News of the Week; September 7, 2016

GAMES

1. Lindsay Lohan Loses ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Lawsuit
2. Lindsay Lohan sets lawyers on Grand Theft Auto 5 – Update: Judge dismisses Lohan’s case
3. Sorry Lindsay Lohan, Grand Theft Auto Vis satirizing you, court rules: Satirical representation is protected under the Constitution, court says.
4. Lindsay Lohan’s Grand Theft Auto lawsuit rules in Rockstar’s favour: Court considers GTA5 “a work of fiction and satire”.
5. 500+ fan games on Game Jolt targeted by Nintendo DMCA takedown
6. Nintendo cracks down on fan-made games: DMCA takedown notice prompts closure of more than 500 projects on GameJolt
7. Nintendo’s DMCA-backed quest against online fan games: Takedown requests for 500 titles part of a new crackdown on IP infringement.
8. Miyamoto: Mario is coming to mobile because that’s where people play games
9. Sony nixes mod support on PS4: Bethesda says platform holder “will not approve user mods the way they should work” for Skyrim or Fallout 4
10. Sony’s more powerful PS4 ‘Neo’ to debut in November as $400 PS4 Pro
11. PS4 Pro: “This could be the final nail in the coffin for Xbox One” – analyst
12. British Telecom is taking Valve to court over patent infringement
13. How Licensing Laws are Threatening Your Video Games
14. Steam Spy and the specter of game sales transparency
15. Take-Two getting into VR: Despite previous skepticism of new tech, publisher plans to launch Carnival Games VR this year
16. Survey: Over 20% of VR/AR devs are working on platform exclusives
17. VR: Not all legal plain sailing ahead – Harbottle & Lewis explores the potential product liability and data protection issues that might emerge with the rise of virtual reality
18. Oculus Warns Users Not to Use Note 7 in Gear VR Headset Amid Exploding Phone Recall
19. Pokemon Go surpasses 500M downloads as it heads to Apple Watch
20. Pokémon Go church stunt could mean hefty jail term for Russian blogger: 22-year-old accused of “insulting religious sensitivities,” faces five years behind bars.
21. Second Pokémon Go Alliance Announced: SoftBank 
22. Pokémon Go “a real game changer” for Sony’s mobile ambitions: CEO Kaz Hirai believes AR could “lift all boats” in the market for mobile games
23. Pokémon, No! Practical Tips For Handling Latest Mobile Device Craze
24. Perspective on knowledge: Pokémon GO is our future (David Weinberger)
25. Eve Online Going Free-To-Play After 13 Years
26. Video Games Allow Characters More Varied Sexual Identities
27. Publisher BulkyPix is being liquidated, allegedly stiffing devs in the process
28. Guillemot family to buy another 3.5% of Ubisoft: Purchase of a further 4 million shares will add protection against a possible Vivendi takeover
29. Google Play opens up Early Access: Developers can now nominate their games to be included in early funding program
30. Publishers for indies – are they useful anymore?
31. Hey, Here’s an Idea: Maybe Stop Preordering Videogames
32. What Is The Best Video Game Sport?
33. Activision Blizzard hires Fox Sports exec as MLG CEO
34. Counter-Strike’s second Eleague esports season kicks off on TBS and Twitch
35. The once and future king of esports: He was one of the greatest esports stars of all time. And if you’re a a pro gamer, you’re living his legacy.
36. Meet Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong, the Original Pro Gamer: World’s first ‘Quake’ champ was recently inducted into the esports Hall of Fame
37. Ed Smith And The Imagination Machine: The Untold Story Of A Black Video Game Pioneer – At APF in the 1970s, as the second-known African-American video game engineer, he helped create an industry.
38. Report: China will have 465 million mobile players by the end of 2016
39. Free-to-Play Isn’t a Special Case in Ethics

