News of the Week; November 2, 2016

GAMES

1. Sega/Steam Took Down A Bunch Of Legitimate Steam Workshop Mods Over Copyright Concerns
2. Steam bans misleading “bullshots” from its product pages: Concept art and pre-rendered shots no longer allowed on online storefront.
3. Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game
4. Skyrim Publisher Gives Up on Game Reviews—and It Won’t Be the Only One
5. How working on gross, violent games can mess with developers
6. What drives game developers to crunch?
7. No, Hello Games didn’t admit that No Man’s Sky was a mistake: A confusing morning of conflicting reports and Twitter hacking drama.
8. More proof shows Hollywood insiders leaking movies on torrent sites: Talent agency says “sharing of award screeners is commonplace” in Hollywood.
9. Star Trek Online’s PS4 and Xbox One Version Passes 1 Million Players: Free-to-play MMO reaches new heights on consoles.
10. THQ Nordic purchases NovaLogic’s assets: The Delta Force series and other military-themed titles join the publisher’s roster of “partly forgotten, but classic game IPs”
11. Big Telecom versus Video Games: Big Implications
12. Mobile gaming isn’t so mobile: New survey from PayPal and SuperData shows that most people play mobile games in the bedroom, living room or bathroom
13. Latin America will generate $4.1bn in game revenues this year – Newzoo: Console market in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico rising rapidly
14. Welcome to the New Era: Games as Media: SuperData’s Joost van Dreunen sees games, like other entertainment, being more highly targeted by advertisers
15. Attacking someone’s family over a video game is not acceptable’ – Miles Jacobson: The Sports Interactive boss talks angry gamers, Brexit and ‘very, very, very false’ SteamSpy data
16. Warren Spector: “I couldn’t care less about maximising profitability” – OtherSide’s resident genius gives his 4 criteria for success at Sweden Game Conference
17. Gaming’s rarest systems, carts, and collectibles can be found at this huge museum: We geeked the heck out at the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas.

DIGITAL

1. A New Internet Tax in Canada Would Keep Indigenous People Offline
2. Competition Bureau Conducts Internet Sweep Focusing on Online Reviews and Endorsements
3. Gawker and Hulk Hogan Reach $31 Million Settlement
4. Gawker Settles With Hulk Hogan, And The First Amendment Is Worse For It
5. Swedish Court: News Site Embedding A YouTube Video Guilty Of Copyright Infringement
6. Linking to unlicensed content: Swedish court applies GS Media
7. Swedish File-Sharing in Decline, Anti-Piracy Lawyer Says
8. Copyright Office Gratuitously Kills The DMCA Safe Harbor For Thousands Of Websites (Eric Goldman)
9. Another Tortured DMCA Online Safe Harbor Ruling–Emi v. MP3tunes (Eric Goldman)
10. 230 provides protection against liability, not immediately appealable immunity from suit: General Steel Domestic Sales, L.L.C. v. Chumley, No. 15-1293 (10th Cir. Nov. 1, 2016) (Rebecca Tushnet)
11. It’s Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (Even Your Car)
12. Facebook lets advertisers exclude users by race: “This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”
13. How Facebook’s Racial Segmentation Is Helping Trump Campaign Try To Suppress African American Voting
14. Trolls For Trump: Meet Mike Cernovich, the meme mastermind of the alt-right. 
15. As Standing Rock Protesters Face Down Armored Trucks, the World Watches on Facebook
16. Pepe, Nasty Women, and the Memeing of American Politics
17. Smashing the Silicon Valley patriarchy: anti-Lean In strategy puts onus on men – Instead of pressuring women in the tech industry to solve sexism, this feminist activist is teaching men how to stop biased behavior
18. A collision of Chinese manufacturing, globalization, and consumer ignorance could ruin the internet for everyone
19. NFL ‘Pleased’ With Twitter Live Streaming Deal After Five Games
20. Paying to Have and Not to Hold: We’re increasingly paying extra to get the digital version of a book or movie.
21. The Inside Story Of Vine’s Demise: Former employees paint a picture of management issues, changing strategies, and existential questions.
22. Vine’s biggest stars mourn its death — but saw it coming
23. Inside the secret meeting that changed the fate of Vine forever
24. YouTube Finally Buries The Hatchet With GEMA, Meaning People In Germany Can Watch Videos Again
25. The sound of music: Youtube and GEMA finally settle
26. Samsung’s mobile division profits collapse by 96% year-over-year: Mobile giant can’t push ahead with its “new flagship products” fast enough.
27. The Bizarre Role Reversal of Apple and Microsoft
28. Apple’s new ‘TV’ app is its way of simplifying all your streaming content: Building a “unified TV experience” under the Apple umbrella.
29. Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress: In which Wix forgets what happens when you add GPL code to your closed-source app.
30. Google Strategy Teardown: Betting The Future On AI, Cloud Services, And (Tamed) Moonshots
31. Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm; no one knows how it works: Neural networks seem good at devising crypto methods; less good at codebreaking.
32. Ransomware Is Booming and Companies Are Paying Up
33. What Last Week’s Internet Shut Down Really Means: The Internet of Things era is already here. It could take down our cities if we let it.
34. The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive: Tech companies use the insights of behaviour design to keep us returning to their products. But some of the psychologists who developed the science of persuasion are worried about how it is being used
35. Ridiculous: Nick Denton Settles Remaining Charles Harder Lawsuits, Agrees To Delete Perfectly True Stories
36. How Facebook algorithms impact democracy: Its algorithms decide what you see. And they don’t distinguish fact from fiction.
37. If Palantir really cared about diversity, it wouldn’t pay its employees like this
38. The City That Was Saved by the Internet
39. Digital Exhaustion: North American Observations (Ariel Katz)

