News of the Week; October 12, 2016

GAMES

1. Oculus Founder Skips Company Event To Avoid Being A ‘Distraction’: “Palmer absolutely decided that he was not going to be here.”
2. Oculus’s big event keynote had one noticeable omission—founder Palmer LuckeyConsumer spend on VR to hit $11.2 billion by 2020 – IHS Markit
3. John Carmack says VR devs are “coasting on novelty”
4. Fallout 4 and Skyrim mods are coming to PS4—but with restrictions: Modders can’t upload external assets, and Fallout 4 mods don’t have a release date.
5. Skin in the Game: Video Game Publisher Dodges Teenage Gambling Suit, But Must Address State Regulator Concerns 
6. Uncharted Director Criticizes Triple-A Development, Says It Can “Destroy People”: Amy Hennig says she worked 10.5 years of 80-hour weeks.
7. Not A Game: Industry Labour Practices May Be Headed For a Big Change
8. “This industry is not going to protect us. We have to learn to protect ourselves”: The Chinese Room co-founder Jessica Curry calls for greater diversity in the industry, says everyone needs to do their part
9. Racing game specialist SimBin re-established in the UK
10. Meet Duran Parsi, Collegiate Starleague CEO And Law School Student
11. Dallas Mavericks’ Mark Cuban: ‘I Haven’t And Won’t Invest In (eSports) Teams’

DIGITAL

1. Mozilla trolls the EU’s nonsensical copyright laws with classic memes
2. Open Letter to the European Commission – On the Importance of Preserving the Consistency and Integrity of the EU Acquis Relating to Content Monitoring within the Information Society
3. Indonesia Government Introduces Vague Law Making Offensive/Embarrassing Memes Illegal
4. Twitter shouldn’t let itself become a tool for tyrants
5. Twitter’s Woes Signal the End of the Social Wars
6. NFL teams could face huge fines for posting game GIFs and videos on social media
7. To Combat Dropping Ratings, The NFL Thinks Fining Its Teams For Sharing Video On Social Media Is The Answer
8. Dozens of suspicious court cases, with missing defendants, aim at getting web pages taken down or deindexed
9. More Details Uncovered On Bogus Defamation Lawsuits Being Used To Delist Negative Reviews
10. Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Says He’s Stopped ‘Monitoring’ Gawker, But Still Sending It Bogus Takedown Demands
11. Prominent Pro-Patent Judge Issues Opinion Declaring All Software Patents Bad
12. Apple got its verdict back—$120M against Samsung: Federal Circuit judges revive Apple patents on “slide-to-unlock” and autocorrect.
13. Supreme Court may reel in Apple v. Samsung damage award: How much punishment is appropriate when it comes to design patents?
14. FTC Releases Big Report On Patent Trolls, Says The Patent System Needs To Change
15. An Interesting Online Personal Jurisdiction Ruling (No, Really!)–Rotblut v. Terrapinn
16. Enforcement problems with online contacts: an Uber case study
17. YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For ‘Violating Community Guidelines’
18. YouTube Crushed TV in Total Debate Viewership
19. The way YouTube stars are making millions is changing
20. Atlanta Hawks Receive 1 Million Views On Facebook Live Open Practice
21. Backpage CEO arrested, accused of running “world’s top online brothel”
22. We’re up to seven reports of “safe” Galaxy Note 7s exploding – Update: AT&T and T-Mobile halt sales as supposedly “safe” devices catch fire.
23. Samsung halts Galaxy Note 7 production, but UK carriers yet to nix sales of device: There have been at least seven reports of replacement phones exploding.
24. Galaxy Note 7 recall, Part 2: Samsung admits replacement units are unsafe: “Safe” Note 7s aren’t actually safe. Samsung starts second recall.
25. Don’t buy a Galaxy Note 7—and return yours if you already have: With production and sales of the Note 7 paused, we’ve got some alternate picks.
26. Gear VR no longer works with explosive Galaxy Note 7: Recognition that a phone exploding inches from your eyes is a bad idea.
27. How artificial intelligence is changing online retail forever
28. I have seen the future of the Internet: Millions of rogue fridges will render it unusable – Instead monetising 8K IPTV, telcos need to focus on security and DDoS mitigation.
29. WhatsApp’s data love-in with Facebook probed by Spanish watchdog: Data protection authorities shake fist at WhatsApp’s data-sharing U-turn.
30. Big Data and Competition Policy (Maurice Stucke & Allen Grunes)
31. Speak, Memory: When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence

CREATIVITY

1. Commodifying Banksy
2. Don’t call me a British artist – I’m thoroughly European
3. Ed Sheeran hits back at ‘scandalous allegations’ in $20m Photograph copyright lawsuit
4. Trump Adds To His Anti-First Amendment Legacy In Threatening To Sue Clinton For Campaign Ads
5. NBC Delayed Story About Trump’s Access Hollywood Recording Over Fear That He Might Sue
6. Dear Donald Trump And Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal
7. Trademark Infringement Suit Against Kanye West Precluded By The First Amendment
8. Sanity: MasterCard Loses Absolutely Idiotic Trademark Challenge Against An Athletic Competition
9. Why Copyright Reform Won’t Solve the Troubles Faced By the Newspaper Industry (Michael Geist)
10. The Copyright Office wants your comments on whether it should be illegal to fix your own stuff
11. In the Internet Age, Dolce and Gabbana Are Still Banning Critics, But Why?
12. New California Law Will Require Online Entertainment Database Sites to Remove Age-Based Information 
13. The Commission’s DSMS and CJEU case law: what relationship?
14. Are Prices Free Speech? The Supreme Court is set to weigh in on whether merchant surcharges are protected as free speech 
15. Remembering a journalist who was killed for standing up to Putin

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. A Cord-Cutting Battle in Canada is Brewing Between a Telecom David and Goliath
2. CRTC finds proposed wholesale high-speed access rates unreasonable
3. CRTC scolds big telecoms for ‘not just and reasonable’ wholesale rates
4. John Doyle: Why is the Canadian public subsidizing reality TV drivel?
5. Comcast fined $2.3 million by FCC for “negative option billing” practices: “It is basic that a cable bill include charges only for services and equipment ordered.”
6. FCC proposes broadband privacy rules despite opposition from ISPs: Pay-for-privacy plans won’t be banned, but ISPs face new opt-in requirements.
7. Comcast Dramatically Expands Unnecessary Broadband Caps — For ‘Fairness’
8. Charter Joins AT&T In Using Lawsuits To Try And Slow Down Google Fiber
9. Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump on broadband: She has a plan, he doesn’t: Clinton vows to defend net neutrality—Trump calls it “attack on the Internet.”

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. US government: Russia behind hacking campaign to disrupt US elections – DHS, Intelligence officials formally accuse Russian government of DNC hack, others.
2. The FBI Wants To Crack Another Dead Terrorist’s Locked iPhone
3. Welcome to the machine—Yahoo mail scanning exposes another US spy tool: Surveillance by machine “doesn’t count as spying unless you’re guilty,” right?
4. Yahoo Email Scanning May Sink EU Privacy Shield Agreement
5. Yahoo Inc. sued for gross negligence after confirmed hacking
6. ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for feeding surveillance company user data: Geofeedia touts access to Twitter’s firehose, “partnership with Instagram.”
7. Inspector General’s Report Notes Section 215 Requests Down Sharply Since 2013
8. Why we should celebrate the Elena Ferrante firestorm
9. FCC Chairman Proposes Final Privacy Rules
10. Bungling humans and systems failures outshine cyber attacks, say infosec bods: People cause more network outages than machines—and malicious actions are falling.

jon