DIGITAL

1. Warner Brothers reports own site as illegal: Film studio Warner Brothers has asked Google to remove its own website from search results, saying it violates copyright laws.
2. Warner Bros. flags own site for piracy, orders Google to censor pages: Studio also wanted Amazon, Sky, and IMDb links nixed for allegedly breaking copyright law.
3. Warner Bros. Issuing Takedowns For Its Own Site Is No Laughing Matter
4. U Of M Forwards 8,000 Emails Regarding Illegal Downloads: Copyright office likens threatening notices to extortion
5. Pirates Plunder 4K Hateful Eight, But Did They Crack DCP?
6. Tim Cook, Apple Chief, Defends Tax Practices and Says Cash Will Return to U.S.
7. Cook slams EU Apple tax case as “total political crap”—antitrust boss hits back: Commissioner Vestager says disputed figures in Apple ruling came from Apple.
8. Rather Than Coming Up With Brand New Taxes For Tech Companies, The EU Just Issues A Massive Fine On Apple
9. How Apple Helped Create Ireland’s Economies, Real And Fantastical
10. Ireland to Appeal Tax Ruling in Apple Case
11. Standing up to Apple
12. Apple could bring home billions in taxes if US passes a tax holiday – Law prof: “For the most part, companies like Apple don’t need to repatriate money.”
13. Unfortunate Expansion Of ‘Failure To Warn’ Exception To Section 230–Beckman v. Match (Eric Goldman)
14. Austrian Courts Uphold Creative Commons License Terms — For Now
15. Condé Nast Has Started Using IBM’s Watson to Find Influencers for Brands: Tapping into AI for recruitment 
16. SpaceX Rocket Explosion Sets Back Facebook’s Internet Expansion in Africa
17. Who controls the internet? Ted Cruz’s fantasy vs. the reality
18. Trump Finally Says Something Coherent About ‘the Cyber’
19. Google’s Clever Plan to Stop Aspiring ISIS Recruits
20. Do memes violate copyright law?
21. YouTubers are in uproar as they might lose money for swearing online
22. YouTube ‘demonetization,’ explained for normal: The Great YouTube Ad Freakout Of Late August 2016, explained.
23. Influencers weigh in on YouTube’s ‘censorship’ controversy
24. Pewdiepie: “Youtube Doesn’t Care About Its Creators” – PewDiePie slams YouTube following the recent monetization controversy.
25. ICG raises concerns over “de-monetisation” of YouTube content: YouTube guidelines, “could have the unintended consequence of discouraging creators from making edgy, interesting content”
26. Defending Noncommercial Uses: Great Minds v Fedex Office
27. Facebook Just Proved It Isn’t Hooli From Silicon Valley
28. Judge tosses lawsuit over 1-star Yelp review for overfeeding pet fish: Fish owner – We have a right to express “opinions without the fear of a lawsuit.”
29. Court Tosses Prestigious Pets’ $1 Million Defamation Suit Against Unhappy Customers
30. Samsung will recall Galaxy Note 7 because of exploding batteries: Recall affects all 2.5 million units that have shipped so far.
31. DRM: Still Hurting Paying Customers The Most
32. Professor Eric Goldman Stops Writing At Forbes, In Part Because Of Its Stance On Ad Blocking
33. This software will give movies and TV shows a diversity score
34. The Untold Story Of Blackberry Hype: Five years after young people organized riots that shook the UK, a look at the Blackberry’s pivotal role in youth culture.
35. Stupid Patent of the Month: Elsevier Patents Online Peer Review
36. How Tech Giants Are Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence
37. How algorithms rule our working lives: Employers are turning to mathematically modelled ways of sifting through job applications. Even when wrong, their verdicts seem beyond dispute – and they tend to punish the poor
38. Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari review – how data will destroy human freedom: It’s a chilling prospect, but the AI we’ve created could transform human nature, argues this spellbinding new book by the author of Sapiens
39. Bhutan’s Gross National Unhappiness: In The Wake Of The Country’s First Facebook Defamation Lawsuit, Fears Of Censorship Rise
40. A livestream of a small town in Wyoming is bringing the internet together
41. Engineering Humans with Contracts (Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger)

