News of the Week; February 1, 2017

GAMES

1. Oculus verdict: Judge awards ZeniMax $500 million: Facebook owned VR company did not misappropriate trade secrets as ZeniMax alleged, however
2. Oculus, execs liable for $500 million in ZeniMax VR trial: Court finds Rift maker broke NDA but didn’t steal trade secrets.
3. Lawsuit over NBA 2K facial scanning privacy concerns falls flat
4. Ohio State researcher’s study retracted from journal: Research from an Ohio State communication professor was retracted from a scientific journal after two outside researchers found discrepancies in variables from the original experiment when they replicated the study.
5. A Professor Claimed Video Games Make People Better Shooters — Then His Study Got Retracted: Brad Bushman has some explaining to do
6. 2012 Research Paper Linking Video Games And Violence Finally Retracted Over Massaged Data Accusation
7. Report: GameStop staff under fresh pressure to sell used games over new ones
8. ‘NBA 2K’ Video Game Maker Beats Lawsuit Over Biometric Face-Scanning: A judge rejects gamers’ privacy complaint because they haven’t alleged a concrete injury.
9. FBI reveals 173-page Gamergate file
10. EA’s earnings show revenues are up, losses are better than expected
11. Nintendo’s nine-month profits soar on Pokémon and Seattle Mariners sale: Pokémon Sun & Moon sold 14.7m units worldwide, full-year profit forecast almost doubled to ¥‎90 billion
12. Nintendo addresses “weak” Switch launch lineup: President Tatsumi Kimishima says company wants to avoid long gaps without new games, pledges continued support for 3DS
13. Two speed market drove over $30 billion in games deals in 2016: Tim Merel of Digi-Capital on how 2016 broke the industry M&A record by 77%
14. Deep dive in the data of Games on Kickstarter in 2016
15. Mad Catz threatened with stock market delisting
16. Microsoft’s games revenue continues to slip due to falling hardware sales
17. Microsoft fails to impress tech media by selling thousands of HoloLenses: $3,000 enterprise headsets experience lower sales than mass-market consumer devices.
18. Disney shuts down Club Penguin: Original kid-friendly virtual world going dark, to be replaced by mobile-exclusive Club Penguin Island in March
19. Devs, don’t post positive Steam reviews of your game under fake names
20. Valve to start blocking accounts that gamble Team Fortress 2 gear
21. eSports: The missed billion-dollar opportunity for publishers and platforms
22. Resident Evil 7’s Denuvo protections cracked in under a week: Quick turnaround by hackers could have profound business implications.
23. Hackers unlock NES Classic, upload new games via USB cable: It’s not as simple as drag-and-drop, but no screwdriver or hardware mods needed.
24. The Founder’s Dilemma: A terrifying new video game is a little too real.
25. Kojima says games and movies must ‘converge’ to survive
26. Working with influencers: “The internet can smell disingenuity a mile off”: Space Ape’s Simon Hade discusses the perks and pitfalls of working with YouTubers and streamers
27. In Berlin, refugees become friends—through board games: Building bridges with board games.
28. The Radical Environmentalism of the Sega Genesis
29. King on diversity: “No company will succeed on its own here.” – Diversity and culture manager Natalie Mellin says more firms need to “show role models together” in order to address gender imbalance
30. How closing borders kills understanding, and censors art
31. GDC responds to Trump’s travel ban, refunds affected attendees: Organisers of upcoming developer conference says they are “horrified” by President’s decision
32. ESA urges caution on US immigration policy: Trade group tells Trump administration that foreign workers are vital to domestic game industry
33. ‘It breaks my heart’: Engaredev responds to U.S. travel ban: “What makes me sad is that I hear in the game industry that there are all these diversity programs, but then, if you’re looking for diversity, for new perspectives, there are really a lot of new perspectives in those countries the US is blocking.”
34. “Immigration ban will harm us as a company” – Insomniac: Ratchet and Clank and Spider-Man maker joins chorus of game developers condemning executive order
35. Trump is bad for the US games industry: An isolationist, nationalist administration can’t help but harm an increasingly diverse and global industry
36. 1979 Revolution proceeds to benefit ACLU in wake of immigration ban
37. 2017 Trends in Mobile Gaming
38. PETA demands plastic Warhammerfigures stop wearing fur: In the grim darkness of the far future, it’s the animals that have it worst.
39. Namco founder and “Father of Pac-Man” has died: Masaya Nakamura was instrumental in kickstarting the video game revolution of the 1980s

