News of the Week; July 5, 2017

GAMES

1. Tencent imposing time limits on children to allay addiction fears
2. Tencent implements time limits to curb kids’ gaming addictions: Honour of Kings players under 12 restricted to one hour per day, two for under 18s
3. Tencent: Honor of Kings restrictions won’t hurt game revenue – “Under 12 years old constitute a small proportion of our total user base and a smaller percentage of our paying user base”
4. Halo-inspired fan-game gets conditional thumbs up from Microsoft: Installation 01 can continue to operate as long as it stays non-commercial.
5. Report: Xbox One X benchmarks detail 4K capabilities: Some games hit 4K with extra GPU overhead, others struggle with higher resolution.
6. Case study: When 2 indie devs come up with very similar concepts
7. Indie Developer Finds Game On Torrent Site, Gives Away Free Keys Instead Of Freaking Out
8. The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast: Diversity in games with Anita Sarkeesian: The Feminist Frequency founder on her Tropes series, dealing with the backlash and how developers can explore new stories
9. 15-Year-Old’s Reaction To Winning Her First Street Fighter V Tournament Is Everything
10. Activision Blizzard: Overwatch League is the most ambitious in eSports history – At Gamelab, MLG founder Mike Sepso opened up about the Overwatch League – “this will be a core part of the future of the eSports business”
11. Nickelodeon invests in amateur eSports outfit Super League Gaming
12. Nickelodeon enters esports as part of $15m funding round for Super League Gaming: SLG total now at $28m, other investors include DMG Entertainment and Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik
13. Layoffs as ESL restructures: Jobs lost as world’s largest esports organisation “realigns resources”
14. Valve to axe Dota 2 Majors in favour of third-party tournaments: The road to The International 2018 will be handled by third-party tournaments, selected by Valve
15. Bioware Shoots Down Mass Effect: Andromeda DLC Cancellation Rumors, But No Single-Player DLC Reportedly Planned
16. The Nintendo Switch and the Long Game
17. UK retailer GAME issues profit warning as Switch shortage hits hard
18. How Super Mario Run’s lackluster sales are changing Nintendo’s mobile strategy
19. The game has changed for Nintendo on mobile: Last year smartphones were set to be Nintendo’s saviour; with the successful launch of Switch the calculus has changed
20. Nintendo dismisses idea of entering resurgent PC market
21. Nintendo Switch arrests Japanese console market decline: Mario Kart 8 was the best-selling Switch game in H12017, beating Zelda despite much later release date
22. Super Mario Odyssey will never be ‘Game Over’, according to devs
23. Japanese console market grows for the first time in three years
24. Amazon UK retroactively imposes one-per-customer SNES Mini limit: Customers who pre-ordered multiple devices have had their orders reduced
25. Play Game Boy cartridges on your smartphone with this £60 accessory: Adds the physical buttons, too.
26. Pokemon Go surpasses $1.2 billion in revenue
27. Pokémon Go still has millions of players after one year: Millions of Pokémon Go players get big gym, pokécoin, raid boss update for first anniversary.
28. A year in, millions still play Pokémon Go(and will likely attend its festival): Punctuating a wild 12 months, Niantic releases a big gym overhaul patch.
29. Ubisoft wishes Watch Dogs 2 players a terrible Fourth of July: Single-player mode had been slapped with loud surround-sound noise, until update.
30. GAME issues profit warning as Switch stock dries up: But retailer expects to see growth in the software markets over the following financial year
31. China extends lead as the world’s biggest video game market
32. Chinese games market is the world’s biggest at $25.6bn: Expected to grow to $29bn by the end of 2017, currently represents 25% of the global market
33. Sony Pulls “World’s Fastest Platinum Trophy” Game From PSN
34. ‘The economics are really tough’ for console exclusives, says former Sony exec
35. Brexit Britain: League of Legends in-game currency gets UK price hike
36. Brexit prompts League of Legends price hike: Riot Games increasing the cost of virtual currency by 20% from July 25th
37. Zynga Founder Launches New Political Project And It’s Getting Criticized
38. For indie devs, the Vita’s niche audience is what makes it a viable platform: “Any time you have a system that gets kind of neglected by its parent company, you find this hardcore passionate fanbase ready to support anything that’s coming out for it.”