CREATIVITY

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Efforts to suppress political expression in Japan are meeting an unlikely foe: the flash mob.
2. How White Kids Stole House Music from Black Aunties: It’s time for sonic reparations
3. Melania Trump Sues Daily Mail & A Blogger Over Stories, Using Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan’s Lawyer
4. Melania Trump Lawsuit Is Not The ‘Next Gawker,’ It’s The Open Beta Of A Trump Presidency
5. Man sues Detroit Tigers for using trademarked phrase ‘Welcome to the D’
6. Motorcycle clubs fight to keep their trademark ‘colors’
7. Creative Commons Wants To Step Into Lawsuit Over Definition Of ‘Noncommercial’ In A CC License
8. Another 19th Century Moral Panic: Theater
9. Mobile vs. Computer: Implications for News Audiences and Outlets
10. Disney Debuts New ‘Star Wars’ Toys With Fan-Created Online Films
11. U.S. Department of Justice Rejects Modification of Music Licensing Consent Decrees
12. Friedman v. Live Nation Merchandise, Inc.
13. Further Update on the Blacklock’s “Litany of Litigation” – First Trial Set For September 19, 2016 (Howard Knopf)
14. How ‘Making A Murderer’ Fans Have Influenced The Search For Truth In The Teresa Halbach Murder
15. The New Rules Of The Creative Economy
16. Louis Vuitton can’t take a joke
17. Louis Vuitton’s Inability To Take A Joke Opens Up A Chance To Fix Our Broken Trademark Laws
18. Alabama Library Threatens Jail Time for Overdue Books
19. Be a Winner: Complying with Canadian Contest Laws
20. Why calling screentime ‘digital heroin’ is digital garbage: Inciting fear about the dangers of digital media is counter productive
21. 40 Years Ago: George Harrison Found Guilty of ‘My Sweet Lord’ Plagiarism
22. Hollywood Freaking Out That Europe Might Make It Marginally Easier For People To Legally Access Content
23. Has Banksy’s true identity been discovered?
24. The MacTaggart Lecture 2016: Shane Smith, Founder & CEO of Vice (Edinburgh International Television Festival)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Harassment finding against ex-CRTC commissioner nixed due to ‘witch hunt’: Federal Court ruling reproaches both investigator and chair of federal agency
2. Federal court finds CRTC harassment investigation unfair
3. Federal court rules former CRTC commissioner denied procedural fairness in harassment investigation
4. The CRTC Wades into Quebec’s Internet Blocking Legislation – Does A Constitutional Collision Loom?
5. CRTC defends the Internet, and the right to choose. Hurrah! (Timothy Denton)
6. Anti-Robocall Statute Violates First Amendment–Gresham v. Rutledge
7. Gretchen Carlson Settles With Fox — And We Are All Denied The Discovery We So Richly Deserve
8. The Revenge of Roger’s Angels: How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media.
9. Fox News and Megyn Kelly find themselves in a book bind
10. Media Matters declares another kind of war against Fox News
11. Future of TV sports: Pay up or be blacked out
12. iPlayer viewers must have TV licence but BBC can’t track online cheats: Web-based verification system to police licence fee dodgers won’t be used by BBC.
13. CBS Announces New Ad-Free More-Expensive Streaming Service…That Includes Ads
14. Tales from Comcast’s data cap nation: Can the meter be trusted? – “Our meter is perfect,” Comcast rep claims. It isn’t—and mistakes could cost you.
15. Users Say Comcast Broadband Usage Meters Don’t Work, May Result in Hundreds Of Dollars Of Errant Charges
16. What Net Neutrality? While The FCC Naps, AT&T Now Exempting DirecTV Content From Wireless Usage Caps
17. Three’s ad-blocker plans challenged over net neutrality: A European Union agency has said that mobile network’s Three’s plans to offer ad-blockers would violate net neutrality.
18. FCC Gives Up On Municipal Broadband Fight
19. AT&T’s throttling victory may hinder FTC’s power to protect consumers: Ruling raises questions about FTC ability to regulate Google, Verizon.
20. Contested FCC Media Ownership Order Leaves Rules Largely Unchanged
21. Surprise! European Union Adopts Net Neutrality Guidelines That Don’t Suck
22. AT&T, Poster Child For Government Favoritism, Mocks Google Fiber For Government Favoritism
23. Blame Your Lousy Internet on Poles: The war over high-speed access is fought on 40-foot-high wooden sticks. (Susan Crawford)
24. The Do-Not-Call List Has a Gaping Hole: Illegal robocalls that try to scam you out of money are flourishing. Can the phone companies figure out how to stop them?
25. FCC Needs to Impose Strong Protections Around Stingray Use
26. CRTC Settles Alleged CASL Violation — Messages Sent Without Consent

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Amazon, Google, Apple… Fox News join Microsoft in US gag orders fight: Eclectic bunch support MS battle against US government’s secret requests for user data.
2. The Man Who Lit The Dark Web: Data-mining tools are helping cops bust open online human trafficking
3. ACLU Challenges Gag Orders Issued To Tech Companies By The DOJ
4. Dropbox hackers stole e-mail addresses, hashed passwords from 68M accounts
5. Hacker Guccifer, who exposed Clinton’s use of private e-mail, gets 52 months: Feds wanted harsh term to underscore that hacking is not “a crime to be celebrated.”
6. Google can now peer inside your apps to get search results
7. Golden State Warriors Android app constantly listens to nearby audio, fan says: Official app of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors is the subject of a federal lawsuit.
8. New cloud attack takes full control of virtual machines with little effort: Existing crypto software “wholly unequipped” to counter Rowhammer attacks.
9. Forget Software—Now Hackers Are Exploiting Physics
10. Building a new Tor that can resist next-generation state surveillance
11. Australian Government Using Data Retention Law To Seek Out Journalists’ Sources, Hunt Down Whistleblowers
12. James Comey Claims He Wants An ‘Adult Conversation’ About Encryption; Apparently ‘Adults’ Ignore Experts
13. New leaks prove it: the NSA is putting us all at risk to be hacked (Bruce Schneier)
14. Spying Inc. (Danielle Keats Citron)

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