GAMES

1. Leslie Benzies suing Rockstar over $150 million: Key GTA developer accuses publisher, Houser brothers of forcing him from company, withholding royalties
2. Take-Two sued by former Rockstar North president for $150 million in unpaid royalties
3. Rockstar: Benzies’ claims “downright bizarre”
4. Grand Theft Auto devs planned to leave Take-Two: Leslie Benzies lawsuit says he and the Houser brothers set up an independent company that would still work on publisher’s IP
5. 5 things to know about GTAproducer Leslie Benzies’ legal fight with Rockstar
6. Blizzard shutters popular private WoW server with threat of legal action
7. Blizzard shuts down popular fan-run “pirate” server for classic WoW: Nostralrius servers claimed 800K users are playing 2006-era World of Warcraft.
8. The Ultimate In CwF: How Lovers Of Stardew Valley Fought Piracy By Buying The Game For Pirates
9. Game Studio’s Plan To Deal With Critic Of Games: Sue Him To Hell
10. UK Government-backed eSports competition to debut alongside Rio Olympics
11. Wargaming wants an eSports players union
12. Twitch and Faceit partner for new eSports initiative with $3.5m prize pool
13. Activision Blizzard boasts new CS:GO eSports viewership record – A record-breaking 45 million hours of live broadcast were watched
14. Sports satellite radio channel expands to cover eSports
15. Bottom of Form: Rock Band 4 Fig campaign raises half its $1.5 million target
16. Twitch users can now live stream Android games from their PC
17. Codemasters pulls DriveClub developer Evolution back from the brink
18. Oculus shipping dates pushed back again as pre-order woes continue
19. Beamdog CEO stands up to bullies, says harassing tactics won’t work
20. Jack Thompson and how I started with GamePolitics
21. All Those Evil Violent Video Games Apparently Failed At Turning Kids Into Deviant Murder-Terrorists
22. Fewer dumb things are said about video games these days
23. Looking back: Brown v. EMA
24. Looking back: GamerGate
25. For Good Men To See Nothing
26. Can a video game company tame toxic behaviour?: Scientists are helping to stop antisocial behaviour in the world’s most popular online game. The next stop could be a kinder Internet.
27. Survey: Video ads are the #1 way players prefer to ‘pay’ for mobile games
28. This Assetto Corsa Mixed Reality Video Shows VR Racing’s Potential
29. Accessibility in VR game design: The Fantastic Contraption approach

DIGITAL

1. European Court of Justice – Posting a hyperlink to a website which published photos without authorisation does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement
2. Linking to pirated material doesn’t infringe copyright, says top EU court lawyer: Key question is whether the Court of Justice of the European Union agrees with him.
3. The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court
4. Is Purchase of a Google AdWord use of a Trade Mark? Case Examined by Australian Federal Court
5. 3D-printed masterpiece? Computer mimics brushstrokes of Rembrandt: New portrait created using machine learning algorithms with help from Microsoft.
6. Scientists Create a New Rembrandt Painting, Using a 3D Printer & Data Analysis of Rembrandt’s Body of Work
7. The dark side of Guardian comments: As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, the Guardian commissioned research into the 70m comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black. Hear from three of those writers, explore the data and help us host better conversations online
8. Facial-Recognition Software Might Have a Racial Bias Problem: Depending on how algorithms are trained, they could be significantly more accurate when identifying white faces than African American ones.
9. From Siri to sexbots: Female AI reinforces a toxic desire for passive, agreeable and easily dominated women
10. Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: The Moral Compass of a Machine
11. In China, Alleged Assault Footage Helps Muffle Panama Talk
12. How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell
13. NCAA Reverses Their Ban On Social Media And Texting Communication Between Coaches And Recruits
14. Is The Era of Live Sports Streaming Upon Us?
15. Vancouver-based BroadbandTV trails only Google, Facebook for online video views
16. Global PC shipments continue to fall in 2016
17. Online courses’ metadata helps NCAA catch cheating coaches red-handed: Head coach sent grad students all over the country to complete online coursework
18. YouTube Copyright Claim Strips Audio Out of Conference on Surveillance Overreach

CREATIVITY

1. More People Recognizing Copyright’s ‘Free Speech Problem’
2. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven may be partly stolen, judge says: ‘Substantial’ similarities are enough to warrant a trial over whether Robert Plant and Jimmy Page lifted opening chords from Taurus by the band Spirit
3. Led Zeppelin ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Copyright Case Will Go To A Jury… Meaning Band Will Almost Certainly Lose
4. Theft or inspiration: A musical guide to copyright lawsuits – The Song Remains… Similar?
5. Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome”: Civil rights anthem never should have been copyrighted, plaintiffs say.
6. Lucasfilm Threatens And Threatens Non-Profit Over Lightsaber Battle Event
7. Richard Prince – an update
8. Right of Publicity Claim over Straight Outta Compton Gets Kicked Straight Outta Court
9. The Future of Digital Cinema May Be At Stake in Lawsuit Over Interoperability: GDC and Dolby go to war over whether the messages and commands that allow motion pictures to play on screen are a protected form of intellectual property.
10. When you can parody another’s work or mark
11. Authorship and the Boundaries of Copyright: Ideas, Expressions, and Functions in Yoga, Choreography, and Other Works (Christopher Buccafusco)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Canadian Government Fails To Force Cheaper TV Options, Blames Consumers For Not Trying Harder
2. Cable cord-cutting numbers soar in Canada thanks to Netflix, high prices, says report: 80% more people cut the cord in 2015 compared with 2014, says report
3. Affordable Internet access is everyone’s business: Geist
4. Intervening at the CRTC: Nothing Encourages Participation Like Background Checks and Legally Mandated Undertakings (Michael Geist)
5. Three-O2 merger hits major snag as UK competition watchdog wades in
6. Silverpush Stops Using Sneaky, Inaudible TV Audio Tracking Beacons After FTC Warning
7. Verizon won’t fix copper lines when customers refuse switch to fiber
8. FCC: Carrier pocketed $10M in bogus cell phone subsidies – Record $51M fine proposed for carrier accused of enrolling ineligible customers.
9. How Big Telecom Gets Away With Rewriting America’s Laws

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Apple won’t demand to learn how FBI cracked terror suspect’s phone: Gadget maker said it did not know whether FBI employed a software or hardware hack.
2. US government still pursuing court order to unlock iPhone in New York case: “The government’s application is not moot,” Justice Department says.
3. Privacy watchdog to investigate RCMP over alleged ‘stingray’ cellphone surveillance: The commissioner has opened an investigation into the use of International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, otherwise known as stingrays, by law enforcement.
4. FBI paid “gray hats” for zero-day exploit that unlocked seized iPhone: Washington Post says feds likely bought hack from “ethically murky” researchers.
5. The Senate’s Draft Encryption Bill Is ‘Ludicrous, Dangerous, Technically Illiterate’
6. MIT Tech Review Tries To Blame Apple Encryption For Wrongful Arrest
7. Oculus brings real (and pervasive) data-mining to virtual reality
8. Senator Al Franken questions Oculus’ data collection, calls for transparency
9. EU-US Privacy Shield in big trouble, may not pass muster, suggests German leak: EU data authorities might push for top EU court case if Commission forges ahead anyway.
10. Microsoft Endorses the EU-US Privacy Shield. Will Others Follow?
11. Privacy Shield doesn’t do enough to curtail US surveillance, say EU data watchdogs: “Great step forward,” but still work to do, say privacy experts.

jon

GAMES

1. Valve misled Australian consumers, says court: Valve found to be in violation of Australian consumer law because Steam didn’t have a refund policy
2. Nintendo denies bowing to GamerGate pressure in employee firing: Former staffer Alison Rapp was the subject of intense online harassment in the month preceding her dismissal
3. Studio cancels Wii U game in protest of Nintendo firing employee: Necrosoft Games’ Brandon Sheffield calls on Mario maker to be an industry leader in fight against online harassment
4. IGDA critical of Nintendo’s decision to fire Alison Rapp
5. Surprise: Court Allows Lindsay Lohan’s Suit Against Take-Two Interactive To Go Forward
6. EA issues DMCA takedown on video that overlays footage of Trump onto Mass Effect 2 trailer
7. EA DMCAs Trump/Mass Effect Mashup Video Claiming Trump Re-Tweeting It Made Its Use ‘Political’
8. EA: Trump video “an unauthorized use of our IP” – Presidential candidate tweets fan-made, Mass Effect robbing video
9. Oculus apologises for “unexpected component shortage”
10. How Japanese Mobile Game Makers Go After Whales: 5 Popular Gacha Mechanics
11. Gameloft lays out all the reasons the Vivendi takeover is a bad idea
12. Disney Infinity and the problem with Apple TV’s gaming ambitions: Five months in, signs point to an anemic start for Apple’s living room gaming push.
13. EVE Online’s big battle proves players are the content in a sandbox MMO
14. Blizzard signs children’s book deal: Scholastic will publish World Of Warcraft series
15. Inside the lo-res Roguelike FPS inspired by Canadian politics
16. University of California, Irvine announces a League of Legends scholarship: UC Irvine will be the first public, state-run school to officially support esports
17. eSports driving over 21% of Twitch viewership – Newzoo
18. Alibaba investing in 1200 Chinese eSports events in 2016
19. Vainglory dev and Twitch announce multi-million dollar eSports partnership
20. FACEIT and Twitch launch esports league following the example of traditional sports leagues
21. The British government wants to create the Olympics of esports
22. Any retail Xbox One can be used as dev kit starting now
23. Using retail Xbox Ones as dev kits comes with significant caveats
24. Square Enix backs Final Fantasy XV with feature-length movie
25. To build a new Baldur’s Gate, Beamdog had to reverse-engineer the original
26. Mind Craft :Microsoft’s popular video game Minecraft helps kids learn everything from programming, science and math to art, languages and history.
27. See just how fast mobile has overtaken the rest of games
28. Slice: Mobile gamers spend average of $87 on in-app purchases – Game Of War players spend, on average, $550 to achieve victory
29. The average U.S. paying mobile game player spent $87 on F2P IAP last year
30. Rovio writes off 2015 as an ‘expected’ loss
31. Rock Band 4 crowdfunding campaign fails to take flight
32. GamePolitics shutting down: Entertainment Consumers Association pulls the plug on specialist gaming site after 11 years
33. That Dragon, Cancer Discusses Let’s Play Issues While Clearing Content IDs
34. Players watch streams of the games they like, then buy them
35. eSports driving game purchases – NPD
36. Congressman blames son for spending $1,300 in campaign funds on Steam games: FEC questions California rep for unauthorized “personal expenses.
37. Sony staffer crafts custom PS4 gamepad for player with cerebral palsy
38. The View From the Tower: Why Cambridge graduates struggle to get into the games industry

DIGITAL

1. Twitter Makes Huge Move In Winning Rights To Live Stream NFL Thursday Night Football Games
2. Yahoo Will Stream One MLB Game Every Day For The Rest Of The Season
3. The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court
4. For The Fifth Time Now, German Court Says Adblocking Is Legal
5. Supreme Court Agrees to Consider Samsung-Apple Patent Case
6. $85 million patent verdict, largest ever against Google, wiped out on appeal: Patent describes a failed company’s 1996 desktop notification system.
7. Using Adblock Plus to block ads is legal, rules German court—for the fifth time: Adblock’s whitelisting scheme for advertisements also acceptable, Munich court says.
8. Linux kernel lawsuit SCO v IBM is alive, 13 years and counting: Suit claims IBM allegedly placed commercial UNIX code in the Linux kernel’s codebase.
9. Oracle will seek a staggering £6.5 billion in second copyright trial against Google: Oracle will ask another jury to make Google pay the biggest IP verdict ever.
10. Quebec bill would force Internet firms to block access to online gaming sites
11. Degrees of Freedom, Dimensions of Power (Yochai Benkler)
12. Chinese Censors Erase #PanamaPapers Evidence From Web
13. A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again: Meet accused hacker and copyright infringer Alexandra Elbakyan.
14. Posting Photos of Red Bowls on Facebook Is Now Deemed Seditious by the Thai Junta
15. DMCA’s Notice And Takedown Procedure Is A Total Mess, And It’s Mainly Because Of Bogus Automated Takedowns
16. RIAA: How Dare The Internet Use The DMCA That We Wrote To Build Useful Services!
17. Our Comment On DMCA Takedowns: Let’s Return To First Principles (And The First Amendment)
18. More Evidence That Tons Of DMCA Takedowns Are Bad News… And That People Are Afraid To Counternotice
19. CNBC Asks Readers To Submit Their Password To Check Its Strength Into Exploitable Widget
20. How to Make a Bot That Isn’t Racist
21. Microsoft accidentally revives Nazi AI chatbot Tay, then kills it again: A week after Tay’s first disaster, the bot briefly came back to life today.
22. Microsoft reactivates Twitter bot ‘Tay’, and it promptly tweets about smoking weed in front of cops
23. Clippy’s Back: The Future of Microsoft Is Chatbots: CEO Satya Nadella bets big on artificial intelligence that will be fast, smart, friendly, helpful, and (fingers crossed) not at all racist.
24. Regulators grapple with how a robo-adviser can be a fiduciary: SEC commissioner Kara Stein says agency is being ‘disrupted’ by technology along with everyone else
25. The biggest mystery in AI right now is the ethics board that Google set up after buying DeepMind
26. Meet the Robocar, an autonomous racing car: Yes, it does look like something straight out of Hollywood.
27. Man who sued over a patent on online photo contests must pay fees to EFF: “Ranking things in categories… was well known before the Internet.”
28. This Russian Website Uses Neural Networks to Combine Images, With Awesome Results
29. So Teenagers Now Prefer YouTube To Netflix And TV: According to a new survey, it’s *all* about vloggers and viral vids these days…
30. There Are Now 2,000 YouTube Channels With At Least One Million Subscribers
31. Marissa Mayer vs. “Kim Kardashian’s A__”: What Sunk Yahoo’s Media Ambitions?
32. Stupid Patent Of The Month: Mega-Troll Intellectual Ventures Hits Florist With Do-It-On-A-Computer Scheduling Patent
33. Why we’re talking differently about the web: The ways in which we talk about technology – and how we communicate through it – are rapidly changing. What does this mean for the future of our language?
34. Adventures in the Trump Twittersphere
35. Swedish Court: Wikipedia Hosting Photos Of Public Artwork Is Copyright Infringement For Some Reason

CREATIVITY

1. Lions Gate Entertainment Inc. v. TD Ameritrade Services Co. Inc.: District court holds Lions Gate’s trademark-related claims under Lanham Act and related state law are preempted by Copyright Act in suit over financial services ad campaign that used modified version of famous line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” from movie “Dirty Dancing.”
2. Court Rules Against Lionsgate In TD Ameritrade Suit For Dressing Up Copyright Claim As A Trademark Claim
3. Abdullah v. Walt Disney Co. – USDC, C.D. California, March 14, 2016: District court grants motion to dismiss children’s author’s copyright infringement lawsuit, holding that defendant Walt Disney’s animated film “Frozen” is not substantially similar to plaintiff’s copyrighted children’s story “The Snow Princess.”
4. Don’t Mention the IP Law: John Cleese and The Faulty Towers Dining Experience – So there’s this dinner theatre show called The Faulty Towers Dining Experience. It’s been running for years. But apparently John Cleese has only just heard about it and he’s not too pleased. The similarity with his own Fawlty Towers is obvious and TFTDE is clearly ‘dining out’ (yes) on the popularity of Cleese’s show.
5. John Steinbeck Heirs Now Feuding Over Steven Spielberg ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Adaptation
6. Gawker begins appeal against $140M Hulk Hogan sex-tape verdict: Was it wrong for a jury to decide “what’s news?”
7. The science behind the insane popularity of “react” videos on YouTube: Controversial theory may explain why we love watching people experience stuff.
8. Competition Bureau releases updated Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines
9. Campaign IP Violations Part 2 – Trump Sued for Copyright Infringement 
10. The Latest In Reputation Management: Bogus Defamation Suits From Bogus Companies Against Bogus Defendants
11. How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History
12. Ontario Music Fund Oversight Hits Sour Note: Gov Docs Discuss “Breach of Integrity” (Michael Geist)
13. Kylie Jenner’s new ‘Paper’ cover reveals how teens and social media are reshaping print publications
14. Did the city steal the idea for its Toronto sign? Mayor, councillors and city face $2.5M lawsuit over concept
15. 27 Stores That Were Named By Absolute Geniuses: Grab some baked goods at “Bread Pitt,” then get your laundry done at “Lord of the Rinse.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Netflix throttling itself isn’t a net neutrality problem, FCC chair says: Wheeler disappoints Netflix critics who called for investigation.
2. FCC votes to help poor people buy broadband and protect privacy online: 3-2 votes anger Republicans after last-minute compromise is dropped.
3. FCC’s “nutrition labels” for broadband show speed, caps, and hidden fees: New labels will help ISPs comply with net neutrality transparency rules.
4. Painful Comcast cancelation phone calls targeted by California legislation: Bill requiring online cancellation a response to infamous Comcast call.
5. ISPs Now Charging Broadband Users A Steep Premium If They Want To Avoid Usage Caps
6. CRTC enters into MOU with FTC on spam and unlawful telemarketing 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. The Scarlett Johansson Bot Is the Robotic Future of Objectifying Women
2. WhatsApp is Now End-to-End Encrypted (Bruce Schneier)
3. Reddit’s Warrant Canary Just Died (Bruce Schneier)
4. Reddit removes “warrant canary” from its latest transparency report – CEO is staying mum: “I’ve been advised not to say anything one way or the other.”
5. Canadian Court Says Vice Magazine Must Hand Over Its Communications With A Suspected Terrorist
6. Cases highlight legal debate over texting privacy rights
7. Appeals Court: No stingrays without a warrant, explanation to judge: Police also barred from shrouding stingray use in ridiculous NDAs.
8. Appeals Court Says Indiana’s Bad Anti-Texting Law Can’t Be Used To Justify Stops Or Searches
9. UK Law Enforcement Trying To Force Man They’ve Never Charged With A Crime To Decrypt His Computers
10. UK cops tell suspect to hand over crypto keys in US hacking case: Lauri Love faces extradition to US over hitting Federal Reserve, among others.
11. Hacking Team Has Lost Its License to Export Spyware
12. Hundreds of requests to unlock phones flood FBI
13. FBI Won’t Tell Apple How It Got Into iPhone… But Is Apparently Eager To Help Others Break Into iPhones
14. Feds used 1789 law to force Apple, Google to unlock phones 63 times: “These cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes.”
15. How a spy probe wound up as a child pornography prosecution
16. Foia Request – Government Attempts To Access Encrypted Messages: Request for records related to attempts by the government to access encrypted messages sent using the messaging platforms of mobile communications providers. (ACLU)
17. Brussels terror attacks: Why ramping up online surveillance isn’t the answer – Op-ed – Brief moratorium needed on calls for new spying laws after atrocities.
18. Privacy and Cybersecurity Issues in Canadian M&A Transactions

jon

GAMES

1. Trendy sues Studio Wildcard over origins of Ark: Survival Evolved – Former creative director Jeremy Stieglitz violated non-compete and non-interference clauses, says Dungeon Defenders dev
2. Dev explains why he copyright claimed ‘That Dragon, Cancer’ Let’s Plays
3. That Dragon, Cancer dev says Let’s Play videos took away sales
4. Sim racing enthusiasts ordered to take down unlicensed Formula 1 mods: F1’s commercial rights holder is notoriously protective of its intellectual property.
5. Formula E And Virtually Live Partner To Bring Fans Unique Sports VR Experience
6. The Ars review: Oculus Rift expands PC gaming past the monitor’s edge
7. The biggest non-VR stories at GDC 2016
8. Roundtable: What we learned about VR at GDC – Virtual reality is a current reality, but its future remains a question mark 
9. Legal Issues in VR
10. Valve loses Australian legal battle, found guilty of breaking consumer law
11. Valve misled Australian consumers, says court: Valve found to be in violation of Australian consumer law because Steam didn’t have a refund policy
12. Female gamers and the difference between trash talking and sexual harassment
13. Blizzard pulls “sexualised” victory pose from Overwatch: “This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective”
14. Muslim fighter given Christian celebration in UFC 2: EA apologizes to Khabib Nurmagomedov, pledges to fix issue in game’s next update
15. Capcom cops to wonky Street Fighter Vlaunch—then delays paid download store: Offers pair of measly fighter costumes as “thanks for… patience and understanding.”
16. Sony plans to bring PlayStation IP to mobile
17. More confirmation, speculation on “PlayStation 4K” rumors
18. The Future of Data Analysis: Better games, better players, and AI interpretation?
19. Your kids want to make Minecraft YouTube videos – but should you let them?
20. Pratchett: AAA becoming braver at tackling serious subjects – Award-winning writer believes we’ll see a “trickle up” of maturity in content from indies and mid-level studios
21. Harvard Team Is Disqualified for Cheating in College Video-Game Competition
22. Nintendo Korea restructuring results in massive layoffs

DIGITAL

1. Microsoft’s teenage AI shows I know nothing about millennials: But like all teenagers, she seems to be angry with her mother.
2. Microsoft terminates its Tay AI chatbot after she turns into a Nazi: Setting her neural net processor to read-write was a terrible mistake.
3. Tay, the neo-Nazi millennial chatbot, gets autopsied: Microsoft apologizes for her behavior and talks about what went wrong.
4. Who turned Microsoft’s chatbot racist? Surprise, it was 4chan and 8chan
5. It’s Your Fault Microsoft’s Teen AI Turned Into Such a Jerk
6. Here’s How We Prevent The Next Racist Chatbot: Tay.AI Is The Consequence Of Poor Training
7. Can a Computer Get a Patent?
8. A Computer Wrote A Novel — And Nearly Won A Literary Prize For It
9. Budget 2016: Is It The End of a Canadian Digital Strategy? (Michael Geist)
10. Trump’s Incomprehensible ‘Cyber’ Policy: ‘Make Cyber Great Again’
11. The state has lost control: tech firms now run western politics (Evgeny Morozov)
12. Why Are People Using Ad Blockers? Ads Can Eat Up To 79% Of Mobile Data Allotments
13. Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (Jennifer M. Urban, Brianna L. Schofield & Joe Karaganis)
14. The Hidden Cost of Signing Up for Internet in Spain: Your Sanity
15. The Unseen Threat of Digital Warfare
16. Indian Migrant Worker Arrested in Saudi Arabia For Denouncing Working Conditions on Facebook
17. Rage-quit: Coder unpublished 17 lines of JavaScript and “broke the Internet” – Dispute over module name in npm registry became giant headache for developers.
18. Social media “influencers”: the do’s and don’ts of disclosure 
19. Donald Trump’s Social Media Ties To White Supremacists
20. Landmark Daily Fantasy Sports Settlement between DraftKings, FanDuel and New York
21. The Sharing Economy’s Dirty Laundry: Sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb aren’t helping local economies — they’re just helping themselves.
22. In foam-arrow patent fracas, Newegg swoops in to aid LARPer defendant – Newegg lawyer Lee Cheng: “We geeky types like to stick together.”
23. Record companies made $2.4B last year from streaming, but it’s not enough
24. Report: “YouTube Connect” will be a livestreaming Periscope competitor – News of yet another live YouTube service surfaces.
25. Most young viewers feel it’s OK when YouTube stars shill for sponsors, study says
26. Demolition company says a Google Maps error led them to tear down the wrong house
27. It’s Not Just You: Netflix’s Movie Catalogue Keeps Getting Smaller – It seems to be part of the company’s plan.
28. How well online dating works, according to someone who has been studying it for years
29. Clickbait Obsession Devours Journalism
30. 4 Reasons America’s Laws Governing Robots Are Terrifyingly Outdated: Robots are evolving faster than the laws that rule their existence.

