News of the Week; October 5, 2016

GAMES

  1. Court dismisses class action lawsuit against Valve over CS:GO gambling
  2. Federal Court Rejects Online Gambling Lawsuit Against Valve–McLeod v. Valve
  3. Washington state authority orders Valve to stop allowingCS:GO skin gambling
  4. Valve threatened by Washington State Gambling Commission – CS:GO skins controversy continues for the Steam platform holder
  5. Pokémon Go creator sued by The Hague over “nuisance” players on beaches: Beaches at Kijkduin have become a Mecca for Dutch gamers, damaging protected dunes.
  6. Niantic facing court in The Hague over Pokémon Go: Fears over damage to a protected beach raise questions over efficacy of Niantic’s grievance procedures
  7. Pokemon GO still generating about $2m a day – Newzoo: At its peak, the wildly popular game was generating revenues of $16m each day, Newzoo says
  8. Lindsay Lohan’s Grand Theft Auto Suit Dismissed
  9. With Sony’s support, Bethesda revives mods for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PS4
  10. PS4 Skyrim, Fallout 4 getting user mods after all: After blaming Sony for missing features, Bethesda backtracks, also promises PS4 Pro support for both titles
  11. No Man’s Sky’s advertising is officially under investigation in the UK: ASA looking at allegedly misleading screens, videos, and descriptions.
  12. No Man’s Sky Subreddit Closed, Described as “Hate Filled Wastehole” By Mod: The game’s subreddit was purged of all discussion threads and shuttered.
  13. Under Armour, Snapchat Team Up For Cam Newton Interactive Game
  14. Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture studio co-founder calls for immediate action to improve diversity in games
  15. Why the Video-Game Culture Wars Won’t Die
  16. Racing Game Developers Sacrifice Playability On The Altar Of Anti-Piracy, Deliver Laggy Mess To Paying Customers
  17. Forza Horizon 3 is plagued by issues on Xbox One
  18. Dev who sued Steam users drops lawsuit, citing money problems
  19. Digital Homicide owner cancels lawsuit against Steam users: Cites lack of funds in termination filing after “business was destroyed completely”
  20. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – what next for the games industry?
  21. Amazon reveals Twitch’s first currency, gambling systems: New sports-brawling game Breakaway will “integrate directly” with Twitch in many ways.
  22. eSports teams attract more outside investment: Steve Aoki buys a stake in upstart Rogue as Memphis Grizzlies owner ups his share of League of Legends Championship Series squad Immortals
  23. Influx of capital into eSports will force it to grow up: Traditional sports owners and executives getting into eSports will herald huge changes to the culture and business of the sector
  24. The Next Great American Pastime: Major League Gaming is building the ESPN of eSports. And reshaping sports media.
  25. Esports are now officially legal in France
  26. First eSport Tournament Streamed in Virtual Reality
  27. Sony PlayStation VR review: You know what? Sony did it. The PSVR is actually pretty great
  28. PlayStation VR provides a lot of bang for your virtual reality buck – Review: VR on a game console finds a sweet spot between cheap and top-of-the-line.
  29. The Mainstreaming of Augmented Reality: A Brief History
  30. VR hardware will grow to $50 billion by 2021 – Juniper
  31. With SEC approval, anyone can now invest in Psychonauts 2’sFig campaign
  32. Ubisoft: “We won’t relax until they sell their shares” – Ubi succeeds in adding two new independent directors to the board, and reelects Yves and Gerard Guillemot
  33. Vivendi bides its time as Ubisoft re-elects Yves Guillemot as chairman
  34. Ubisoft fends off unwanted suitor: 10 Years Ago This Month: The Prince of Persia publisher attempts to stay independent from EA, and for good reason
  35. Xbox boss admits internal goal was to sell 200m consoles: Phil Spencer says the rough start for Xbox One was partly due to the company’s misguided approach to the business at the time
  36. Worldwide digital sales top $6 billion in August – Superdata: Tracking firm sees premium games getting more popular in China, with collectible card games the future of free-to-play
  37. War Robots dev acquired by Russian internet giant for $30M
  38. Kickstarter-Funded Game Drops DRM-Free Version It Promised, Then Promises It Again After The Backlash
  39. PewDiePie’s ‘Tuber Simulator’ Tops The App Store Charts, Crashes Servers Due To Immense Popularity
  40. Madden devs own up to misplacing the sun
  41. DIGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings Of The First International Joint Conference Of DIGRA And FDG – 62 Articles Or Papers

