News of the Week; December 21, 2016

GAMES

1. Pokémon ROM hack stopped by Nintendo four days before launch: In highly unusual move, Nintendo targets a ROM hack—essentially, a mod.
2. Super Mario Run slower to top charts than Pokémon Go
3. Nintendo shares fall despite Super Mario Run’s instant success
4. Overwatch comic locked in Russia due to “gay propaganda”: Latest comic not readable in Russia as Tracer character established as homosexual
5. Survey: Men play games to compete, women play to complete
6. Brianna Wu running for US Congress in 2018: Games developer and victim of hate campaign wants a place on technology subcommittee, plans to combat cyber-bullying and revenge porn
7. How Christine Love makes sex in games believable, engaging, and funny: Ladykiller in a Bind avoids making any character “the avatar of queerness.”
8. Ex-Crytek dev crowdfunding legal fees to sue for unpaid salaries: Former FX artists claims he has not been paid since September, pay troubles began in May
9. No tears for Crytek: It’s one thing for a company to go under, but another to take its unwilling employees with it
10. Crytek to shutter five studios during restructure
11. Street Fighter V ragequitters to be publicly shamed with profile icon: Capcom hopes peer pressure will stop epidemic of intentional disconnects.
12. Like Flies: Doom The Latest Game To Remove Denuvo Via Patch
13. Denuvo says devs don’t get refunds if its anti-piracy tech is defeated
14. Netmarble buys Kabam’s Vancouver studio: Developer behind Marvel Contest of Champions joins Korean mobile company ahead of new Transformers game launch
15. Wicked leaks: what legal weaponry is available to fight game launch hacks?: Stevens & Bolton’s Grace McNulty-Brown advises devs on how to protect their project’s secrets ahead of release – and what to do if leaks do occur
16. The Luck and Loss Behind Loot Boxes
17. Riot and MLB Advanced Media finalize League of Legends deal: Baseball web business to pay at least $50 million annually through 2023 for the commercialization and monetization rights to LoL eSports
18. NFL Teams To Hold Madden Tournaments Streamed On Twitch In 2017
19. Esports Predictions: Great Growth in 2016, Storm Clouds for 2017
20. Fnatic: “We opened an eSports store to prove it was possible”: The professional gaming team opened a retail outlet in London last month – and it could be a sign of things to come
21. Bigben Interactive acquires rights to Test Drive brand from Atari
22. Where do consoles go from here?: 2016 marks the beginning of a new era of console iteration – what does it mean for the industry?
23. Can we go back in time and wipe Assassin’s Creed film from our DNA?: Michael Fassbender is the only light in this slow, nonsensical waste of a franchise.
24. How 1979 Revolution: Black Friday Let Me Relive My Father’s History
25. Twitch wants its users to start streaming their ‘everyday lives’
26. 30 Years of Ubisoft: “The Guillemots are critical to our success”
27. Games have a place in higher education, but where they are now isn’t working.
28. Gamasutra’s Best of 2016: Top 10 Games of the Year
29. 2016: The year in games – The big events that shaped an extraordinary 12 months
30. 2016 games industry brings in $94 billion – Superdata: Research firm says mobile dominated the year, bringing in $41 billion compared to retail’s $26 billion and free-to-play online’s $19 billion
31. GamesIndustry.biz presents… 2016: The Year In Numbers: Check out some of the key facts and figures from the past twelve months with our handy infographic