CREATIVITY

1. The Mandatory Tariff Issue – The Follow Up and the Future – Implications for the Access Copyright v. York University Case. etc. (Howard Knopf)
2. Despite Massive Streaming Revenue Gains, RIAA Still Lying & Crying
3. Time Warner, Defenders Of Copyright, Forced To Pay Up For Copyright Infringement
4. House Of Cards Sued Over Trademark Regarding Themed Slot Machines
5. Patent that cost Microsoft millions gets invalidated: For over a decade, Uniloc pursued royalties for various anti-piracy schemes.
6. Court To Film Director: You Must First Create An Infringing Work Before We Can Discuss Whether Or Not It’s Actually Infringing
7. Judge Rejects Film Producer’s Bid to Have Buck Rogers Character Declared in Public Domain
8. Brothers in Law: A Photographer’s Artistic Freedom v. an Individual’s Rights to Privacy
9. Video rental past due for 14 years leads to arrest of NC man: Rental store is defunct. Format is obsolete. Movie is bad.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Dissenting Commissioner Thinks Corus Has Too Sweet A Deal
2. Memorandum of Understanding between the United States Federal Trade Commission and the CRTC on mutual assistance in the Enforcement of Laws on commercial email and telemarketing (CRTC)
3. ‘March 1 is the new January 1’ – A ‘new year’ in Canadian television services
4. Netflix throttles video on AT&T and Verizon to keep users under data caps: Netflix limits video to 600kbps and 360p, says “data caps are bad for consumers.”
5. Netflix Reveals It Throttles AT&T, Verizon Customers To Save Them From Usage Caps, Overage Fees
6. Netflix should be investigated for throttling itself, FCC Republican says
7. The Cable Industry Wants Netflix Investigated… For Throttling Itself
8. Zero-rating by major ISPs “threatens open Internet,” advocates tell FCC: FCC urged to stop data cap exemptions at Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
9. Google Fiber makes phone service official, starts at $10 a month: A “cloud based” phone number brings Google Voice features to landlines.
10. Prison Telco Claims Prisoners Will Riot If Company Can’t Keep Overcharging Inmate Families

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. FBI Denies It Lied About Ability To Crack iPhone, Also Suggests Cellebrite Rumor Is Wrong
2. Apple Asks Judge Overseeing NY iPhone Case To Wait Until More Is Known About FBI’s New Magic Unlocking Trick
3. Apple likely can’t force FBI to disclose how it got data from seized iPhone: “It is an important test for the government’s disclosure policy.”
4. Influencers: FBI should disclose San Bernardino iPhone security hole to Apple
5. FBI hacks into terrorist’s iPhone without Apple
6. Feds break through seized iPhone, stand down in legal battle with Apple: DOJ won’t say how, but its mysterious new method to bust through iPhone 5C worked.
7. DOJ Says That The Crack Of Syed Farook’s iPhone Only Applies To That Model Of iPhone
8. FBI Breaks into iPhone. We Have Some Questions. (EFF)
9. FBI Is Pushing Back Against Judge’s Order to Reveal Tor Browser Exploit
10. Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI.: When Johns Hopkins discovered a different security flaw, it notified Apple so the problem could be fixed. The FBI is keeping its newly found breach a secret from everyone.
11. Some Thoughts On What, Exactly, The DOJ’s ‘Inaccurate Assertion’ Might Be Concerning Secret Legal Opinion
12. If FBI Can Get Into A Device Running iOS 9, Why Does It Say It Still Needs Apple’s Help To Get Into One Running iOS 7?
13. Encryption Is a Luxury: The people that most need privacy often can’t afford the smartphones that provide it.
14. Under Surveillance: Examining Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring (Elizabeth Stoycheff)
15. France Still Thinks It Regulates Entire Internet, Fines Google For Not Making Right To Be Forgotten Global
16. American Big Brother: A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression

jon

GAMES

1. Supreme Court punts in 1st AmendmentMadden NFL legal fight: EA said it was being wrongly punished because its virtual gridiron looked too real.
2. Supreme Court rejects EA defense in Madden suit: Lawsuit brought by former pros used in games without permission can now proceed as publisher faces familiar setback
3. Xbox chief: “We justly deserve the criticism” for GDC party with hired dancers
4. Xbox chief: Company party’s hired dancers “not consistent with our values”
5. The SXSW Online Harassment Summit Was A Small But Necessary Step Forward: It was a misunderstanding of online harassment that led to the creation of the summit, and there’s still a lot more work to be done.
6. Gone Home Dev: Look past “the best person for the job”: Steve Gaynor wants industry veterans to open the door to more talented women
7. GDC panel says that, in games, “Muslim blood is cheap”
8. Beyond ageism: Industry must think about older gamers
9. Machinima settles with FTC over undisclosed payments to online ‘influencers’: The network reportedly compensated YouTubers for feature Microsoft’s Xbox in their videos
10. Pokkén Tournament penalizes players for rage quitting
11. Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million
12. Nintendo: Bravely Second localization change due to player feedback
13. Report: Wii U will be Nintendo’s shortest-lived home console
14. How the demonization of emulation devalues gaming’s heritage – Or: Why Uncle Buck is easier to buy than Duck Tales for the NES.
15. Sony: We’re “happy to have the conversation” on cross-platform play – Vague statement hints at case-by-case openness to Microsoft’s invitation.
16. Report: Sony working on upgraded, 4K-capable PS4 – Development sources say hardware refresh would sport more powerful GPU.
17. PlayStation VR: Sony is “probably going to reject” games under 60 fps
18. PlayStation VR launch lineup has five slick Sony-made games: PlayStation VR Worlds and The Playroom VR to become the Wii Sports of PSVR.
19. PlayStation VR to sell 8m units in 24 months – analyst
20. Amazon selling out of PSVR across Europe: Supplier limiting second batch of headsets to one per customer
21. Survey: PlayStation/Xbox gamers more interested in VR than PC players: Exclusive results from Ipsos show PS4/Xbox One owners most engaged group
22. PlayStation VR Launch Bundle Pre-orders Opening at Amazon Today (Update: Sold Out)
23. Oculus will launch with 30 VR games—but are they any good?: Launch preview event weirdly focused on future Touch titles, and we think we know why.
24. Vertigo lives: Oculus Rift preview event suffers from VR tracking woes – Launch game devs admit they’ve seen bug, “can’t repro” it. Will Oculus fix it in time?
25. Why VR is not the most important trend at GDC: The democratisation of game engines and creative tools is the most exciting and powerful movement in games this decade – and the best is yet to come
26. Epic looks outside of gaming for new uses of Unreal Engine: Powerful real-time 3D is revolutionizing everything from film to architecture.
27. Take it from a pro, Street Fighter 5’s changes are for the greater good: One Guinness Worlds Record-holding champ believes the community needs SFV to succeed.
28. Xbox Survey asks users if they want to sell back digital content: Question suggests potential trade-in price of 10%; analyst downplays potential threat to GameStop
29. Tencent cleared $3 billion smartphone game revenue in 2015
30. Game dev reveals correlation between a translation and a region’s piracy: Localization in Western Europe paid off—but Brazilian Portuguese didn’t fare so well.
31. Valhalla moves HQ to Vancouver: Tomonobu Itagaki believes talented devs more attracted to Western countries than Japan
32. IGDA to name best companies for crunch: Dev group hopes transparency around uncompensated overtime will improve employers’ behavior, will name-and-shame if it doesn’t
33. Downtown Grand adds dedicated eSports Lounge
34. GDC 2016 attracts 27,000 attendees

DIGITAL

1. 9th Circuit revisits Dancing Baby copyright case: No fair use via algorithm – In a sharp dissent, one judge argues EFF should win its case immediately.
2. New Decision In Dancing Baby DMCA Takedown Case — And Everything Is Still A Mess
3. Eight-second videos are long enough to infringe on copyright, says UK judge: High Court rules that sharing sports highlights on Fanatix is not “fair dealing.”
4. Court Rejects “Browsewrap.” Is That Surprising?–Long v. ProFlowers
5. Spotify inks “no copyright claim” royalty deal with music publishers: “Only a temporary solution,” says copyright lobby group.
6. Big Win For Free Speech Online In Backpage Lawsuit (Eric Goldman)
7. Streetmap seeks to appeal against High Court ruling in Google case: UK-based mapping outfit continues to challenge search giant despite major setback.
8. EU Court Of Justice Advocate General Says Open WiFi Operators Shouldn’t Be Liable For Infringement
9. Wikileaks Exaggerates Story About State Department Working With Google To Block Video
10. Machines That Will Think and Feel: Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy—and that should scare us
11. DailyDirt: AlphaGo Plays Better Go Than Puny Humans…
12. ‘Facebook for guns’ app aims to take America’s gun culture online
13. Live Streaming Virtual Reality Company Receives Investment Of $12.5 Million From Intel Capital, Sacramento Kings, A&E
14. Why apps like Siri and Cortana need to understand suicide: Study reveals that smartphones respond to emergencies with confusion, bad info.
15. Netflix rescued “The Little Prince” after it was abruptly dropped from US theaters
16. Where’s The Money? YouTube Revenues Explained
17. YouTube was meant to be a video-dating website: Co-founder Steve Chen tells SXSW conference that ‘we thought dating would be the obvious choice’ – but internet users didn’t agree
18. Twitter in 10 tweets: The social network is celebrating 10 years of letting folks share their thoughts in 140 characters or fewer. Here are the moments that stand out.

CREATIVITY

1. Copyright Board Ruling Strikes Fair Balance in Heated Education Fight (Michael Geist)
2. The Copyright Board’s K-12 Tariff: Good, Bad, Retroactive, Mandatory? A Seven Year Itch? (Howrad Knopf)
3. False Alarms: Examining the Misleading Claims About the State of Canadian Publishers (Michael Geist)
4. The ‘Monkey Selfie’ Monkey Just Filed an Appeal
5. Amazon Defeats Lawsuit Over ‘A Gronking To Remember’ Book Cover (Eric Goldman)
6. As Predicted, Elsevier’s Attempt To Silence Sci-Hub Has Increased Public Awareness Massively
7. Jim Balsillie: Canada’s intellectual property red tape holding the country back from innovating
8. Princess Cruises Faces Lawsuit Over Barry Manilow Concert Broadcasts
9. Authoritarian hold music: How Donald Trump’s banal playlist cultivates danger at his rallies
10. Donald Trump Thinks Hulk Hogan/Gawker Jury Award Is Good For His Plans To ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws
11. Supreme Court: 8 Potential Cases That Would Impact Entertainment and Media

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Canadian Cable Companies Make A Mockery Of Government’s Push For Cheaper TV
2. CRTC flooded with complaints about new $25 skinny basic TV package: The commission has already received nearly 600 complaints about the mandated TV deals
3. John Doyle: Canadian TV is a place of squalor and neglect
4. FCC’s cable box rules won’t prohibit extra ads around TV channels: Ban unneeded as companies like TiVo “are not disrupting advertising,” FCC says.
5. Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Charges Fly in TV Distribution Fights
6. T-Mobile and YouTube compromise on video throttling and zero-rating: YouTube joins Binge On, videos won’t count against T-Mobile data caps.
7. Prison phone company says rate caps will make inmates angry and dangerous: Confusion about prices could lead to damage in prisons, CEO tells court.
8. Despite Gigabit Hype, U.S. Broadband’s Actually Getting Less Competitive Than Ever
9. FCC Chairman Calls For New Consumer Privacy Regulations Of Internet Service Providers
10. Why Tom Wheeler rejected broadband price caps and last-mile unbundling: FCC chairman has hammered ISPs, but he could have gone even further.
11. Tennessee kills muni-broadband expansion bill after AT&T opposition: Lawmakers caved to lobbyists, disappointed rep says.
12. ISPs Are Blocking Google Fiber’s Access To Utility Poles In California
13. AT&T Uses Binding Arbitration Mouse Print To Kill Throttling Class Action
14. Government announces media ownership law changes: The changes recognise that traditional media platforms need greater freedom to restructure and rescale the ownership of their businesses to respond to competition from new forms of media. (Australia)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Hulk Hogan Awarded $115 Million in Privacy Suit Against Gawker
2. $115 million verdict in Hulk Hogan sex-tape lawsuit could wipe out Gawker – Hogan’s lawyer: Gawker editor was “playing God” with my client’s privacy.
3. Facebook’s ad platform now guesses at your race based on your behaviour: Company profiles users so Facebook can sell against their “ethnic affinity.”
4. Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling: It just wants to assign you an “ethnic affinity” based on what you do and like.
5. Another FBI Filing on the San Bernardino iPhone Case (Bruce Schneier)
6. Apple Tells Court That The DOJ Is Lying About It Advertising The Fact That Encryption Keeps Out Law Enforcement
7. US government pushed tech firms to hand over source code: Obtaining a company’s source code makes it radically easier to find security flaws and vulnerabilities for surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.
8. US Government Has Apparently Demanded, And Obtained, Tech Companies’ Source Code In The Past
9. Apple’s VP Of Software Engineering: No, We Have Never Given A Backdoor To Any Government
10. Apple Encryption Engineers, if Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
11. How Apple Could Lose By Winning: The DOJ’s Next Move Could Be Worse
12. Former Presidential Cybersecurity ‘Czar’ Slams DOJ/FBI For Its Position On Apple Encryption
13. Apple defends crypto fight against government during launch event – Cook: “We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government.”
14. FBI says it might be able to break into seized iPhone, judge cancels order to aid decryption: “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance of Apple.”
15. DOJ To Court: Hey, Can We Postpone Tomorrow’s Hearing? We Want To See If We Can Use This New Hole To Hack In
16. Apple gets short-term win, but new mysterious FBI unlocking method looms
17. Government keeping its method to crack San Bernardino iPhone ‘classified’
18. Gov’t accidentally publishes target of Lavabit probe: It’s Snowden
19. Apparent Redaction Failure Leads To Government Confirming Target Of Lavabit Investigation
20. We need stronger limits on Apple-style court orders
21. Burner phones, not encryption, kept Paris terrorists off the authorities’ radar: Terrorists not using encryption undermines gov’t calls for it to be backdoored, weakened.
22. French Police Report On Paris Attacks Shows No Evidence Of Encryption… So NY Times Invents Evidence Itself
23. Google Searches & Jury Selection: What Role Should Social Media Have in Voir Dire?

jon

GAMES

1. Judge Allows Lindsay Lohan to Advance in ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Lawsuit: The actress says the game publisher used her image in violation of New York civil rights laws.
2. Conspiracy Theories Over Steam Game Suddenly Crashing Wrong; Just More Broken Anti-Piracy Code
3. French politics places hard regulations over the esports industry
4. Kim Kardashian banks $80 million from Glu Mobile’s game
5. 16 years later, Blizzard is still patchingDiablo II: New update helps the game run on modern operating systems
6. Fake ‘Minecraft’ app puts spotlight on coding marketplaces that are “fuelling pirate community on app stores”
7. How free-to-play has evolved game marketing
8. Supercell books record sales of over €2bn for 2015
9. Riot Games acquires Radiant Entertainment
10. Nexon to acquire Big Huge Games
11. Paradox-Ruffian partnership “amicably terminated”
12. Steam Early Access is hitting its stride – EEDAR
13. Microsoft needs to clearly articulate its vision for PC gaming
14. Xbox Live adds cross-network multiplayer: Microsoft allowing developers to make Xbox One games that can connect with other console networks
15. Why Microsoft is finally pushing for cross-platform online gaming: The Xbox One can’t afford to lock out competing consoles, and gamers stand to benefit.
16. Xbox indie gaming opens the door to playing against PlayStation owners: MonoGame is also welcomed to the Xbox One, finally filling the XNA hole.
17. The Division Isn’t Just Ubisoft’s Next Game, It’s The Company’s Future
18. Ubisoft calls The Division a record breaker: Doesn’t share numbers, but says its first 24 hours are unprecedented
19. Inside the new book, ‘Sex, Drugs and Cartoon Violence: My Decade as a Video Game Journalist’VR devs call for restraint on horror games and jump scares
20. My virtual living room: Setting up a social VR space in the house – Drilling, furniture-clearing, ceiling-testing, and Pictionary hacking.
21. PlayStation VR surprises with $399 price point
22. Crytek announces CryEngine 5, adopts “pay what you want” model
23. Group Explorations of User-Generated Worlds with VRChat
24. “Our brains essentially are always screwing with us”: Radial Games’ Dr. Kimberly Voll tells devs the weird ways our brains work, and how that can be used (or abused) in VR
25. You Don’t Have as Much Control in Videogames as You Think
26. Google’s AI beats world Go champion in first of five matches
27. Google AI goes 3-0, wins Go match against Lee Se-dol: The last two games will still be played, but DeepMind’s AlphaGo has officially won.
28. In the Age of Google DeepMind, Do the Young Go Prodigies of Asia Have a Future?
29. The Sadness and Beauty of Watching Google’s AI Play Go

DIGITAL

1. DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis on how AI will shape the future: Beating Go was just the start — DeepMind has designs on healthcare, robots, and your phone
2. You can Google it: Supreme Court of Canada grants leave to appeal global injunction
3. Supreme Court of Canada to hear Google Injunction Appeal
4. FTC Announces Settlement With Lord & Taylor After Accusing Retailer of Deceptive Advertising
5. Google loses appeal against Russian search engine over Android bundling: Search and ad giant has to tweak contracts with smartphone makers in the country.
6. Microsoft upgraded users to Windows 10 without their OK
7. Baltimore school cops charged with beating boy after video goes online
8. Don’t Post About Me on Social Media, Children Say
9. Customer Loses Suit Over Employees’ Disparaging Facebook Posts–Howard v. Hertz
10. Google Defeats Lawsuit Over Duplicate Content Penalty–D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone
11. New Zealand Expert paper #7 TPPA: Intellectual Property and Information Technology
12. White House’s Claims that the TPP Would Curb Internet Censorship are Fantasy (EFF)
13. Man accused of jamming passengers’ cell phones on Chicago subway: Windy City commuters were complaining for months about dropped phone service.
14. Big-name sites hit by rash of malicious ads spreading crypto ransomware
15. Searching Places Unknown: Law Enforcement Jurisdiction on the Dark Web (Ahmed Ghappour)
16. Inside Instacart’s fraught and misguided quest to become the Uber of groceries
17. The creepy, inescapable advertisements that could define virtual reality
18. The Intersection of Big Data and Antitrust Law − Finally a Case in the EU 
19. Adobe issues emergency patch for actively exploited code-execution bug: Critical bug was used to take control of vulnerable computers.
20. Botched Java patch leaves millions vulnerable to 30-month-old attack: Oracle said the flaw was fixed. Newly released exploit code shows otherwise.
21. Is Twitter Making Us More Productive?
22. Why we use adblockers: ‘We need to have more control over what we’re exposed to’
23. Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1: We may be on the verge of creating a new life form, one that could mark not only an evolutionary breakthrough, but a potential threat to our survival as a species
24. Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 2: Self-driving cars, war outsourced to robots, surgery by autonomous machines – this is only the beginning
25. The Early History Of The Streaming Media Industry and The Battle Between Microsoft & Real
26. Internet of Things Bill Introduced 
27. Anti-swatting Representative leads first-ever SXSW Online Harassment Summit
28. SPJ ‘president-elect’ headlines SXSW panel about gaming
29. The disturbingly simple way dozens of celebrities had their nude photos stolen

