News of the Week; November 19, 2014

GAMES

1. Ubisoft’s Sneaky Scheme to Keep You From Seeing Bad Reviews

+ 3 Reasons Why Video Game Review Embargoes Are Particularly Anti-Consumer

+ Why didn’t Ubisoft do the right thing and delay Assassin’s Creed Unity?

2. No Dragon Age: Inquisition for India as EA pulls RPG: Local obscenity laws to blame, says EA

3. Assassin’s Creed Unity Criticized By Former French Politician

4. Nexon drops developer Robotoki’s first game after studio drops free-to-play model

5. Sony’s Layden: Harassment “completely unacceptable”

6. We Are Not Jack Thompson’ Song Delivers A Positive Message To All Gamers

+ Intel Resumes Ad Campaign With Gamasutra

+ Victims Of Online Threats Say Perpetrators Aren’t Being Caught

+ Rage Against GamerGate’s Hate Machine

+ The Anita Sarkeesian Hater That Everyone Hates

+ Grand Theft Auto V’s First-Person Sex With a Prostitute

+ Dragon Age: Inquisition’s women, and the remarkable ordinary

7. Sweden looking to label games that promote gender equality

8. ‘Final Fantasy XIV’ Servers Targeted by Ongoing DDoS Attacks

9. Dev who threatened Gabe Newell has returned to Code Avarice

10. Breaking the lock: Why all game content should be unlocked from the outset – It’s past time developers stop restricting when and how we play their games.

11. Early Access popularity growing, but only 25% have released as a full game

12. PETA Launching Animal Friendly ‘Minecraft’ Server This Weekend

13. Gumi to file IPO at $890 million valuation

14. Big Fish Games to be acquired for $485 million

15. Good Game: The rise of the professional cyber athlete.

16. Atari landfill cartridges sell for up to $1,500 each at auction: City raises $36,000 selling nearly 100 trashed cartridges

17. 8-Bit Philosophy: Plato, Sartre, Derrida & Other Thinkers Explained With Vintage Video Games

DIGITAL

18. Court agrees that Google’s search results qualify as free speech: Website CoastNews had its complaint tossed; must pay attorney’s fees to Google.

19. French ‘right to be forgotten’ decision takes link removal beyond Europe

20. Appeals Court Rules in Favor of Anonymous Speech in California Prop. 35 Case

21. Unsealed Filing Shows DOJ Misled Appeals Court About National Security Letter Gag Orders

22. Americans Want More Privacy from Companies and Government

23. Mobile App Privacy Practices: The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada Issues Tips For Communicating Privacy Practices to App Users

24. Computer espionage attacks on human rights, civil liberties groups: Citizen Lab releases new report

25. Condemnation mounts against ISP that sabotaged users’ e-mail encryption: Researchers say AT&T subsidiary thwarted STARTTLS protection, sent e-mail in clear.

26. Hotel charges couple’s credit card $156 for negative Trip Advisor review: Terms of service for “Dirty rotten stinking hovel” authorizes bad-review fines.

27. FCC calls AT&T’s fiber bluff, demands detailed construction plans: AT&T claims net neutrality forced it to “pause” fiber builds it never started.

+ The troubling truth behind these anti-net neutrality op-ed writers

+ Net Neutrality is sooo much more than access to the “tubes”… (danah boyd)

28. The Cable Model and The Internet Model

29. 6 links that will show you what Google knows about you

30. Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists

+ The moment I learned just how far Uber will go to silence journalists and attack women

+ Uber’s Moral Compass Needs Recalibration

+ The Immaturity and Arrogance of Uber

+ Hear Sarah Lacy respond to Uber exec’s proposed million dollar smear campaign against her

31. LinkedIn Can’t Shake Publicity Rights Claims Based on Reminder Emails

32. Amazon and Hachette resolve dispute with multi-year agreement: Agreement ends a bitter months-long dispute that saw NYT op-eds, Colbert segments.

33. When Fitbit Is the Expert Witness: An upcoming court case will use fitness-tracking data to try and prove a plaintiff’s claim, bringing us one step closer to the new age of quantified self incrimination.

34. Virtual Reality Aims for the Mobile Phone:

35. A smartphone-based virtual reality headset from Samsung and Oculus VR could make the technology more accessible, but it also demonstrates a new set of challenges.

36. How Individual Identity Influences The Way Audiences Share [Survey Data]

37. IBM’s Watson Can Now Debate Its Opponents

38. Why I Am Teaching a Course Called “Wasting Time on the Internet”

CONSTRAINTS

39. Art In A Time Of Surveillance

40. Music Critics See Their Role and Influence Waning in The Era of Digital Music

41. How Garth Brooks took on the internet – and lost: The poor sales of his comeback album Man Against Machine show that taking a stand against the modern music business only works if you’re Taylor Swift

jon