DIGITAL

1. Google Is Battling Global Censorship In Canada’s Supreme Court
2. Families Of Orlando Shooting Victims Sue Twitter, Facebook, And Google For ‘Supporting Terrorism’
3. Kurt Eichenwald Sues Twitter Troll Over Alleged ‘Epileptic’ Image Assault
4. Google Finally Wins One Of Those Nutty Defamation Lawsuits Down Under
5. Manhattan Attorney Sues Google Over Three-Word ‘Libelous’ Review That Isn’t A Review Or Libelous
6. Google, Apple, Uber, IBM Say They Would Not Help Build A Muslim Registry: Meanwhile, Oracle declined to comment.
7. How to bump Holocaust deniers off Google’s top spot? Pay Google: Google ‘is unhappy’ with Holocaust denial beating the truth in its search results – but it probably makes more money that way
8. Washington Post automatically inserts Trump fact-checks into Twitter: Chrome plug-in comes 6 months after Trump revoked Post’s campaign press credentials.
9. Backpage Executives Defeat Pimping Charges Per Section 230–People v. Ferrer
10. Jury Rules for Arista in Cisco Copyright Case: Networking equipment makers had sparred over technology for hardware commands
11. Command Line Interface Copyright Case: Not Fair Use… But Not Infringing Thanks To Scenes A Faire
12. Prenda Law “copyright trolls” Steele and Hansmeier arrested: Lawyers who turned porn lawsuits into big business now face criminal charges.
13. Take a minute and read Yahoo’s 238 word CONFESSION about the Cyber theft of 1+ billion user accounts! 
14. Verizon Wants A Yahoo Price Cut After Company Reveals Another, Massive Hack Attack
15. Facebook charged with misleading EU over $22 billion WhatsApp takeover: Social networking giant “intentionally, or negligently, gave incorrect info.”
16. Facebook Pins a Scarlet Letter to Fake News: New tools and policies take on the News Feed’s worst offenders. But our truth problems are bigger than Facebook.
17. Facebook Announces Its Pilot Plans To ‘Deal’ With Fake News — Not With Censorship, But With More Info
18. Facebook will outsource fact-checking to fight fake news: Seven US fact-checking groups become Facebook News Feed’s new de-facto gatekeepers.
19. Conservative Media Freak Out Over Facebook’s Plan To Address The Fake News Problem
20. It’s time to get rid of the Facebook “news feed,” because it’s not news: Fake news didn’t throw the election. It was a symptom, not a cause.
21. Facebook is a monopoly, so why shouldn’t it be nationalised?
22. I was a victim of a Russian smear campaign. I understand the power of fake news.
23. The real history of fake news
24. Fake news and online harassment are more than social media byproducts — they’re powerful profit drivers
25. German law would fine social media sites “publishing” fake news: Social media sites must kill hoaxes within 24 hours, offer prominent corrections.
26. Now Germany Wants To Criminalize Fake News
27. Ridiculous German Court Ruling Means Linking Online Is Now A Liability
28. Dental Firm Tries To Dodge Section 230 With Trademark Claims; Runs Headfirst Into Anti-SLAPP Law
29. Uber’s Self Driving Cars Are Running Red Lights, Uber’s Blaming “Human Error”
30. Uber is losing money hand-over-fist: The ride-sharing company is disrupting the notion of profit.
31. Are eBay sellers the ultimate customer, or the ultimate consumable? #brickscam
32. Internet companies forced to block The Pirate Bay, bittorrent websites in Australia, Federal Court rules
33. First Aussie Pirate Bay Block Gets Defeated in Seconds
34. You can no longer be sued for leaving negative reviews online
35. President Obama Signs Law Making Ticket Buying Bots Illegal
36. Online Influencers Called Out in Second Letter to FTC
37. DMCA Process Abused To Nuke Post About Researcher Who Faked Data On Federally-Funded Study
38. Bitcoin Is Being Monitored By An Increasingly Wary U.S. Government
39. Supreme Court Will Hear A Case That Could Finally Shut Down East Texas As The Patent Troll Mecca
40. How The DMCA And The CFAA Are Preventing People From Saving Their Soon-To-Be-Broken Pebble Watches
41. How Imposter Buster, a Twitter Bot, Is Besting Anti-Semites: Some of these racists have been suspended by Twitter. Others have abandoned their trolling in frustration. And more are being added to the bot’s hit list by the day.
42. French drones to deliver the mail once per week: Trial limits drones to a nine-mile route.
43. Instagram reaches 600 million monthly active users; numbers doubled in two years
44. Apple given favorable treatment on tax? No way, insists Ireland: European Commission accused of “selectively” targeting Apple—according to Apple.
45. Someone published the wrong Mummy trailer and now it’s a meme
46. The holographic anime “robot” that will keep house for lonely salarymen: Gatebox connects home devices to an interactive anime “waifu” for “a new, shared lifestyle”.
47. CEIPI/EAO Conference–“Copyright Enforcement in the Online World”
48. How Do App Stores Challenge the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem?
49. Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy: Today, the White House released a new report on the ways that artificial intelligence will transform our economy over the coming years and decades.
50. How to Fix the Internet: Anonymity has poisoned online life. (Walter Isaacson)
51. Appeals Court Deals Rebuke To Controversial Prosecutor Who Targeted Aaron Swartz: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office “overstepped its bounds” in pursuing federal charges, the ruling said.