CREATIVITY

1. Americans scooping up key jobs on Canadian film sets thanks to new rules from Ottawa
2. There Are Many, Many Things the Chinese Communist Party Doesn’t Want Shown on TV
3. Russia’s Paranoid Patriotism Gets a Cartoon Movie
4. Harry Potter Author Offends Native American Scholars With New Story 
5. Free Speech Protection for Critical Online Review
6. ‘Happy Birthday’ settlement terms made public
7. The Mass-Market Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird Is Dead: Harper Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the inexpensive paperback edition that was popular with schools.
8. Music Licensing Shop Harry Fox Agency Appears To Be Scrambling To Fix Its Failure To Properly License Songs
9. Can’t Make This Up: Paramount Says Star Trek Fan Flick Violates Copyright On Klingon And ‘Uniform With Gold Stars’
10. Paramount, CBS list the ways Star Trekfanfic Axanar infringes copyright: Suit cites Warp Drive, Klingon High Council, Uniform with Gold Shirt, more.
11. The Gloves Are Off: Competing Biopics Battle For Hollywood Purse 
12. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine: copyright preempts Dirty Dancing trademark claim (Rebecca Tushnet)
13. ESPN Sends Cease & Desist Letter To Barstool Sports Over “Pardon My Take” Podcast
14. Middle Earth Enterprises Attempts To Block Wine Importer From Using The Word ‘Hobbit’
15. Glee Spins Us Wrong Way Round
16. The Registrability of the Trademark Consisting of an Acronym
17. Professor Rebecca Tushnet Says the CAFC’s Reasoning in In re Tam Was Wrong 
18. The First Amendment Walks Into A Bar: Trademark Registration And Free Speech (Rebecca Tushnet)
19. Supreme Court Declines To Hear Batmobile Copyright Case
20. Supreme Court won’t tinker with ruling giving copyright to the Batmobile: The Batmobile is for Batman and Robin, unless you get a license from DC Comics.
21. Should All Research Papers Be Free?
22. Silicon Valley writer: The show’s lack of diversity is accurate
23. The price of Hollywood whitewashing: How this complex drama about a Latina woman became just another Keanu Reeves cop movie: I watched “Daughter of God,” the original film that was mangled beyond recognition into “Exposed”
24. The Saga of Kesha, Dr. Luke and a Mother’s Fight: ‘He Almost Destroyed Us’ 
25. Ai Weiwei brings white grand piano to muddy refugee field 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. ‘Skinny Basic’ Cable Will Reduce Consumer Choice? Claim Earns Rating Of ‘Some Baloney’
2. “Drop Comcast today,” Yankees network tells baseball fans: Comcast won’t pay for Yankees games, so network urges viewers to switch.
3. ISPs won’t be allowed to serve targeted ads without customers’ permission: FCC chair proposes new privacy rules for fixed and mobile broadband.
4. Broadband Industry Has A Hissy Fit As FCC Unveils Some Fairly Basic New Broadband Privacy Protections
5. Canada lags U.S. privacy rules for ISPs
6. You Didn’t Notice It, But Google Fiber Just Began the Golden Age of High Speed Internet Access: Its “dark fiber” project in Huntsville creates a model that might finally thrust US Internet access into the 21st Century (Susan Crawford)
7. Verizon to Pay Nearly $1.4M Over Use of ‘Supercookie’
8. FCC Fines Verizon Wireless US$1.35 Million for Use of Tracking Cookies Without Consent
9. 5 Things You Should Know About the FCC’s Proposed Privacy Rules: It stops Verizon’s zombie cookie in its tracks, but allows AT&T to keep charging customers extra if they want privacy.
10. There Are Many, Many Things the Chinese Communist Party Doesn’t Want Shown on TV
11. Why Russian Television Said Nothing When a Nanny Beheaded a Four-Year-Old Girl
12. The Dragonslayer: A year ago, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saved the internet. In this exclusive interview, he tells us what’s next.
13. The Cord Cutting The Pay TV Sector Keeps Saying Isn’t Happening — Keeps Happening
14. How Donald Trump Proves the Equal Time Rule Is a Joke

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. China is building a big data platform for “precrime”: Using online profile and movements, government aims to catch “terrorists” in advance.
2. We Now Have Algorithms To Predict Police Misconduct: Will police departments use them?
3. France votes to penalize companies for refusing to decrypt devices, messages: But UN official warns: “Without encryption tools, lives may be endangered.”
4. Where European countries stand on privacy versus security
5. UN tells UK to “desist from setting a bad example” with Snooper’s Charter: Says Investigatory Powers Bill “runs counter” to key European court rulings on privacy.
6. Time for Change: Reform of the Federal Privacy Act
7. In Apple vs. the FBI, There Is No Technical Middle Ground
8. There are ways the FBI can crack the iPhone PIN without Apple doing it for them: Getting Apple to write new firmware is the easiest route—but probably not the only one.
9. Feds fire back on San Bernardino iPhone, noting that Apple has accommodated China
10. Apple General Counsel Blasts Justice Department For Crazy Filing
11. We Read The DOJ’s Latest Apple Filing To Highlight All Of Its Misleading Claims
12. DOJ Keeps Pointing To A ‘3 Factor Test’ In Its Cases Against Apple; Except No Such ‘Test’ Exists
13. Obama weighs in on Apple v. FBI: “You can’t take an absolutist view”
14. President Obama Is Wrong On Encryption; Claims The Realist View Is ‘Absolutist’
15. Former cyber czar says NSA could crack the San Bernadino shooter’s phone: Richard Clarke tells NPR that the FBI just wants precedent and could have data already.
16. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Encryption
17. John Oliver explains why iPhone encryption debate is no joking matter: Comedian dissects FBI technical and legal fallacies without lionizing Apple.
18. John Oliver Explains Why You Should Side With Apple Over The FBI Better Than Most Journalists
19. Florida sheriff pledges to arrest CEO Tim Cook if Apple resists crypto cooperation: If Apple wouldn’t comply with a court order, sheriff vows: “I’ll lock the rascal up.”
20. Apple fires back: “Government is adept at devising new surveillance techniques”: In final filing before hearing, Apple says gov’t hasn’t shown “necessity.”
21. Apple’s Response To DOJ: Your Filing Is Full Of Blatantly Misleading Claims And Outright Falsehoods
22. Senator Lindsey Graham Finally Talks To Tech Experts, Switches Side In FBI V. Apple Fight
23. FBI v. Apple is a security and privacy issue. What about civil rights? – Jesse Jackson: “Activities of civil rights organizations and activists” at stake.
24. White House Begins To Realize It May Have Made A Huge Mistake In Going After Apple Over iPhone Encryption
25. John McAfee tells Ars he’s fighting a lonely battle, but that he’s not lying: The dangers of government overreach are real—and he just wants you to see them.
26. Encrypted WhatsApp messages frustrate new court-ordered wiretap: DOJ and Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, may clash just like in iPhone case.
27. Facebook, Google and WhatsApp plan to increase encryption of user data: Spurred on by Apple’s battles against the FBI, some of tech’s biggest names are to expand encryption of user data in their services, the Guardian can reveal
28. Go ahead, make some free, end-to-end encrypted video calls on Wire: Switzerland-based startup trumpets its strong security and pro-privacy stance.
29. Google says it won’t Google jurors in upcoming Oracle API copyright trial: Oracle worried Google might research jurors’ Gmail, ad-viewing, browsing history.
30. Surveillance and Our Addiction to Exposure

jon

GAMES

1. Nintendo fends off Wii Remote patent suit appeal
2. Rage Against The Convoluted ‘Rage’ Trademark Dispute
3. Developer alleges China-based Eyogame Studio stole his iOS game
4. Microsoft wants to monopolise games development on PC. We must fight it: Microsoft is looking to dominate the games industry ecosystem with its aggressive new UWP initiative. Developers must oppose this, or else cede control of their titles
5. Epic CEO: “Universal Windows Platform can, should, must, and will die” – UWP first step towards “locking down the consumer PC ecosystem,” says Tim Sweeney.
6. An upgradable Xbox One? Think this one through, Microsoft: Despite what it says, the rules of the PC market won’t fly on console.
7. Lionhead shutdown shines a light on Microsoft Studios: First-party development for Xbox One has slowed to a trickle; does Microsoft’s third-party focus see Xbox as part of the Windows 10 ecosystem
8. EA’s Ultimate Team earning around $650 million a year
9. Yahoo launches eSports site
10. Most gamers not interested in VR in 2016 – report
11. Superdata cuts VR forecast by 30%
12. HTC warns: Don’t sit on imaginary VR furniture when using the Vive – Also, have a friend on hand so you don’t trip over your cat. Seriously.
13. Activision won’t have an E3 booth this year
14. No E3 booths for Disney, Wargaming
15. Why are some of gaming’s biggest publishers abandoning E3?: Wargaming, Disney join EA and Activision in sitting out the show.
16. Activision, Riot among Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”
17. Can a new CEO fix Zynga, which has lost nearly $1 billion since 2008?
18. Valve notifies Steam users affected by Christmas breach…
19. Steam user reviews can be bought for $5 – Report
20. Kickstarter funded Bear Simulator abandoned by its creator
21. Successful $100,000 Kickstarter Dev Calls It Quits Due To Drama
22. Feminist Frequency and Crash Override Network announce partnership
23. Iran Joins The Using Video Game Footage To Pump Up Your Own Military’s Reputation Arms Race
24. Publisher Hachette launches gamebook format: “Our first gamebook utilizes gameplay from the BAFTA winning New Star Soccer”
25. SEC goes after principals in 38 Studios loan deal
26. Wells Fargo Sued For Being A (Shady) Shill For Curt Schilling

DIGITAL

1. CSS and HTML Code May Be Copyrightable–Media.net v. Netseer
2. Apple must pay $450 million as Supreme Court rejects e-book antitrust appeal: Appeals court ruled that Apple knowingly conspired with publishers to keep prices high.
3. Reviewing the Fight Against ‘Astroturfing’
4. These are the most hate-filled places in America, according to their tweets
5. New Emmy Rules Open Categories to YouTube and Other Streaming Shorts
6. YouTube Funds Women Video Creators, Teams With U.N. and Geena Davis
7. Supreme Court Refuses to Provide Clarity on Discipline for Off-Campus, Online Student Speech 
8. Using Scraper to Harvest Records Isn’t Fraudulent Access Under CFAA–Fidlar v. LPS
9. Can Software Be Created As a Work-for-Hire? 
10. Biggest patent troll of 2014 gives up, drops appeal: East Texas judge tossed out eDekka’s 168 cases, and it must pay attorneys’ fees.
11. IBM sues Groupon over 1990s patents related to Prodigy: Big Blue also says it “owns” the idea of signing into an app with Facebook.
12. ‘Made in America’ 2015? The TPP and the Future of Canada’s Digital Economy
13. As 4th trial nears, Samsung asks judge: Make Apple stop talking about Korea: Judge refuses “overly broad” request but issues a warning to Apple lawyers.
14. Canadian tech unicorn Hootsuite gets written down by Fidelity
15. Whole lotta onions: Number of Tor hidden sites spikes—along with paranoia – What’s driving the surge in hidden services—is it government tampering?
16. DRM Is Evil, Part 8,492: Nook Pulls Out Of UK, Exploring Options To Let People Retain Access To At Least Some Books
17. Google Asked To Remove 100,000 ‘Pirate Links’ Every Hour
18. Biggest patent troll of 2014 gives up, drops appeal: East Texas judge tossed out eDekka’s 168 cases, and it must pay attorneys’ fees.
19. PewDiePie could win an Emmy someday thanks to new Academy rules: New and revised Emmy categories make room for short-form, online video content.
20. We calculated the year dead people on Facebook could outnumber the living
21. Facebook is eating the world (Columbia Journalism Review)
22. Five Ways Machine Learning Is Shaping The Future of Advertising

CREATIVITY

1. Kanye West caught using Pirate Bay to download music software
2. Adam Levine’s Songwriter Competition Show Under Fire for Requiring Contestants to Waive All Royalties
3. Copyright Suit Alleges Huckabee Campaign Lacks “Eye of the Tiger”
4. The Donald Sends Cease And Desist Threat To Band Over The Use Of His Name In Music And Video
5. Copyright and the US primaries: From Adele to Neil Young, why do artists keep getting Berned by politicians? 
6. She should be so lucky: Kylie Minogue opposes Kylie Jenner’s bid to trade mark “KYLIE”
7. Jimi Hendrix Estate Sues Distillery for “Purple Haze Liqueur”
8. Author Sues Google For Copyright Infringement For Copying His ‘Philosophy’ In A TV Ad
9. Fox News & Fair Use: How Transformed Does Reposted Content Need to Be?
10. Copyright History: The Strange Case Of A Book Authored By Mark Twain Via A Ouija Board
11. Bob Marley copyrights: decision of the Court of Appeal: What do words mean? Back to basics
12. Why the Oscars’ Diversity Issue Matters to All Employers
13. Former N.W.A. Manager Seeks to Save ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Lawsuit: Jerry Heller argues against the idea that he’s a public figure.
14. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Implications for Canadian IP Law
15. Texas Court of Appeals Chops Machete’s Hope for Texas Film Production Incentives 
16. Desperation Shows As Critics Argue That Nominated Librarian Of Congress Is ‘Pro Obscenity
17. Producing in Canada – A guide to Canadian film, television and interactive digital media incentive programs (Dentons)

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Study: Netflix is a major reason people don’t watch network TV – But there are still some broadcast channels that Netflix users watch.
2. Viacom International’s CEO explains why he’s not worried about cord-cutting
3. Canadian Cablecos Dodge Government Demand For Cheaper TV Bundles — By Hiding Them From Consumers
4. Giving Pick-and-Pay a Chance: Why Skinny Basic Is Just the Start of More Competitive TV Pricing (Michael Geist)
5. Public Knowledge: Comcast’s Usage Cap Shenanigans Violate Neutrality, NBC Merger Conditions
6. AT&T to sell DirecTV online—no satellite dish or set-top box required – Still TBD: Which channels are available and whether the service will be zero-rated.
7. AT&T Buying Missouri State Law Ensuring Broadband There Continues To Suck
8. Comcast gets big tax break that was designed for Google Fiber: Oregon law was designed to help Google Fiber, but Comcast benefits, too.
9. Verizon’s “supercookies” violated net neutrality transparency rule: Verizon agrees to $1.35M fine and will make it easier to avoid tracking cookies.
10. Poor Americans will get $9 a month to buy broadband or mobile data: Lifeline program shifting from phone subsidies to Internet service.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Apple files appeal in ‘All Writs Act’ San Bernardino case
2. San Bernardino DA says seized iPhone may hold “dormant cyber pathogen”: He says iPhone might be “a weapon” to trigger some nefarious worm of some sort.
3. What is a “lying-dormant cyber pathogen?” San Bernardino DA says it’s made up: He now says there’s no evidence of cyber doom, wants iPhone unlocked to be sure.
4. Full Brief From San Bernardino District Attorney Even More Insane Than Application About ‘Dormant Cyber Pathogen’
5. Congress Seems Pretty Angry About The FBI’s Belief That The Courts Can Force Apple To Help It Get Into iPhonesSurprise: Pro-Surveillance WSJ Editorial Board Sides With Apple Over FBI
6. We Read All 20 Filings In Support Of Apple Against The FBI; Here Are The Most Interesting Points
7. Feds: New judge must force iPhone unlock, overturning ruling that favored Apple – Prosecutors claim All Writs Act can compel Apple to help unlock an iOS 7 iPhone.
8. Secret court approves classified rule change on how FBI can use NSA data: Sources speaking to The Guardian say privacy measures are enacted.
9. Bye, bye Canadian P.I.?: What Apple’s fight against the FBI means for the protection of personal information in Canada
10. FBI v Apple – how might this play out in Australia? 
11. France votes to penalise companies for refusing to decrypt devices, messages
12. French Parliament Votes For Law That Would Put Tech Execs In Jail If They Don’t Decrypt Data
13. Brazil frees imprisoned Facebook exec who couldn’t decrypt WhatsApp messages: With the help of US tax dollars, WhatsApp upped its security back in 2014.
14. Different Brazilian Judge Orders Facebook Exec Released After Arrest
15. Russian Parents Can Now Get Text Message Alerts if Their Kids Search for ISIS Online
16. Reflections on Bruce Schneier’s talk, titled “Security and Privacy in the World-Sized Web”,
17. These researchers tracked Banksy like a serial killer to reveal his identity
18. Hacker who exposed Bush family e-mails, photos will be extradited to US: “Guccifer” leaked George W. Bush’s amateur paintings, among other things.
19. French Parents Face Fines, Lawsuits And Prison For Posting Pictures Of Their Own Children Online
20. Germany launches antitrust probe over Facebook data harvesting: Data-hoarding giant’s biz tactics could be unfair for users, says cartel office.
21. Google extends right-to-be-forgotten rules to all search sites: That includes Google.com for the first time—blocked via geolocation data.
22. Broadband Industry ‘Studies’ Claim Users Don’t Need Privacy Protections Because ISPs Are Just Harmless, Innovative Sweethearts
23. Interesting Research on the Economics of Privacy (Bruce Schneier)

jon

GAMES

1. PS4 to sell 100 million – DFC: Research firm predicts Sony to hold dominant lead in console space; Xbox One and PS4 revenues to be 50% digital by 2019
2. PlayStation TV over in North America and Europe too
3. Stream PS4 games to your PC or Mac with next system update: PS4 version 3.5 expands the useful feature past Vita, PlayStation TV.
4. Moon Studios CEO calls out console firms for hardware secrecy: Thomas Mahler says Nintendo NX will “just not have any software support” at launch due to lack of devkits
5. Cratering portable sales can’t prop up Nintendo’s business anymore: With 3DS sales declining rapidly, Nintendo needs NX to succeed fast.
6. Microsoft needs to stop forcing console-like restrictions on Windows Store PC games: With the upcoming Quantum Break a Windows Store exclusive, users are up in arms.
7. Rock group says Final Fantasy XIV song is “a straight up rip off”
8. EA abandons “ghost” trademark application: Ubisoft’s objected due to the existence of its Ghost Recon franchise
9. Capcom taking aim at Street Fighter V rage quitters
10. Naughty Dog apologizes for Ubisoft art in Uncharted 4 trailer
11. Ubisoft seeks Canadian investors to help stave off Vivendi takover
12. Gameloft board advises against selling stock to Vivendi
13. Harmonix launches Fig campaign for Rock Band 4 on PC
14. Halo World Championship sports $2.5 million prize pool
15. Valve raises Counter-Strike eSports prize to $1 million
16. Valve boss Gabe Newell fires host and production company after problems at the $3 million Dota 2 Shanghai Major
17. Lawyer’s perspective: A legal evaluation of Riot’s new competitive penalty policy
18. ESL and Intel launch eSports diversity initiative
19. YouTube dominating Twitch in gaming videos – Newzoo
20. Inside the Artificial Universe That Creates Itself: A team of programmers has built a self-generating cosmos, and even they don’t know what’s hiding in its vast reaches.
21. Decades later, players are still unlocking secrets in classic Mortal Kombat: Ed Boon’s arcade diagnostic menus have remained hidden since the early ’90s.
22. You wouldn’t be able to pause your video games today without Jerry Lawson: Lawson was a pioneering black engineer back when it was even harder in Silicon Valley.
23. McDonald’s is trialling Happy Meals that can turn into VR goggles
24. VR could make games a political scapegoat again – Capps
25. Second annual Chicago Video Game Law Summit set for April 16th

DIGITAL

1. Silk Road 2.0 Court Docs Show US Government Paid Carnegie Mellon Researchers To Unmask Tor Users
2. Judge confirms what many suspected: Feds hired CMU to break Tor
3. Tidal Sued For Unpaid Royalties And Cooking The Streaming Counts
4. Stupid Patent of the Month: 100+ companies sued over “personalized content” – Patent owner says EFF “calls inventors names” to help the “anti-patent movement.”
5. China Imposes New Restrictions on Online Publishing
6. Saudi Arabia Sentences Twitter User to 10 Years in Prison and 2,000 Lashes for Apostasy
7. US military launches cyber attacks on ISIS in Mosul, and announces it: Secretary of defense reveals cyber attacks in advance of ground battle for city.
8. White House Asked Google & Facebook To Change Their Algorithms To Fight ISIS; Both Said No
9. Patreon Moves To Give Users A Chance To Respond To DMCA Notices Before Taking Down Content
10. Can YouTube’s Video Claiming Policy Be Improved?
11. YouTube Addresses Concerns About Its Video Claiming Policy, Promises Changes
12. Top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide • January 2016
13. “Privacy Shield” proposed to replace US-EU Safe Harbor, faces scepticism: Unlikely to satisfy Europe’s data protection watchdogs—or the EU’s top court.
14. Bitcoin Is “Property,” Rules California Judge in Pivotal Bitcoin Case 
15. Machinima Pays NYAG $50,000 Over Undisclosed Endorsements
16. Clickwrap, Browsewrap and Mixed Media Contracts: A Few Words Can Go a Long Way 
17. Prize-Winning Novelist’s Facebook ‘Joke About White Guys’ Is Gone—and Back—in Less Than 24 hours
18. NLRB Rejects Employer’s Attempt to Restrict Content of Employees’ Emails Sent Over the Employer’s Email System
19. Appeals Court Dumps Apple’s Slide To Unlock Patent, Tosses Massive Jury Award Against Samsung In The Trash
20. Apple’s $120M jury verdict against Samsung destroyed on appeal: Autocorrect and “slide to unlock” patents are invalid in light of prior art.
21. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 37: Breaking Digital Locks For Personal Purposes (Michael Geist)
22. Tyler, TX Brags About Its “Friendliness” to Patent Trolls
23. Deadpool face-animation tech now embroiled in Hollywood legal battle: Company hopes to block distribution of films using Mova, a tech it claims to own.
24. Op-ed: The international politics of VPN regulation – Repressive nations are pursuing increasingly diverse strategies for curbing VPN use.
25. Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Resigns Amid a Community Revolt
26. 50 Cent Breaks the Golden Rule of Social Media Posting
27. NY Times recommends ad blockers after CEO mulls ad-block ban: CEO says apps “ask for extortion to allow for ads;” paper says they conserve battery.
28. Can a Blind Person Read Your Website?
29. The nightmare of watching Netflix while battling PTSD
30. Google’s Artificial Brain Is Pumping Out Trippy—And Pricey—Art

CREATIVITY

1. Fairness Confirmed: Copyright Board Deals Another Blow to Access Copyright (Michael Geist)
2. Access Copyright and Absent Universities & Colleges – As the Mandatory Elephant in the Room Patiently Waits and Watches (Howard Knopf)
3. Quebec Court Dismisses Copibec Copyright Class Action Against Laval University (Michael Geist)
4. Why Kesha’s Case Is About More Than Kesha: Lena Dunham + Lenny stand with Kesha, because we will not “accept shame and fear as the status quo.”​
5. The Saddest Thing About the Kesha/Dr. Luke Lawsuit: It’s how familiar it all is.
6. Pop music desperately needs more female producers
7. This is everything Chris Rock said about race during his Oscars monologue
8. Disney CEO asks employees to chip in to pay copyright lobbyists: Letter boasts of beating Aereo, getting TPP—and wants workers’ help in 2016.
9. OMDC Response Confirms Minister Coteau’s Music Fund Claims Inaccurate (Michael Geist)
10. Same Fears, Different Century: Stage Adaptation Of Orwell’s ‘1984’ Still Ominously Relevant
11. China Won’t Broadcast the Hong Kong Film Awards Because of Dystopian Nominee ‘Ten Years’
12. Egyptian Writer Ahmed Naji Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for his “Sexually Explicit” Novel
13. Democracy warning as Canadian media outlets merge and papers close: Federal minister convenes talks as union calls for action over increasingly centralised ownership and publishers warn of threat to public interest journalism
14. Court Beats Down Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit–Beast Sports v. BPI (Eric Goldman)
15. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 38: Limits on Canadian Digital Lock Safeguards (Michael Geist)
16. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 39: Quiet Expansion of Criminal Copyright Provisions (Michael Geist)
17. Canadian Libraries’ Response to Chapter 18 of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
18. Disney CEO asks employees to chip in to pay copyright lobbyists: Letter boasts of beating Aereo, getting TPP—and wants workers’ help in 2016.
19. Statutory rights to terminate copyright grants
20. As Netflix Soars, HBO Comes Under Increasing Pressure
21. 19 Reasons to be Thankful for “Fair Use”
22. MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture (Vancouver Art Gallery)
23. Measuring Creativity: Learning from Innovation Measurement (WIPO)

