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July 2019
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Dear AHL: Get Your App Shit Together Because You're Freaking Us Out

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There are many, many ways for big companies' attempts to use social media or smart apps to go horribly wrong. Usually these happenings involve either hacked into accounts repurposed for lulz, rogue employees having a bit too much to drink on beer Friday and then going off, or companies doing something stupid and then blaming either of the previous for it.And then there's the American Hockey League's mobile app, which for some reason alerted users that Stewart Zimmel apparently both owes someone $6k and threatens to punch people in the throat.

The American Hockey League's long-awaited schedule announcement for the 2019–20 season hit a minor road block on Wednesday, when the code behind the official app of the NHL’s top minor league became self-aware and demanded money from Stewart Zimmel. At least, that’s one way to interpret these confusing but very real screenshots of push notifications sent to users today, which accused Zimmel of threatening to punch someone named Ian Bowman in the throat “nemours times” (sic).
It wasn't just this one Twitter user, either. Others stared quizzically at their phones, wondering why Stewart Zimmel won't just pay back what he owes, not to mention why he would go around throat-punching people. Far from this being some one-off thing, the app later began displaying screenshots of communications in which someone named Zimmel kinda does threaten to punch someone in the throat. And, because the internet is a wonderful place, some people began trying to figure this mystery out.
Stewart Zimmel, for those wondering, is the COO of a company called HockeyTech, according to his LinkedIn. HockeyTech bought the company Zimmel previously worked for, Buzzer Apps, in 2018. Bowman, according to an older fragment of the Buzzer Apps LinkedIn page that’s archived on Google, used to work for the company too. It seems safe to assume that he worked on the AHL app—or at least knew how to hack it—and also that he feels he’s owed $6,000 from Zimmel.
The AHL has since gotten its app back under control, meaning that it is no longer sending users screenshots of threats of violence... so that's good. On the other hand, it really shouldn't be that hard to keep this kind of stuff from happening. And if you're going to launch an app that can push notifications to the public's phones, it's probably best to have some checks in place to keep this sort of thing from happening.

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posted at: 12:00am on 23-Jul-2019
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Judge Tosses Crazy Copyright Lawsuit Over Gigi Hadid Photo

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Last month, we wrote a fairly long post about some interesting elements (demonstrating the flimsiness of "copyright" existing for many photographs) in a copyright lawsuit filed against model Gigi Hadid for reposting a cropped paparazzi photo on her Instagram. As we noted in that post, despite all of the interesting arguments made regarding copyright and photos, it seemed clear that this case was going to get tossed on purely procedural grounds -- namely that the lawsuit, filed by a photo agency called Xclusive-Lee (who may or may not even hold the rights to the photo), was filed prior to the photo receiving a registration from the Copyright Office. Back in March, the Supreme Court said that copyright law is quite clear that you need to wait until the registration is obtained.Here, that was not the case. It was filed before the registration was granted, and thus it's no surprise that (as first pointed out by the Hollywood Reporter) that this case was thrown out for that reason alone.

Assuming, without deciding, that Plaintiff has sufficiently pled that it owns a validcopyright in the Photograph, the Court concludes that Plaintiff's copyright infringement claimshould nevertheless be dismissed due to Plaintiff's failure to comply with the registrationrequirement. As the Supreme Court has held, the registration requirement is [a] statutorycondition under which a plaintiff must obtain registration of a copyright in a work before filinga lawsuit based on infringement of that work.
The judge mocks the weak attempt by Xclusive-Lee's lawyers to argue that because this lawsuit was filed before the Supreme Court made it's ruling, that the court can magically ignore the Supreme Court. Not how it works.
Acknowledging the holding in Fourth Estate, Plaintiff argues, in effect, that because it filedthe complaint in this matter before the Supreme Court's decision in Fourth Estate, and becauseprior to Fourth Estate, the Second Circuit had left the application/registration rule . . . issue to thediscretion of individual District Court judges....Fourth Estate should not preclude Plaintiff's infringement claim in this case. The Court disagrees.There is no doctrinal basis on which this Court can decline to apply a Supreme Courtdecision that would otherwise apply merely because that Supreme Court decision was issued after the filing of the complaint at issue in this case. Indeed, Plaintiff cites no case law supporting itsposition. In Fourth Estate, the Supreme Court decisively held that § 411(a) requires a plaintiff tohave already been granted registration from the Copyright Office prior to commencing an actionfor copyright infringement. See Fourth Estate, 139 S. Ct. at 888. Although Fourth Estate postdated Plaintiff's filing of its complaint, it is nevertheless binding on all lower federal courts unlessand until the Supreme Court decides to revisit it.... For thisreason, Plaintiff's observation that the Second Circuit may have provided for a different resultprior to Fourth Estate is of no moment.
Ah well. Exactly as expected. Still, it will be interesting to see if the issues raised earlier do start to show up in future cases.

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posted at: 12:00am on 23-Jul-2019
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