News of the Week; December 7, 2016

GAMES

1. FIFA 17 under fire in Russia following EA’s support of LGBTQ campaign: Custom rainbow kits have been met with calls for a ban among Russian MPs citing 2013 “gay propaganda law”
2. Russian officials allege FIFA 17 violates law against gay propaganda
3. Alleging theft of trade secrets, Zynga takes 2 ex-employees to court
4. Konami issues cease and desist against Unreal Castlevania fan remake: But publisher has allowed all current files to remain available, developer hopes to acquire an official licence
5. What Gamergate should have taught us about the ‘alt-right’: The 2014 online hate-storm presaged the tactics of the Trump-loving far right movement. Prominent critics of the president elect should take note
6. Appeals Court Dumps Infringement Lawsuit Against EA After Plaintiff Fails To Produce Evidence
7. DoomRL creator says ZeniMax threatened legal action: Creator of Doom-inspired rogue-like told to remove trademark-infringing content from site
8. Zenimax threatens legal action against Doom-inspired roguelike, DoomRL
9. Doom-inspired roguelike goes open-source in a bid to outrun Zenimax lawyers
10. South Korea cracks down on cheaters with law targeting illicit game mods
11. Inside one modder’s seven-year quest to revive The Matrix Online
12. Devs are recovering games (if not payments owed) from bankrupt publisher BulkyPix
13. Lifetime PS4 sales surpass 50 million in the wake of Black Friday
14. Sony already the market leader in virtual reality: New report suggests successful launch of PlayStation VR and PS4 install base puts platform holder ahead of Oculus and Vive
15. Mafia III has “allowed me as a white developer to make connections with people of color”: Hangar 13’s Haden Blackman on tackling race and pushing the medium forward
16. Don’t ignore the trolls: After another grueling year full of heightened antagonism in the games industry, it’s time to take a different approach
17. That Dragon, Cancer co-dev: “You chose to love us through our grief”: Ryan Green gave a heartfelt acceptance speech as tale of child cancer picked up Game Award
18. “The end of comfortable publisher-journalist relationships will lead to better journalism”: The impact of publishers going direct to consumers is having a liberating impact on the games press
19. Tall Pikachu, no whip: Starbucks to launch Pokémon Go crossover – Most cafés should become game-specific locations, teeming with new Pokémon.
20. Game Jolt offers YouTubers, Twitch streamers 10% of game sales: New Partners program offers free games and revenue share for video or livestream promotion
21. League of Legends’ latest World Championships prize pool hits $6.7M
22. Anti-tobacco group takes games to task: Truth Initiative calls for tobacco use to trigger an automatic M rating from ESRB and for devs to stop featuring it in games kids play
23. Opinion: Now is the time to unionize the game industry
24. Worlds-as-a-service: Charting the future of location-based games: Mantle CEO Dean Gifford on why his team can finally build the tech that will take geo-location game design from Pokémon Go to GTA Worldwide
25. So, You Were the Blue Zombie! Actors Play Videogame Characters in the Dark: Gaming world, rife with competition, keeps plots a mystery
26. New games on Steam in 2016 rose 40% over last year: Over 4200 games hit the store in 2016, Steam Spy says, equivalent to 38% of its lifetime total
27. A slow Atari 2600 emulator is now inside Minecraft—and it’s pretty cool: 3D interface, slow speeds expose the machinations of the ancient 6502C processor.
28. To promote tech education, Canada’s Prime Minister made his own game
29. Copyright, Culture, and Community in Virtual Worlds (Dan Burk)