DIGITAL

1. Intellectual Property Owner Awarded Control of Infringer’s Social Media Accounts
2. Perfect 10, Inc. v. Giganews, Inc.
3. Facebook Live Is the Right Wing’s New Fox News: How the rough-around-the-edges live-streaming tool became the perfect incubator for conservative news in the Trump age.
4. The Data That Turned the World Upside Down
5. Axel Springer CEO: Facebook should not fact check ‘fake news’ — it is not a news organization
6. Flush with anti-Trump donations, ACLU gets Y Combinator’s mentorship
7. China’s Response To Study Confirms It Uses ‘Strategic Distraction’ To Prevent Collective Action. Sound Familiar?
8. Copyright Trolls Overplay Their Hand In Finland, Bringing A Government Microscope To Their Practices
9. RIP, “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System: The anti-piracy accord between ISPs and entertainment industry meets its demise.
10. Ding Dong: Silly Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Scheme Is Dead
11. Internet Service Providers, Studios and Record Labels Call It Quits on Copyright Alert System
12. The US ‘Six Strikes’ Anti-Piracy Scheme is Dead: The “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System is no more. In a brief announcement, MPAA, RIAA, and several major US ISPs said that the effort to educate online pirates has stopped. It’s unclear why the parties ended their voluntary agreement, but the lack of progress reports in recent years indicates that it wasn’t as successful as they had hoped
13. Venezuelan officials arrest four Bitcoin miners on charges of stealing electricity: With the economy in shambles, Bitcoin miners have tried to side-step currency woes.
14. Monero, the Drug Dealer’s Cryptocurrency of Choice, Is on Fire
15. Sony missed writing on the wall for DVD sales, takes nearly $1B writedown: Or, in corporate-speak, loss was “mainly driven by an acceleration of market decline.”
16. Thanks to YouTube, Vevo Nears 100 Million Active Monthly Users
17. Lawyer for “inventor of e-mail” sends threat letter over social media posts: Shiva Ayyadurai’s attorney, who sued Techdirt, goes after another blogger.
18. Thousands of College Kids Are Powering a Clickbait Empire: How a 29-year-old built Odyssey, a vast network of college students happy to fuel multi-million dollar marketing campaigns for peanuts.
19. The internet of toys
20. Robot knows when to hold ‘em, wins huge in poker tournament: 120,000 hands and a $1.7 million margin of victory later, Carnegie Mellon’s AI wins out.
21. Click Here to Kill Everyone: With the Internet of Things, we’re building a world-size robot. How are we going to control it? (Bruce Schneier)
22. The merging of humans and machines is happening now: Her organisation invented the internet. It gave us the self-driving car. And now DARPA’s former boss sees us crossing a new technological boundary
23. Tech Leaders Are Just Now Getting Serious About the Threats of AI: Apple joins a leading AI ethics group, one of several tech-led initiatives preparing for a highly automated future.
24. The Gates Foundation Emerges As A Leader In The Fight For Full Open Access And Open Data
25. Apple will move its entire international iTunes business to Ireland: International HQ will move from one tax haven to another.
26. Apple sets revenue and iPhone sales records in Q1 of 2017
27. TV shows go into overdrive on Snapchat
28. Can One App Revolutionize TV Ratings For The Streaming And Binge-Watching Era?
29. Causality in machine learning
30. Canada’s Supreme Court Is Preserving Every Website Mentioned In Its Rulings
31. What We Buy When We Buy Now (Aaron Perzanowski & Chris Hoofnagle)

