GAMES
- Atari Being Sued for Alleged Unpaid Rollercoaster Tycoon Royalties: Developer Frontier believes the game sold more than Atari said it did.
- Oculus VR condemns “wasteful litigation” as ZeniMax lawsuit begins: A Dallas court heard the opening statements yesterday, trial is expected to last three weeks
- China blocks Pokemon Go and others to protect ‘information security’
- Study estimates Pokemon Go has added over 144 billion steps to US physical activity
- Unofficial Sims Online revival buckles under unexpected player counts
- The Mystery Account Destroying Online Go Was Google’s
- That mystery Go player crushing the world’s best online? It was AlphaGo again: After 50 straight wins, DeepMind’s AlphaGo earned a draw—because its connection timed out.
- Activision hands out comical punishment to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare exploiters: 48 hour bans handed out for economy-busting key harvesting glitch.
- Team-owned eSports org suspends CS:GO league after a majority of players bail
- Counter-Strike league shuts down after player revolt: Professional eSports Association abandons inaugural season after players refuse to play, citing misleading contracts
- Why Amazon and Activision Blizzard Are Betting on eSports As Gaming’s Next Big Thing: Some of tech’s biggest players see huge potential in the global reach and accessibility of eSports.
- “We need to reverse the way the media thinks about eSports”: eSports experts discuss why more government support and better promotion of player well-being is needed to help the industry grow in the UK
- Milwaukee Bucks Owner Wesley Edens Confirms Formation Of eSports Team
- 1.5M accounts exposed after eSports org balks at hacker’s ransom demand
- Why Japan’s arcades are its game industry’s cutting-edge labs
- Sim racing hits the big time with the $1 million Vegas eRace: Exciting racing made up for bland graphics in sim racing’s biggest-ever event.
- Pokémon Go’s road to China blocked over safety and security concerns: The mobile hit will be investigated by a state body for a range of potential risks
- Brain-Controlled VR Experiences: Challenges & Potentials
- Sweeney: VR platforms must stay open, Oculus following “the wrong model” – Epic Games co-founder believes Oculus is making the same mistake as Apple in cutting off its audience from other virtual reality users
- An AI has learned to drive on Mario Kart 64’s Luigi Raceway
- Rocket League topped PlayStation Store’s download charts in 2016: Psyonix beat some heavyweight competition to finish on top in both Europe and the US
- App Store revenues up by 40% to $20 billion in 2016
- Apple: App store devs earned $20 billion in 2016
- Steam hosts record-breaking 14M concurrent users
- Steam paid revenue flat in 2016 despite escalating releases – Steam Spy: More than 5,000 games hit Valve’s store last year, but “truly big games” were in shorter supply
- Vegas eRace: Racing drivers and gamers ready for $1M showdown
- Lionsgate invests in eSports team Immortals: Hunger Games movie firm makes another move in professional gaming
- Disney intros Kids TV streaming box: $99 ad-free media and games player in the works from Snakebyte, will support optional Bluetooth controllers
- New hardware, new approaches and new directions; three areas in which the industry will evolve significantly this year, and one that will remain stagnant
- Seven reasons why grown ups should play more video games: Often seen as the pastime of friendless teenagers or a guilty pleasure, there are many huge benefits to playing video games
- Elon Musk plays Overwatch, thinks storytelling is neglected in modern games
- Final Fantasy 7An oral history
- Game psychologist wants to help design game characters, not just systems
DIGITAL
- Popular tech blog sued by self-proclaimed “inventor of e-mail” hits back: “This fight could be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely right.”
- Bureau closes Apple iPhone investigation: No abuse of dominance found related to contracts with Canadian wireless carriers (January 6, 2017 — Ottawa, On — Competition Bureau)
- France’s ‘Right To Disconnect’ Is Now Live, For Reasons Passing Understanding
- Linking to illegal content can constitute a copyright infringement – CJEU Sanoma interpreted by a German Court
- EFF to Court: Don’t Let the Right of Publicity Eat the Internet
- Children in England sign over digital rights ‘regularly and unknowingly’: Children’s commissioner calls for greater representation after study finds half of eight- to 11-year-olds have agreed opaque T&Cs with social media firms
- A Lack of Yakking: Students appear to have moved on from Yik Yak, once a prime app for anonymous gossip and racist comments — a relief for administrators struggling to curb online bullying.