 COMMUNICATIONS

1. Bell tells staff to downplay new $25 basic TV package ordered by CRTC: Company is trying to make new, cheap TV package unattractive, Bell employee believes
2. CBS Broadcasting Inc. v. FilmOn.com, Inc.
3. ‘Wireless propaganda’ and the lame denials it inspires: Cellphone industry supporters and executives are trumpeting price studies that don’t mean anything. (Peter Nowak)
4. Canada Forcing Cheaper, More Flexible Pricing On TV Industry March 1. Will It Work?
5. Will ‘skinny packages’ tempt cable customers to stay connected?: Cheaper TV packages, ‘pick-and-pay’ channels available today
6. FCC ‘Probing’ Whether Cable Companies Have Sabotaged Internet Video
7. AT&T gave $62K to lawmakers months before vote to limit muni broadband: Missouri bill would make it difficult for cities to offer Internet service.
8. AT&T Sues To Keep Google Fiber Competition Out Of Louisville
9. AT&T sues Louisville to stop Google Fiber from using its utility poles: Lawsuit could delay Google construction, give AT&T head start in fiber race.
10. When Comcast’s Business As Usual Turns Out to Limit Minority Access: What happens when a plutocrat’s “rational” decisions wind up affecting minority areas? Take a look at Hartford.
11. One year later, net neutrality still faces attacks in court and Congress: FCC’s Title II and muni broadband rulings face uncertain future.
12. Like the Internet itself, this policy debate should be open
13. It took Verizon seven months to fix Internet outage in NYC building
14. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 40: Mobile Roaming Promises Unfulfilled (Michael Geist)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Apple prevails in pre-San Bernardino forced iPhone unlock case in New York: All Writs Act can’t be used to achieve legislative goal that US Congress hasn’t granted.
2. Apple prevails in forced iPhone unlock case in New York court – Ruling: All Writs Act can’t be used to achieve goal that Congress hasn’t granted.
3. Judge In Different Apple Case Says That All Writs Act Doesn’t Mean Apple Needs To Help Feds Break Into Phone
4. Federal Judge Says Third Party Doctrine A Perfectly ‘Good Law;’ No Warrants Needed To Obtain Cell Location Records
5. Why the FBI’s Apple iPhone Demands Are Rotten to the Core (Michael Geist)
6. We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology: Apple’s battle with the FBI is not about privacy v security, but a conflict created by the US failure to legitimately oversee its security service post Snowden (Yochai Benkler)
7. Forcing Apple to Hack That iPhone Sets a Dangerous Precedent (Darrell Issa)
8. Bill Gates refutes reports that he sided with FBI in Apple privacy fight
9. Police chief: There’s a “reasonably good chance” not much is on seized iPhone – Top San Bernardino cop tells NPR there’s “low probability” unlocking it will reveal more.
10. John McAfee better prepare to eat a shoe because he doesn’t know how iPhones work
11. Apple tells court it would have to create “GovtOS” to comply with ruling: Claims in 65-page motion to vacate that it would have to build on-site FBI forensic lab.
12. What’s At Stake In Apple/FBI Fight: Who Gets To Set The Rules That Govern Your Privacy & Security
13. Apple CEO prepared to fight the FBI all the way to the Supreme Court
14. The technology at the heart of the Apple-FBI debate, explained (Christopher Soghoian)
15. FBI vs. Apple Establishes a New Phase of the Crypto Wars (Dan Froomkin & Jenna McLaughlin)
16. Preliminary thoughts on the Apple iPhone order in the San Bernardino case: Part 3, the policy question (Orin Kerr)
17. FBI is asking courts to legalize crypto backdoors because Congress won’t: The most lawmakers have done is float bill to create a “commission” to study issueApple’s encryption fight against the U.S. government could spill into Canada
18. Why Canada isn’t having a policy debate over encryption
19. Want To Report A Dangerous Drug Dealer? Just Enter Your Personal Info Into The DEA’s Unsecured Webform
20. Most software already has a “golden key” backdoor: the system update – Software updates are just another term for cryptographic single-points-of-failure.
21. Courts, DOJ: Using Tor Doesn’t Give You A Greater Expectation Of Privacy
22. WikiLeaks Publishes NSA Target List (Bruce Schneier)
23. Why Don’t Tech Reviews Discuss Gadget Security and Privacy? (Dan Gillmor)
24. Online Privacy and the Invisible Market for Our Data (Rebecca Lipman)
25. South Korea Embraces Ridiculous Right To Be Forgotten As Well
26. 8th Circuit finds copyright preemption of publicity claim (Rebecca Tushnet)
27. Eighth Circuit Tosses NFL Players’ Lawsuit

jon

GAMES

1. Seggie c. Roofdog Games Inc., 2015 QCCS 6462
2. Nintendo-claimed video a “crystal clear case of fair use” says EFF attorney
3. Nintendo addresses controversial Fire Emblem Fates scene by tweaking dialog
4. PES 2016’s officially licensed Euro 2016 DLC only has 15 officially licensed teams: Republic of Ireland! Belgium! Sweden! More not included!
5. Percentage of women devs “not good enough” – ESA CEO
6. Vivendi in process of mandatory takeover bid for Gameloft
7. Activision Blizzard-King acquisition closes: Publisher touts “largest game network in the world” with 500 million users
8. Valve and HTC’s Vive priced at $800: VR kit will launch in April bundled with Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption
9. Will high-priced headsets kill mass-market virtual reality in its crib?: At $799, the HTC Vive isn’t exactly at a consumer-friendly price point… yet.
10. The CW takes a gamble on primetime esports, with mixed results
11. Jas Purewal on the business and law of eSports
12. Rulesets within LCS and Global Leagues
13. Do You Sell Games Online? Here’s A New Law You Should Probably Know About
14. Are Video Games Art? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
15. Kojima, del Toro vow to work together again after Silent Hills debacle: Pair of unlikely friends still eager to collaborate after Konami troubles.
16. DICE bait: How open-world adventures took over gaming’s academy awards – Our definition of “Game of the Year” is getting a tad narrow and predictable.
17. ARM: Mobiles will be graphically equivalent to PS4/Xbox One by 2017
18. Smartphones that rival console performance are not a threat
19. What dating a Japanese sim taught me about love
20. Government recommends eight years in prison for Leland Yee 

DIGITAL

1. Court Orders Uber To Control Its Google Search Results (Eric Goldman)
2. Google’s appeal of worldwide injunction to be heard by Supreme Court of Canada
3. Courtney Love Defeats Twibel Claims–Holmes v. Love
4. Actor Can Proceed With Twitter Defamation Lawsuit, Likely to Unmask Anonymous Twitter User 
5. Does it violate federal export law if a website publishes CAD files of firearms?: And does it matter if those files are already available on BitTorrent?
6. Dentist said to hit patients will pay $12k for trying to out YouTube critic: “Psycho dentist” video remains up, and the attempt to remove it was costly.
7. Online piracy: Dallas Buyers Club throws in the towel but the fight continues
8. Appeals court says Apple’s settlement in e-book price-fixing case can stand
9. Copyright As Censorship: Popular Twitter Account Keeps Getting Deleted Over Trollish DMCA Claims
10. Using Copyright To Shut Down ‘The Pirate Bay’ Of Scientific Research Is 100% Against The Purpose Of Copyright
11. Irony 101: Citing Copyright, Sony Takes Down YouTube Video About … Copyright; You can’t make this stuff up – An online lecture included as part of a course on U.S. copyright law offered by Harvard University in the U.S. and overseas has been taken down by YouTube due to a copyright claim by Sony Music.
12. Three Strikes System In Australia ‘Too Costly’ For Industry; Seems Piracy Not Such A Massive Problem After All
13. Posting Vacation Photos To Facebook Costs An Employee His Job
14. This letter got me fired from my job at Yelp
15. MindMaze Raises $100 Million with $1B Valuation for “Neural Virtual Reality Platform”
16. Employers Must Be Careful Using Non-Disparagement Clauses to Discourage Employees’ Negative Online and Social Media Posts 
17. Mozilla, EFF, and Creative Commons call for more openness in trade negotiations
18. Robot Art Raises Questions about Human Creativity

CREATIVITY

1. Fairness Confirmed: Copyright Board Deals Another Blow to Access Copyright (Michael Geist)
2. Secrecy around $30M Ontario music fund strikes wrong notes: Geist – The Ontario government has exaggerated the impact of the first round of funding with the creation of relatively few new full-time positions and limited international investment in the province.
3. Secret Spending & Weak Results: Why the Ontario Government’s Music Fund Strikes the Wrong Note (Michael Geist)
4. Chinese government will ban foreign media from publishing online in China: New regulations will also apply to films, music, and computer games.
5. Facts Be Damned. China’s President Demands Media Outlets Parrot the Party Line
6. China’s young reporters give up on journalism: ‘You can’t write what you want’: The ever greater constraints placed on news reporting by Xi Jinping mean many Chinese journalists see no point in pursuing a media career
7. NYPD Says It Has No Record Of Asking Disney To Use Copyright To Shut Down Times Square Characters, Despite Public Admission
8. Sneaky Change to the TPP Drastically Extends Criminal Penalties (EFF)
9. Quiet ‘Legal Scrub’ Of TPP Makes Massive Change To Penalties For Copyright Infringement Without Telling Anyone
10. NextDoor boots reporter for reporting on police press conference: Chief will hear your questions—if you can prove residency. Does that violate law?
11. Twentieth Century Fox Television V. Empire Distribution Inc.: District court rules Fox’s hit television show “Empire” did not infringe or dilute trademark of record label Empire Distribution because Fox’s use of “Empire” was protected by First Amendment.
12. Kesha Loses Bid To Be Freed From Contract With Dr. Luke
13. Feeling The Burn: Bikram yoga poses are not copyrightable says the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Copyright owners need to act, says Kristen McCallion and John McCormick.
14. Original 1977 Star Wars 35mm print has been restored and released online: There’s no Jabba, no CGI, and Han most definitely shoots first.
15. “Hoverboard” company that had competitor raided at CES backs down: The Chinese defendant lawyered up, defended itself—and wants attorneys’ fees.
16. New study confirms: Hollywood is white as hell
17. 6 white actors who won Oscars for playing people of color
18. The Oscar goes to: Men who play criminals and women who play wives

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Yachts and Helicopters?: Why All Stakeholders Should Be Concerned By Blais’ Blast (Michael Geist)
2. FCC votes to “unlock the cable box” over Republican opposition: Customers should be able to watch TV on any device without CableCard, FCC said.
3. FCC Votes to Dismantle Cable’s Monopoly Over The Set Top Box
4. Looking at the Decision of the Copyright Royalty Board on Internet Radio Royalties for Commercial Webcasters – What are the Issues that the Judges Considered? 
5. Verizon faces probe of falling poles, sagging cables, and infested cabinets 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Feds to court: Apple must be forced to help us unlock seized iPhone: Both sides will square off in federal court in Riverside, California next month.
2. Apple CEO Tim Cook says company won’t build the FBI a backdoor for the iPhone
3. McAfee will break iPhone crypto for FBI in 3 weeks or eat shoe on live TV: One man & his crew of hackers will save freedom by hacking where no one else dares.
4. FBI’s Own Actions Likely Made Farook’s iPhone Data Inaccessible
5. Encryption isn’t at stake, the FBI knowsApple already has the desired key: The FBI knows it can’t bypass the encryption; it just wants to try more than 10 PINs.
6. Google CEO sides with Apple, opposes court-ordered device backdoors: Pichai says US gov’t forcing Apple to “hack customer data” sets a “troubling precedent.”
7. Bill Gates sides with government in Apple v. FBI fight
8. Bill Gates Is Confused About Apple FBI Fight, Makes Everyone More Confused
9. Pew Asks Stupid Misleading Question About FBI Apple Fight, Gets Stupid Misleading Answers
10. The Obscure 1789 Statute That Could Force Apple to Unlock a Smartphone
11. That Apple FBI back door thing
12. Footnote Reveals That The San Bernardino Health Dept. Reset Syed Farook’s Password, Which Is Why We’re Now In This Mess
13. Senate intel chief backs off on bill criminalizing refusal to aid decryption: It’s been a whirlwind week surrounding the encryption debate.
14. Preliminary thoughts on the Apple iPhone order in the San Bernardino case (Part 1) (Orin Kerr)
15. Preliminary thoughts on the Apple iPhone order in the San Bernardino case: Part 2, the All Writs Act (Orin Kerr)
16. The iPhone Writ Large (Derek Bambauer)
17. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Complying with court order is “too dangerous to do”: Internal letter, Q&A lay out Apple’s rationale for fighting court order.
18. The List Of 12 Other Cases Where The DOJ Has Demanded Apple Help It Hack Into iPhones
19. FBI’s Scorched Earth Approach To Apple Means That Tech Companies Now Have Even Less Incentive To Help Feds
20. Court Says EFF Can Move Forward With Discovery In Its Big Case Against NSA Surveillance
21. ‘Difficult to determine’ scope of privacy breach in Five Eyes data sharing: Lack of information about metadata sharing ‘unconscionable’ and ‘irresponsible,’ privacy advocate says
22. ‘Trust Us With More Data,’ Say Government Agencies Hacked By A 16-Year-Old
23. Privacy Advocates and ISPs Spar over Targeted Ads 
24. Australian Tribunal Says User’s IP Address And URLs Visited Are Not Personal Information
25. Avvo misappropriated identity for commercial use, says lawyer in class action 
26. No compelling interest in right of publicity for private figure, 9th Circuit rules (Rebecca Tushnet)
27. Ninth Circuit Tosses Hurt Locker Case
28. Introducing Safe Harbour 2.0: the EU-US Privacy Shield
29. From “Safe Harbor” to “Privacy Shield”: laying the groundwork for a new agreement on transatlantic data transfer with the United States

jon

GAMES

1. Apple Rejects Game Based On Bible Story Due To Content Including Violence Against Children
2. Apple’s Binding of Creativity
3. Hatred Devs Next Game Has You Fighting An ISIS Invasion
4. Bethesda gets appeal of German Fallout 3 ban
5. Yes, you can rely on Amazon’s new game engine during the zombie apocalypse: Lumberyard terms of service features a carve-out in case of reanimated human corpses.
6. Kids, forget console gaming—play the FBI’s browser-based game instead: “Slippery Slope to Violent Extremism” is an awful game unworthy of even pirating.
7. War Stories: What It’s Really Like Working on AAA Games at Ubisoft – Or why I quit my dream job to go indie
8. Zoe Quinn drops harassment suit against ex
9. US game industry pulls in $23.5 billion in 2015
10. Mad Catz axing 37% of staff as Q3 profit dips 10%
11. Play 1,000 Windows 3.1 games for free on Internet Archive
12. Twitch’s Users Watch More Video In A Month, On Average, Than Typical YouTube Users Do
13. Activision Blizzard gunning for NFL-scale eSports revenue
14. It’s Time To Think About Protecting Nicknames In Esports
15. Zynga posts $117 million full-year loss
16. King’s profit and sales fall in 2015
17. Kickstarter “maturation means more money, but not for more people” – ICO
18. Rise of the Tomb Raider wins Writers Guild award
19. Mattel gets Halo master license
20. Who Really Conceived Guitar Hero Live?: A former Activision developer says the game was his concept and he ought to be credited.
21. Headshot: A visual history of first-person shooters
22. Study: As gamers age, their competitive instincts wane
23. ESA mourns Scalia: Industry trade group remarks on passing of Supreme Court Justice who wrote majority opinion in 2011 game legislation case

DIGITAL

1. Women are better at coding than men—if they hide their gender
2. High Schooler’s “Murder” Tweet Isn’t “Cyberstalking”–State v. Kohonen
3. Wikimedia Takes Down Diary Of Anne Frank, Uses It To Highlight Idiocy Of DMCA Rules, Copyright Terms
4. Embattled copyright lawyer uses DMCA to remove article about himself: Marc Randazza tells WordPress that the unflattering story “is not fair use.”
5. Six Strikes gets another extension
6. Dish Agrees To Cripple Its Ad-Skipping DVR To Settle Fox Lawsuit
7. BT ad claims that the Internet was invented in the UK: Surely the telco giant should know the difference between Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee?
8. Viacom and Snapchat strike bigger ad and content deal
9. Microsoft looks to be retreating from EU antitrust fight against Google – ICOMP lobby group’s long-running campaign against search and ad giant collapses.
10. Judge: Google dominance didn’t hurt online maps competitor – StreetMap traffic fell after Google began showing map previews in search results.
11. France says Facebook must face French law in nudity censorship case – Paris court says Facebook cannot mandate that its French users sue in California.
12. Why Journalism is not Dying in the Digital Age (Michael Geist)
13. This woman is sharing millions of research papers online—and making some major enemies
14. Kids will soon make their own toys with Mattel’s $300 ThingMaker 3D printer
15. One Year In: Why A Die-Hard Mechanical Watch Lover Can’t Get The Apple Watch Off His Wrist (And Why That Matters)
16. Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning
17. The incredibly sad world of niche dating apps
18. Moore’s law really is dead this time: The chip industry is no longer going to treat Gordon Moore’s law as the target to aim for.
19. Barry Diller: Data is the new cable
20. Cryptopolitik and the Darknet (Daniel Moore & Thomas Rid)
21. Robot Art Raises Questions about Human Creativity
22. On the Ethics of Online Shaming

CREATIVITY

1. Sony Music Issues Takedown On Copyright Lecture About Music Copyrights By Harvard Law Professor
2. Children’s show in tribute to Frozen cancelled after legal threat from Disney
3. “Happy Birthday” is public domain, former owner Warner/Chapell to pay $14M – Winning lawyer says more bogus copyrights may come under legal attack.
4. “Rime” Graffiti Case Against Moschino Survives Dismissal 
5. It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s…Superdad? California District Court Rules That DC Comics Can Pursue Its Trademark Infringement Lawsuit Against T-Shirt Maker
6. Without Copyright Infringement, Deadpool Doesn’t Get Made
7. Pirates in your neighbourhood: How new online copyright infringement laws are affecting Canadians one year later
8. It’s not just the Oscars. The Grammys are incredibly white, too.
9. Unbelievable: Saudi Arabia’s Vice Police Arrests a “Female” Mascot
10. After Revealing Workplace Sexual Harassment, an Iranian Newscaster Says It’s ‘Time to Break Free’
11. Cross-Border Copyright Guide 2016 (RPC)
12. The Good, the Bad and the Strange of the Department of Commerce’s White Paper on Copyright
13. International Intellectual Property Alliance wants more countries on USTR’s ‘Watch List’
14. Copyright Protection in Canada for Artists
15. The Perils of Going Native: Why Canadians Should Heed US Guidelines on Native Advertising 
16. NY Attorney General Announces 4 Settlements Over False Endorsements 
17. Why student journalists at University of Kansas filed a federal lawsuit
18. What Vanna White, Albert Einstein, and Johnny Carson have in common: the right of publicity 
19. Lights, Camera, Love: From ‘The Dating Game’ to ‘The Bachelor,’ TV dating shows have reflected, and even influenced, how we date in real life
20. Which Comes First in Contemporary Music Technology: the Musician or the Machine?
21. Why messaging is the future of the news brand
22. The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide.