DIGITAL

1. Internet freedom at stake in Supreme Court of Canada case: B.C. Court of Appeal ordered Google to enforce a worldwide ban on website links in intellectual property battle, thus unilaterally deciding to regulate the free flow of information worldwide
2. Google brings internet free-speech battle to Supreme Court: Search engine says ruling could pave way for countries to use their courts to block content worldwide
3. Google v. Equustek: The SCC Hearing on Internet Jurisdiction and Free Speech (Michael Geist)
4. Should Canadian Courts Have the Power to Censor Search Results?: The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision may be a landmark in the history of free speech
5. Google’s auto-search results have become slightly less offensive: Google says, “we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas, and cultures.”
6. Samsung victorious at Supreme Court fight with 8-0 opinion against Apple: Apple can’t automatically get Samsung’s full profits due to patent infringement.
7. Embedding isn’t copyright infringement, says Italian court: Website blocks lifted, but new EU copyright rules may make unauthorised embedding illegal.
8. Copyright Troll Ordered To Pay $17k To ‘Pirate’ It Falsely Accused
9. Internet giants will join forces to stop online sharing of terrorist material: Facebook, Twitter, et al to use hashes to quickly spot, takedown terrorist imagery.
10. We Built a Bot That Trolls Twitter’s Worst Anti-Semitic Trolls: On Twitter, racists like to impersonate minorities like Jews and say viciously bigoted things in order to defame them. So we created a sheriff who calls them out on it.
11. A photo of a 4-year-old with Hillary Clinton was used as a disgusting meme. Her mom fought back.
12. Hate speech crackdown: EU says Silicon Valley needs to do a better job
13. Op-ed: Stop pretending there’s a difference between “online” and “real life” – Seriously just cut it out. The stakes are too high.
14. Google, democracy and the truth about internet search: Tech-savvy rightwingers have been able to ‘game’ the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and… Donald Trump becomes president
15. How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind “Pizzagate” Was Spread: A man was arrested Sunday for bringing a gun into a pizza place named in Clinton conspiracy rumors.
16. Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible With News
17. Dunja Mijatović: Why bother? A quick take on lying on social media
18. Fake News About Fake News Leads To (Fake?) Defamation Threat
19. Antigua Says It Will Certainly, Absolutely, Definitely Use WTO Permission To Ignore US Copyright And Set Up A Pirate Site, Maybe
20. China Files A Million Patents In A Year, As Government Plans To Increase Patentability Of Software
21. How Algorithms Can Bring Down Minorities’ Credit Scores: Analyzing people’s social connections may lead to a new way of discriminating against them.
22. Why Russia Is Using the Internet to Undermine Western Democracy: Powerful Russians were terrified by the internet in 2011. Now they’ve made sure we are, too.
23. Lawyers: New court software is so awful it’s getting people wrongly arrested – Problematic Odyssey Case Manager software package is used nationwide.
24. Court Rubber Stamps IRS’s Demand To Get All Coinbase User Data
25. NFL loosens its policies on teams posting GIFs and videos: Just don’t expect to see sweet replays during games.
26. YouTube Reports $1 Billion Paid to Recording Industry Through Advertising This Year
27. YouTube Creators Can Now “Remove Access” from MCN’s Via YouTube’s Dashboard
28. PewDiePie quit plan prompts YouTube reply
29. Law Firm That Sued 20-Year-Old Crash Victim Over Negative Review Now Owes $26,831 In Legal Fees
30. Lawyer sues 20-year-old student who gave a bad Yelp review, loses badly: Law firm said student Lan Cai must cough up $100k for online complaints, judge disagreed.
31. Law Passed To Protect Customers From Non-Disparagement Clauses And Other Ridiculous Restrictions
32. Netflix to Offer Subscribers Video Download Option
33. The proposed new VAT rules on e-publications: do they have any implications for copyright and digital exhaustion?
34. Microsoft-LinkedIn deal cleared by regulators, opening new doors for people around the world
35. EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month: Streaming cloud-based content: Invention “contains little more then rote recitations of long-existing technologies.”
36. W3C at a crossroads: technology standards setter or legal arms-dealer?
37. When robots read books: Artificial intelligence sheds new light on classic texts. Literary theorists who don’t embrace it face obsolescence
38. The Future Of Digital: 2016
39. Every Website Needs To Re-register With The Copyright Office, Who Can’t Build A Functioning System

