News of the Week; March 11, 2015

GAMES

1. ‘Turkey Not Banning Minecraft,’ Says Diplomat

+ Mojang Responds To Turkish Government’s Plan To Ban ‘Minecraft’

+ Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Super-Violent Minecraft

2. Report: Mississippi deputy fired over threatening Xbox Live players: Offers racist slurs, home address, badge number during Call of Duty session.

3. GDC Awards Show Hosts Deliver Messages About Internet Hate

4. Massachusetts congresswoman urges FBI to take Gamergate seriously

5. Brianna Wu vs. the Troll Army: She set out to transform the video gaming industry by creating a hit game aimed at female players. Then came Gamergate. And the harassment. And the death threats.

6. The games industry is wrong about kids, gaming and gender

7. The People Who Make Brutal Video Game Porn

8. Video game bans: the debate about guns, GTA, and real-life violence

9. Australian Classification Board Turns To IARC To Streamline Ratings Process

10. Finally, African Fantasy Is Getting Its Own Gorgeous RPG

11. Intel Promises To Help Foster More Diversity in The Video Games Industry

12. Riot Games rated one of America’s top 15 places to work

13. CFP: Games for the Elderly, and the Representation of Aging in Video Games

14. Petition Call on Activision and Infinity Ward To Revamp ‘Modern Warfare 2’ for PS4, Xbox One

15. How Switzerland could be the model for better game communities

16. What is a gamer?

17. Comcast Blocks HBO Go on PlayStation Devices

18. PlayStation Network attacked “every day” – Yoshida

19. Swatting: It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Gets Murdered

20. Majesco Hands Off Retail Publishing As Annual Shareholder Meeting Looms

21. Curt Schilling Speaks Out About the Failure of 38 Studios

22. A word on dealing with publishers: Don’t – Skulls of the Shogun dev Borut Pfeifer cautions indies against signing deals for marketing help, says many exist to leech value

23. The Rise Of Slow Gaming, Our Cultural Antidote To Angry Birds

24. Blizzard offers college tuition in new eSports tournament

25. Minecraft’s Markus Persson Tells All On His Sale To Microsoft, His $70 Million Home

26. VR sickness cannot be solved by hardware improvements alone: Walt Disney Imagineering’s Bei Yang points to game design as an ever present risk of sickness in virtual reality

27. Why video game engines may power the future of film and architecture: The original developer of Gears of War has an ambitious plan for the future of everything

28. History of Video Games (1950-1980)

29. The Merging of Artist and Audience: How Games will Redefine Fame

30. On killing virtual dogs

DIGITAL

31. Free to Be You and Me? Copyright and Constraint (Rebecca Tushnet)

32. 13-24 Year Olds Watching More YouTube Than TV – To The Surprise of No-one

33. U.S. NSA sued by Wikimedia, rights groups over mass surveillance

34. New smoking gun further ties NSA to omnipotent “Equation Group” hackers: What are the chances unrelated state-sponsored projects were both named “BACKSNARF”?

35. Je suis Charlie sentiment fades amid calls to tame free speech

36. Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not From Them (Bruce Schneier)

37. Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft: I’m putting more trust in communities than corporations (Dan Gillmor)

38. Two weeks on, Superfish debacle still causing pain for some Lenovo customers: Assurances on the demise of the dangerous adware are (somewhat) exaggerated.

39. Attack Attribution and Cyber Conflict

40. Misuse of Canada’s Copyright Notice System Continues: U.S. Firm Sending Thousands of Notices With Settlement Demands (Michael Geist)

+ More Copyright Trolls Rushing In To Take Advantage Of Canadian Copyright Notice System Loopholes

41. Here’s why patents are innovation’s worst enemyMPAA Abusing DMCA Takedowns To Attempt A Poor Man’s SOPA

42. Federal Court finds meta tags do not infringe trademarks or copyright

43. Trial Court Doesn’t Unmask Parodist Twitterers

44. CRTC Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer issues $1.1 million penalty to Compu-Finder for spamming Canadians

45. How Reddit Became a Worse Black Hole of Violent Racism than Stormfront

46. This Is What It’s Like To Go To Prison For Trolling: In January 2014, two people were found guilty of sending death and rape threats to the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez in the most high-profile online abuse case Britain has yet seen. 

47. WordPress Wins Case Against DMCA Abuser… Who Ignored The Proceedings

48. Will the FTC ever drop the hammer on paid Wikipedia edits?

49. Following the Digital Breadcrumbs: How to distinguish online nutcases from honest-to-God villains.

50. Spanish Court Limits Scope Of EU’s Right To Be Forgotten

51. Facebook post written in Florida lands US man in United Arab Emirates jail: Mechanic accused of slandering his employer, which is illegal in the Emirates.

52. Sofia Vergara Successfully Shuts Down “Fan Site” Via UDRP Proceeding

53. Europe reverses course on net neutrality legislation: EU member states have voted in favor of allowing the prioritization of “specialized” services.

54. MySpace – what went wrong: ‘The site was a massive spaghetti-ball mess’: Former VP of online marketing Sean Percival on corporate interference, Punch The Monkey, and a failed attempt to buy Spotify

55. Top 10 emerging technologies of 2015

56. Cognitive Technology: The rise of “bionic brains”

57. Licensing Your 3D Printed Stuff: Why 3D Printed Objects Challenge Our Copyright Beliefs

58. Why No One’s Talking About ‘Cord-Forevers’

59. Why It’s Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry

CREATIVITY

60. The End of Creativity: The word “creativity” was made up less than a hundred years ago. It is time to stop using it.

61. Raising the Broadcast White Flag: What Lies Behind Bell’s Radical Plan to Raise TV Fees, Block Content, Violate Net Neutrality & Fight Netflix

62. Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to pay $7.4m to Marvin Gaye’s family over Blurred Lines: Jury decides Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke copied 1977 hit Got to Give It Up in lawsuit filed by Gaye’s children

+ The Blurred Lines Decision

+ Jury Says Robin Thicke And Pharrell Infringed… Even If They Didn’t Mean To: Told To Pay $7.3 Million

+ How the ‘Blurred Lines’ case could have chilling effect on creativity

63. What The Law Really Says About Music Plagiarism: How you think about music ≠ how the courts think about music.

64. What We Talk About When We Talk About Crediting Photographers

65. Bryn Geffert On Securing Rights

66. India Threatens BBC Over Decision To Air Rape Documentary In U.K.

+ Indian Government Attempts To Censor BBC Gang Rape Documentary; Succeeds Only In Drawing More Attention To It

67. We can’t rely on corporations like Fox to care about ethics in journalism

68. Jury Decides Village People ‘Y.M.C.A.’ Songwriter Has 50 Percent Song Share

69. 2 Hockey Players And Elisha Cuthbert Want Cash From A TV Station For Airing A Joke Tweet

70. Liability may lurk in the vitriol of reader comments

71. Media mergers and the Competition Bureau: is the medium the market? 

72. Rise Of The Robot Sportswriter: Now that the AP has announced that it will outsource sports stories to artificial intelligence, we can expect lots of freezing #ColdTakes!

73. What It’s Like Publishing My Entire Book on Medium

jon