The CopyKat's Baked Cake Social

It seems Twitter is removing 'recycled' jokes which have been re-tweeted. First spotted by @PlagiarismBad, The Verge tell us that at least five separate tweets have been deleted by Twitter for copying this joke: "saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side"  Olga Lexell, who, according to her Twitter bio, is a freelance writer in LA, appears to be the first person to publish the joke on Twitter. In a tweet she confirmed that she did file a request to have the tweet that copied her 'joke' removed. Eleonora has posted her thoughts on the IPKat here. 

The MPAA has sued MovieTube, owners of some two-dozen-plus streaming sites, alleging copyright infringement, according to a story from The Hollywood Reporter. MPAA members 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. jointly filed a lawsuit in New York against a number of MovieTube-owned streaming sites. The group is asserting both copyright and trademark claims, and the complaint is filed against both John and Jane Does, and XYZ Corporations, as the MPAA is uncertain of exactly whom they are suing. In total, the MPAA lawsuit names 29 websites. The complaint asserts that the defendants are both willingly and openly breaking copyright laws, and that they are deliberately hiding their identities while doing so. More here.

This from Arts Technica: It's been two years since filmmakers making a documentary about the song "Happy Birthday" filed a lawsuit claiming that the song shouldn't be under copyright. Now, they have filed what they say is "proverbial smoking-gun evidence" that should cause the judge to rule in their favour. The "smoking gun" is a 1922 version of the "Happy Birthday" lyrics, predating Warner/Chappell's 1935 copyright by thirteen years and making the work public domain. That 1922 songbook, along with other versions located through the plaintiffs' investigations, "conclusively prove that any copyright that may have existed for the song itself... expired decades ago."   The original melody for "Happy Birthday to You" was composed in the late 1800s by school teacher Mildred Hill in Louisville, Kentucky. The song was a variation on a composition called "Good Morning to All," with lyrics penned by her sister, Patty Hill. Warner/Chappell said that there was no evidence that the Hills' successor - their sister Jessica Hill - had given up the sisters' copyright to the work. More here on the 1709 Blog and more on Above The Law here.

Librarians across Australia are cooking up a campaign to change the country's copyright laws. However, they want people to bake biscuits and cakes rather than picket Parliament. Social media users are being encouraged to cook a vintage recipe and share a photo of the result. The aim is to encourage the Attorney-General to look at changing the law so that unpublished (orphan) works are treated the same way as published ones. Executive director of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) Sue McKerracher said the nation had "some rather strange copyright laws".