News of the Week; May 24, 2017

GAMES

1. Does Valve really own Dota? A jury will decide: Federal court case could hinge on 2004 forum post granting “open source” license.
2. Jury to decide whether Valve owns DOTA: Two games studios challenge the company’s ownership to DOTA
3. Valve’s ownership of Dota 2 is set to be decided by a jury
4. Why Texas may have lost its status as a hotbed of game patent lawsuits
5. World of Tanks dev apologizes for threatening YouTuber with a takedown
6. Wargaming apologises for World of Tanks YouTuber row: Developer had threatened to issue a copyright take down against SirFoch
7. Bandai Namco delays Get Even after Manchester Arena attack: Meanwhile, MCM London Comic Con beefs up security ahead of this week’s event
8. Pokémon Go hackers getting put in Pidgey-filled purgatory: Niantic appears to be using machine learning to hide rare Pokémon from bot makers.
9. New ‘creators’ section lets game devs curate the PlayStation Store
10. PlayStation Store introduces developer-led curation: The Creators initiative allows studios to share their favourite games
11. Departed Kerbal Space Program devs now work at Valve
12. How Kona’s devs used the Canada Media Fund, and why they won’t use it again
13. Why Chinese industrial firms are snapping up game studios: ‘You can buy profit’: “Obviously there is little industrial logic in combining a Western mobile games company with a Chinese industrial firm. But people see how much money can be made, so it’s not so strange.”
14. Judge to Decide Vexing Question in Entertainment: License Needed to Show Body Tattoos? – A judge lets Take-Two, publisher of ‘NBA 2K,’ seek declaratory judgment against the owner of a tattoo design featured on LeBron James’ body.
15. Facebook expands eSports coverage with ESL partnership: Social network to host over 5,500 hours of live tournament programming including 1,500 hours of exclusive content
16. Are esports sport?
17. Twitch Adds Speed Controls So You Can Watch Noteworthy Plays In Slow Motion
18. Is Switch what the future of consoles looks like?: Is Nintendo’s new platform a one-time gimmick, or an important reinvention of the console for a new market landscape?
19. Nintendo helps push April US game sales up 10% – NPD: Switch hardware and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dominated the industry
20. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe devs patch out potentially obscene taunt
21. Anita Sarkeesian: “Games need to tell better stories that don’t oversimplify oppression”: Critic praises “cultural shift” in video game storytelling, but says recent examples are a “band-aid on a deeper wound”
22. Many pet rabbits will die in Second Life on Saturday
23. Lawbreakers dev: PC/console cross-platform play is “dumb” – Bleszinski says developing for keyboard/mouse and console leads to “balance issues.”
24. How Destiny 2 is leading to gold devaluation in World of Warcraft: Real-world value of in-game gold dips 7 percent since Battle.net announcement.
25. “Virtual reality will be our best interface with true AI”: VR expert Dave Ranyard discusses the potential for storytelling with virtual and augmented reality at Nordic Game
26. Oskar Burman: “Free-to-play will grow, but will never dominate VR” – Former Rovio exec believes virtual reality has a lot to learn from mobile, but won’t be ruled by the same type of games
27. Unity takes $400 million investment from Silver Lake: Half of the money will let employees and shareholders cash out of the company
28. For Google, the Future of VR Is on the Open Web with WebVR & WebAR
29. Augment Your Legal Knowledge of Augmented Reality
30. Conservative party’s immigration policy could hurt UK game devs, warns UKIE
31. UKIE warns UK Conservative Party over immigration policy: But Dr Jo Twist welcomes ‘commitments to support the UK games and wider creative industries’
32. Game companies are agreeing to strike terms, say screen actors guild: But they don’t reveal who
33. Janet Murray On Why Some Players And Critics Still Cannot Tolerate Narrative In Games
34. How Alexis Kennedy is writing the next Dragon Age
35. How Cuban game devs balance tense relationship between propaganda and creativity: Gov’t once feared, now starting to embrace games
36. There’s now 45 million people gabbing about games on Discord
37. “This is as important as AI or space travel” – Why Improbable is worth over $1bn: We speak to the CEO of Britain’s most talked about start-up
38. Bioware: Humility and compromise are key to good game design – At Digital Dragons, Bioware design director James Ohlen tackled the differences between the “dream” of game development, and the practical reality
39. Kerbal Space Program developers hired by Valve: Timeframe for the new hires coincides with departure of eight of Squad’s core staff last year
40. Jurgen Post: “The Sega brand will come back and start to flourish again”
41. Humble Bundle has raised over $95 million for charity: Humble Freedom Bundle provided a boost, says co-founder John Graham, but Humble will be careful “not to overstep our bounds” on politics
42. Veteran game developers reveal their childhood creations: When they were kids
43. An Improved AlphaGo Wins Its First Game Against the World’s Top Go Player
44. The Original Monopoly Was Deeply Anti-Landlord: The game of cutthroat capitalism was actually intended as a lesson on wealth inequality.