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Why watching online video in Canada sucks
2. Comcast begs Atlanta customers not to switch to Google Fiber – Comcast touts more on-demand video, voice remote; leaves out price and data caps.
3. CRTC CASL Compliance and Enforcement Update 
4. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 29: Cultural Policy Innovation Uncertainty (Michael Geist)
5. Do customers still want landlines? Telecom industry doesn’t want anyone to hear the answer
6. Here’s Why CBS Is The Future Of Television No One Saw Coming (Except Les Moonves)
7. Full Copyright Royalty Board Decision on Webcasting Royalties Now Public 
8. Current Telecom Developments

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Judge: Apple must help FBI unlock San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone – Specifically, Apple must create custom firmware file so FBI can brute force passcode.
2. No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
3. It’s legal for GCHQ to break into computers and install spyware, tribunal rules: Investigatory Powers Tribunal also says “thematic warrants” to hack an entire city are fine.
4. AT&T Does Not Care about Your Privacy (Bruce Schneier)
5. Apple: Dear judge, please tell us if gov’t can compel us to unlock an iPhone
6. ISPs want “flexible” privacy rules that let them “innovate” with customer data – ISPs should be able to choose how they protect customer data, they tell FCC.
7. O2 customers will have their Underground journeys tracked, analysed by advertisers – O2 will sell anonymised bulk data of about 1 million Tube journeys per day to Exterion.
8. Google Partially Caves To French Demands For More Global Censorship Of ‘Forgotten’ Links
9. Internet of Things to be used as spy tool by governments: US intel chief – Clapper says spy agencies “might” use IoT for surveillance, location tracking.
10. Pressure grows to rethink Snooper’s Charter as Labour winds back its support: Opposition’s initial enthusiasm for the Investigatory Powers Bill has apparently cooled.
11. The Limits of Tower Dump Privacy Protections
12. New report contends mandatory crypto backdoors would be futile: With two-thirds of crypto developed abroad, crooks have plenty of non-US alternatives.
13. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 28: Privacy Risks From the Source Code Rules (Michael Geist)
14. The dark side of big data

jon

GAMES

1. Take-Two sued over 2K16 tattoos
2. Take-Two Interactive accused of infringing tattoos in NBA 2K video games: Lawsuit says game maker rejected licensing demand of $1.1 million.
3. Complaint Alleges Copyright Infringement for Video Game Featuring LeBron and Kobe’s Tattoos 
4. The King and his (tattoo artist’s) copyright
5. Is LeBron James a “Medium of Expression” under the Copyright Act? We May Soon Find Out 
6. The Binding of Isaac rejected by Apple due to violence towards children
7. Nintendo and its fanboy – one of them doesn’t understand ‘Fair Use’
8. How exactly did Nintendo change the ‘petting’ minigame in Fire Emblem Fates?
9. Game cracking group takes a year off as a “genuine sales” experiment: But other piracy groups will no doubt fill the gap they leave.
10. Mad Catz chairman, CEO, general counsel all resign
11. Morhaime: “You can’t really distinguish eSports from game development”
12. Kids who played shoot-em-up games in the ‘90s were probably (mostly) OK: Study looking at negative impacts of video games finds small effects.
13. Sony further extends PS4’s console sales lead over the 2015 holidays
14. Bandai Namco sees growth in video games arm
15. Nintendo’s profits drop 30% year-on-year
16. Niko Partners: Chinese mobile market has hit peak growth – Analysts still predict domestic mobile revenues will top $11bn in 2019
17. One man’s strange interaction with Bethesda customer support
18. Just Cause 3 prompts despair among Chinese pirates
19. Glu’s celebrity strategy faltered on Katy Perry, James Bond games
20. Unsung Story development halted
21. Nintendo puts its sleep-tracker plans to sleep: First part of the new “Quality of Life” initiative isn’t product-ready.
22. 22cans makes changes to Godus Wars following DLC complaints: “The extra content being a premium add on really isn’t a popular choice”
23. Chief Justice sells at least $250K of Microsoft stock in advance of hearing: Three justices own individual stocks, and that’s created more conflicts recently.
24. The ESA must adapt or die
25. ESA: SuperData’s critique on us “gratuitous, misinformed” – Rich Taylor, ESA’s Senior VP, Communications and Industry Affairs, responds to Joost van Dreunen’s opinion piece
26. VfL Wolfsburg signs English 22-year-old for FIFA eSports team
27. Sonic The Hedgehog’s Long, Great, Rocky History

DIGITAL

1. BroadbandTV takes over as No. 1 online video network worldwide
2. The Publisher Turf Wars: Facebook Instant Articles, Ad Blocking And The Future
3. Clock ticking for Facebook to stop tracking French netizens: “We’re confident we comply with EU Data Protection law,” says free content ad network.
4. How Does Netflix Pay Studios? What the Streaming Giant Does to Obtain Content
5. Netflix and Amazon’s deals at Sundance don’t make economic sense because they don’t have to
6. Everyone hopes Snapchat can boost LA tech. But is Hollywood holding Snapchat back?
7. Magic Leap Raises $793.5 Million Series C Investment to Accelerate Adoption of Secretive AR Tech
8. Google Can Derive Undisclosed Economic Benefits From CAPTCHAs–Rojas-Lozano v. Google
9. Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks to copyrighted content
10. NBC, Filthy Pirates, Sued Over Use Of Photographer’s Work Without Permission
11. Client’s scathing Yelp reviews net divorce attorney $350,000 in damages
12. eBay has no plans to fix “severe” bug that allows malware distribution
13. Fake Online Locksmiths May Be Out to PickYour Pocket, Too: Odds are good that when you search Google for someone to help you get into your home or car, results will include poorly trained subcontractors who will squeeze you for cash.
14. TPP would be disastrous for Canada’s innovators, Jim Balsillie warns
15. The Woman Who Created Netflix’s Enviable Company Culture
16. Twitter Wants You to Know That It Is Fighting Terrorists
17. Inside the conspiracy theory that Microsoft has rigged the Iowa caucuses for Marco Rubio
18. It’s not Cyberspace anymore. (danah boyd)
19. Fashion and the IoT
20. Google’s AI will battle Go world champion live on YouTube: DeepMind’s AlphaGo will take on South Korea’s Lee Sedol in March
21. Why lost phones keep pointing at this Atlanta couple’s home
22. Just think of all the jokes you can make with this ‘Simpsons’ screenshot search engine
23. 20 Years Ago Today: The Most Important Law On The Internet Was Signed, Almost By Accident

CREATIVITY

1. David Bowie’s Legacy On Copyright And The Future Of Music
2. Will Performance Royalties Create a New Class of Radio Pirate?
3. Warner To Pay $14 Million In ‘Happy Birthday’ Settlement; Plaintiffs Ask For Declaration That Song Is In Public Domain
4. Ridiculous Copyright Fight Still Keeping The Only Video Of The First Super Bowl Locked Up
5. The NFL wants you to think these things are illegal: Yes, you can record Sunday’s game. And you can talk about it.
6. NFL Edging Towards Claiming A Trademark On ‘The Big Game’ Again
7. How Freddie Mercury Refused to Allow HIV to Derail His Art: 25 years ago Queen released ‘Innuendo,’ a return to form that held a powerful secret
8. The Yakuza Are Running Japan’s Hollywood
9. Political Interference? The Culling of Japan’s Broadcasters Culminates in a Respected Journalist’s Ouster
10. Changes to Canadian Work Permit Categories for Television/Film and Performing Arts 
11. Offensive trademarks: can they be registered in Canada and the US?
12. A history of black contestants on ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’
13. The People v. O.J. Simpson Creators on Their Relationship With Veracity and Why All Film Is Manipulation
14. Extremism Threatens Press Freedom

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Verizon’s mobile video won’t count against data caps—but Netflix does: Verizon Wireless tests limit of net neutrality rules by zero-rating own data
2. Comcast Using Minority Astroturf Groups To Argue Cable Set Top Box Competition Hurts Diversity
3. States Wake Up, Realize AT&T Lobbyists Have Been Writing Awful Protectionist State Broadband Laws
4. Facebook’s free Internet app banned by India’s new net neutrality rule: Zero-rating targeted by regulators overseas while it remains legal in US.
5. India Bans Zero Rating As The U.S. Pays The Price For Embracing It
6. Nielsen Plays Catch-Up as Streaming Era Wreaks Havoc on TV Raters
7. Exclusive: With full power at CBS, CEO Moonves sees more aggressive move to digital
8. Toronto City Council Sides With CRTC in Rejecting Mayor Tory’s Support of Bell Appeal
9. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 26: Why It Limits Canadian Cultural Policies (Michael Geist)
10. New EU-US Safe Harbour Agreement

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. UK-US deal would allow MI5 to get chat, e-mails directly from US companies: Concern over “dumbing down” of protections because of UK’s weaker safeguards.
2. Previously tame UK parliament watchdog rips into new Snooper’s Charter: Committee says IPB’s metadata collection is “inconsistent and largely incomprehensible.”

jon

GAMES

1. Take-Two sued over portrayal of player tattoos in NBA 2K16
2. Who owns the word “Ghost”? Ubisoft, EA fight it out: Ubisoft worries EA’s Ghost Games will be confused with “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon”
3. Atari and Haunted House Tycoon square off at upcoming USPTO hearing
4. Sony’s “Let’s Play” Trademark Application Denied For A Second Time
5. Sony is trying – and failing – to trademark “Let’s Play”
6. PlayStation’s move to America won’t change its DNA
7. Sony sold 8.4 million PS4s in Q3: 15.4 million after nine months, already higher than the whole of the last fiscal year
8. Don’t look now, but the PC is the world’s biggest gaming platform: But it’s free-to-play and social gaming that’s driving the most revenue.
9. EA lets slip lifetime Xbox One and PS4 consoles sales: 55 million units combined, minus Sony’s 36 million, leaves 19 million for Microsoft.
10. EA goes solo for E3 Expo
11. EA’s absence from E3 is not a death knell
12. Star Wars Battlefront passes 13m shipped as EA exceeds Q3 guidance: GAAP net revenues were flat, however, and the publisher lost $45 million [UPDATE: physical sales dominated digital for Star Wars]
13. EA: We’re on a “journey to regain trust of the PC gamer”
14. GameStop makes publishing debut with Insomniac’s Song of the Deep
15. Hearthstone’s new formats and the rise of digital scarcity: Old downloadable goods aren’t hard to produce, but they could soon be hard to get.
16. USC to start publishing label focused on “innovative work”: USC Games Publishing aims to become the industry’s equivalent of the MIT Press
17. Blizzard launches Heroes Of The Dorm 2016
18. Icejam raises $3 million to develop “Playable Data” platform
19. MGS V sells 6m, pushes Konami digital profits up by 150%
20. Niantic’s Ingress has over 14m downloads
21. Gameloft will have to return $3 million New Zealand grant: Closure of Auckland studio prompts government agency to “claw back” R&D grant
22. Stump The Trump 2016 lets players squash Donald Trump
23. Survival Island 3: Australia Story 3D game that encourages players to bludgeon Aboriginal Australians to death causes outrage
24. ‘Tomahawk’ class in Bravely Second: End Layer altered for Europe, North America
25. YouTube Personalities Use ‘Minecraft’ to Prey on Underage Fans

DIGITAL

1. YouTube mobile reach ‘outstrips US cable nets’
2. Alphabet’s market cap tops Apple, is now the world’s most valuable company
3. Facebook prohibiting private firearms sales from unlicensed sellers: The company will remove posts reported by its users that violate the policy.
4. Google to divert extremist searches to anti-radicalisation websites: Search engine giant reveals plans for pilot scheme to home affairs committee hearing, with Facebook and Twitter also probed over extremism policies
5. Go, Marvin Minsky, and the Chasm that AI Hasn’t Yet Crossed: An expert in AI separates fact from hype in the wake of DeepMind’s victory over humans in the most challenging game of all
6. Google’s AI beats Go champion, will now take on best player in the world: Google sets a neural network loose on the ancient Chinese game Go.
7. The Internet of Emotions: Putting the person back into personalization
8. Future of VR is social, say Steam VR developers
9. The End of Twitter
10. How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Internet Program
11. Indonesian Carrier Blocks Netflix Streaming Service
12. The esoteric debate that’s tearing the Bitcoin world apart, explained
13. Has a Royalty Change Doomed Small Webcasters?
14. YouTube community ‘reacts’ to questionable trademark filing
15. Fine Bros back down, rescind trademark claim on the word “react”: Claim was for “programs… in the field of observing, interviewing groups of people.”
16. How Two of YouTube’s Biggest Stars Became Its Biggest Villains Overnight
17. The Fine Bros Plan Is Actually Pretty Cool If You Get Past How They Announced It
18. Anti-swatting US Congresswoman targeted in swatting attack: Computer-generated voice called in threat to author of Internet Swatting Hoax Act.
19. What’s stupid this month: Xerox patents sharing documents online
20. DOJ Lies To ‘FOIA Terrorist’ Jason Leopold; Claim They Have No Documents On Aaron Swartz
21. What’s the Legal Definition of a “Social Media Site”? Uh… (People v. Lopez) (Eric Goldman)
22. The Twitter trial you never heard about: Toronto man found guilty of harassing Michelle Rempel
23. Writer Claims Libel, Copyright Infringement When Screencap Of Her Tweet Is Used In An Online Article
24. Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case: “They started the litigation, and it would be irresponsible to not finish it.”
25. Ecuador Continues To Use US Copyright Law To Censor Critics
26. Ruling creates a ‘bizarre scenario,’ says lawyer: A flawed Small Claims Court decision vindicates critics who said digital lock amendments to the Copyright Act enacted in 2012 were too broad, according to a Toronto intellectual property lawyer. 
27. Lawyer facing discipline for internal e-mails
28. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 19: No Canadian Side Agreements to Advance Tech Sector (Michael Geist)
29. Inside The Most Vicious Conflict On The Internet: When the internet’s pit bull obsessives grab ahold of something, they don’t let go.
30. The Tragic Data Behind Selfie Fatalities
31. Wikimedia’s newest board appointment steps down amid editor hostility: In a non-binding vote, 290 editors had asked for Geshuri to be removed.
32. Closing the Tech Industry Gender Gap
33. Hacking Technology’s Boys’ Club
34. Nest Thermostat Goes From ‘Internet Of Things’ Darling To Cautionary Tale
35. First-person drone racing is much harder than I expected: Apparently, strapping goggles to your face is the best way of piloting a drone.
36. Can Robot Racing Win Human Hearts?
37. Tech Companies Are Leading The Rise Of Crowdsourced A&R
38. Will Machines Eliminate Us?: People who worry that we’re on course to invent dangerously intelligent machines are misunderstanding the state of computer science.
39. Surveying Ten Years Of Top Internet Law Developments (Eric Goldman)
40. Modern Grief: Confronting my husband’s digital ghosts—one email at a time

CREATIVITY

1. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 18: Failure to Protect Canadian Cultural Policy (Michael Geist)
2. Hasbro Sued For Font Piracy On My Little Pony Merchandise
3. Monkey See, Monkey Do, But Judge Says Monkey Gets No Copyright
4. Pick A Side: Video Of Creepy Girls Singing To Donald Trump Taken Down Over Copyright On WWI Song
5. Commerce Department Wants To Fix Some Of The Worst Problems Of Copyright Law: Reform Crazy Damages
6. New York Times Sues Publisher Over War Photos, Fair Use At IssueSeventh Circuit: Water Scientist Gagged By Lobbying Group’s Bogus Copyright Injunction
7. USPTO white paper on remix, first sale, and statutory damages
8. Party Raising “First Sale” Defense to Copyright Infringement Bears Initial Burden of Proof
9. The S—–ness Of IP Law Has Taught The Public That Everything Is Stealing And Everyone Is Owed Something
10. For Canadian innovators, will TPP mean protection – or colonialism?
11. State of the Netflix union discussion with chief content officer Ted Sarandos
12. Why ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ Might Be The Most Important Hollywood Movie Of 2016
13. The Future of the Humanities: Reading – As technology advances, doomsaying remains constant.

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Canadian wireless bills: that’s a lot of coffee!
2. CRTC executes another raid in malware investigation
3. New Report To FCC Details How Binge On Violates Net Neutrality
4. Lest there be doubt (Timothy Denton)
5. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 20: Unenforceable Net Neutrality Rules (Michael Geist)
6. Why Canadian Telecom Companies Must Defend Your Right to Privacy (Michael Geist)
7. Ignoring cable industry protest, FCC says it will “unlock the set-top box”: Cable TV customers could save a lot of money on set-top box rental fees.
8. Tom Wheeler fires back at cable lobby, says cable box fees are too high
9. Cable lobby is really mad about FCC’s set-top box competition plan
10. Inside the FCC’s audacious plan to blow up
11. MLB Settles, Leaving Unanswered Questions: Do Sports Leagues’ Regional Blackout Agreements Violate Antitrust Laws?

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Ontario Superior Court creates new privacy tort in revenge porn case
2. Ontario court explicitly adopts new privacy tort: public disclosure of private facts
3. New Privacy Tort: Public Disclosure of Embarrassing Private Stuff 
4. Canada Temporarily Drops Out Of Five Eyes Spying Coalition, After Realizing It Wasn’t Properly Protecting Information
5. Last-gasp Safe Harbor “political deal” struck between Europe and US: Draft EU-US Privacy Shield framework won’t be drawn up for several weeks, however.
6. EU And US Come To ‘Agreement’ On Safe Harbor, But If It Doesn’t Stop Mass Surveillance, It Won’t Fly
7. Interview: Safe Harbour 2.0 will lose again, argues Max Schrems – “Silicon Valley doesn’t rule world. Respect laws in each country,” says privacy campaigner.
8. U.S. takeover of network carrying sensitive federal data raises security concerns
9. How an Overreaction to Terrorism Can Hurt Cybersecurity: Encryption could have prevented some of the worst cyberattacks. Giving back doors to law enforcement will make matters worse (Bruce Schneier)
10. Felon’s lifetime GPS monitoring upheld by US federal appeals court: Burden on privacy “must in any event be balanced against the gain to society.”
11. Feds don’t need crypto backdoors to spy—your TV and toothbrush will do: Internet of Things opens government access to real-time, recorded communications.
12. Uber has started monitoring smartphones to see when drivers are speeding
13. Security And Privacy Standards Are Critical To The Success Of Connected Cars
14. Databases create access to police misconduct cases and offer a handy tool for defense lawyers
15. Employee GPS Tracking – Is it Legal? 
16. Does property owner have the right to shoot down hobbyist’s hovering drone?
17. “Don’t Panic”: Making Progress on the “Going Dark” Debate (Berkman Center)
18. Protecting Children Vs. Protecting Privacy

jon

GAMES

1. Lawsuit against Oculus founder can proceed, judge rules
2. Oculus Faces Messy Ownership Claims Over Its Head Mounted Display–Total Recall v. Luckey
3. Call Of Duty Again Sued Over Another Historical Figure… Who Is A Good Guy In The Game
4. Guitar Hero YouTuber Sings Acapella Version To Get Around ContentID Takedowns… Probably Is Still Violating Copyright Law
5. Nintendo removes controversial “gay conversion” scene in Fire Emblem: Fates – US, European version won’t show female gay character getting drink spiked by male.
6. Yandere Simulator banned from Twitch
7. Nüdtendo series depicts Nintendo characters in the buff
8. EA struggles to secure Unravel trademark
9. Warner Bros. ignores PC players, drops Windows support for Mortal Kombat X: Following buggy PC launch, upcoming DLC will only come to consoles
10. Skype to hide IP addresses by default, protecting gamers everywhere: Comms software has been widely blamed for enabling denial-of-service attacks.
11. Capcom giving eSports a fighting chance
12. Skillz launches new eSports multiplayer platform
13. eSports market to grow 43% to $463m in 2016 – Newzoo
14. PC trumps mobile, console in booming $61bn digital games market
15. Game software to bring in $90 billion in 2016
16. Sony unites PlayStation and Network operations under one division
17. Why Women Now Outnumber Men At The Top US Video-Game Design School
18. Donald Rumsfeld releases first game
19. Minecraft Education Edition: why it’s important for every fan of the game – Microsoft has been demonstrating its new schools version of the blockbuster, but crucially this spin-off could break off from the original Minecraft modding community
20. Virtual reality is about to completely transform psychological therapy
21. Redbubble launches fanart program for indie devs: Studio-curated collections generate revenues for artists and IP owners
22. Canadian man gets $8K refund from Microsoft for in-game purchases
23. Research: Game-Based Learning Can Help Nontraditional Student
24. Gamer reflects on how games helped shape his teenage attitudes towards women

DIGITAL

1. Putin’s top Internet adviser seems to own a piracy torrent site: Site owner is also head of Russia’s Internet Development Institute.
2. Meet the Thai Facebook User Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for Insulting the Monarchy
3. Appeal dismissed; use of trademarks in metatags in this case found not to be copyright or trademark infringement
4. Constitutional challenges bring an end to Canada’s only provincial cyberbullying-specific legislation
5. Judge Tosses Out Criminal Case In Canada Over Twitter Fight
6. Evidence and Social Media: Notes from the Canadian Twitter Trial 
7. It’s Not Harassment To Talk Tough About Your Court Case (And Litigation Opponent) In Social Media
8. Posting Mocking Photo To Social Media May Be Tortious….If You’re Shaq–Binion v. O’Neal
9. Forget TV, Netflix and YouTube dominate kids’ viewing
10. Mozilla co-founder unveils Brave, a browser that blocks ads by default: Brave will replace blocked ads with its own ads, taking a 15% cut of revenues.
11. Spotify Songwriter Lawsuits: What, Why And What Happens Next?
12. Netflix starts blocking VPNs, proxies, and other unblocking services: Australian VPN company reports that Netflix has started blocking its IP addresses.
13. Row erupts over MCN content takedown
14. Censorship in the social media age
15. If You Use An Adblocker You Hate Free Speech, Says Internet Ads Guy
16. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 17: Weak E-commerce Rules (Michael Geist)
17. Wait… we sued who?! Patent troll drops case one day after Newegg’s lawyer calls: Minero wants to tax every USB hub sold, but it will skip Newegg’s house brand.
18. Google paid Apple $1 billion to be the default search on iOS: That number is the latest revelation from the ongoing court case between Oracle and Mountain View.
19. Goldman Sachs Files Patent for Cryptocurrency “SETLcoin” 
20. Three reasons why Bitcoin isn’t dead yet
21. It’s Complicated: How Netflix and Amazon Add a Big Wrinkle to Sundance Deal-Making
22. The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ
23. How the smartphone changed everything, or, the rise of BYOD in the workplace: Since the Blackberry, IT has struggled to keep up with demands for ubiquitous mobility.
24. In South Korea, a rehab camp for Internet-addicted teenagers
25. How a College Student Used Creative Commons to Dominate Political Photography
26. When Virtual Reality Meets Education
27. Wikipedia editors revolt, vote “no confidence” in newest board member
28. The spreading of misinformation online
29. Top 10 Internet Law Developments of 2015 (Eric Goldman)
30. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 16: Intervening in Internet Governance (Michael Geist)
31. Signing vs. Ratifying: Unpacking the Canadian Government Position on the TPP (Michael Geist)
32. Age Of Abundance: How The Content Explosion Will Invert The Media Industry

CREATIVITY

1. NYT throws hissy-fit, sues over use of thumbnails in critical book (Rebecca Tushnet)
2. Vibrant Lives of Afghan TV Crew, Erased in a Taliban Bombing
3. Morocco ramps up crackdown on press freedom with trial over citizen journalism
4. Clinic Works w/Law Scholars to Argue Against Copyright in Legal Codes
5. Why authors don’t need copyright protection long after death
6. Fair Access: Striking the Right Balance on Education and Copyright (Michael Geist)
7. Piracy Can Boost Digital Music Sales, Research Shows
8. Copyright Is Nothing To Joke About
9. Journalism Education’s Big Miss: Ignoring the Business Side
10. How racially skewed are the Oscars?
11. Social Media Slams India’s Judgmental Journalist
12. SpringOwl’s 99 Page Presentation On Turning Around Viacom
13. The Epic Fail Of Hollywood’s Hottest Algorithm: When Ryan Kavanaugh wasn’t hanging out with Bradley Cooper, or leasing a horse for Kate Bosworth, or negotiating a Golden Globes shout-out from Christian Bale, or bringing a baby wolf to the office, he was talking up the sweetest game in Hollywood – the chance to invest in movies that seemed certain to succeed.
14. Can film help save the world?
15. Chinese Firm Now Owns The Rights To Tiananmen Square Tank Man Photo; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
16. France says AZERTY keyboards fail French typists: “Almost impossible” to write correctly in French with a French keyboard, officials say.
17. Nestlé vows to battle on after latest Kit Kat blow in the High Court
18. Transparent and Participatory Processes Are Vital to Creating Copyright Rules that Work for Everyone

