News of the Week; December 17, 2014

GAMES

1. Court Ruling: EA’s Anti-Piracy Software Is Patent Infringing

2. Angry Birds And The Bizarre World Of International Basketball Corruption

3. Destiny players banned for use of modded consoles

4. Valve Removes ‘Hatred’ From Steam Greenlight

+ Update: Valve returns Hatred to Greenlight after removal

5. An Open Letter To Tim Cook About Game Censorship

+ Papers, Please on iPad has nudity reinstated: Apple lifts its censorship on the game’s body scanning feature

6. Custom games being used to treat psychopaths

7. Microsoft tells J.S. Joust devs their game is “NOT possible” on Windows: PlayStation Move-enabled game only on Mac and Linux for now, will be open sourced.

8. The latest games trademark controversy: S.T.A.L.K.E.R and STALKER

9. Consumer Reports Reveals Its Top Five Most Violent Games / Top Five Games For Kids Lists

10. Acceptable censorship?: Why are people so outraged about retailers pulling Grand Theft Auto V when the industry condones far more damaging censorship as a matter of routine?

+ Grand Theft Auto 5, Australian culture, and how the American press misses the point

11. Why does gender balance matter in the games industry?

+ GamerGate’s silver lining

12. Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres (Thomas Apperley)

13. Fan-Made Pokémon Fighting Game Looks Better Than The Official One

14. Mobile gaming installed base tops 1 billion – IDC

15. How Pop Culture Made “Flappy Bird” An Overnight Success

16. France gets EU approval to bolster tax breaks for game developers

17. The Sporting Stars of the Future Play ‘Halo,’ Not Soccer

18. The Best Video Games of 2014

DIGITAL

19. Is Every Orc an Author? On Rehearing, Judges Challenge 5-Second Copyright in Garcia v. Google

20. Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World: Platforms, Policy, Privacy, and Public Discourse (Berkman Center for Internet & Society)

21. Supreme Court’s Privacy Streak Comes To End: Split Court Affirms Legality of Warrantless Phone Searches Incident to Arrest (Michael Geist)

22. Anonymous-Tied Sentencing Details Still in Dark

23. Over 700 Million People Taking Steps to Avoid NSA Surveillance (Bruce Schneier)

24. Government documents reveal telecom providers envision surveillance-ready networks: Geist

25. Will Privacy Be 2015’s Killer App?

26. The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality

27. From net neutrality to copyright: media law trends for 2015: The battle over how to protect an open internet, new copyright exceptions and the increasing influence of the European commission are just a few trends to monitor next year 

28. When Facial Recognition Software Becomes the Good Guy: Facebook envisions AI that could stop you from uploading embarrassing pictures.

29. Google To Close Google News In Spain On December 16 In Response To New Law

+ Spanish Newspapers Want Google News Back

30. Ukrainian Hackers Leak Russian Interior Ministry Docs with ‘Evidence’ of Russian Invasion

31. Google Allegedly Closing Down Russian Engineering Office In Response To Russian Data Laws

32. Leaked Emails Reveal MPAA Plans To Pay Elected Officials To Attack Google

+ Project Goliath: Inside Hollywood’s secret war against Google

33. “Shadowy” anti-net neutrality group flooded FCC with comments: Form letter campaign makes it appear Americans don’t support net neutrality.

34. The Messy Media Ethics Behind The Sony Hacks: The gray area where the leaked information resides — between public and private, prurient and illuminating — might not be the exception, but the new normal.

+ No Gray Area: It’s Definitely Not OK to Publish Emails From the Sony Hack: A look at the media’s strategy of relying on criminals to do their reporting for them.

+ Sony Fires Off Letter To Press Outlets Demanding They Cease Publication Of And Destroy Any ‘Stolen Information’

+ Can Sony Get Around First Amendment to Sue the Media Over the Hack? (Analysis)

35. Now at the Sands Casino: An Iranian Hacker in Every Server

36. Operation Socialist: The Inside Story Of How British Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco

37. World Wide Web Foundation: It’s Time The Internet Became a Basic Human Right

38. An Open Letter to Everyone Involved in the Tor Fight: And a Few People Who Aren’t (Quinn Norton)

39. Spotify vs Uber: A case study on why it’s sometimes better not to be (a jerk)

40. Monkey Selfie Back In The News: Photographer Threatens Copyright Experts With His Confused Understanding Of Copyright

41. Do Artifacts Have Ethics?

CONSTRAINTS

42. Eric Holder Blinks: Won’t Force Reporter James Risen To Reveal Source (Or Send Him To Jail)

43. The insane history of how American paranoia ruined and censored comic books

44. Georgia Tech Research Finds Copyright Confusion has ‘Chilling Effects’ in Online Creative Publishing

45. Art is a business – and, yes, artists have to make difficult, honest business decisions: It’s tough enough to make a living when we do what we love. Quit being so critical of artists who are transparent about the money side (Amanda Palmer)

46. Why the Future Will be Made by Creators, Not Consumers

47. Grappling With the ‘Culture of Free’ in Napster’s Aftermath

48. U.S. TV Viewing Down Sharply In Past Year: Nielsen

49. How YouTube MCNs are Conquering Hollywood

50. You Can’t Make a Living: Digital Media, the End of TV’s Golden Age, and the Death Scene of the American Playwright

51. Libraries Face Off Against Publishers and the European Union at WIPO

52. Uber imposes 4X surge pricing in wake of Sydney crisis, then free rides: At first, firm charged A$100 minimum during hostage crisis, then gave refunds.

53. Inside the Collapse of The New Republic

54. Sowing Mayhem, One Click at a Time

55. Digital giants get bigger at the expense of the small blog sites: The growth of companies such as BuzzFeed, Gawker, Mashable and Vice Media could crush independent journalistic enterprise

56. The New Hampshire Rebellion: I met Larry Lessig in an empty train, one cold evening of November 2013, somewhere between Marseille and Paris. He had boarded before me and was trying to force the door into the sitting compartment

jon