45. ‘Resident Evil’ Franchise Set for a Reboot
46. Nine Days With an Absurd $9,000 Gaming Laptop

DIGITAL

1. Appeals Court Orders Expedited Hearing in ReDigi Case
2. Apple and Nokia end their patent fight
3. Lawsuits get settled, but what about the companies wielding Nokia patents?
4. Titan Note Continues Trying To Sell Its Questionable Device; Its Own Actions Keep Raising More Questions
5. Apple, Verizon Join Forces To Lobby Against New York’s ‘Right To Repair’ Law
6. Terrorism victims can’t hold Facebook liable for Hamas’ use of the platform: Website immunity holds up against the US Anti-Terrorism Act.
7. Facebook Defeats Lawsuit Over Material Support for Terrorists–Cohen v. Facebook (Eric Goldman)
8. Turkish President Demands Google Delist A Bunch Of Websites Comparing Him To Hitler
9. Malta’s Prime Minister Sues Panama Papers Journalist For Defamation; Gets Facebook To Delete His Reporting
10. Revealed: Facebook’s internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence – Leaked policies guiding moderators on what content to allow are likely to fuel debate about social media giant’s ethics
11. Facebook content rules leaked days after Tories vow tougher Internet laws: Facebook mod guidelines are OK with violent death, misogyny; but don’t threaten Trump.
12. A Campus Murder Tests Facebook Clicks as Evidence of Hate
13. EU fines Facebook 110 million euros over WhatsApp deal
14. Facebook fined $122 million for misleading EU over WhatsApp deal: Facebook says it couldn’t automatically match WhatsApp accounts; EC disagrees.
15. Mergers: Commission fines Facebook €110 million for providing misleading information about WhatsApp takeover (European Commission)
16. European Union Proposes Rules To Hold Online Video Platforms Accountable For Hate Speech
17. Social networks face tougher EU oversight on video content: Facebook, Twitter and others may have to abide by same regulations as broadcasters
18. You won’t believe why Facebook will block this headline: Updates to news feed algorithms tweaked to catch spammy and deceptive headlines.
19. How Facebook Sees The World: By acknowledging the existence of an editorial compass, the technology giant tacitly accepts its role as a de facto censorship power—and opens itself to government attack.
20. Facebook Will Begin Streaming One Major League Baseball Game A Week On May 19
21. Facebook Joins Twitter In Live Streaming Major League Baseball Games On Friday Nights
22. ISIS Has A Strategy To Create A Media Frenzy And News Outlets Are Struggling To Disrupt It: Struggling to cover terror in the media age. (Zeynep Tufekci)
23. Twitter And Tear Gas: How Social Media Changed Protest Forever (Zeynep Tufekci)
24. Court of Appeal granted an appeal of the Federal Court’s decision allowing internet service provider to charge a fee for disclosure of suspected infringer
25. Copyright Board Rules Whether YouTube Uploads Constitute “Publication” and “Making Available” Under Copyright Act
26. Four copyright registrations expunged where Respondent was not the author and owner of the works
27. Defense Against the Dark Arts of Copyright Trolling (Matthew Sag)
28. Uber threatens to fire Levandowski if he doesn’t comply with court order: Can Uber engineer be forced to choose between the Fifth Amendment and his job?
