be against EU law.

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