COMMUNICATIONS

1. ESPN Pretends It Saw Cord Cutting Coming, Says Departing Subscribers Old And Poor Anyway
2. ISPs try to kill open-access fiber network, avoid competition
3. AT&T CEO Thinks You’re A Forgetful Idiot, Hilariously Gives Apple Encryption Advice 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Phone Companies after R v. Rogers: Constitutional Guardians or Agents of the State?
2. Canadian Supreme Court Tightens Up Rules On Law Enforcement’s Use Of Cell Tower Dumps
3. Almost 12 Years After Calling a Reporter, DOJ Whistleblower Slapped With Ethics Charges
4. Ethics charges filed against DOJ lawyer who exposed Bush-era surveillance: Thomas Tamm exposed “the program” which provided the fodder for a Pulitzer Prize.
5. When You Crack Open The Surveillance Door, The Food Police Will Want Your Metadata
6. Shodan Lets You Browse Insecure Webcams
7. How to search the Internet of Things for photos of sleeping babies: Shodan search engine is a creepy reminder of why we need to fix IoT security.
8. “Internet of Things” security is hilariously broken and getting worse: Shodan search engine is only the latest reminder of why we need to fix IoT security.
9. Ding-Dong — Your Easily Hacked ‘Smart’ Doorbell Just Gave Up Your WiFi Credentials
10. Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA: These so-called “trusted third-parties” may be the most important tech companies you’ve never heard of. ZDNet reveals how these companies work as middlemen or “brokers” of customer data between ISPs and phone companies, and the U.S. government.
11. What’s The Difference Between ‘Mass Surveillance’ And ‘Bulk Collection’? Does It Matter?
12. AT&T CEO okay with giving the US government encryption backdoor access
13. AT&T CEO won’t join Tim Cook in fight against encryption backdoors
14. Why Apple Defends Encryption
15. France Rejects Backdoors in Encryption Products
16. How The UK’s Counter-Terrorism And Security Act Has Made Law Enforcement Into The Literal Grammar Police
17. The White House Asked Social Media Companies to Look for Terrorists. Here’s Why They’d #Fail.
18. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 13: Ban on Data Transfer Restrictions (Michael Geist)
19. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 14: No U.S. Assurances for Canada on Privacy (Michael Geist)
20. The Next Social Media We Want and Need!: Crypto giant David Chaum explains his PrivaTegrity, and tells why it’s so vital
21. Cute to “a little sinister”—the beauty of US spy satellite rocket launch logos
22. Should Animals Have a Right to Privacy?: Some animals are internet stars. Others are subject to obsessive data collecting in the wild. But this visibility comes at a price.

jon

GAMES

1. Activision sued for portraying Angolan rebel as murderous “halfwit”: Family of Jonas Savimbi object to his depiction in Call of Duty: Black Ops II
2. Call of Duty publisher sued by family of Angolan rebel: Jonas Savimbi is portrayed as a ‘barbarian’ in Call of Duty: Black Ops II say three of his children who seek €1m damages
3. Supreme Court will hear Microsoft’s appeal in Xbox 360 case: Microsoft wants the disc scratching class-action lawsuits thrown out
4. Big Fish’s Virtual Casino Doesn’t Violate Washington’s Gambling Statute
5. What legal experts think of Sony’s ‘Let’s Play’ trademark claim
6. Can Sony Trade Mark ‘Let’s Play’?
7. Law Firm Challenges Sony’s ‘Let’s Play’ Trademark Before It’s Too Late
8. American game developer freed from Iranian custody after four years: Amir Mizra Hekmati convicted of espionage over “documentary” war games.
9. Life Is Strange sparks Square Enix anti-bullying campaign
10. Twitch’s #GeekGirlDinner
11. Feminist Frequency announces format change for remaining Tropes vs Women videos
12. Vivendi sells its stake in Activision Blizzard: Former parent company unloads remaining 5.7% interest in publisher for $1.1 billion
13. Analysts cool on VR, eSports: Deloitte Global restrained about growth markets’ 2016 performance, expects mobile to get tougher for devs
14. A final nail in the coffin of cloud streaming: Streaming gameplay from data centres was never a good idea, and now it’s a dead one – but the tech that drove it is helping to reshape our industry
15. The Oculus Rift is Now 4 Months Backordered
16. New Hitman game switches to episodic model: “We fully acknowledge that the decision may frustrate some players”
17. PewDiePie Gets To Be The Boss Of His Own YouTube Network Thanks To Disney
18. ESPN ramps up eSports coverage
19. ESA: People “deserve better” than NPD numbers: Trade group upset that released data doesn’t take digital or mobile revenues into account
20. Kickstarter: $46 million pledged to video games in 2015
21. Real Sports Money Moves Into Video Game Sports?: Investors, some with big-league sports backgrounds, are transforming the most prominent competitive video game league.
22. Duke Nukem actor refused gig as voice of Republican presidential ad campaign
23. Dan Pinchbeck wins Writer’s Guild award: Chinese Room co-founder picks up prize for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
24. Microsoft, Crytek launch educational gaming initiatives
25. Much more than Mario Kart: The history of kart racers

DIGITAL

1. Netflix cracks down on customers using VPNs, proxies, and unblockers: It may affect all VPN users, not just those trying to evade license restrictions.
2. How Twitter quietly banned hate speech last year: Company now emphasizes safety and free expression rather than lack of censorship.
3. Apple axes free iTunes Radio service, directs listeners to Beats 1 instead
4. Access Copyright Demands Higher Royalties Due to Education Investment in Technology (Michael Geist)
5. Big Data Can Be Used To Violate Civil Rights Laws, and the FTC Agrees
6. FTC Issues Report (and Warning Shot) on Big Data Use 
7. After five years of conflict with Apple, some Samsung phone features are banned: The injunction on old phones still irks Samsung.
8. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 10: Criminalization of Trade Secret Law (Michael Geist)
9. The Perkins v. LinkedIn Class Action Settlement Notification Was Badly Bungled (Eric Goldman)
10. PC shipments showed record decline in Q4 2015
11. The Complicated Relationship between DMCA Takedown Notices and the Word “Expeditious”
12. The Dangers of a Blockchain Monoculture
13. Ad Blocking: A Primer
14. YouTube star Colleen Evans gets her own Netflix show based on Miranda Sings
15. NBC Exec: Netflix Poses No Threat To Us, God Wants You To Watch Expensive, Legacy TV
16. Mom and Dad swiped right: Meet the Tinder babies! 

CREATIVITY

1. Croatian cake pirates threatened with lawsuits: If you have Disney characters on your confections, you will be sued.
2. Bernie Sanders lawyers to Wikipedia: Take down our logo, you’re violating DMCA – In today’s political DMCA spat, $10 sticker sales are pitted against fair use.
3. Hollywood Helps Show Why DMCA Takedowns Are Dangerous, By Taking Down Links To MPAA’s Search Engine
4. Judge Swain Rejects Artist’s Copyright Claim Against Starbucks Over Ad Campaign 
5. Metallica Sends 41 Page Legal Threat To Canadian Cover Band 
6. God v. Copyright: Mike Huckabee Invokes Religion In Copyright Suit
7. The use of “iwatch” as an AdWords keyword by Apple does not infringe an earlier third party’s trademark, says the IP Court of Milan
8. Newspaper bosses ‘paralyzed’ by change, clueless about paid content, says Steve Brill
9. ‘Cartel’ Author Don Winslow Responds To Sean Penn: “Call It Anything You Want – Except Journalism”
10. Lego Says It Is Changing Its Policy After Ai Weiwei Controversy
11. Lego Reverses Policy On Block Orders For Political Projects After Public Shaming
12. Disney Stock Crashes Due to ESPN Concerns. Is This a Buying Opportunity?
13. What was the TV channel?: In the midst of cable’s existential meltdown, ABC Family rebrands to Freeform
14. Supreme Court takes up copyright case over resold textbooks—again
15. Copyright Question: Does David Bowie Get The Copyright On Computer Generated Lyrics?
16. A Lesson from the History of Italian Opera: Some Copyright Good/More Copyright Useless
17. Copyright and Creativity – Evidence from Italian Opera (Michela Giorcelli & Petra Moser)
18. in defense of fair dealing (Meera Nair)

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Big Three wireless carriers to raise prices as low loonie takes toll
2. Verizon Wireless selling data cap exemptions to content providers: Video, music, app downloads, and ads can be exempted from caps for a fee.
3. What Washington Has in Store for Broadcasters in 2016 – Looking at the Legal Issues that the FCC Will Be Considering in the New Year 
4. Regulator raises questions about future Internet services as ‘dark cloud’ looms 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Ontario court rules police orders breached cellphone users’ Charter rights
2. Top European court to snooping governments: Mass surveillance needs judicial oversight – ECHR rules Hungarian anti-terror law infringes on basic human rights. Watch out, UK.
3. European Court Of Human Rights May Have Just Outlawed Mass Surveillance Without Most People Realizing It
4. UK Appeals Court Says UK Terrorism Act’s Detention Clause Violates Press Freedoms
5. EFF Wants Cisco Held Responsible For Helping China Track, Torture Falun Gong Members
6. Australia’s new metadata retention laws
7. BlackBerry — Which Said It Wouldn’t Protect Criminals — Assures Criminals Its Phones Are Still Secure
8. Rightscorp agrees to pay $450,000 for illegal robocalls: Class action ends after plaintiffs suffered an anti-SLAPP setback last year.
9. More Data Breach Lawsuits Fail In Court–Michaels Stores and SuperValu
10. Should We Allow Bulk Searching of Cloud Archives? (Bruce Schneier)
11. A Few Keystrokes Could Solve the Crime. Would You Press Enter? (Jonathan Zittrain)
12. Another US ag-gag law outlawing data collection is challenged in court: Bill bans secret filming or sound recording on an employer’s premises.
13. Feds Confirm Cardinals Accessed Astros System With Old Password, File Unauthorized Access Charges
14. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 11: Weak Privacy Standards (Michael Geist)
15. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 12: Restrictions on Data Localization Requirements (Michael Geist)
16. Sean Penn’s Opsec (Bruce Schneier)

jon

Games

1. Will Supreme Court tackle 1st Amendment issue in Madden NFL litigation?: Expression in movies, plays, books, music, and video games hangs in the balance.
2. Virtual Casino Doesn’t Violate California’s Gambling Law–Mason v. Machine Zone
3. Fake Minecraft sequel pulled from App Store
4. Just Cause 3 prompts despair among Chinese pirates
5. Major piracy group warns games may be crack-proof in two years: The never-ending game-cracking battle may be tilting toward digital protection.
6. Nintendo claims fanboy’s YouTube video, fanboy extends middle finger
7. Canadian father gets nearly $8K credit card bill for FIFA purchases
8. “I am not a terrorist”: Muslim man barred from playing Paragon beta – Florida professor shows up on government terror watchlist, can’t sign up to play.
9. Sony fails to secure “Let’s Play” trademark: Refused by USPTO because “consumer confusion is likely”
10. Sony Just Tried To Trademark ‘Let’s Play’ And Failed For The Wrong Reason
11. Luckey: “I handled the messaging poorly” – Oculus founder apologises for pricing shock, but maintains that “we don’t make money on the Rift”
12. Oculus must open the warchest and show us the software: $600 makes Oculus Rift into a platform, not a gadget – and that makes it absolutely essential that Oculus prove its worth in software
13. Oculus: PlayStation VR addresses “a separate market”
14. VR game devs ready for a slow launch after $599 Oculus Rift reveal: Early-bird studios prepared for a long wait before VR reaches the mainstream.
15. Oculus open to subsidizing Rift in the future
16. Oculus founder: “Your crappy PC is the biggest barrier to [VR] adoption” – Luckey says demand will force down the costs for VR’s underlying hardware.
17. A negative-sum game: Policing Counter-Strike: GO cheaters with Overwatch – In battling cheaters, Valve crowdsources the judge, jury, and executioner.
18. Xbox only hurting itself by refusing to share sales numbers: Microsoft’s fear of comparisons to the PS4 is taking focus away from the Xbox One’s considerable successes
19. EA launches $5 monthly subscription plan to access “vault” PC games
20. EA expands US parental leave policy
21. Marc Laidlaw retires from Valve: Half-Life writer confirms departure from studio after nearly 20 years
22. New approach by Valve pays dividends in Steam Winter Sale
23. Early Access angst? Why it’s OK to sell unfinished games
24. GameStop rakes in nearly $3 billion over holidays: New console sales and collectibles drive revenues up slightly; thin Nintendo lineup blamed for lower software sales
25. Report: game industry spent $629.2 million on TV ads in 2015
26. Xbox only hurting itself by refusing to share sales numbers
27. Games dominated the UK’s entertainment top 10 in 2015: Three of the top five were games, digital revenue rose by 17 per cent
28. Writers Guild of America doles out game nominations
29. How a game-playing robot coded “Super Mario Maker” onto an SNES—live on stage: Writing a level editor atop active code with the controller ports and 8KB of SRAM.
30. Norwegian high school puts e-sports and gaming on the timetable: Students will have five hours a week of reflex training, nutrition advice, and game study.
31. Research finds positive correlation between playing action video games and the acquired capability for suicide
32. That Dragon, Cancer: A game that wrestles with grief, hope, and faith
33. Razer to donate That Dragon, Cancer proceeds to charity

Digital

1. Appeals court upholds deal allowing kids’ images in Facebook ads
2. Yahoo settles e-mail privacy class-action: $4M for lawyers, $0 for users – Company won’t stop scanning e-mail for ads, but plaintiffs now seem unbothered.
3. Online Dating Services Must Give California Users a “Cooling Off” Period–Howell v. Grindr
4. German Publishers Still Upset That Google Sends Them Traffic Without Paying Them Too; File Lawsuit
5. European Court of Human Rights Rules Turkey’s YouTube Ban Violated Rights to Receive and Impart Information
6. Why Is The Federal Government Shutting Down A CES Booth Over A Patent Dispute?
7. ESPN Employees Keep Failing To Disclose Their Advertising Tweets As Advertising
8. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 4: Copyright Notice and Takedown Rules (Michael Geist)
9. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 5: Rights Holders “Shall” vs. Users “May” (Michael Geist)
10. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 6: The Price of Entry (Michael Geist)
11. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 7: Patent Term Extensions
12. Living in a Nonmaterial World: Determining IP Rights for Digital Data
13. ProPublica Launches the Dark Web’s First Major News Site
14. The high-tech cop of the future is here today
15. Peak content: The collapse of the attention economy
16. Insiders say what’s going on inside $11 billion Pinterest — and it’s not all good
17. YouTube’s Robert Kyncl says digital video will trump TV by 2020
18. YouTube’s CES Keynote: Four Reasons Why Digital Video Will Win the Decade
19. Before Rachel Bloom was a Golden Globe winner, she was a YouTube star
20. Periscope Videostreams Now Appear — And Autoplay — Inside the Twitter App
21. Streaming Music Platforms Soar, Apple Surpasses 10M Subscribers
22. Netflix says it’s ‘not obvious’ how to limit use of VPNs
23. Virtual reality: A new frontier in journalism ethics
24. Virtual Reality Could Provide Healthy Escape for Homesick Astronauts
25. A Strategist’s Guide to Blockchain: The distributed ledger technology that started with bitcoin is rapidly becoming a crowdsourced system for verifying transactions of all types. Could it replace central banks, notary publics, and manual vote recounts?
26. Intel continues diversity initiative and announces new one to combat online harassment
27. Meltdown at Wikipedia?
28. Inside LaPresse+ Decisive and Final Move to Digital
29. Why Programmatic TV is Still Stuck in First Gear: TV industry slow to adopt digital ad practices, though certain tactics show promise
30. Bill Ford Isn’t Scared of Apple: Henry’s great-grandson explains how the automaker can become a software-driven service company that makes cars, too
31. People call me Aaron

Creativity

1. Court Finds Monkey Can’t Own Selfie Copyright
2. Monkey selfie case: judge rules animal cannot own his photo copyright – A San Francisco court said that while the protection of law could be extended to animals, there was no indication that it was in the Copyright Act
3. No Monkeying Around: Judge Rules That Animals Cannot Hold Copyrights, Do Not Have Standing to Sue 
4. Louis Vuitton Loses Trademark Lawsuit Over Joke Bag; Judge Tells Company To Maybe Laugh A Little Rather Than Sue
5. Why Radio Stations Probably Couldn’t Just Play David Bowie Music As A Tribute: Copyright Law Is Messed Up
6. Once Again, Piracy Is Destroying The Movie Industry… To Ever More Records At The Box Office
7. Hateful Eight Pirated Leak Harms Film All The Way To Box Office Records
8. Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels
9. The Case of the Missing Hong Kong Book Publishers
10. How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain
11. How much election influence does “the media” really have? Digging into the data
12. Devil Music: A History of the Occult in Rock & Roll – From The Beatles and the Stones to Led Zep, Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath, how the dark arts cast a spell on popular music

Communications

1. The Battle Over the Future of Broadband in Canada: Mayors Tory & Watson v. Nenshi (Michael Geist)
2. Zero for Conduct: On the surface, it sounds great for carriers to exempt popular apps from data charges. But it’s anti-competitive, patronizing, and counter-productive. (Susan Crawford)
3. With Fixed Costs And Fat Margins, Comcast’s Broadband Cap Justifications Are Total B.S.
4. T-Mobile Doubles Down On Its Blatant Lies, Says Claims It’s Throttling Are ‘Bullshit’ And That I’m A ‘Jerk’
5. John Legere asks EFF, “Who the f**k are you, and who pays you?”: T-Mobile CEO takes on digital rights group that objected to video throttling.
6. T-Mobile’s John Legere Goes Off The Deep End: ‘Who The F*** Are You, EFF?‘
7. T-Mobile to meet with FCC over Binge On
8. Streaming Video Company Drops Out Of BingeOn To Protest John Legere’s Attack On EFF; It Will Still Get Throttled, Though
9. John Legere apologizes to EFF for mocking group in throttling debate: “I am a vocal, animated, and sometimes foul-mouthed CEO,” T-Mobile boss says.
10. John Legere Just Can’t Stop The Misleading B.S. About BingeOn
11. What T-Mobile Is Really Doing And Why It Violates Net Neutrality
12. AT&T’s unlimited smartphone data is back—but only for TV subscribers: No tethering, and the $100 plan is only for DirecTV and U-verse TV customers.
13. AT&T Is Happy To Remove Wireless Broadband Caps, But Only If You Sign Up For Its TV Services
14. ISPs mad that FCC wants faster broadband deployment: FCC insists that US can do better, with 10 percent still lacking access.
15. House Rushes To Gut FCC Authority To Prevent Inquiry Into Comcast Broadband Caps
16. Settlement Reached In Class Action Lawsuit Against Rightscorp For Robocalls
17. CASL – year in review
18. Canadian Anti-Spam Enforcement 2015: A Year in Review
19. Replacing Judgment with Algorithms (Bruce Schneier)

Surveillance & Privacy

1. Two months after FBI debacle, Tor Project still can’t get an answer from CMU
2. Saudi Arabia Arrests Samar Badawi for Tweeting on Behalf of Her Jailed Husband
3. Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations: Researchers contradict Juniper claim that Dual_EC_DRBG weakness couldn’t be exploited.
4. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo slag Snooper’s Charter: US Internet companies warn that harmful moves by the UK will have global impact.
5. Canadian Cops Can Decrypt PGP BlackBerrys Too
6. The Internet of Things that Talk About You Behind Your Back (Bruce Schneier)
7. The risks — and benefits — of letting algorithms judge us (Bruce Schneier)
8. US Intelligence director’s personal e-mail, phone hacked

jon

GAMES

1. “World of Warcraft” Creator Takes Battle to Court over Game’s Characters
2. $100M Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Settled For…An Apology?
3. Ember settles Machine Zone copycat suit with an apology
4. FTC Closes 2015 With No New Secret Shopper Survey
5. VR sticker shock: How Oculus failed to prepare the world for a $599 Rift
6. CNN phones it in with ‘Internet gaming addiction’ report
7. Activision Blizzard buys MLG for $46 million
8. Report: Major League Gaming acquired by Activision in $46 million buyout – Majority of the cash will go towards paying off MLG’s mounting debts.
9. Activision confirms MLG buyout to create “ESPN of eSports”
10. Garry’s Mod passes 10m sales barrier
11. Steam hosted $3.5 billion in paid game sales last year
12. PS4 sales nearing 36 million: Sony added 5.7 million systems to installed base over the last six weeks of 2015
13. Oculus Rift priced $600, ships in March: The much anticipated VR headset finally has a retail price [Update – Palmer Luckey says Rift “obscenely cheap”]
14. Oculus rewarding dev kit backers with free Kickstarter Edition Rift
15. Report: VR will be worth $5.1 billion in 2016
16. VR installed base to hit 38.9m by year-end – SuperData
17. Playing for Time: A father, a dying son, and the quest to build the most profound videogame ever

DIGITAL

1. Understanding David Lowery’s Lawsuit Against Spotify: The Insanity Of Music Licensing
2. How Spotify Pays (or Doesn’t Pay) Songwriters
3. Homeland Security Admits It Seized A Hip Hop Blog For Five Years Despite No Evidence Of Infringement; RIAA Celebrates
4. French Government Ordered to Adopt Decree providing for ISP Compensation
5. Richard Prince Finally Sued (Again) For Copyright Infringement Over His ‘Instagram’ Art
6. Lumosity pays $2 million to FTC to settle bogus “Brain Training” claims: FTC said company “simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”
7. Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Decision On Fair Use And Right Of First Sale Fails To Budge The Needle On Either Issue
8. Rules of procedural fairness breached by refusal to allow Netflix to be heard on new provisions in tariff
9. UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods applies to certain software license agreements
10. Cisco gets a big patent win despite Supreme Court loss, overturns $64M verdict: Cisco calls the seven-year litigation initiated by a patent troll a “travesty.”
11. How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice: A recent dustup over smart light bulbs illuminates a larger problem.
12. Are Movie Theaters Actually Fueling Piracy?
13. Consenting to Computer Use (James Grimmelmann)
14. Tech Law in 2016: Previewing Some of the Tough Policy Choices (Michael Geist)
15. Online copyright – Hyperlinking and accessibility
16. App Store sees $1.1 billion in sales over Christmas
17. Believe It or Not, YouTube May Spend More on Content than Netflix Does
18. Five Streaming Video Predictions for 2016
19. There’s No Such Thing as an MCN. It’s a Figment of Your Imagination
20. For Many Nonprofits And Causes, YouTube Stars Are The New Guides To Growth
21. The Triumph of Email: Why does one of the world’s most reviled technologies keep winning?
22. Virtual Reality Therapy: Treating The Global Mental Health Crisis
23. The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?: Should autonomous vehicles be programmed to choose who they kill when they crash? And who gets access to the code that determines those decisions? (Cory Doctorow)
24. Turkish Hackers Claim Credit for Hijacking Top Russian Official’s Instagram
25. A Politics For Technology
26. Film vs. digital: the most contentious debate in the film world, explained – Why knowing how a movie was shot is so important before you go to the theater.
27. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 2: Locking in Digital Locks (Michael Geist)
28. How The TPP Is Trouble: Public Interest Explicitly Tossed In Favor Of Corporate Interests
29. Paul Graham is Still Asking to be Eaten: An Obviously Critical Response to Paul Graham is Still Asking to be Eaten: An Obviously Critical Response to “Economic Inequality” by Paul Graham
30. Amazon customer complains, finds spiteful 10-inch dildo in his shopping basket: Watch out: If you provide honest answers in a satisfaction survey, you might be next.
31. Aaron Swartz’s Quest to Keep Corporations From Privatizing the Internet

CREATIVITY

1. Public Domain Day outside the USA: what Canada and the rest of the world get today
2. What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2016?: Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1959
3. Hong Kong Bookseller’s Disappearance Stokes Fears of Cross-Border Kidnaps by Mainland Chinese Police
4. The Adelson forces buy a newspaper, journalists fight back: a journal of my updates on this story
5. Inside Ethiopia’s Self-Defeating Crackdown on Oromo Musicians
6. The First Amendment Protections Afforded To A “Tattoo Establishment” 
7. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 3: Copyright Term Extension (Michael Geist)
8. The Reasons You Can’t Stop Binge Watching: There are psychological and neurological explanations for why we pay so much attention to our favorite shows.
9. The Celebrity Surgeon Who Used Love, Money, and the Pope to Scam an NBC News Producer: When Benita Alexander fell for celebrated doctor Paolo Macchiarini—while filming a documentary about him—she thought her biggest problem was a breach of journalistic ethics. Then things got really interesting.