29. Objecting to sexual harassment got me fired, says ex-Uber employee
30. The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power (Ryan Calo & Alex Rosenblat)
31. Paypal says Pandora’s logo infringes, starts trademark battle: “The similarities between the logos are striking, obvious, and patently unlawful.”
32. Trademark Has Come To This: Tinder Opposes Dating App With Only One Lonely Dude On Its Dating Roster
33. Shinder, Shinder, Shinder … will you ever be like Tinder?
34. Did eBay Irreparably Injure Trademark Law? (Mark Lemley)
35. How Not to Prove a Mark is Generic. Use of GOOGLE as a Verb Does Not Constitute Genericide
36. A WannaCry Flaw Could Help Some Victims Get Files Back
37. Windows XP PCs infected by WCry can be decrypted without paying ransom: Decryption tool is of limited value, because XP was unaffected by last week’s worm.
38. Hackers Are Trying to Reignite WannaCry With Nonstop Botnet Attacks
39. Windows 7, not XP, was the reason last week’s WCry worm spread so widely
40. How I accidentally stopped a global Wanna Decryptor ransomware attack: A British security researcher found and pulled WannaCrypt’s kill switch.
41. WannaCry Ransomware Cyberattack Raises Legal Issues
42. NSA Was Concerned About Power Of Windows Exploit Long Before It Was Leaked
43. There’s new evidence tying WCry ransomware worm to prolific hacking group: Common tools, techniques, and infrastructure make link “highly likely.”
44. Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America
45. Who Are the Shadow Brokers?: What is—and isn’t—known about the mysterious hackers leaking National Security Agency secrets
46. The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory: A Tale of Two Filter Bubbles
47. Someone Is Trying to Scrub Trump’s Name From the Wikipedia Page of Lieberman’s Law Firm
48. The Library of Congress Makes 25 Million Records From Its Catalog Free to Download
49. Theresa May Plans To Regulate, Tax And Censor The Internet
50. An EU text and data mining exception: will it deliver what the Digital Single Market Strategy promised?
51. How a Chipmunk Emoji Cost an Israeli Texter $2,200
52. A Pro Flag Football League Is Launching And It Might Be The Most High-Tech League In The World
53. James Corden is getting his own Snapchat show, the first from CBS
54. BostonGlobe.com disables articles when your browser’s in private mode
55. Boston Globe Blocks Readers Using Privacy Modes In Browsers
56. Amid YouTube Ad Plight, Patreon Says It Will Pay Creators $150 Million This Year
57. The Most-Desired Career Among Young People Today Is ‘YouTuber’ (Study)
58. Google Confirms Glass Team is Not Working With AR/VR Team
59. Google’s New AI Is Better at Creating AI Than the Company’s Engineers
60. Google Wants to Apply AI & Machine Learning to All Its Products
61. Intel to make Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free in bid to spur adoption: And the company has promised to put Thunderbolt 3 controllers into its processors.
62. Five Ways Elon Musk’s Brain-Computer Interface Could Transform the World
63. Hear Me Out: Let’s Elect an AI as President
64. How Artificial Intelligence will impact professional writing
65. AI and Robots Will Change the Way We Create and Consume Content
66. An AI invented a bunch of new paint colors that are hilariously wrong: Let’s just say this neural network won’t make you fear the robot uprising.
67. We Are All Kasparov: When Deep Blue beat the world chess champion 20 years ago, we learned a huge lesson. Just not the one we thought.
68. Why Humans Are So Terrified Of Robots With Feelings
69. The value of robotic process automation
70. How Copyright Law Creates Biased Artificial Intelligence (Amanda Levendowski)
71. Plagued by high-profile flops, Kickstarter and Indiegogo are bringing in experts to help inventors fulfill their promises.