39. Without code from the original, Blizzard had to build StarCraft: Remastered from scratch
40. StarCraft Remastered devs unveil price, explain how much is being rebuilt: Dev team admits losing old code and assets, needing to “eyeball everything.”
41. Razer files for IPO in Hong Kong: Peripherals company to pursue ambitious expansion plans by going public, expects to raise a reported $600 million
42. Video game distributors prepare for digital future: Alliance rebrands and moves into digital publishing – “We believe consumers will access all software digitally,” CEO Jay Gelman says
43. “Gamers are part of our creative process” – Activision’s Eric Hirshberg: The Activision CEO on rescuing Call of Duty, re-launching Destiny and what comes next for Skylanders
44. Survey: 77% of devs believe AR/MR will be more popular than VR, long-term
45. Of Course There’s A Reason Why Tekken 7’s Android Has Breast Physics
46. A programmer turned Wikipedia into a classic text adventure: Developer turned a novel-generation project into an interactive Infocom tribute.
47. The Worst E3 Ever?: 10 Years Ago This Month: ESA nukes its annual showcase just as the industry reaches its peak, and the Red Ring of Death ushers in the Mattrick era at Xbox

DIGITAL

1. Federal Court of Appeal Deals Music Labels Major Defeat By Upholding Tariff 8 Internet Streaming Decision (Michael Geist)
2. The Battle Over Tariff 8: What the Recording Industry Isn’t Saying About Canada’s Internet Streaming Royalties (Michael Geist)
3. Court vacates apparent fake-defendant libel takedown order in Patel v. Chan
4. State Dept. Enlists Hollywood And Its Friends To Start A Fake Twitter Fight Over Intellectual Property
5. Rob Kardashian Could Face Revenge Porn Charges for Posting Explicit Photos of Blac Chyna, Expert Says
6. Trump Mocks Mika Brzezinski
7. Mika Brzezinski explains what President Trump’s tweets reveal about him
8. Morning Joe co-hosts accuse White House of blackmail over tabloid story
9. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough’s Extortion Claim Against Donald Trump and the National Enquirer
10. Why Trump’s Vengeful Tweeting MattersDonald Trump Is Testing Twitter’s Harassment Policy: The president’s latest outbursts suggest the social-media platform imposes no editorial standards. But should it?
11. Twenty Theses About Twitter (Eric Posner)
12. Trump Supporters Cry Bias After NPR Tweets the Declaration of Independence
13. Save Free Speech From Trolls: Criticism is not censorship no matter how insistent Twitter’s free speech brigade might be.
14. CNN implied threat against redditor over Trump-CNN GIF ignites Internet: After extracting apology from “HanAs**holeSolo”, CNN reserves right to expose him.
15. Silicon Valley sexual harassment scandal spreads: Six women have accused Binary Capital partner Justin Caldbeck of making unwanted sexual advances. Several said the misconduct took place when the women sought funding or guidance on their businesses.
16. More women come forward to talk about Silicon Valley’s sexual harassment problem: Some big name VCs have issued apologies
17. Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment
18. ‘I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you’: Five Silicon Valley tech investors are accused of sexually harassing women: Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital were both accused of sexually harassing women in the tech industry; Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital, Marc Canter of Macromedia and investor Jose De Dios also had allegations leveled against them; Ten female entrepreneurs came forward and revealed the allegations this week; They claim the men targeted them with sexist comments, touched them without permission or sent inappropriate messages or emails over the years; McClure, Sacca and Caldbeck have all publicly apologized for their behavior; De Dios has denied the allegations against him, while Canter accused a woman of lying about her claims 
19. Start-up investor Dave McClure resigns from 500 Startups
20. We Are All Internet Bullies
21. UK dealer charged in US over multimillion-dollar fake Bitcoin site scam: Renwick Haddow created ‘trendy’ companies and duped investors into thinking they were big successes, authorities in New York allege
22. Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men from Hate Speech But Not Black Children: A trove of internal documents sheds light on the algorithms that Facebook’s censors use to differentiate between hate speech and legitimate political expression.