COMMUNICATIONS

1. EFF blasts T-Mobile’s Binge On, calls for FCC investigation
2. T-Mobile throttles all video streams and downloads to 1.5Mbps, EFF says: T-Mobile’s claim that it’s “optimizing” video disputed by EFF tests.
3. Will the Proposal for an Online Public File for Radio and Cable and Satellite TV Be Adopted Soon?
4. Broadcasters, Others Underscore Need for Foreign Ownership Rule Changes in FCC Comment

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Report: China hacked Hotmail accounts and Microsoft didn’t notify customers
2. Microsoft decided not to warn Tibetan and Uyghur e-mail hack victims: Microsoft feared angering Chinese gov’t. Now it will notify of state-sponsored attacks.
3. House Intelligence Committee Orders Investigation Into Surveillance Of Congress That It Authorized
4. In 2015, promising surveillance cases ran into legal brick walls: Attorneys everywhere are calling things moot after the phone metadata program ended.
5. Dutch government: Encryption good, backdoors bad
6. FTC Wields COPPA Cudgel Against App Developers
7. Parents are worried about the new WiFi-connected Barbie, but should they be?
8. Pew Research Center Issues Report on Attitudes Toward Sharing Personal Information with Private Sector
9. New Year’s Resolution for GCs in 2016: Establishing a Data Governance Committee

jon

GAMES

1. Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? Court Dismisses Video Gamer’s Right of Publicity Claim
2. French Consumer Group Tries To Win Back Resale Rights For Digitally Distributed Games
3. Video game companies are collecting massive amounts of data about you: Haven’t read the “terms and conditions” on that video game system you got for the holidays? You may want to take a look.
4. Valve explains: DDoS-induced caching problem led to Xmas Day Steam data leaks and downtime – 34,000 people may have had their personal data seen by others.
5. The best video games of 2015, as picked by the Ars editors: From epic quests to entirely new sports, 2015 was packed with gaming gems.
6. Ars in 2015: The year in gaming conventions – A visual tour of the most memorable sights we saw during our gaming travels.
7. Using the new Apple TV to emulate classic game consoles

DIGITAL

1. Court Enforces Arbitration Clause in Amazon’s Terms of Service–Fagerstrom v. Amazon
2. YouTube Wins Another Case Over Removing And Relocating User Videos
3. European Court of Human Rights Rules Turkey’s YouTube Ban Violated Rights to Receive and Impart Information
4. Is Ottawa’s cyberbullying law also unconstitutional?
5. SCC requires tech neutrality in copyright negotiations
6. Book Publisher Has No Idea How Google Works But Pretty Sure It Could End Piracy If It Tried
7. Case Law, Canada: Warman v Fournier, Appeal dismissed, operators of website and liable for internet defamation (David Potts)
8. Greater liability for ISP’s?
9. DMCA and the Internet of Things (Bruce Schneier)
10. The Letters of the Law: 2015 in Technology Law and Policy (Michael Geist)
11. YouTube Kids, Disney promise safe online spaces for kids, but experts say buyer beware
12. Yes, emoji still have a racism problem
13. Hashtags, Trademarks and One #ProudMama
14. Diversity report card: YouTubers get the only ‘A’ grade of 2015
15. How Netflix won 2015
16. With 14.4M downloads, Game of Thrones is the most-pirated TV show of 2015: Other top pirated shows: Walking Dead, Big Bang Theory, and Arrow.
17. How The Beatles’ Streaming Marks a Turning Point for Digital Music
18. Even The Power Of The Dark Side Can’t Save Disney & ESPN From Cord Cutting
19. Musicians file $150M lawsuit against Spotify for copyright violations
20. Spotify sued for $150 million over allegations of cheating artists
21. Here are the tech gadgets we hope you didn’t get for Christmas
22. How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982
23. The DMCA Has Delivered Us Into The Hands Of The Proprietary Internet Of Disconnected Things
24. Microsoft patents a slider, earning EFF’s “Stupid Patent of the Month” award

CREATIVITY

1. Syrian Filmmaker Naji Jerf Killed in Turkey After Exposing ISIS Crimes in Aleppo
2. Syria, France most deadly countries for the press
3. Federal Circuit Decision Helps Defenders of “Redskins” Trademark
4. Canada Too Has An Issue With Abitrary Applications Of Morality In Trademark Applications
5. 50 Cent Files Stupid, Hypocritical Lawsuit Over Another Rapper’s ‘Theft’ Of His Song In A Mixtape
6. CBS Sues Over Star Trek Fan Film Because It Sounds Like It’s Going To Be Pretty Good
7. CBS, Paramount sue crowdfunded Star Trekfilmmakers for copyright infringement
8. Woman That Rapper 2 Chainz Called a “THOT” In Viral Video Loses Lawsuit–Chisholm v. Epps
9. Peyton Manning May Want to Consider an Audible
10. Activist-Journalist Reflects on Meeting the Iranian Ambassador at a New York Holiday Party
11. UK: “No rights, no cry!” – Court of Appeal rules on copyright in certain Bob Marley songs
12. 1996 Internet IPO’s
13. TPP’s Forgotten Danger: Stronger Trade Secrets Protection, With Criminal Penalties For Infringement
14. 2015 – The Copyright Year

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Telus will pay over $7-million in customer rebates for misleading ads
2. No blurred lines: FTC delivers clear native advertising guidance
3. Comcast, Which Wanted To Become Even Bigger, Leads The ISP Pack In Consumer Complaints To The FCC
4. Comcast Cap Blunder Highlights How Nobody Is Ensuring Broadband Meters Are Accurate
5. After A Decade Of Waiting For Verizon, Town Builds Itself Gigabit Fiber For $75 Per Month
6. The Cable Industry’s Response To A Banner Year For Cord Cutting? Massive Across The Board Price Increases For 2016 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. FTC Settles with Oracle over Charges of Software Security Misrepresentations
2. How does the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 change the Internet surveillance laws?
3. Exclusive: Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson
4. China’s new anti-terror law: No backdoors, but decryption on demand
5. UK Home Secretary Wants Everyone’s Metadata; But If You Ask For Hers, Gov’t Says You’re Being Vexatious
6. One Of Congress’s Biggest Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Suddenly Aghast That NSA May Have Spied On Him
7. Russian “Right to be Forgotten” Law: Update
8. FTC Imposes Record $100 Million Civil Penalty For Violating Data Protection Consent Order
9. Google slams AVG for exposing Chrome user data with “security” plugin
10. Another Scandal Resulting from E-mails Gone Public
11. Proposed Cybersecurity Disclosure Act Shows Deep Misunderstanding of the Role of the Board of Directors
12. YouTube star Zoella at war with her fans over Twitter plea for privacy – after spotting die-hard followers peering through windows of her £1million mansion
13. If We’re Not Careful, Self-Driving Cars Will Be The Cornerstone Of The DRM’d, Surveillance Dystopias Of Tomorrow

jon

GAMES

1. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. v. Ucool, Inc. and Ucool Ltd., Case No. 15-CV-01267-SC., United States District Court, N.D. California., September 23, 2015.
2. Nintendo Wins Mii Patent Suit
3. Russian man sues Bethesda for ‘Fallout 4’ being so addictive
4. Extra Credits Tackles China’s Propaganda Game Sesame Credit
5. Propaganda Games: Sesame Credit – The True Danger of Gamification – Extra Credits
6. Xbox Live pummelled by DDoS attack; hacker group claims responsibility: Phantom Squad had threatened to mimic Lizard Squad, take down gaming services.
7. Two App Developers Settle FTC Charges They Violated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act: Companies’ Apps Shared Kids’ Information with Ad Networks; Will Pay $360K In Civil Penalties
8. FTC announces settlements with LAI Systems and Retro Dreamer: Devs will pay a combined $360,000 in civil penalties for violating COPPA
9. New Research Suggests Compulsive Gamers’ Brains Are Wired Differently
10. When Does A Parody Twitter Account Constitute Criminal Identity Theft?–Sims v. Monaghan
11. One More Ruling in the O’Bannon v. NCAA Saga
12. eSports still waiting for its big “Supercell moment” (Jas Purewal & Peter Lewin)
13. Turner Is Giving Away $2.4 Million to Gamers in 2016
14. Tencent purchases remaining shares in Riot Games to hold 100% of equity
15. League of Legends now owned entirely by Chinese giant Tencent: Chinese conglomerate buys Riot Games’ remaining equity.
16. Rocket League revenues nearly $50 million: Psyonix’s $2 million bet on soccer-with-cars game is paying off in a big way
17. CastAR to pay back Kickstarter backers: “We want to do right by our backers and think that this is the right way to do that”
18. Twitter hires first ever director of game partnerships
19. Research: opinions on gaming differ among races
20. Staten Island man claims video games inspired his statements to police about a double murder
21. Curt Schilling will not testify before RI House Oversight Committee
22. Japan’s console market: Lost in Transition?
23. The Year that Handhelds Died 

DIGITAL

1. Rightscorp wins landmark ruling, Cox hit with $25M verdict in copyright case: Case marks the first time an ISP has been held liable for user piracy.
2. $25 Million Jury Verdict In Rightscorp Case Raises Serious Questions About Copyright Law
3. BMG Rights Management (US) LLC, and Round Hill Music LP, v. Cox Communications, Inc., United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, December 1, 2015.
4. Bank of America gets Twitter to delete journalist’s joke, says he violated copyright: “I have no way of guessing what the objection was really about.”
5. Judge, siding with Google, refuses to shut down Waze in wake of alleged theft
6. Fox News Heads to a Jury Trial to Defend Its Use of 9/11 Photos on Facebook
7. Netflix, Technological Neutrality, Fair Dealing, Procedural Fairness and the Copyright Board of Canada
8. CRB Announces Webcasting Royalty Rates for 2016-2020 – Lower Rates for Broadcasters Who Stream, Minimal Change for Pureplay Webcasters 
9. Kim Dotcom to be finally extradited to the US, New Zealand judge rules: Megaupload founder promises new appeal in case that’s dragged on for nearly 4 years.
10. 42 percent of cord-cutters don’t even subscribe to home broadband
11. Russian Activist Gets Two-Year Sentence for ‘Calls to Extremism’ on Social Networks
12. Streaming TV Isn’t Just a New Way to Watch. It’s a New Genre.
13. Influencer Marketing: Tips for a Successful (and Legal) Advertising Campaign
14. The end for the Dallas Buyers Club Dispute and Speculative Invoicing? Or is it Just the Beginning
15. UK police busts karaoke “gang” for sharing songs that aren’t commercially available: Three old guys giving away karaoke tunes is now a “commercial-scale gang.”
16. Laws need a technology update: Tim Hudak makes some logical points about the sharing economy
17. How Our Digital Obsession With Artists Has Created A New Blueprint For Success
18. Google’s Move Toward Fair Use Comes In Anticipation Of YouTube Red
19. Amazon UK found selling illegal weapons including stun guns and pepper sprays: Guardian investigation finds third-party sellers and Amazon itself guilty of illegal sales.
20. Nova Scotia Court Strikes Down Province’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Cyberbullying Law
21. Trump Calls For Partial Shutdown Of The Internet, Doesn’t Understand What He’s Saying
22. WhatsApp blocked in Brazil for 48 hours by court: Unknown petitioner gains injunction blocking Facebook’s popular messaging service used daily by 93 million users in the country
23. As Venezuelan economy collapses further, gov’t targets US-based currency news site: Pres. Nicolas Maduro said he’d ask US to extradite “bandits” behind DolarToday.com.
24. The Multiverse – AR + VR + More
25. A Timeline of Fashion’s Early Experiments With Virtual Reality
26. New York Times CEO Mark Thompson says there will still be a print paper in 10 years, but he’s really into virtual reality
27. BBC to machine-translate TV news into Japanese and Russian: Content will still be checked by human journalists before it’s uploaded online.
28. Appeals Court Rejects Prior Restraint In Defamation Case; Could Have Gone Further
29. In a first, East Texas judge hits patent troll with attorneys’ fees: eDekka LLC had a patent that “teaches someone… a new way of doing things.”
30. 16 mobile theses
31. The Star Wars social network
32. Pricing Algorithms and the Digital “Smoke-Filled Room”
33. EFF releases 2015 Holiday Wishlist 

CREATIVITY

1. In the War of Music vs. Terror, Bet on Music
2. When a Quirk of Copyright Law Creates a Christmas Classic: It’s a Wonderful Life and the Public Domain 
3. Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘Who’s On First’ Doesn’t Get Past First Base
4. A dreaded sunny day for Abbott & Costello heirs: play made fair use of Who’s On First – TCA Television Corp. v. McCollum, No. 15 Civ. 4325 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 17, 2105)
5. Famed Artist Jeffrey Koons Sued For Alleged Copyright Infringement…Again 
6. Photographer Sues Artist Jeff Koons for Infringement of Gin Ad
7. Copyright: No Longer a Property Right? (Jane Ginsburg)
8. This season, a notorious pirate gives the music industry an expensive gift: It’s a little machine that’s already “cost” the music industry millions of dollars.
9. Appeals Court Says US Government Cannot Deny Trademarks For Being ‘Disparaging’
10. Are Legal Restrictions On Disparaging Personal Names Unconstitutional?–In re The Slants
11. Asian-American band “The Slants” overturns USPTO rule on “disparaging” trademarks: Federal Circuit ruling arrives as Washington Redskins fight a similar battle.
12. Defendant can’t take advantage of TM abandonment it created
13. Fears for Hong Kong’s Press Freedom Follow Alibaba’s Purchase of the South China Morning Post
14. News: Court of Appeal dismiss Mirror Phone Hacking Appeals on all grounds
15. How “Homeland” Helps Justify the War on Terror
16. The American Papers that Praised Hitler: They fell hard for the job-creating Führer with eyes that were like ‘blue larkspur.’ Why did so many journalists spend years dismissing the evidence of his atrocities?
17. The New Breed of Newspaper Mogul? On Sheldon Adelson’s Purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal
18. Star Wars’ Legacy II: An Architect Of Hollywood’s Greatest Deal Recalls How George Lucas Won Sequel Rights
19. How #BlackLivesMatter Changed Hip-Hop and R&B in 2015: Kendrick Lamar and D’Angelo spoke to the struggle — but so did Black Twitter, the most radical hip-hop voice of all
20. Music In 2030
21. How Art Became Irrelevant: A chronological survey of the demise of art
22. Diverse movies are a huge business. Why doesn’t Hollywood make more?
23. An Oral History of Transgender Representation on Scripted TV

COMMUNICATIONS

1. Shaw Communications buying Wind Mobile in deal valued at $1.6 billion
2. YouTube mad at T-Mobile for throttling video traffic: T-Mobile’s “Binge On” reduces quality to 480p to reduce data usage.
3. AT&T, DirecTV Deliver ‘Merger Synergies’ By Raising Rates In Perfect Unison
4. Comcast customer discovers huge mistake in company’s data cap meter: Comcast said he used 120GB of data while on a multi-week vacation.
5. TPP Ratification Process Grinding To A Halt As Canada Launches ‘Widespread Consultations’ On The Deal
6. FCC Bureau Extends Open Internet Order’s Small Provider Exemption Until December 2016; Table Set for Full Commission Review in December 2016 
7. Is CHCH newsroom now operated by ‘related employer?’ 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. EU Broadens Right To Be Forgotten In Dangerously Vague Ways With New ‘Data Protection’ Directive
2. Final Draft of Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten” Law – Daphne Keller
3. NY Times Warns About Europe Expanding The ‘Right To Be Forgotten’
4. Using Law Against Technology (Bruce Schneier)
5. Appeal In EFF’s Big Lawsuit Against NSA Dismissed For ‘Lack Of Jurisdiction’; Heads Back To Lower Court Again
6. Why The New CISA Is So Bad For Privacy
7. Congress approves surveillance legislation tucked into budget package
8. RCMP pushes for new law to get Canadians’ private information without a warrant
9. The US Gov’t Says Backdoors Are Great For You — But A Serious Security Risk For Them
10. Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication: When going abroad, turn off additional security. What could possibly go wrong?
11. Manhattan District Attorney Still Totally Ignorant About Encryption, Slams Tim Cook & Demands Legislation To Wipe Out Encryption
12. It Must Be Christmas Time, Because Target Is Losing People’s Personal Information Again
13. From Hello Kitty To Major League Baseball, Companies Are Leaking Kids’ Data All Over The Web
14. The Return of the Privacy Injunction? Some Practical Considerations
15. Bahamas man accused of hacking celebs, stealing movie scripts & sex tapes
16. “The Medieval Origins of Mass Surveillance” (Bruce Schneier)
17. More Writings on the Second Crypto Wars (Bruce Schneier)

jon

GAMES

1. Publishers sued over fantasy sports patents: EA, Activision, Zynga, Take-Two, Konami among targets of suits over games based on real-time events and TV shows
2. Washington Post editorial compares Trump campaign to GamerGate
3. Survey: “Gamers” are poorer, more male, less white than “game players”
4. Truth Initiative takes aim at videogame smoking
5. The Game Awards draws 2.3 million viewers
6. Former Square Enix exec calls Konami’s treatment of Kojima ‘bad business’
7. Hideo Kojima’s first post-Konami game will be PS4 exclusive
8. Bethesda joins ESA
9. EA sets up Competitive Gaming Division
10. The Climb Is Crytek’s New Virtual Reality Game About Mountain Climbing
11. Crytek’s Oculus debut of The Climb successfully tackles VR sickness, vertigo: 2016 game may be thin on content but stuns with visuals, welcome VR-platformer twists.
12. Project Phoenix’s backers are in for a long wait
13. Star Citizen reaches $100 million in funding
14. The crowdfunding bubble isn’t bursting: But it’s definitely in a decline phase, says ICO Partners’ Thomas Bidaux in this crowdfunding year in review
15. SAVE POINT: How Microsoft plans to make the Xbox great again
16. Streaming’s dark underbelly couldn’t stall its meteoric rise in 2015
17. The discussion in mobile is over, Free-to-Play has won
18. Riot Games one of Glassdoor’s best places to work
19. Report: Malware Targeting Steam Traders
20. Why Nike’s Using a Video Game to Market Kyrie Irving’s Newest Sneaker

