GAMES
- Russia Accuses EA Of LGBT Propaganda Over Including Rainbow Shoelaces Soccer Players Wore In Real Life
- California man spent $1 million playing Game of War: Mobile game described as “like gambling, but with no possibility of winning.”
- China forces devs to reveal loot box drop rates in game: Players must be aware of the percentages behind random prizes, says new law
- Loot box odds in all videogames available in China go public on May 1 (if devs listen)
- Bethesda Bullies One Of Its Creative Fans Over Website Metatags
- Report: Crytek once again failing to pay its developers on time
- A dev is trying to crowdfund legal action against Crytek over unpaid wages
- Vivendi stake in Ubisoft passes 25%, increasing takeover threat: French media company needs to acquire 30% of publisher’s stock before it can offer to buy the company
- Ubisoft dev fears ‘constraints that kill creativity’ if Vivendi takes over: “Obviously [concern about a potential takeover] has struck us at some point. We are a company that has been creating and has been leading through independence and that is something that is key to our success, key to the way we are organized.”
- French regulators fine Ubisoft execs 1.27 million euros for insider trading
- Ubisoft says AMF claims “unjustified, unfounded and illegal”: Ubisoft has decided to appeal the French AMF’s decision to sanction its team members
- White House hosts Girls Make Games game dev workshop
- Super Mario Run is online-only to combat piracy, says Nintendo’s Miyamoto: Fans must have an Internet connection to play Nintendo’s latest game.
- Hands-on: Super Mario Run might be the weirdest Mario game yet: Four-level demo looks and sounds like Mario but doesn’t play like it.
- Game Review Site Says Square Enix Blacklisted Them To Punish Low Review Scores
- Koch and Square Enix clarify review code policy: “We would never impose a blacklist or ban on any media for a review score”
- Rocketwerkz’ Dean Hall defends VR devs who make exclusivity deals
- Dean Hall on VR: “There is no money in it” – RocketWerkz CEO says medium currently relies on subsidies from platforms
- The eSports Explosion: Legal Challenges and Opportunities (Jas Purewal & Isabel Davies)
- To avoid conflicts of interest, 2 Twitch-owned eSports teams go independent
- On the eSports Failure of Heroes of the Storm
- How Riot Games used sports technology to help pro players communicate in tournaments
- Boom.tv Raises $3.5 Million As World’s First 3D Live Streaming Platform For eSports
- Ex-AAA devs form Drifter and raise $2.25M to develop VR eSports
- Twitch divests itself of Evil Geniuses, Alliance eSports teams: Streaming company transfers team ownership to players, citing obligation to avoid preferential treatment
- Twitch rolls out automated tool to stem wave of chat harassment: “AutoMod” uses machine learning to keep up with the trolls.
- Twitch introduces automatic moderator tool to curb chat abuse: AutoMod evolves thanks to machine learning
- Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian: The Last of their Kind – The end of two of the industry’s longest-running and most troubled development processes is a reminder of the excesses of the 2000s
- Majesco Entertainment exits the video games business: Merger with medical firm marks the end for the Zumba, Cooking Mama, and Psychonauts publisher
- Porsche’s exclusive deal with Electronic Arts is no more: After 17 years, the exclusive deal ends, freeing Porsches to appear in new games.
- Report: Sony Considering Merging Film And Gaming Divisions
- Did crowdfunding survive 2016?: Fig raised $8m of the $20m in gaming campaigns this year – was it enough?
- South Korea To Tackle Video Game Cheating By Criminalizing Breaking A Game’s ToS
- After cracks, developers remove Denuvo DRM from their games: Is Denuvo issuing refunds when its protection stops working?
- The future of the European games industry is written in the telecom regulations: Jari-Pekka Kaleva examines the impact of EU negotiations
- Where now for Call of Duty?: The world’s biggest shooter series is under threat, but Activision still holds all the cards
- Game over for law outlawing pinball in Indiana town: Pinball ban included a $300 fine, six months in jail.
- 2016: Did the “Year of VR” deliver? – Highs and lows of 12 months in a new medium
- The 5 trends that defined the game industry in 2016
DIGITAL
- Arista beats Cisco’s $335M copyright claim with an unusual defense: Jury found that Cisco command lines were “scènes à faire.”
- Court endorsement of fair dealing rights splits bar
- German judges explain why Adblock Plus is legal: Spiegel argued there’s no right to de-link its “unified offer” of news and ads.
- Mediaplayers and streaming: AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona in Filmspeler proposes broad interpretation of notion of ‘indispensable intervention’
- Hollywood Studios Win Injunction Against Streamer VidAngel
- Commercial sites must check all their links for piracy, rules Hamburg court: Case shows “devastating consequences” of EU copyright ruling for the Web, MEP warns.