CREATIVITY

1. Hollywood Accounting Back In Court: How Has Spinal Tap Only Earned $81 In Merchandise Sales For Its Creators?
2. Appeals Court Upholds Warner Bros.’ Legal Victory Over ‘Gone With the Wind’ Merchandise
3. Text of 8th Cir decision in Warner Bros v X One X (A.V.E.L.A.) re Use of Movie Stills
4. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars Sued Over “Uptown Funk”: Minneapolis funk band Collage claim copyright infringement
5. It’s official: Oracle will appeal its “fair use” loss against Google: Case goes back to court that held APIs are copyrighted in the first place.
6. Second Circuit Finds Use of “Who’s on First” Routine Not Transformative and Not Fair Use
7. U.S. Copyright Office Is in Turmoil Amid a Firing and Lobbying Controversy: Personality clashes and mission creep may explain it.
8. Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes
9. MPAA: EFF Just Jealous It Doesn’t Control Copyright Office Like Hollywood Does
10. Australian Teen With Wacky Mullet Sues The Media For Making A Meme Out Of His Haircut
11. ‘Citizen Journalism’ Is a Catastrophe Right Now, and It’ll Only Get Worse
12. Huge Casino Threatens Small Blues Club For Using The Word ‘Live’ In Its Name
13. Inside the Budding Trademark Battle for “Nasty Woman” Apparel
14. Understanding Michael Jordan v. Qiaodan: Historical Anomaly or Systemic Failure to Protect Chinese Consumers (English and Chinese Versions)
15. Is Paramount “Unsalvageable”?: As the Redstones figure out how to save Viacom, they need to start by turning around Paramount.
16. Advertising Standards Canada comes out with an updated Code and new guidance on testimonials and endorsements (October 2016)
17. Where can you legally take a ballot selfie on Election Day?
18. California must awkwardly defend obsolete anti-ballot selfie law: Golden State formally approved practice, but new law doesn’t take effect until 2017.
19. Anonymous Speech Is More Important Than Ever. TED Proves It
20. The AP wants to use machine learning to automate turning print stories into broadcast ones: The experiment is part of a larger effort by the news agency to incorporate automation into its journalism.
21. The WordPress-Wix Dispute
22. “Spray” the Word: Graffiti Law is a New Legal Niche
23. My Talk At Wikimedia: Copyright Impacts Everything (Mike Masnick)
24. Copyright’s Framing Problem (Margot Kaminski & Guy Rub)
25. A Free Speech Right to Trademark Protection? (Lisa Ramsey)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. CRTC slashes anti-spam fine in first review decision
2. 7 Practical Lessons from CRTC’s First CASL Enforcement Decision 
3. Canada To Debate Banning ‘Zero Rating’ This Week
4. The CRTC’s Differential Pricing Hearing: ISPs Should Not Be Picking the Internet’s Winners and Losers
5. U.S. sues DirecTV for illegal information trading during Dodgers talks
6. UK ISPs must now advertise broadband price with line rental included: Most ISPs have now moved to all-in pricing. Hooray!
7. FCC imposes ISP privacy rules and takes aim at mandatory arbitration
8. FCC Issues New Privacy Regulations for Broadband Providers 