CREATIVITY

1. Locked & Loaded: The Gun Industry’s Lucrative Relationship With Hollywood – The NRA and the entertainment industry interact publicly as mortal enemies. But as the number of weapons shown in movies and TV steadily increases — and stars like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie make fortunes wielding guns onscreen — a co-dependence that keeps both churning is revealed: “making the liberal bias a lot of money”
2. TV Networks, Studios Shifting Program Strategies in the Trump Age: “Are We Telling the Right Stories?”
3. Sirius XM wins New York appeal over older songs
4. New York stops the litigious sprawl of pre-1972 sound copyrights: Sirius XM comes back after The Turtles won early copyright victories.
5. The Battle Over Public Performance Rights Of Old Music Heats Up: NY Rejects, Supreme Court Petitioned
6. Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc. (Dec. 20, 2016, 2nd Circuit C.A.)
7. Nestle loses EU Kit Kat trade mark tussle with Cadbury
8. Crunch time for Kit Kat’s 3D shape as EU judges show teeth in trademark row: Foretaste of a future food fight between rival four-finger products?
9. Branding Names: from Air Jordan to Linsanity and Trump Toilets
10. Review of the Copyright Act in 2017
11. Productivity Commission: Tales of the Widespread Demise of Canadian Publishers are Just That (Ariel Katz)
12. Australian report shows fair use vital in copyright reform
13. Fair Use… The Final Frontier?
14. U.S. Bill Would Introduce a Copyright Claims Board
15. Our copyright laws are holding us back, and there’s a way out
16. Federal Statute Barring Non-disparagement Clauses Is Enacted
17. No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals
18. Seeking Open Access Deal, 60 German Academic Institutions Ditch All Subscriptions With Elsevier
19. Police Department’s Social Media Policy Is Unconstitutional–Liverman v. Petersburg (Eric Goldman)
20. Blacklock’s Must Pay $65,000 for Litigation that “should never have been commenced let alone carried to trial” (Howard Knopf)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. CRTC rules high-speed Internet a ‘basic telecom service’
2. CRTC declares broadband internet a basic service: Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says it can’t make full access to ultra-high speed services a reality on its own, and will require business and government help.
3. Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-496: Modern telecommunications services – The path forward for Canada’s digital economy
4. CRTC’s ‘cornerstone’ ruling on basic telecom service expected to have repercussions for telcos
5. Internet bills reduced for thousands of Canadians after CRTC decision
6. A ‘Netflix Tax’ for the New Year? Maybe so
7. Ontario Government Tells Ottawa It Is Open to New Internet Tax to Fund Cancon (Michael Geist)
8. License Renewal Shows FCC Does Not Regulate Content – Implications for Calls to Regulate Fake News?
9. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to Step Down
10. Tom Wheeler to leave FCC on January 20 when Trump becomes president: Wheeler says being FCC chair was “greatest honor” of his professional life.
11. FCC Boss Tom Wheeler Resigns, Signaling The Beginning Of The End For Net Neutrality
12. Remaining FCC Commissioners Promise To Gut Net Neutrality ‘As Soon As Possible’
13. FCC Republicans vow to gut net neutrality rules “as soon as possible”: Pai and O’Rielly also promise not to enforce disclosure rules on small ISPs.
14. AT&T, Verizon Laugh At The FCC’s Last-Minute Attempt To Crack Down On Zero Rating
15. AT&T and Verizon try to fend off net neutrality case before Trump takes over: Net neutrality investigation likely on last legs because of Trump’s victory.
16. Comcast Admits Net Neutrality Rules Had No Real Impact On The Company
17. Happy New Year From Comcast: Usage Caps, Rate Hikes, And More Sneaky Fees In 2017
18. Sky agrees to £11.7 billion Fox takeover—handing full control to Murdoch: 21st Century Fox revives push for Sky after phone hacking saga killed last bid in 2011.
19. IOC, USOC And NBC Universal Announce Olympic Channel Partnership In The United States: New Linear Olympic Channel in the U.S. Devoted to Olympic Sports, Athletes and Stories to Launch in Second Half of 2017 – Partnership Includes Significant Commitment of Olympic Sports Programming Hours on NBC & NBCSN

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. EU’s highest court delivers blow to UK snooper’s charter: Indiscriminate collection of emails is illegal, court rules in response to challenge originally brought by David Davis
2. Investigatory Powers law setback: Blanket data slurp is illegal—top EU court: UK gov’t to appeal against judgment; says it’s a blow for everyday policing, other agencies.
3. Court Says Abandoned Phone Locked With A Passcode Still Has Expectation Of Privacy
4. U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack
5. Lawyer’s Twitter “parody” and #Pizzagate: ethics violation? 
6. Congrats, hackers: you’re now a munition (sort of): Wassenaar rules require export licenses for anything that could be considered “intrusion software”—but not in US, yet.
7. European Information Security Advisory Says Mandating Encryption Backdoors Will Just Make Everything Worse
8. James Clapper’s Office To Finally Reveal NSA’s ‘Incidental Collection’ Numbers
9. U.S. to disclose estimate of number of Americans under surveillance
10. Canadian telecoms push back on proposed police powers: Rogers, TekSavvy and others say the government hasn’t justified why it needs expanded digital powers
11. What can you do with a billion Yahoo passwords? Lots of bad things: Now, Yahoo user data could be behind scores of spear-phishes or other breaches.
12. Twitter Cuts Off Fusion Spy Centers’ Access to Social Media Surveillance Tool (ACLU)
13. Snowden’s ‘Proper Channel’ For Whistleblowing Being Booted From The NSA For Retaliating Against A Whistleblower
14. Surveillance Oversight Board Was Fun While It Lasted, But That’s Pretty Much Over For Now
15. How to rethink what’s ‘top secret’ for the Internet age
16. “Life Is Short. Settle with the FTC” – The Cost of Ashley Madison’s 2015 Data Breach 
17. Op-ed: Why I’m not giving up on PGP – Key discovery is an issue, but Signal can’t replace PGP.
18. UK schoolkid data shared to “create hostility” against illegal migrants: Up to 1,500 names a month pass between department for education and home office.
19. EFF Ad in Wired: Your threat model just changed
20. Risk And Anxiety: A Theory Of Data Breach Harms (Daniel J. Solove & Danielle Keats Citron)
21. Future of Privacy Forum’s “Must Read” Privacy Papers for Policymakers

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