- Tim Wu: ‘The internet is like the classic story of the party that went sour’ – The influential tech thinker has charted the history of the attention industry: enterprises that harvest our attention to sell to advertisers. The internet, he argues, is the latest communications tool to have fallen under its spell
- How a week of Trump tweets stoked anxiety, moved markets and altered plans
- Snapchat Accused of Misleading Investors in Ex-Employee’s Lawsuit
- Yahoo is dead, long live Altaba!: Following Verizon purchase, only Asian investments and some patents remain.
- Verizon Insists Higher Phone Upgrades Are Being Used To Enhance The Network Instead Of Make Up Revenue Decline
- TV anchor says live on-air ‘Alexa, order me a dollhouse’ – guess what happens next: Story on accidental order begets story on accidental order begets accidental order
- The Humans Working Behind the AI Curtain
- Why We Can’t Fix Twitter: Social media is broken. When will we realize that we’re the problem?
- How should Twitter respond to WikiLeaks threats to track its verified users?
- France does not currently need the new 3D printing laws that parliament is considering, say experts
- Martin Shkreli harasses Teen Vogue writer, has Twitter account suspended
- Eli Pariser: activist whose filter bubble warnings presaged Trump and Brexit – Upworthy chief warned about dangers of the internet’s echo chambers five years before 2016’s votes
- 2016 sees Internet Explorer usage collapse, Chrome surge
- Netflix Downloader Pulled Offline Following Trademark Complaint
- BBC vs Netflix: iPlayer to stream shows before they air on TV – Beeb gets in on binge-watch game—hopes to lure Brits away from rival services.
- Vancouver-based BroadbandTV expands to Southeast Asia, Middle East
- The Internet of Things: U.S. Copyright Office Releases Report on Software Enabled Products
- FridgeCam lets you make your dumb fridge smart with a simple camera: Why replace an entire fridge when you can stick a camera inside the one you have?
- Blockchains for Artificial Intelligence: From Decentralized Model Exchanges to Model Audit Trails
- Hacking the Attention Economy (danah boyd)
- Top 10 Internet Law Developments of 2016 (Eric Goldman)
- Honest YouTube Rewind: The Most Controversial YouTube Stories of 2016
- Why Trolls Won in 2016
- 2016: The Year We Stopped Listening To Big Tech’s Favorite Excuse – For a time, “We’re just a platform” was a handy excuse for the unexpected consequences of Silicon Valley’s most important companies. But this year it stopped working.
- Aaron Swartz and me, over a loosely intertwined decade: Remembering the talented activist who lived in our Internet neighborhood.
CREATIVITY
- US Supreme Court loaded with First Amendment cases: Can you trademark an offensive name or not? Justices to decide.
- Axanar isn’t fair use, judge finds, setting stage for Star Trek copyright trial: Set courtrooms to stun as judge rejects motions for summary judgment from both sides.
- Court gives jury mission to explore strange world of copyright and fair use
- Copyright in Klingon
- Why Unreleased Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Beach Boys Tracks Are Suddenly Appearing: EU Copyright Law
- Bill O’Reilly accused again of sexual harassment. Ratings to spike!
- The Killers issue demands to Panda Express over fortune cookie: It appears that the Las Vegas rock band stumbled upon a fortune cookie that reminded them of a hit track from their first album, Hot Fuss.