- Application of problematic CJEU ruling on copyright infringement by hyperlinks is getting out of hand
- Legacy Recording Industry To Trump: Please Tell Tech Companies To Nerd Harder To Censor The Internet
- Canadian Copyright Reform Requires Fix to the Fair Dealing Gap (Michael Geist)
- How the Supreme Court can avoid turning the Web into a Wild West (Michael Geist)
- Magic Leap is actually way behind, like we always suspected it was
- The Reality Behind Magic Leap
- Magic Leap CEO: “we are making mini-production test runs of our first system”
- How Streaming Is Changing Music (Again)
- In 2017, media companies will finally realize they are being disrupted by the very platforms that distribute their content: “Smart pipes” are changing the way consumers interact with their favorite content — and traditional delivery systems want in on the future.
- Casting Agency Looked to Fill Role of Alt-Right Neo-Nazi for Cadillac Commercial: Have the alt-right (and their ideas) become a target demographic? Apparently so.
- The DDoS vigilantes trying to silence Black Lives Matter: The Web lets anyone be a publisher—or a vigilante.
- Short Sighted Newspaper Association Asks Trump To Whittle Down Fair Use, Because It Hates Google
- Can journalism be virtual? (Taylor Owen)
- Right of Publicity Claims in a Digital Age
- Why it’s dangerous to outsource our critical thinking to computers: It is crucial for a resilient democracy that we better understand how Google and Facebook are changing the way we think, interact and behave (Evan Selinger & Brett Frischmann)
- Seeing without knowing: Limitations of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic accountability (Mike Ananny & Kate Crawford)
- IEEE Just Published the First Draft Report on How to Make an ‘Ethically Aligned’ AI
- The Public Policy Implications of Artificial Intelligence
- Donald Trump has weaponized Twitter — with dangerous consequences
- Source: Twitter cut out of Trump tech meeting over failed emoji deal
- An Inconvenient Truth About Silicon Valley and Donald Trump: The President-elect’s disruptive platform sounds awfully familiar to the valley’s leaders.
- Fake News: How a Partying Macedonian Teen Earns Thousands Publishing Lies
- Iran The Latest Country To Use ‘Fake News’ As An Excuse For Widespread Censorship
- Fake news peddlers and muckrakers risk “sickness of coprophilia,” says Pope – Pontiff: publishing fake news “probably the greatest damage that the media can do.”
- In the era of fake news and broken politics, should we let computers decide how to rule the world
- Gawker’s Demise And The Trump-Era Threat To The First Amendment: Hulk Hogan’s smashing legal victory shows us that publishing the truth may no longer be enough.
- Schadenfreude with Bite
- Is Doxing Unethical For Lawyers?
- Attorney wants Google to unmask reviewer who only wrote, “It was horrible”: Attorney decries review as an opinion “to disparage a person in his profession.”
- The Obligation To Experiment: Tech companies should test the effects of their products on our safety and civil liberties. We should also test them ourselves.
- There Is No Neutral Interface: “What are we optimizing for? Is it for civic responsibility? Personal relevance? Quality? Truthiness? Diversity of sources and viewpoints? Time on site? Time well spent?”
- PewDiePie claims he will delete his YouTube channel today: Problems with YouTube’s suggested and recommended lists affect high-traffic channels.
- Yik Yak fires 30 of 50 employees, still has no business model: CEO still calls app a “special place for college students around the world.”
- Looking for a Mind at Work: The FTC Presents a Staff Summary of its September 2016 Workshop on Disclosure Effectiveness
- The Freedom to Yelp: Congress Curbs ToS Overreach
- Every US taxpayer has effectively paid Apple at least $6 in recent years: If you think Apple is cheating via overseas tax trickery, you’ll hate this move.
- When robots read books: Artificial intelligence sheds new light on classic texts. Literary theorists who don’t embrace it face obsolescence
- Selfless Devotion: Giving robots “feminine” personalities implies human women should stick to the program
- New Publications Examine Harmful Speech Online (Berkman Klein Center)
- The internet is broken. Starting from scratch, here’s how I’d fix it.
CREATIVITY
- It Begins: Congress Proposes First Stages Of Copyright Reform, And It’s Not Good
- China’s Richest Man Tells MPAA’s Chris Dodd To Tell Donald Trump To Be Nice To China… Or Else
- 37 Professors and Scholars Respond To IPO’s “Call For Views: Modernising the European Copyright Framework”
- RIAA, newspapers ask Trump to limit fair use, toughen copyright: Content companies still have a grudge against Google, and they’re telling Trump.
- Freedom of Expression? Fair Use? Thank These Artists You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
- “Is There Something I Should Know?” – Duran Duran loses High Court copyright battle
- Lights. Camera. Legal Action! Jury finds iconic ‘Jersey Boys’ musical infringes copyright
- Artist Sues Universal Music Over Plagiarism, Gets Called Out by Fellow Artist: The artist Kendell Geers has penned a scathing open letter against Attia in response.
- Not Gone with the Wind: IP Rights Despite Public Domain Images
- Media Organizations (Correctly) Worry That Rolling Stone Verdict Will Make Saying Sorry Actionable
- Vegas Golden Knights trademark denied by U.S. government
- What Rogue One Can Teach You about… Trade Dress?
