News of the Week; January 6, 2016

GAMES

1. “World of Warcraft” Creator Takes Battle to Court over Game’s Characters
2. $100M Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Settled For…An Apology?
3. Ember settles Machine Zone copycat suit with an apology
4. FTC Closes 2015 With No New Secret Shopper Survey
5. VR sticker shock: How Oculus failed to prepare the world for a $599 Rift
6. CNN phones it in with ‘Internet gaming addiction’ report
7. Activision Blizzard buys MLG for $46 million
8. Report: Major League Gaming acquired by Activision in $46 million buyout – Majority of the cash will go towards paying off MLG’s mounting debts.
9. Activision confirms MLG buyout to create “ESPN of eSports”
10. Garry’s Mod passes 10m sales barrier
11. Steam hosted $3.5 billion in paid game sales last year
12. PS4 sales nearing 36 million: Sony added 5.7 million systems to installed base over the last six weeks of 2015
13. Oculus Rift priced $600, ships in March: The much anticipated VR headset finally has a retail price [Update – Palmer Luckey says Rift “obscenely cheap”]
14. Oculus rewarding dev kit backers with free Kickstarter Edition Rift
15. Report: VR will be worth $5.1 billion in 2016
16. VR installed base to hit 38.9m by year-end – SuperData
17. Playing for Time: A father, a dying son, and the quest to build the most profound videogame ever

DIGITAL

1. Understanding David Lowery’s Lawsuit Against Spotify: The Insanity Of Music Licensing
2. How Spotify Pays (or Doesn’t Pay) Songwriters
3. Homeland Security Admits It Seized A Hip Hop Blog For Five Years Despite No Evidence Of Infringement; RIAA Celebrates
4. French Government Ordered to Adopt Decree providing for ISP Compensation
5. Richard Prince Finally Sued (Again) For Copyright Infringement Over His ‘Instagram’ Art
6. Lumosity pays $2 million to FTC to settle bogus “Brain Training” claims: FTC said company “simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”
7. Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Decision On Fair Use And Right Of First Sale Fails To Budge The Needle On Either Issue
8. Rules of procedural fairness breached by refusal to allow Netflix to be heard on new provisions in tariff
9. UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods applies to certain software license agreements
10. Cisco gets a big patent win despite Supreme Court loss, overturns $64M verdict: Cisco calls the seven-year litigation initiated by a patent troll a “travesty.”
11. How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice: A recent dustup over smart light bulbs illuminates a larger problem.
12. Are Movie Theaters Actually Fueling Piracy?
13. Consenting to Computer Use (James Grimmelmann)
14. Tech Law in 2016: Previewing Some of the Tough Policy Choices (Michael Geist)
15. Online copyright – Hyperlinking and accessibility
16. App Store sees $1.1 billion in sales over Christmas
17. Believe It or Not, YouTube May Spend More on Content than Netflix Does
18. Five Streaming Video Predictions for 2016
19. There’s No Such Thing as an MCN. It’s a Figment of Your Imagination
20. For Many Nonprofits And Causes, YouTube Stars Are The New Guides To Growth
21. The Triumph of Email: Why does one of the world’s most reviled technologies keep winning?
22. Virtual Reality Therapy: Treating The Global Mental Health Crisis
23. The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?: Should autonomous vehicles be programmed to choose who they kill when they crash? And who gets access to the code that determines those decisions? (Cory Doctorow)
24. Turkish Hackers Claim Credit for Hijacking Top Russian Official’s Instagram
25. A Politics For Technology
26. Film vs. digital: the most contentious debate in the film world, explained – Why knowing how a movie was shot is so important before you go to the theater.
27. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 2: Locking in Digital Locks (Michael Geist)
28. How The TPP Is Trouble: Public Interest Explicitly Tossed In Favor Of Corporate Interests
29. Paul Graham is Still Asking to be Eaten: An Obviously Critical Response to Paul Graham is Still Asking to be Eaten: An Obviously Critical Response to “Economic Inequality” by Paul Graham
30. Amazon customer complains, finds spiteful 10-inch dildo in his shopping basket: Watch out: If you provide honest answers in a satisfaction survey, you might be next.
31. Aaron Swartz’s Quest to Keep Corporations From Privatizing the Internet

CREATIVITY

1. Public Domain Day outside the USA: what Canada and the rest of the world get today
2. What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2016?: Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1959
3. Hong Kong Bookseller’s Disappearance Stokes Fears of Cross-Border Kidnaps by Mainland Chinese Police
4. The Adelson forces buy a newspaper, journalists fight back: a journal of my updates on this story
5. Inside Ethiopia’s Self-Defeating Crackdown on Oromo Musicians
6. The First Amendment Protections Afforded To A “Tattoo Establishment” 
7. The Trouble with the TPP, Day 3: Copyright Term Extension (Michael Geist)
8. The Reasons You Can’t Stop Binge Watching: There are psychological and neurological explanations for why we pay so much attention to our favorite shows.
9. The Celebrity Surgeon Who Used Love, Money, and the Pope to Scam an NBC News Producer: When Benita Alexander fell for celebrated doctor Paolo Macchiarini—while filming a documentary about him—she thought her biggest problem was a breach of journalistic ethics. Then things got really interesting.

COMMUNICATIONS

1. EFF blasts T-Mobile’s Binge On, calls for FCC investigation
2. T-Mobile throttles all video streams and downloads to 1.5Mbps, EFF says: T-Mobile’s claim that it’s “optimizing” video disputed by EFF tests.
3. Will the Proposal for an Online Public File for Radio and Cable and Satellite TV Be Adopted Soon?
4. Broadcasters, Others Underscore Need for Foreign Ownership Rule Changes in FCC Comment

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Report: China hacked Hotmail accounts and Microsoft didn’t notify customers
2. Microsoft decided not to warn Tibetan and Uyghur e-mail hack victims: Microsoft feared angering Chinese gov’t. Now it will notify of state-sponsored attacks.
3. House Intelligence Committee Orders Investigation Into Surveillance Of Congress That It Authorized
4. In 2015, promising surveillance cases ran into legal brick walls: Attorneys everywhere are calling things moot after the phone metadata program ended.
5. Dutch government: Encryption good, backdoors bad
6. FTC Wields COPPA Cudgel Against App Developers
7. Parents are worried about the new WiFi-connected Barbie, but should they be?
8. Pew Research Center Issues Report on Attitudes Toward Sharing Personal Information with Private Sector
9. New Year’s Resolution for GCs in 2016: Establishing a Data Governance Committee

jon