DIGITAL

  1. European Court Rules On Open WIFI (Andres Guadamuz)
  2. A Closer Look at the RIAA Lawsuit Against YouTube-MP3
  3. New York Fashion Company Sued Over Use of Photograph on Instagram
  4. Y2K 2.0: Is the US government set to “give away the Internet” Saturday? 
  5. Texas and 3 other states sue to block ICANN transition (Rebecca Tushnet)
  6. Judge rejects plea from states to stop U.S. from giving up control of Internet
  7. The Internet Finally Belongs to Everyone
  8. How countries like China and Russia are able to control the internet
  9. Murky international laws threaten to break up the internet as we know it
  10. After Facebook “censors” anti-Muslim posts, hate groups sue US gov’t: Gov’t lawyers now ask judge to dismiss lawsuit, as activists “lack standing.”
  11. FBI’s Comey: Actually, Chasing ISIS Off Twitter Makes It More Difficult For Us To Follow Them
  12. Did attackers take down Newsweek because of an anti-Trump story?: Reporter tweeted Friday: “Lots of IP addresses involved. Main ones from Russia.”
  13. How 1.5 Million Connected Cameras Were Hijacked to Make an Unprecedented Botnet
  14. How Facebook Live became the tool for live streaming death by police
  15. How An Old Hacking Law Hampers The Fight Against Online Discrimination
  16. Arduino on Arduino battle ends in reconciliation, merger: Schism in leading open source hardware project heals with new Arduino Foundation.
  17. Popular YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent to Beat Censorship
  18. Social media stars are helping Hollywood reach younger audiences, for a price
  19. HP Apologizes for Busting People’s Printers on Purpose
  20. Amazon bans reviews based on free or discounted products: Only books and reviews from the Amazon Vine program are exempt from new rules.
  21. Patent troll VirnetX beats Apple again, awarded $302M in FaceTime damages: Patent holder will seek millions more over whether Apple willfully infringed.
  22. Stupid Design Patent Of The Month: Rectangles On A Screen
  23. Here’s Why Software Patents Are in Peril After the Intellectual Ventures Ruling
  24. FTC Study on Patent Assertion Entity Activity
  25. Trademarks: Trolls at the Gate – In a few short years, anyone with a couple hundred dollars will be able to register a trademark, whether it’s being used commercially or not. Trademark trafficking, and trolls, won’t be far behind.
  26. Cox Wants Music Group to Pay for False Copyright Claims: Internet provider Cox Communications is demanding over $100,000 in compensation from Round Hill Music, for the legal fees it incurred based on false copyright claims. The music group sued Cox last year over alleged infringements committed by the ISP’s subscribers, without actually owning any of the copyrights in question.
  27. What The Twitter Sale Reveals About Twitter, Itself: The plain truth about the struggling social-media company has become clear in its highly public, and theatrical, auction.
  28. On @Jack’s One Year Anniversary, Twitter Remains a Mess
  29. Trump’s Overnight Twitter Tirade Sums Up His Weaknesses
  30. How I Taught A Jury About Trolls, Memes And 4Chan — And Helped Get A Troll Out Of Jail
  31. Donald Trump Happily Repeating Lie About Google Autocomplete Suppressing Negative Hillary News
  32. The new secret code that racists are using online is doomed to fail
  33. 4chan is running out of money—and Martin Shkreli wants to help out: Cash worries have dogged the notorious troll-haven for years.
  34. Virtual Reality to Help Bring the Last Nazi War Criminals to Justice
  35. Facebook Video Metrics Crossed The Line From Merely Dubious To Just Plain Wrong
  36. Is Twitter Really the Future of Sports Watching?
  37. All That New Google Hardware? It’s a Trojan Horse for AI
  38. Can A.I. help out in the executive suite?
  39. The future of protest involves light, holograms and augmented reality
  40. Thoughts on Neuromarketing, ZMET and Thinking Fast and Slow
  41. Legally Blind Man Sees Clearly For The First Time Ever, Thanks to Virtual Reality
  42. The remix wars: Originality in the age of digital reproduction
  43. MIT’s “Moral Machine” Lets You Decide Who Lives & Dies in Self-Driving Car Crashes
  44. Tech billionaires are asking scientists for help breaking humans out of the computer simulation they think they might be trapped in
  45. A fourth law of robotics? Copyright and the law and ethics of machine co-production (B. Schafer, D. Komuves, JN Zatarain & L. Diver)