DIGITAL    

1. Court strikes down anti-cyberbullying law created after Rehtaeh Parsons’s death: Nova Scotia was 1st jurisdiction in Canada to try to regulate cyberbullying
2. Germany makes Facebook, Google, and Twitter remove hate speech within 24 hours: German government is trying to deal with the rise in xenophobic comments.
3. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Reassures Muslim Users
4. Trump doesn’t want ISIS “using our Internet”: GOP candidates debate closing the Internet, surveillance, and encryption.
5. SCOTUS rules against DirecTV customers
6. Samsung appeals $548M Apple patent verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court: In a bid to reduce or eliminate the $548 million the company has been forced to pay rival Apple over a patent dispute, Samsung on Friday filed a petition to have its appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
7. Google Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over Waze Data
8. Senate Passes Bill Banning Non-Disparagement Clauses
9. Couple takes pics of Star Wars figure they bought, gets DMCA notice from Lucasfilm: Legal action stems from an apparent early release at an Iowa Wal-Mart.
10. Disney drops—then doubles down on—DMCA claim over Star Wars figure pic: Man who took photos of a $6.94 Walmart action figure gets banned from Facebook.
11. Disney Sending Out DMCA Notices Over Pictures Fans Took Of Their Legally Purchased Star Wars Toy
12. Ecuador Likely To Legalize DRM Circumvention In The Exercise Of Fair Use Rights — Something TPP Will Block
13. UK Throws A Copyright Crumb: Confirms That Digitized Copies Of Public Domain Images Are In The Public Domain
14. Chinese Authorities Think Internet Companies Should Reward Netizens Who ‘Spread Good News’
15. Is Canada safe from the Safe Harbor decision?
16. EU plans to harmonise contract laws for supply of digital content and online sale of goods
17. After Spending A Day As The Internet’s Punching Bag, Philips Walks Back Firmware Update That Locked Out Third-Party Products
18. Why parents and administrators are freaking out about an app called After School
19. Facebook’s Mental Health Problem: The most important thing I learned in 2015? That depression and social media do not go well together at all.
20. Pirate Bay Founder: ‘I Have Given Up’
21. Kickstarter failures highlight the “backer” vs “consumer” divide
22. Inside Netflix’s Plan to Boost Streaming Quality and Unclog the Internet
23. Tear down those paywalls!
24. Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame
25. Daily Fantasy Sites Get Reprieve After Initial Loss In New York Court Battle; FanDuel Reenters NY
26. Yahoo ‘is about to have a massive heart attack from obesity,’ says shareholder attacking the company
27. Again, CEO Isn’t Yahoo’s Real Problem
28. How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over: They’re funding a new organization, OpenAI, to pursue the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence — and give the results to the public
29. Websites may soon know if you’re mad—a little mouse will tell them: Cursor speed and precision link to anger and other negative emotions.
30. Block potential Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers with this Chrome add-on – For those watching the film later this week, the Internet is a dangerous place.
31. The First Quantified Brain

CREATIVITY

1. Competition Tribunal Gives Go Ahead for Price Maintenance Claim Against Music Industry Giants (Michael Geist)
2. Man faces years in jail for alleged online comment insulting Thai king’s dog: Thailand’s military seems to think country’s lèse-majesté law applies to royal pets, too.
3. Online Comments, Free Speech and Internet Defamation: News Outlets Challenged by Internet Commenters 
4. Live Music’s $20 Billion Year: The Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well Reunion, Taylor Swift, One Direction Top Boxscore’s Year-End
5. New Banksy piece puts Steve Jobs in a Syrian refugee camp
6. You may soon need a licence to take photos of that classic designer chair you bought: Copyright strikes again, with photographers and publishers hit particularly hard.
7. Copyright infringement suspends New Milford theater’s production
8. Is Han Solo Legally Justified in Shooting Greedo First? A Lawyer Explains

COMMUNICATIONS

1. News director of two BC radio stations resigns after editorial staff asked to sell ads
2. DC court finds FilmOn X internet TV service is not a cable system and cannot rely on statutory license to retransmit over-the-air TV signals 
3. Verizon Exec In Charge Of TV Services Admits She Cut The Cord
4. Verizon to join AT&T in charging companies for “sponsored data”: Net neutrality rules apparently no obstacle to zero-rating.
5. “The more bits you use, the more you pay”: Comcast CEO justifies data caps: Unfortunately, usage-based billing only works one way: in Comcast’s favor.
6. FCC Boss Mocks Unfair Comcast Broadband Caps At Industry Dinner, Still Hasn’t Done Squat About It
7. Could Canadians who watch the U.S. version of Netflix face new rules?
8. UPDATE: CHCH TV suspends newscasts as company declares bankruptcy
9. The untold story of TV’s first prescription drug ad
10. “Do Not Track” will not be enforced by the FCC

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Let’s stop blaming ‘the internet’ for terrorism
2. All LA schools shut down over message sent from 8chan’s e-mail host, cock.li: “We live in an age where anonymous messages can be sent with extreme ease.”
3. Finding Proportionality in Surveillance Laws – Andrew Murray
4. Fact-checking the debate on encryption: Recent terror attacks have sparked the debate over encryption and backdoors.
5. Beware of state-sponsored hackers, Twitter warns dozens of users: Journalists, security researchers, and activists receive Twitter warning e-mail
6. Tech firms could owe up to 4% of global revenue if they violate new EU data law: After years of negotiation, European Union approves new data protection law.
7. The FTC and DAA Set Their Sights on Cross-Device Tracking 
8. Wish list app from Target springs a major personal data leak: Database is available over the Internet, no password necessary, researchers say.
9. Woman sues Airbnb after finding hidden camera in her rental: Complaint says living room-based camera intercepted couple’s private talks, too.
10. Hit-and-Run Driver Arrested Because Car Reported Accident
11. Got a drone? It’s registration time, says the FAA: $5 fee will be waived for those who register by mid-January.
12. CIS Joins ACLU And ACLU Of Northern California In FOIA Request To Justice Department Seeking Info On Phone Unlocking Orders
13. Law Enforcement is Using a 226-Year-Old Law to Force Tech Companies to Unlock Mobile Phones
14. Backslash: Anti-surveillance gadgets for protesters – Two designers create a toolkit for tech-savvy protesters.
15. New Internet Monitor report: “Openness and Restraint: Structure, Discourse, and Contention in Saudi Twitter”
16. UK man arrested for VTech security breach
17. Quinn: The ethics of digitally snooping on teens
18. Making private information public — the continued expansion of privacy class action liability
19. Judge Tells TCPA Plaintiffs: Quit Being Complainers, Texting “Gamers” Was Consent
20. Twitter rejects accusations for illegally Intercepting messages

jon

VIDEO GAMES

1. Report: Kojima prevented from picking up award by Konami
2. Report: Konami lawyer barred Hideo Kojima from accepting any Metal Gear Solid awards
3. Steam Under Fire – New Case: Ironburg Inventions v Valve (NDGA 2015)
4. Steam tightens trading security amid 77,000 monthly account hijackings: Traded items will be “held” for days unless you have two-factor security.
5. Modder/Hacker’s Work Pushes Sony To Release Its Own PS4 Remote Play For PC App
6. Patent For Mini-Games Within Loading Screens Expires; Explosion In Better Game Loading Screens Forecasted
7. The Year of Pokémon: the Potential & Pitfalls of AR Gaming
8. Woman who killed her daughter ‘for interrupting her video game’ in 1994 gets parole
9. EA disputes GameStop’s claim that Star Wars: Battlefront underperformed
10. Video Game Stocks Bounce Back in 2015
11. Sega cuts full-year profit estimate by 90 per cent
12. VR to hit $70 billion by 2020 – Report
13. Magic Leap raising additional $827 million – Report
14. Double Fine launches crowd-funding campaign for ‘Psychonauts 2’
15. Welcome to the post-indiepocalypse
16. Time killers: The strange history of wrist gaming
17. Why AI Systems Are Learning to Play Old-School Video Games
18. Twitch’s gaming empire: How streaming changed the way we play
19. eSports network Azubu raises $60 million
20. Eight PS2 games coming to PS4
21. PlayStation VR expo round-up: Impressive Rez Infinite leads killer line-up: Other stunners include Until Dawn light gun game, Eve Valkyrie, Harmonix experiment.
22. The Art of Escape: What do we gain from giving inmates access to video games?
23. These are the most popular gaming videos on YouTube this year

DIGITAL

1. “Repugnant” online discussions are not illegal thoughtcrime, court rules: Judges also rule prosecutors abused the anti-hacking Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
2. Pakistan Aims To Take Home ‘Worst Cybercrime Legislation In The World’ Trophy With Prevention Of Electronic Crimes Bill
3. Eric Schmidt Suggests Building A ‘Spell Checker’ For Online Harassment And Other Bad Things Online
4. Florida newspaper fighting judge’s order to unpublish online news
5. ZenithOptimedia Sees TV Ad Share Shrinking: Internet to be top global medium in 2018
6. Trump says “closing that Internet” is a good way to fight terrorism: Because ISIS recruits kids from the Internet, you see.
7. The Smartphone Is Eating the Television, Nielsen Admits
8. RIAA lawsuit kills Popcorn Time-like free music streaming site
9. Is “this video has been removed for violating the ToS” commercial advertising?: Darnaa, LLC v. Google, Inc., 2015 WL 7753406, No. 15-cv-03221 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 2, 2015) (Rebecca Tushnet)
10. Can YouTube ‘Remove And Relocate’ User Videos Capriciously? (Eric Goldman)
11. Microsoft settles lawsuit against Ballmer, Gates, others over browser ballot blunder’s $732M fine
12. TPP language on copyright open to interpretation, needs to be more clear, say experts: ‘I think before you go and sign something you should have a better sense of what you are signing for,’ says University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist.
13. As an academic, Liberal MP critiqued TPP copyright rule he may have to support
14. Intellectual property biggest issue for Canada in TPP, says Doer
15. BREAKING: EU Commission unveils next steps for copyright reform, including draft content portability regulation
16. New EU copyright rules would give travelers cross-border Netflix access: Rules keep geo-blocking in place, could also introduce “Google tax” on snippets.
17. Set the data free, Mr. Trudeau (Michael Geist)
18. Why the Government’s Commitment to “Open by Default” Must Be Bigger Than Open Data (Michael Geist)
19. The Internet’s Loop of Action and Reaction Is Worsening
20. The online ad industry made a huge mistake 20 years ago that’s still costing it dearly today
21. Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius
22. This Australian Says He and His Dead Friend Invented Bitcoin
23. Who is the hacker that outed Craig Wright as the creator of Bitcoin? Maybe Craig Wright himself.
24. Supreme Court Reaffirms Technological Neutrality in Copyright Royalty Disputes: Description of technological neutrality may be at odds with prior case law
25. 9% of Kickstarter projects fail – Study
26. Yahoo wants to spin off Yahoo, become a holding company for Alibaba shares
27. Kickstarter hires reporter to probe startup that collapsed after raising $3.4M: Crowdfunding firm: We are entitled to further info from Torquing Group.
28. Advances in Robotics Pose Legal, Ethical Questions
29. Insurer now offering “troll insurance” for victims of online harassment: Claims of up to $75,000 can be made for counseling, relocation, or missed work.
30. HTTPS Lawsuits, A New Low For Patent Trolls (Andres Guadamuz)
31. Snapchat’s Move Into Real-Time News is Fascinating
32. Comedians Are Loving This Whole Periscope Thing
33. The self-driving car – a new legal frontier?
34. There’s No Such Thing as a Computer-Authored Work – And It’s a Good Thing, too (James Grimmelmann)
35. When Ethical Hacking Can’t Compete: Companies are paying “white hat” hackers to probe their cybersecurity systems for weaknesses—but some say that so far, they aren’t paying enough.
36. Artificial Intelligence Ethics a New Focus at Cambridge University
37. The “Founder” Generation’s Creation Myth

CREATIVITY

1. Russian Film Festival Gets Official Warning After Promoting Anti-Corruption Documentary
2. Turkish Court Establishes A Special ‘Expert Panel’ To Determine If Comparing Prime Minister To Gollum Is An Insult
3. Copyright case over “Happy Birthday” is done, trial canceled: Settlement details aren’t yet public, but Warner/Chappell isn’t happy.
4. Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke will appeal “Blurred Lines” copyright ruling: Jury ruled that the 2013 hit was too much like Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it up.”
5. The Selfie Monkey Strikes Back: Lawyers Claim Of Course Monkeys Can Sue For Copyright
6. Op-ed: Extending copyright to The Diary of Anne Frank is wrong
7. For Journalists in Myanmar, an Atmosphere of Fear and Repression
8. Journalists storm San Bernardino shooters’ apartment after landlord pries open door
9. Ryan Seacrest: The Mogul Next Door – “I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything on camera or on the microphone without thinking of the back house opportunities and the next business play.”
10. Turmoil in the Weird Karaoke Market
11. Meet the “Real” Cookie Lyon: Lydia Harris was instrumental in the founding of a major hip-hop record label and had to fight to get what she deserved. Sound familiar?
12. Natalia Antonova: Journalist and Playwright Caught Between Russia, Ukraine, and the West
13. Are We Different People In Different Languages?: On Being A Multilingual Writer In The 21st Century
14. Scott Weiland’s Family: ‘Don’t Glorify This Tragedy’

COMMUNICATIONS

1. CRTC battles forces of dorkness, takes action against notorious botnet
2. Canada’s role in international botnet takedown 
3. CRTC Executes CASL Warrant as Part of Botnet Take-down
4. What email marketers should know about the EU’s new data law
5. John Doyle: CRTC should listen to TV critics, just like everyone else
6. European Commission publishes guidance on transatlantic data transfers
7. Max Schrems launches new legal broadside at Facebook: Facebook can’t protect Europeans’ data from U.S. spying, says man who brought down Safe Harbor pact
8. U.S. Jurisprudence Hurting U.S.-EU Data Privacy Relations
9. Turkey’s YouTube Ban Breached Right To Information, Says European Court Of Human Rights
10. Big Cable’s Sledgehammer Is Coming Down: Why usage-based billing is a threat to the open internet, and what can be done to stop it (Susan Crawford)
11. The FCC Is Being Forced to Defend Net Neutrality in Court
12. AT&T Pretends It Was Just About To Offer A Bunch Of Awesome Services, But Then Net Neutrality Happened
13. Net neutrality just went to court. Here’s how it did.
14. Net neutrality supporters optimistic after court arguments: Judges seem to accept FCC’s Title II authority, lawyer says.
15. Sling CEO: Comcast data caps so low they hurt competing video providers: Five hours of TV streaming a day could blow through a Comcast data cap.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. European Court of Human Rights says blanket surveillance is a violation: The ruling also applies to the UK, and might be used against the new Snooper’s Charter.
2. With gun control off-limits, politicians want tech sector to fight terror
3. After Paris Attacks, French Cops Want to Block Tor and Forbid Free Wi-Fi
4. SEC enforcement director tells House Judiciary Committee that investigation agencies should not need warrants to access to email data directly from internet service providers 
5. James Comey, Dianne Feinstein Team Up To Mislead About Encryption; Promise Legislation To Undermine National Security
6. Former FCC Commissioner Idiotically Claims Net Neutrality Helps ISIS: From the a-new-low dept
7. Protecting Free Speech on the Internet From the State of Louisiana
8. Lawsuit Reveals Extent of FBI Internet and Telecom Surveillance 
9. New EU cybersecurity rules neutered by future backdoors, weakened crypto
10. Using Content Delivery Networks To Circumvent The Great Firewall Of China
11. Anonymous Divided: Inside the Two Warring Hacktivist Cells Fighting ISIS Online

jon

GAMES

1. Blizzard Sues Bot Maker Over ‘World Of Warcraft,’ ‘Heroes Of The Storm,’ ‘Diablo 2’ Cheats And Copyright Infringement
2. Grand Theft Auto 5 is better with lightsabers
3. Video games blamed for Packers’ string of losses
4. Dead or Alive publisher denies game is too sexist for Western audiences
5. HoniePop dev offers $1 million for the rights to release Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 in the US
6. Equity Crowdfunding: Gateway To Games Industry Diversity
7. Activision Blizzard raises Hearthstone eSports prize to $1 million
8. From Clash of Clans to Hay Day: the secrets of Supercell’s success
9. Sony confirms ‘Remote Play’ is in the works for PC and Mac
10. The new Gear VR proves virtual reality is finally consumer-ready: $100 headset turns compatible phones into convincing portals to another world.
11. The year of Pokémon: the potential & pitfalls of AR gaming 
12. Is it the beginning of the end for fantasy eSports in the US?
13. Does eSports need a players’ union?: Players, team owners and lawyers give their opinions on the controversial subject.
14. Mobile gaming and intellectual property – a sport of kings?
15. As Mastertronic goes bankrupt, Just Flight flies solo
16. The worldwide effort to disarm Metal Gear Solid V’s nuclear weapons
17. Key trends in the games industry that will define 2016

DIGITAL

1. What Canadian Heritage Officials Didn’t Tell Minister Mélanie Joly About Copyright (Michael Geist)
2. CBC v. SORAC 2003 Inc. (SCC decision 11.26.15)
3. A Supremely Cool Day in Ottawa At and From the Supreme Court of Canada
4. SCC requires tech neutrality in copyright negotiations
5. Why the Supreme Court’s Endorsement of Technological Neutrality in Copyright May Be Anti-Technology (Michael Geist)
6. Canadian Supreme Court Says Tech May Advance, But It Will Never Outrun Collection Societies
7. Supreme Court update – ephemeral copies, technological neutrality and the Copyright Act
8. A brief history of the broadcast reproduction right
9. Authors side with Apple in e-book price-fixing Supreme Court appeal
10. After Illegally Censoring Websites For Five Years On Bogus Copyright Charges, US Gov’t Quietly ‘Returns’ Two Domains
11. Quebec Law Would Violate First Rule of the Canadian Internet (Michael Geist)
12. Online Defamation: Linking and Liking
13. Half a tweet equals defamation
14. User behaviour: Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?
15. Why We Trade Privacy for Facebook Likes: A legal theorist’s new book explains how our desires are woven into the surveillance state.
16. Once again, the RCMP calls for warrantless access to your online info. Once again, the RCMP is wrong
17. What Now? Privacy and Surveillance in Canada After the Paris Attacks (Michael Geist)
18. America’s super-secret court names five lawyers as public advocates: “Very impressive” group has longstanding ties to Washington.
19. Could the Third Amendment be used to fight the surveillance state?
20. UK’s Snooper’s Charter Hands Over Access To User Data To Several Non-Law Enforcement Agencies
21. The NSA’s Bulk Collection Of Phone Records Ended Saturday. Long Live The Bulk Collection Of Phone Records!
22. Judge In FBI Case Was Forced To Redact His Mocking Of FBI’s Ridiculous Arguments
23. How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce
24. Fort Simpson’s Senga Services outs overdue customers on Facebook: ‘If I were struggling to pay bills, I wouldn’t want my community knowing,’ says frustrated resident
25. When children are breached—inside the massive VTech hack: 4.8 million records from a Hong Kong toy company were compromised.
26. Hacked toymaker leaked gigabytes’ worth of kids’ headshots and chat logs: Company encouraged parents to use the pictures and chats with the apps it sold.
27. Toy Maker Vtech Hacked, Revealing Kids’ Selfies, Chat Logs, & Even Voice Recordings
28. Hackers Could Take Control Of Your Car, But You Can’t Sue Carmakers For That Risk (Eric Goldman)
29. Tor Devs Say They’ve Learned Lessons From Carnegie Mellon Attack, But Worries Remain That They’re Outgunned And Outmanned
30. The Serial Swatter: Internet trolls have learned to exploit our over-militarized police. It’s a crime that’s hard to stop — and hard to prosecute.
31. ‘Cloud’ Jokes Aplenty After China Blamed for Australian Meteorology Bureau Hack
32. Stockholders Can’t Sue Yelp Because Of Fake Reviews
33. Rogers Media Inc. pays $200,000 for alleged “unsubscribe” failures
34. Finding Fuboy: one man spent four years and $35,000 to unmask his internet troll
35. Patent troll claims HTTPS websites infringe crypto patent, sues everybody: Netflix and others are fighting back while Scotttrade and others are settling.
36. EFF Files Legal Complaint Against Google At The FTC
37. Facebook bows to Belgium, will stop tracking non-Facebook users: Also promises not to use long-life and unique identifier cookies for Belgian non-users.
38. After Safe Harbor ruling, legal moves to stop Facebook from sending data to US
39. Renewing transatlantic data transfers: how close are we to a revised Safe Harbor agreement?
40. The Internet of Things: guidance, regulation and the Canadian approach
41. “Random Darknet Shopper” is back, and it just bought a £20 polo shirt: Starting December 11, the bot will be on display at a London art gallery.
42. It’s illegal to make private copies of music in the UK—again: You’re also forbidden from format-shifting or uploading to the cloud.
43. How A Kid Running An Obscure Music Forum Became The Target Of The Uk’s Biggest Ever Piracy Case
44. Germany’s Supreme Court rules that ISPs can be ordered to block piracy websites: But only if all other avenues have been explored by the copyright holders first.
45. Google Books is transformative and therefore a fair use
46. Microsoft Lobbying Group Forces ‘Pirate’ To Get 200,000 Views On Anti-Piracy Video… Whole Thing Backfires
47. Kickstarter-launched drone startup denies it cheated customers: Discrepancies “affected the basic performance” of many production units.
48. Judge: There’s no proof Yelp manipulates reviews – Claims that Yelp punishes non-advertisers fail to persuade yet another judge.
49. Privacy & free speech at risk with terms of service (ToS) enforcement on social media content 
50. How The Gates Foundation Reflects The Good And The Bad Of “Hacker Philanthropy”
51. Disrupting Mr Disrupter: Clay Christensen should not be given the last word on disruptive innovation
52. Telepresence Robot for the Disabled Takes Directions from Brain Signals: Brain control becomes a more practical way to control robots when the machines can do some things for themselves.
53. Robotic race car series will support Formula E next year: Same cars, but each team will develop its own AI.
54. WarGames for real: How one 1983 exercise nearly triggered WWIII – Newly released documents reveal the KGB software model that forecasted mushroom clouds.
55. The Big Laughs of Mexico’s ISIS Threat
56. Click it to Stick it: Guide to Creating Binding Online Agreements
57. ESPN Ignored Cord Cutting Threat, Paid For It With Huge Viewership Losses
58. YouTube wants to compete with Netflix, seeks movie and TV show deals

CREATIVITY

1. Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet to Death and Threatens to Sue Critics of Penal System
2. Saudi Arabia Says It Will Sue Twitter Users Who Compare It To ISIS; Apparently Skips The NY Times
3. Thai Printers Scrub Front-Page Article From The International New York Times
4. The Hollywood Reporter, after 65 years, addresses its role in the blacklist
5. Freedom of UK media to publish pictures of children curtailed after landmark ruling (Robin Callender-Smith)
6. Tanya Tagaq’s music to be removed from controversial film, Inuk singer tweets
7. Banksy – an item of disrepair?
8. A.O. Scott Defends the Art of Criticism
9. Parody of copyrighted work entitled to copyright protection
10. Transformative parody entitled to independent copyright protections
11. Sahand Sahebdivani: ‘The Main Thing That Storytelling Does Is It Makes You Human’
12. America Is Too Dumb for TV News – Trump and others are proving it: we can’t handle the truth
13. Blushing with Sexism: The Makeup Secrets of Fox News
14. The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images
15. The Science Of Why Scarcity Makes Us More Creative: Being surrounded with ready-made solutions to problems can inhibit our creative growth.

jon