- Judge Rules ‘Krusty Krab’ Restaurant Violates Viacom’s ‘SpongeBob’ Rights
- Indian High Court Blocks Rent-Seeking Collection Societies From Seeking Any More Rent
- Ontario Court of Appeal confirms $80,000 libel judgment against Ezra Levant: Saskatchewan lawyer brought suit in response to blog posts
- <i>Walking Dead</i> creator lives to fear others’ trademark applications
- Tresona Multimedia, LLC v. Burbank High School Vocal Music Association
- Now BMI takes on the US Radio industry
- Bulgarian Public Radio Forbidden To Play 14 Million Pieces Of Music By Copyright Collection Society
- China & Hollywood: What Lies Beneath & Ahead In 2017
- Congressman Appoints Himself Censor, Removes Painting Critical Of Cops From Congressional Halls
- A Seismic Ruling Revisited: No Common-Law Public Performance Rights in Pre-1972 Sound Recordings in New York–Flo & Eddie v. Sirius
- 2016 Quick Links, Part 8: Fake News, Terrorist Content, Censorship & More (Eric Goldman)
- 2016 Quick Links, Part 9: Privacy/Security (Eric Goldman)
- Copyright Law & The Drummer (Ronojoy Basu)
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Canadian Regulators Declare 50 Mbps To Be The New Broadband Standard
- Why a media coalition is decrying a CRTC ruling on Super Bowl feeds (Michael Geist)
- NFL Blitzes Trudeau in Arcane Super Bowl Advertising Dispute
- Norway Set to Be First Country to Switch Off FM Radio: Move to all-digital radio sparks debate
- ISPs Get Right To Work Pushing For Elimination Of New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules
- Verizon Cracks Down On Unlimited Data Users, Claims Nobody Wants Unlimited Data Anyway
- FCC Denies Reconsideration of Noncommercial Broadcasting Ownership Report Requirements – But Signs that New Commission May See Things Differently
- Tom Wheeler accuses AT&T and Verizon of violating net neutrality: Paid zero-rating in crosshairs, but it won’t matter once Trump is president.
- AT&T Intends To Dodge FCC Review Of Time Warner Mega-Merger, But Trump Remains A Wild Card
- AT&T Already Backing Off Its Biggest Time Warner Merger Promise: Cheaper TV
- AT&T and Time Warner still trying to sidestep FCC scrutiny of merger: Time Warner might get rid of dozens of licenses to avoid public interest review.
- Ad Industry Wants New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules Gutted Because, Uh, Free Speech!
- Don’t Gut Net Neutrality. It’s Good for People and Business
- Verizon raises upgrade fee to “cover increased cost”—but its costs declined
- Verizon purges unlimited data customers, targets those using 200GB: Heaviest unlimited data users must switch to limited plans or be disconnected.
- The Fox News nighttime lineup has shed its last element of real journalism
- The huge challenge of covering Trump fairly
- Yes, Donald Trump ‘lies.’ A lot. And news organizations should say so.
- The U.S. Media’s Problems Are Much Bigger than Fake News and Filter Bubbles
- It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’
- How to Reverse Journalism’s Decline: American journalism is in dire straits. Is a robust public subsidy the antidote?
- Inside The Rise Of The “Breitbart Of The Left”: David Brock, the conservative apostate turned liberal agitator, lays out his plans for the future of the Internet for progressives. “We’re going to go after spineless Democrats who want to make nice with Trump.”
- Did Media Literacy Backfire? (danah boyd)
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Facebook, Google face strict EU privacy rules that could hit ad revenues: Plans to plug “void of protection” could place ad trackers on cookie diet in Europe.
- LA Community College paid $28,000 to free itself from ransomware
- CSIS assessing ‘bulk data’ collection, records show
- IMDb tells California it will continue to publish actors’ ages: The law “plainly violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution and cannot be enforced,” says the Amazon-owned company.
- Court Says 791 Days Of Warrantless Location Tracking ‘Unreasonable,” But Refuses To Toss Evidence
- What The US Intelligence ‘Russia Hacked Our Election’ Report Could Have Said… But Didn’t
- How the U.S. Hobbled Its Hacking Case Against Russia and Enabled Truthers: There’s a ton of evidence tying Moscow to the DNC hack. Somehow, Washington managed to screw up its presentation of that evidence.
- FBI Releases A Stack Of Redactions In Response To FOIA Request For Info On Its Purchased iPhone Hack
- Unsecure routers, webcams prompt feds to sue D-Link: D-Link failed to maintain confidentiality of private key used to sign its software.
- US warns of unusual cybersecurity flaw in heart devices
- Feds may let Playpen child porn suspect go to keep concealing their source code: In 2016, judge ordered DOJ to give up source code targeting a Tor-hidden child porn site.
- ‘For The Children’ Cyberbullying Law Running Into Opposition From Groups Actually Concerned About Children
- How hackers made life hell for a CIA boss and other top US officials
- Big Surprise! – Fraud and identity theft a real problem for online dating sites!
jon