- Late Shift, the world’s first interactive cinema movie, reviewed: Does the protagonist kiss the girl? Kill the old man? Steal the car? You decide.
- ‘Westworld’ Co-Creator Keeps Her Law License Active, Just In Case
- Gender, IP, And Innovation: Open Air’s Future Research
- The CEIPI Publishes An Opinion on the EU Commission’s Copyright Reform Proposal
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- CRTC says it holds power over website blocking in Quebec gambling case
- CRTC rules that website blocking provisions of Québec’s Bill 74 violate federal law: Pro-Internet advocates welcome ruling, having argued that Bill 74’s website blocking raises censorship concerns and violates rules which keep our Internet free and open
- Upon Further Review, the Ruling Should Stand: Why the CRTC Made the Right Call on the Super Bowl Simsub Ban (Michael Geist)
- Unnecessary at Best, Harmful at Worst: Melanie Joly Seeks Global Consensus on Culture Contributions from Digital Services (Michael Geist)
- Canada leads charge to force Internet giants to support more localized content
- Amazon Prime video service launches in Canada: E-retailer’s streaming service expands out of U.S. to more than 200 territories
- FCC’s Ajit Pai says net neutrality’s “days are numbered” under Trump: Pai wants to “fire up the weed whacker” and cut down FCC regulations.
- FCC Commissioner Pai Says Net Neutrality’s ‘Days Are Numbered’ Under Trump
- FCC’s Tom Wheeler willing to “step down immediately” to make deal with GOP: Wheeler seeks deal as GOP refuses to reconfirm Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel.
- FCC Chair Tom Wheeler won’t resign, for now, as FCC enters 2-2 deadlock: Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel must leave after Wheeler offer to GOP is rejected.
- A big change to U.S. broadcasting is coming — and it’s one Putin might admire
- A Comcastic odyssey: $2,000 billing error becomes bureaucratic nightmare – Once again, Comcast fixes a problem only after customer alerts the media.
- Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees $48 per year: Comcast also raising Internet and TV prices 3.8 percent in 2017.
- Samsung Issues Update To Brick Remaining, Spontaneously Combusting Galaxy Note 7 Phones, Verizon Refuses To Pass It On
- AT&T’s DirecTV Now plagued with outages and sports blackouts: AT&T vows to fix technical errors; licensing restrictions may also be a problem.
- AT&T customers get $88 million in credits and refunds for illegal charges: 2014 cramming settlement finally gives money back to nearly 3 million customers.
- Here’s How the AT&T-Time Warner Deal Is Influencing Fox’s Bid for Sky
- Mossberg: Why the AT&T-Time Warner merger is dangerous
- Last Minute Congressional Change Will Give Trump His Own Trump TV, Financed By Taxpayers
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Yahoo admits it’s been hacked again, and 1 billion accounts were exposed: That’s a billion with a b—and is separate from the breach “cleared” in September.
- Hacked cheating site Ashley Madison will pay $1.6 million to FTC for breach
- Vladimir Putin was directly involved in US election hack, report says: The hack was designed to harm Clinton and potentially aid Trump
- President Obama Orders Intel Agencies To Produce Report On Russian Election Influence
- Obama asks intel community to conduct “full review” of election-related hacks: As Trump denies Russian involvement, Congress calls for investigations—and consequences.
- Fancy Bear ramping up infowar against Germany—and rest of West: Russian hackers part of broader campaign against West, German intel chief warns.
- Did the Russians “hack” the election? A look at the established facts: No smoking gun, but evidence suggests a Russian source for the cyber attacks on Democrats.
- Goodale weighing CSIS use of metadata gathered on innocent people
- Google Publishes Eight National Security Letters That Have Been Freed From Their Gag Orders
- Snowden leaks reveal GCHQ and NSA snooped on in-flight mobile calls: Increasing availability of airborne calls potentially makes this a rich source of information.
- No, there’s no evidence (yet) the feds tried to hack Georgia’s voter database: State election official bungles the case that DHS tried to breach his office.
- Evernote’s new privacy policy raises eyebrows: You cannot opt out of having humans read your notes.
- The FCC Suggests Some Wishy Washy, Highly Unlikely Solutions To The Poorly-Secured Internet Of Things
- Google just dodged a privacy lawsuit by scanning your emails a tiny bit slower: The company won’t do ad scans until after a message hits your inbox
- Maker of Internet of Things-connected vibrator will settle privacy suit: Lawsuit says company chronicled “vibration settings” and how long toy was used.
- Researchers Find Vulnerability That Enables Accounting Fraud, PwC Decides The Best Response Is A Legal Threat
- Another Lawsuit Highlights How Many ‘Smart’ Toys Violate Privacy, Aren’t Secure
- Disgraced IT worker stole confidential Expedia e-mails even after he left: Insider-trading scheme netted more than $331,000 in illegal profits.
- Op-ed: I’m throwing in the towel on PGP, and I work in security – “If you need to securely contact me… DM me asking for my Signal number.”
- Recoding Privacy Law: Reflections on the Future Relationship Among Law, Technology, and Privacy (Urs Gasser)
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