News of the Week; September 30, 2015

GAMES

1. Wizards of the Coast settles Hex lawsuit

2. Dev Offers Free Games For Steam User Reviews, Gets Nuked By Valve

3. Black Forest Games loses Diesel trademark dispute

4. Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and more take aim at cyber harassment against women in new report

5. Hasbro Spent Time, Money, Lawyers’ Attention To Barely Make A Difference Over My Little Pony Fan Game

6. Hackers restore PlayStation TV compatibility that was blocked by Sony: Simple e-mail exploit lets microconsole play dozens more games.

7. Valve blames developers for lingering VR nausea issues

8. Carmack: Minecraft is “the single most important application for VR”

9. Hothead Games opens new Halifax studio

10. FarmVille creator Mark Skaggs leaves Zynga

11. Over 20,000 attend first Twitchcon: 1.9 million unique online viewers for streamer show

12. Twitch policy on nudity a “disgrace” – Yang

13. Turner forms Counter-Strike eSports league, TV series

14. Five factors key to making eSports a $1bn business by 2020

DIGITAL

1. NSA snooping may endanger Safe Harbor Agreement with the EU

+ Opinion by ECJ Advocate General finds Safe Harbor invalid

+ Opinion Of Advocate General (EU), 23 September 2015, Case C‑362/14 Maximillian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner

+ US desperately defends Safe Harbour scheme, says it never uses “indiscriminate surveillance” on EU: US tells EU’s highest court not to interfere with its data-slurping-with-impunity agreement.

2. Federal Judge Says Law Enforcement Can’t Make You Hand Over Your Smartphone Passcode

+ Forcing suspects to reveal phone passwords is unconstitutional, court says: Demanding “personal thought processes” amounts to compelled self incrimination.

3. The Era Of Automatic Facial Recognition And Surveillance Is Here (Bruce Schneier)

4. Snowden Treaty Launched: Effort To Get Countries To End Mass Surveillance

5. FTC Sues Marketers Who Used “Gag Clauses,” Monetary Threats, and Lawsuits to Stop Negative Consumer Reviews for Unproven Weight-Loss Products

6. Facebook Ads Are All-Knowing, Unblockable, and in Everyone’s Phone

7. The Increasing Attacks On The Most Important Law On The Internet

8. Online activism and why the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act must die

9. Malware Outbreak in App Store Alerts Tech Companies to Security Risks of China’s Great Firewall

10. DARPA is implanting chips in soldiers’ brains, according to this new book

11. When Online Kremlin Propaganda Leaves the Web, It Looks Like This

12. Beyond ad blocking — the biggest boycott in human history

13. Government Report Declares Broadband An Essential, Uncompetitive Utility, Wistfully Ponders If Perhaps We Should Do Something About It

14. Why Universal, Affordable Internet Access Should be 2015 Election Campaign Issue (Michael Geist)

15. No, You Don’t Need to Post a Facebook Copyright Status

16. Cox Points Out That Rightscorp Is Either A Mass Infringer Itself… Or Admits That Downloading Songs Can Be Fair Use

17. Focus: Companies responding to copyright infringement in creative ways

18. Now That Nielsen Can Actually Be Bothered To Track Internet Video, The Numbers For Traditional TV Are Getting Ugly

19. Spotify but for the Titanic: A Proposal for the Future of News and Publishing

20. Waiting for a Drop in Corporate Hacks after U.S.-China Deal

21. Taylor Swift Deleting Periscope Concert Streams: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

22. Why Apple Music Missed a Beat

23. Election advertising gets with the #times

24. Creative Robots Replacing Artists And Writers…

25. John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus

26. What are the implications of the right to be forgotten in the Americas?

27. Will that be cash, credit or bitcoin? The pros and cons of digital currency

28. The casual racism of our most popular dating apps: Sites like Tinder and Grindr are littered with racial preferences and worse. Why are we so ready to let them slide?

29. The Man Who Created Second Life Thinks We Can Make an Earth-Sized Virtual World

30. Moon-Landing Equivalent for Robots: Assembling an IKEA Chair

31. Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software

+ Volkswagen Scandal Proves It’s Time To Stop Being Passive About Our Tech

+ Should research on vehicle software be hidden from the public? 

CREATIVITY

1. Pow! Appeals court assigns copyright to the Batmobile

+ Appeals Court Says The Batmobile Is A ‘Character’ Covered By Copyright

2. The Copyright Issue of Using Music in Election Campaigns

3. Gallagher v. Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc.

jon