CREATIVITY

1. Duran Duran lose High Court battle over US song rights in copyright test case
2. Duran Duran ‘shocked’ after losing legal copyright battle
3. SiriusXM agrees to pay up to $99M in copyright class action brought by Turtles members
4. McDonald’s slapped with lawsuit by New York graffiti artist 
5. One for the Little Guy! Community Church Defeats Adidas in Trademark Dispute
6. Who Gets To Trademark Iceland?
7. Iceland vs Iceland Trademark Spat More Clear: Iceland Foods Opposed Iceland’s Trademark Application
8. Streaming Won’t Kill the Radio Star: The rise in popularity of Beats 1 and independent stations like Rinse, NTS, and Radar shows just how much we still desire a human touch over algorithm-curated playlists.
9. Disney’s Bob Iger Among Donald Trump’s ‘Strategic and Policy’ Advisory Committee
10. Music Canada Reverses on Years of Copyright Lobbying: Now Says WIPO Internet Treaties Were Wrong Guess (Michael Geist)
11. Hooked For Life: Inside the NFL’s relentless, existential, Big Tobacco-style pursuit of your children.
12. A Dark, Tangled “Tango”: Brando, Bertolucci and the Question of an Actor’s Consent
13. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson has no business lecturing about journalism ethics
14. In a time of many questions, literary journalism provides an answer: Media in the Age of Trump
15. Librarians, Act Now to Protect Your Users (Before It’s Too Late) (EFF)
16. Fifth Circuit reverses multimillion-dollar antitrust verdict based on false advertising, remands: Retractable Technologies, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co. – 5th Cir. Dec. 2, 2016 (Rebecca Tushnet) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Football Association Premier League Limited v Luxton [2016] EWCA Civ 1097
2. Aaron Wudrick: Taxing Netflix and the Internet won’t make Canada more cultured
3. Canada’s Attempt To Force Cheaper, More Flexible Cable Packages Is A Bit Of A Joke
4. Cable TV is about to be disrupted, and the CRTC knows it
5. Comcast Loses Just $5.50 Per Month When You Cut The Cord Thanks To Its Growing Broadband Monopoly
6. Nashville fights Comcast lawsuit over rules that help Google Fiber: Nashville seeks dismissal of lawsuit Comcast filed to delay utility pole access.
7. Wall Street Is Dreaming Of Megamergers Under Trump — Including A Verizon-Comcast Super Union
8. Trump team reassures AT&T over Time Warner merger review: Trump vowed to block sale during campaign, but early signs look good for AT&T.
9. Altice Promises Massive New Fiber Network, Again Proving Net Neutrality Didn’t Stifle Broadband Investment
10. FCC says AT&T is violating net neutrality with DirecTV data cap exemption: Verizon also in trouble with FCC over charging competitors for zero-rating.
11. FCC Warns AT&T, Verizon They’re Violating Net Neutrality With Zero Rating Schemes
12. AT&T-Time Warner Deal: Highlights From Senate Hearing
13. AT&T’s CEO just made an important promise to his rivals
14. Trump Appoints Third Anti-Net Neutrality Advisor To Telecom Transition Team
15. T-Mobile Applauds Likely Death Of Net Neutrality Under Trump
16. T-Mobile excited about life under Trump, reversal of net neutrality rules: T-Mobile predicts more “innovation” once Title II net neutrality rules are gone.
17. Trump supporters bought bogus Obama conspiracy theory peddled by Fox Business

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. China’s New “Social Credit Score” Brings Dystopian Science Fiction to Life
2. Uber knows where you go, even after ride is over: “We do this to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service, and to enhance safety.”
3. These Toys Don’t Just Listen To Your Kid; They Send What They Hear To A Defense Contractor
4. FTC Explores Privacy Concerns Raised By Smart TVs
5. How ‘Just Metadata’ Helped Ruin A Career Diplomat’s Life
6. The Internet of Things is making hospitals more vulnerable to hackers: The attack potential grows exponentially as IoT technologies are implemented, warns European cyber security agency.
7. Internet Archive Successfully Fends Off Secret FBI Order
8. Activist Appeals Court Decision Stating Public Has No First Amendment Right To Record In Public Areas
9. MyDemocracy.ca Responses Don’t Count If You Refuse To Disclose Household Income and Other Personal Information (Michael Geist)
10. Intelligence Committee Senators Call On Obama To Declassify Evidence Of Russian Election Interference
11. UK terror watchdog: I applaud strong, responsible, less intrusive spy laws: David Anderson QC rejects “hostile narrative of power-hungry security services.”
12. How industry can protect privacy in the age of connected toys
13. Gap Between Wiretaps Reported By US Courts And Recipient Service Providers Continues To Grow
14. Legal raids in five countries seize botnet servers, sinkhole 800,000+ domains: At one point, Avalanche network was responsible for two-thirds of all phishing attacks.
15. Millions exposed to malvertising that hid attack code in banner pixels: Manipulated images are almost impossible to detect by the untrained eye.

jon