CREATIVITY

  1. Dash Snow’s Family Sues McDonald’s for Copyright Infringement: The lawsuit claims that any association with McDonald’s will diminish the value of the late artist’s work.
  2. Supreme Court Punts on O’Bannon v. NCAA
  3. No copyright protection for sport broadcasts (Sweden)
  4. Fox News’ Harris Faulkner & Hasbro Settle Lawsuit Over ‘Harris Faulkner’ Hamster
  5. Can you trademark an offensive name or not? US Supreme Court to decide: US law bars trademarks if the name is immoral, deceptive, scandalous, or disparaging.
  6. Phoenix Police Issues Totally Bogus Cease & Desist To Trump Campaign Claiming Copyright Infringement
  7. Following Coverage Of Trademark Dispute, Lawyer Demands Image On News Story Be Taken Down As Infringing
  8. Warning: This article on trademarks may include language deemed ‘scandalous, immoral or disparaging’
  9. Parody product fails to squeak through the cracks in dilution/infringement claim: VIP Products, LLC v. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. (Rebecca Tushnet)
  10. U.S. Court Of Appeals Upholds Ruling That New Hampshire’s Silly Ballot Selfie Ban Violated The First Amendment
  11. NH Ban on Ballot Selfies Held Unconstitutional
  12. EFF Asks Court To Block The DOJ From Prosecuting Researcher For DMCA Violations
  13. Beyoncé’s copyright case was destined for dismissal 
  14. In Pegasus-related copyright suit, judge sidelines as art critic 
  15. Leaker fined $1.2 million for uploading screener of The Revenant
  16. Why Are We Paying for Public Domain Photos?
  17. BBC Radio Director Helen Boaden resigns, criticising state of journalism
  18. Luke Cage’s Signature Hoodie Is a Tribute to Trayvon Martin
  19. Stevie Wonder, Motown, and the First ‘360 Deal’: Wonder’s recommitment to Berry Gordy was a commercial coup and a creative crescendo
  20. Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Consumers, industry present opposing futures for Canada’s wireless code
  2. A Massive Cable Industry Disinformation Effort Just Crushed The FCC’s Plan For Cable Box Competition
  3. AT&T to end targeted ads program, give all users lowest available price: Controversial traffic scanning program, Internet Preferences, meets its demise.
  4. AT&T Stops Charging Broadband Users Extra For Privacy
  5. Overly Broad Arbitration Clause Fails–Wexler v. AT&T
  6. Verizon workers can now be fired if they fix copper phone lines
  7. FCC Streamlines Foreign Ownership Review Process for Broadcasters, Common Carriers
  8. The State of Traditional TV: Q2 2016 Update

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. How Ottawa revived Canada’s most controversial privacy issue (Michael Geist)
  2. Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources
  3. Yahoo Secretly Built Software To Scan All Emails Under Pressure From NSA Or FBI
  4. Yahoo’s CISO resigned in 2015 over secret e-mail search tool ordered by feds – Reuters: Yahoo “complied with a classified US government directive.”
  5. N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets
  6. Feds Gagged Encrypted Communications Firm Open Whisper Systems Over Massively Overbroad Subpoena
  7. Johnson & Johnson Warns Insulin Pump Owners They Could Be Killed By Hackers
  8. A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy: Doctors and lawyers are prohibited from using clients’ information for their own interests, so why aren’t Google and Facebook? (Jack Balkin & Jonathan Zittrain)
  9. Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and Jumpstart Fined $835,000 for Tracking Children Online
  10. How hard is it to hack the average DVR? Sadly, not hard at all
  11. Yahoo hack may have exposed Marissa Mayer’s emails

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