CREATIVITY

1. Fairness Confirmed Again: Federal Court of Appeal Upholds Copyright Board’s Fair Dealing Ruling (Michael Geist)
2. Supreme Court rejects appeal against B.C. Election Act: Registration rules for political ad sponsors don’t restrict individual political expression, court finds
3. Back To The Stampede: Court Upholds Forum Selection Clause Requiring Copyright Action To Return to Alberta
4. Actress in Viral Video Can’t Prevent Video From Being Made Into an Advertisement–Roberts v. Bliss (Eric Goldman)
5. Ninth Circuit Finds First Amendment Protects Against Right-of-Publicity Claim Involving Film “The Hurt Locker” 
6. Woman Claims Her Picture is Worth $2 Billion in Right of Publicity Suit
7. Court of Appeal endorses Data Protection Act as alternative to defamation claim
8. The Federal Court of Appeal Rules on Access Copyright’s K-12 Tariff
9. The New Joint DOJ/FTC Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property 
10. Judge Gorsuch On Copyright And Technology (James Grimmelmann)
11. Apple sued over singer’s right of publicity in iPhone ad singing: No copyright, but can an artist’s voice sustain a “right of publicity” case?
12. Mac Repair Company iGeniuses Sends Legal Threats To Unhappy Customers, Demanding $2500 Per Negative Review
13. Michael Jackson Is Worth More Than Ever, and the IRS Wants Its Cut: Jackson’s star lawyer made a mint for his heirs, so now the government has to be startin’ somethin’.
14. Germany Finally Dumps Law That Says It’s A Crime To Insult Foreign Leaders
15. Jose Cuervo Loses Bid To Block Trademark Registration For Il Corvo Wine
16. The Shattered Mirror, Part One: Fair Dealing Reform Isn’t the Answer for News in the Digital Age (Michael Geist)
17. How the arts helped kill off the NEA — by trying to play the conservative “economic value” game: Our strategy of ditching “Art for Art’s Sake” in favor of “ArtWorks” hasn’t saved the arts — and it never will
18. Trump Advisor Pens Almost Totally Clueless Piece About ‘Intellectual Property Theft’
19. How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content
20. Strategies for Discerning the Boundaries of Copyright and Patent Protections (Pamela Samuelson)
21. Freeing Buskers’ Free Speech Rights: Impact of Regulations on Buskers’ Right to Free Speech and Expression (John Jurich)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Ajit Pai on net neutrality: “I favor an open Internet and I oppose Title II”: New FCC chairman won’t say whether he’ll enforce net neutrality rules.
2. FCC Chairman Pai takes Wheeler’s set-top box plan off the table: Cable industry was open to compromise, but no Republican plan has been offered.
3. FCC exempts small ISPs from broadband truth-in-billing rules: Rule requiring disclosure of hidden fees won’t benefit customers of small ISPs.
4. Pai FCC’s First Commission-Level Vote Targets Rural Broadband Access 
5. Sen. Franken asks AT&T to prove Time Warner merger is good for customers: AT&T won’t commit to public interest statement as it tries to avoid FCC review.
6. Eliminating Net Neutrality likely to raise the cost of using the Internet
7. New York AG Sues Charter For Slow Broadband Speeds, Says Company ‘Ripping Off’ Users With Substandard Service
8. Republican-led FCC drops court defense of inmate calling rate cap: FCC lawyers no longer authorized to defend intrastate calling caps.
9. Verizon Eyes Charter Megamerger, Because Who Likes Broadband Competition Anyway?
10. Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes: Xfinity beta app is now on Roku; for now, customers still need a Comcast TV box.
11. 13 Years Ago at the Last Houston Super Bowl – Janet Jackson’s Impact on FCC Indecency Rules 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Suspecting arson, cops subpoena homeowner’s pacemaker logs, then charge him with multiple felonies
2. Trump’s Executive Order Eliminates Privacy Act Protections for Foreigners (Michael Geist)
3. New Trump Executive Order Says Federal Agencies Should Exclude Foreigners From Privacy Protections
4. President Trump’s Executive Order May Impact the Privacy Shield 
5. Already Under Attack In Top EU Court, Privacy Shield Framework For Transatlantic Data Flows Further Undermined By Trump
6. Trump Orders The Cyber To Be Fixed In The Next Sixty Days
7. Twitter Reveals Two National Security Letters After Gag Orders Lifted; Rightly Complains About Gag Orders
8. Court Says Location Of FBI’s Utility Pole-Piggybacking Surveillance Cameras Can Remain Secret
9. Bodycam footage leaks, resisting arrest charges dropped – Girl screams: “I just recorded everything.” Police officer responds: “Me too.”
10. Appeals court rules that stolen laptops class action against payer can proceed
11. Live Streaming: The Privacy Concerns of Behind-the-Scenes Access
12. Site that sold access to 3.1 billion passwords vanishes after reported raid: LeakedSource garnered criticism for actively cracking the passwords it sold.
13. Majority of Android VPNs can’t be trusted to make users more secure: Study of nearly 300 apps finds shocking omissions, including a failure to encrypt.
14. St. Louis Cardinals Hacking Scandal: A Real-World Example of the Importance of Password Management 
15. Amidst Increased Government Surveillance, Chinese Internet Users Finally Gain Important Online Privacy Protections
16. One More Time With Feeling: ‘Anonymized’ User Data Not Really Anonymous
17. FTC Report Reinforces the Rules for Cross-Device Tracking
18. “You took so much time to joke me”—two hours trolling a Windows support scammer: “Albert Morris” and team get taken for a ride while we tried to track their tradecraft.
19. Blue Lies Matter: BuzzFeed News reviewed 62 incidents of video footage contradicting an officer’s statement in a police report or testimony. From traffic stops to fatal force, these cases reveal how cops are incentivized to lie — and why they get away with it.
20. In not-too-distant future, brain hackers could steal your deepest secrets: Religious beliefs, political leanings, and medical conditions are up for grabs.

jon