23. Facebook ‘Hate Speech’ Rules Protect Races And Sexes — So, Yes, White Men Are Going To Be ‘Protected’
24. Facebook found a new way to identify spam and false news articles in your News Feed: People who post 50-plus times per day are likely sharing spam or false news, Facebook says.
25. The Most Important Lesson From the Leaked Facebook Content Moderation Documents
26. Overhauling Groups Won’t Help Facebook Build Communities
27. Denied: Afghanistan’s All-Girl Robotics Team Can’t Get Visas To The US
28. Newegg fought its way through two appeals to win fees from this patent-holder: It took repeated appeals to win an award that “aged like fine wine.”
29. Copyright Office Releases Report on Section 1201
30. What’s wrong with the Copyright Office’s DRM study?
31. Eliminating Internet Safe Harbours Would Hurt The Economy
32. Market Court’s ruling expected to stem flow of copyright letters
33. Instagram Unleashes An AI System To Blast Away Nasty Comments
34. Instagram Starts Using Artificial Intelligence to Moderate Comments. Is Facebook Up Next?
35. Citrix isn’t just for telecommuting, Red Bull Racing uses it at the track: But the next big thing will be machine learning and AI for simulations and design.
36. Copyright and innovation: If Canada is to become an major centre of high-tech business and AI development, it must remove the copyright-related impediments to innovation.
37. SIRI-OUSLY 2.0: What Artificial Intelligence Reveals About the First Amendment (Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton & Margot E. Kaminski)
38. Search Algorithms Kept Me From My Sister For 14 Years
39. Machine Creativity Beats Some Modern Art: If machines can outperform humans at playing games and driving cars, can they also produce better art? A new kind of Turing test aims to find out.
40. First And Only Snippet Tax Deal In Spain Is With Big Supporter Of Snippet Tax In Germany
41. Delete Hate Speech or Pay Up, Germany Tells Social Media Companies
42. Germany passes law with huge fines for Internet companies that don’t bar hate speech: German legislators want hate speech removed within 24 hours.
43. Germany Officially Gives Up On Free Speech: Will Fine Internet Companies That Don’t Delete ‘Bad’ Speech
44. Designing Genderless Emoji? It Takes More Than Just Losing The Lipstick
45. Zillow Only Kinda Backs Down From Dubious McMansion Hell Threats Following EFF’s Engagement
46. McMansion Hell is Back Online, Will Not Comply With Zillow’s Demands [Update: Zillow Will Not Sue]
47. FilmOn’s chutzpah doesn’t pay off; labeling it a site of (c) infringement is protected by anti-SLAPP law: FilmOn.com v. DoubleVerify, Inc., 2017 WL 2807911, No. B264074 Cal. Ct. App. Jun. 29, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
48. Canadian Supreme Court holds that Google can be ordered to de-index results globally
49. No Monitoring & No Liability: What the Supreme Court’s Google v. Equustek Decision Does Not Do (Michael Geist)
50. Google v. Equustek: Unnecessarily Hard Cases Make Unnecessarily Bad Law (Ariel Katz)
51. Supreme Court of Canada lends an enforcement hand to intellectual property right owners
52. When Google and its ilk become regulators, we all lose
53. Judge Tosses Woman’s Lawsuit Brought Against Google Because A Blogger Said Mean Things About Her
54. Google Begins Experimenting with VR Ads
55. The Lawsuit That Could Pop Alphabet’s Project Loon 
56. Apple Adds VR Rendering Essentials to MacOS via Metal 2
57. Ars spends too much time trying to work in Haiku, the BeOS successor: After years of alpha, the open source execution of BeOS is beautiful but buggy.
58. In attempt to achieve YouTube stardom, woman accidentally kills her boyfriend: According to Pedro Ruiz’ aunt, her late nephew told her – “We want to get famous.”
