News of the Week; December 2, 2015

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