9. US gov’t sues AT&T/DirecTV, calls it “ringleader” of collusion scheme: Dodgers games blacked out after pay-TV companies colluded, DOJ lawsuit says.
10. The Senate Summoned The Wrong Time Warner To Talk About AT&T Merger
11. AT&T’s Already Making Things Up To Get Its Massive New Merger Approved
12. AT&T, Time Warner, and What Makes Vertical Mergers Succeed
13. AT&T falsely claimed pro-Google Fiber rule is invalid, FCC says: FCC says its rules don’t preempt Louisville utility pole ordinance.
14. FCC Lends Support To Google Fiber, Louisville In Fight To Access AT&T Utility Poles
15. The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Must Be Stopped: This deal invites unfair competition and locks in our horrible access problems. (Susan Crawford)
16. EU Advocate General Declares That Hotels Don’t Need To Pay Copyright License To Have In-Room Television
17. NAB Announces Agreements with Sony and Warner to Waive Performance Complement and Other Statutory Requirements for Broadcasters Who Stream Their Signals 
18. Nielsen Forced To Pull Report Offline After It Shows ESPN Losing More Subscribers Than Ever

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. La Presse columnist says he was put under police surveillance as part of ‘attempt to intimidate’
2. Police surveillance scandal: Quebec minister calls for new probe
3. Thai Government Demands Popular Chat App Reveal Any Time Any User Insults The King
4. The FBI Seems To Be Leaking Like A Sieve Concerning Details Of Clinton Email Investigation
5. Facebook blocks insurance company’s plan to base premiums on your posts: Plan would have set fees based on excessive use of exclamation points, among other things
6. Belgian Court Fines Microsoft For Failing To Comply With Its Impossible Order
7. Slapped wrists for “privacy law breakers” Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin, and Mio: Apps should be bound by same rules as physical products, complains Norway watchdog.
8. Digital Rights Ireland files challenge to EU-US data pact: Privacy Shield came into force two months ago after previous framework ruled illegal
9. Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?: This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting.
10. How Despots Use Twitter to Hunt Dissidents: Twitter’s ‘firehose’ of a half billion tweets a day is incredibly valuable—and just as dangerous.
11. Why Wikipedia Is Worried About Global ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Delistings
12. UK ICO recommends personal liability of directors for breaches of data protection law
13. Crimes of the future: Predictive policing uses algorithms to analyse data and cut crime. But does it really work, and should it be trusted?
14. New leak may show if you were hacked by the NSA: Shadow Brokers identifies hundreds of organizations it claims were hacked by NSA.
15. A Gaping Hole in Consumer Privacy Protection Law
16. Online Tracking: A 1-million-site Measurement and Analysis (Steven Englehardt & Arvind Narayanan

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