59. YouTube Reportedly Offered Nominal Refunds To Brands Who Pulled Spend In ‘Adpocalypse’
60. Three-Month-Old YouTube TV Expands To 10 Additional Markets
61. Now Netflix Is Reviving Its Own Canceled Shows, Too
62. Disney Channel And Freeform Ratings Are Falling As Young Viewers Turn To Streaming Platforms
63. BBC Pledges To Invest $44 Million In Digital Content For Kids Through 2020
64. We need our platforms to put people and democratic society ahead of cheap profits: The BBC is a model for a trusted social networking platform that combats fake news and propaganda while serving the public interest.
65. Sale Of Roku Devices Banned In Mexico Due To Rampant Hacking
66. Rotten Tomatoes And The Unbearable Heaviness Of Data
67. Podcast Ad Revenues Are Expected To Reach $220 Million In 2017 (Study)
68. GrubHub trial may finally answer contractor vs. employee quandary: A GrubHub loss could pave the way for a slew of similar labor cases.
69. Couple Asks Internet To Photoshop Out Shirtless Guy From Engagement Photo, Regrets It Immediately
70. People Who Follow Influencers Are More Likely To Engage In Charitable Causes (Study)
71. The US government is removing scientific data from the Internet: At Ars Technica Live, we talked to Lindsey Dillon, who decided to do something about it.
72. Information overload makes social media a swamp of fake news: Low attention and a flood of data are serious problems for social networks.
73. Another Collision of Housing Regulations and Online Innovation–SF Housing Rights Committee v. HomeAway (Eric Goldman)
74. Looking Forward To Next 20 Years Of A Post-Reno Internet
75. The Shifting Landscape of Global Internet Censorship: An Uptake in Communications Encryption Is Tempered by Increasing Pressure on Major Platform Providers; Governments Expand Content Restriction Tactics (Jonathan Zittrain, Robert Faris, Helmi Noman, Justin Clark, Casey Tilton & Ryan Morrison-Westphal)
76. The complete history of the IBM PC: Bill Gates. Mysterious deaths. IBM trying to act like a nimble startup. This story has it all!
77. With iPhone, Apple showed AT&T and Verizon who’s boss: Apple refused to let wireless carriers ruin the customer experience. 

CREATIVITY

1. Paul McCartney Finally Regains Beatles Rights After Near 50-Year-Long Battle
2. Claim U$ 150.000 for Trump: Photographer Julie Dermansky is claiming 150,000 dollars in damages from US President Donald Trump after the Trump organisation apparently used one of her photos without permission.
3. Kanye West Is Done With Tidal
4. The Music Industry’s Still Off Key: The power brokers aren’t responsible for its revival.
5. RIAA Trashes Its Legacy As A 1st Amendment Supporter By Cheering On Global Internet Censorship
6. The elusive data behind copyright reform: In the absence of data, scholars, legislators and other stakeholders are forced to grope in the dark about what copyright reform has wrought. (Bob Tarantino)
7. France’s Highest Court Rules in Favor of Freedom of Expression of Director over Heirs’ Droit Moral
8. Shop Till You Drop… Your Claim… Stores’ Layout Protected by French Copyright
9. Olivia de Havilland Files a Right of Publicity Suit against Feud Producers
10. Library of Awesome—Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter, and Copyright
11. Stars are getting militant about inequality in Hollywood. It’s about time.
12. Alex Jones Has a Perfectly Normal Chat About All the Slave Children Who Are Sent to Mars
13. The End of Utility? Supreme Court of Canada Rewrote Patent Law Rationale as We Knew It
14. Supreme Court harms Canada’s innovation policy stand ahead of NAFTA negotiations
15. ‘Bombshell’ Canadian Patent Ruling Seen Favoring Foreign Companies: Supreme Court decision lowers bar for receiving patents – Decision removes a trade irritant with U.S. before Nafta talks
16. AstraZeneca Canada Inc. v. Apotex Inc. (SCC)
17. USPTO Economists on Patent Litigation Predictors
18. The Importance of Brand Clearance: How About “COVFEFE” As a Brand? Part 2
19. NFL is advising ICE to seize obvious parodies, my FOIA suit reveals (Rebecca Tushnet)
20. EU And US Perspectives On Fair Dealing For The Purpose Of Parody Or Satire (Graeme Austin)
21. The age of distributed truth

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. NFL, DirecTV Defeat ‘Sunday Ticket’ Lawsuit: The battle over blacked-out games has ended. DirecTV and the NFL are dancing in the legal endzone after a California federal court dismissed a nationwide class-action lawsuit over Sunday Ticket.
2. Sports Media Is Dead, Long Live Sports Media
3. Tom Wheeler defends Title II rules, accuses Pai of helping monopolists – Ex-FCC chair: Title II is crucial for net neutrality and consumer protection.
4. Trump picks Republican to fill empty commissioner seat at FCC: Trump nominates Brendan Carr, general counsel and former aide to Chairman Pai.
5. 50 million US homes have only one 25Mbps Internet provider or none at all: 10.6 million homes have no wired access to 25Mbps, 4.9 million can’t get 3Mbps.
6. Vidéotron says it was ‘forced to put an end’ to Unlimited Music, will give customers free data
7. Canadian cellphone startup has success stateside, but shut out at home
8. Record $280M Fine for Dish Network’s Telemarketing Violations
9. AT&T: Forced arbitration isn’t “forced” because no one has to buy service – To avoid AT&T arbitration, your only choice is to not be a customer.
10. Comcast, Charter May Soon Get Even Larger With Joint Acquisition Of Sprint
11. Murdoch’s Sky takeover bid delayed by UK gov’t, sent to CMA for further assessment: Culture secretary says there’s a risk that Murdoch would control too much UK media.
12. Verizon Wireless disconnects some heavy data users in rural areas: Verizon sheds customers who roam on rural networks and use tons of data.
13. ISPs Are No Longer Even Bothering To Provide Bogus Excuses For Their Expanding Use Of Usage Caps
14. Cox expands home Internet data caps, while CenturyLink abandons them: Meanwhile, Cox has plans to charge extra for unlimited data.
15. 40 ISPs, VoIP And VPN Providers Tell FCC They Like Having Net Neutrality Rules
16. ‘Free Market’ Group: FCC Comments Show Nobody Really Wants Net Neutrality
17. A Curious Tale of Economics and Common Carriage (Net Neutrality) at the FCC: A Reply to Faulhaber, Singer, and Urschel (Dwayne Winseck & Jefferson Pooley)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. DOJ Asks The Supreme Court To Give It Permission To Search Data Centers Anywhere In The World
2. Moving Beyond Backdoors To Solve The FBI’s ‘Going Dark’ Problem
3. NSA Continues To Dodge ‘Incidental Collection’ Question, Wants Its ‘About’ Surveillance Program Back
4. Laptop ban led to 20-percent drop in flights for one Mideast airline: Emirates, Etihad, and Turkish Airlines increase security, drop electronics ban.
5. NATO Considering ‘Petya’ Malware a Potential Act of War
6. NotPetya developers may have obtained NSA exploits weeks before their public leak: Clues may tie people behind massive malware attack to mysterious Shadow Brokers group.
7. Backdoor built in to widely used tax app seeded last week’s NotPetya outbreak: Operation that hit thousands was “thoroughly well-planned and well-executed.”
8. As A New Wave Of Cyberattacks Rolls Out, Rep. Ted Lieu Asks What The NSA’s Going To Do About It
9. Global cyberattack seems intent on havoc aimed at Ukraine, not extortion
10. Coalition Objects to Renewed Calls for Weaker Encryption Following ‘Five Eyes’ Ottawa Meeting
11. Google DeepMind deal with NHS broke UK data law, rules ICO: Medical trial that slurped patient records of 1.6 million Brits ruled illegal by watchdog.
12. In Worrisome Move, Kaspersky Agrees to Turn Over Source Code to US Government
13. HTTPS Certificate Revocation is broken, and it’s time for some new tools: Certificate Transparency and OCSP Must-Staple can’t get here fast enough.
14. Windows 10 will try to combat ransomware by locking up your data: But how to protect files from users who have access to those files remains tricky.
15. Government Kills Cyber Remedies as Cyber Threats Mount
16. Cheerleader Fraudulently Obtains Court Order To Scrub Web Of Her Boyfriend-Beating Past
17. Federal government proposes reform of public sector Access to Information Act
18. The Bootlegger, the Wiretap, and the Beginning of Privacy

Jon