72. The Barbarians Are at Etsy’s Hand-Hewn, Responsibly Sourced Gates: The ur-Brooklyn online craft marketplace is under pressure to start acting more like a conventional, shareholder-focused company.
73. Conference Report – ‘Moral Rights and New Technologies: Authorship, Attribution and Integrity in a Digital World’
74. Piece by Piece Review of Digitize-and-Lend Projects Through the Lens of Copyright and Fair Use (Michelle M. Wu)
75. Netflix And Amazon Screenings Are Being Booed At The Cannes Film Festival
76. The A-EON Amiga X5000: An alternate universe where the Amiga platform never died – A new Amiga computer emerges that is both modern and an Amiga.
77. Employee misconduct and social media
78. Eli Pariser Predicted the Future. Now He Can’t Escape It.: Six years after the Upworthy cofounder coined the term “filter bubble,” things are much worse.
79. Tulips, Myths, And Cryptocurrencies

CREATIVITY

1. Supreme Court to decide who owns the 38,000 stories of residential school survivors: The courts say it is up to the survivors to decide what happens to the accounts of their experiences. But a coalition representing the survivors’ children and grandchildren wants to save the stories.
2. Why Is The Far-Right Attacking Ariana Grande After Manchester?: While the world grieves for Manchester, others are taking aim at the pop star’s personal beliefs in a disgusting way.
3. Manchester was an attack on girls: The bombing — and the trolling that followed — show again how females are targeted
4. The Meaning of Ariana Grande: She has one of the most loyal, dedicated fanbases in pop. She represents confidence, empowerment, sexiness, independence. Grownups may never understand, but young women do. Is that what terrorists are afraid of?
5. Conan O’Brien Joke-Stealing Case Gets Green-Lit For Jury Trial
6. A Brief Explainer About What the Heck Is Going On With Rebel Wilson’s Defamation Case
7. Supreme Court urged to clarify law on journalist-source protection
8. Judge Agrees Broadcasters Have First Amendment Right to Refuse Advertisements: SiriusXM wins a lawsuit against a dating company as a result.
9. Music Performing Rights Organizations and the “Full-Work” vs. “Fractional” Licensing Dispute: Government Seeks to Overturn Fractional Licensing Decision
10. RIAA Says Artists Don’t Need “Moral Rights,” Artists Disagree: Major entertainment industry associations often create the impression that they are fighting for the rights of smaller artists, not just their corporate overlords. However, responding to a US Government consultation, both sides are now going head to head over the “moral rights” issue.
11. Sorry East Texas: Supreme Court Slams The Door On Patent Jurisdiction Shopping
12. Supreme Court makes it much harder for patent trolls to sue in East Texas: Folks got sued in East Texas “just because they had a website.” Those days may be over.
13. Lawyer who founded Prenda Law is disbarred: Twenty-one months later, an ethics complaint ends in disbarment.
14. Japanese Music Collection Society Demands Copyright Fees From Music Schools For Teaching Music
15. Trump Allegedly Wants FBI To Look Into Locking Up Journalists Who Publish Leaks
16. News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days
17. Burna Boy allegedly stopped from working in US and Canada by New York Supreme Court
18. The Fyre Festival Is Still a Damn Mess, and Now the FBI Is Involved
19. The Fearless Girl who challenges the Charging Bull
20. 17 charts that show the current state of the music industry
21. Time Magazine Rips Off Mad Magazine?
22. Spanish Supreme Court Rules on Originality for Architectural Works
23. The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over
24. The Mad King of Juice: Inside the Dysfunctional Origins of Juicero
25. Is there copyright in the taste of a cheese? Sensory copyright finally makes its way to CJEU
26. Does Fair Use Affect Academic Authors’ Incentive to Write? Some Lessons from Authors of Works from the GSU Course Reserves Case
27. Seeing’s Insight: Toward A Visual Substantial Similarity Test For Copyright Infringement Of Pictorial, Graphic, And Sculptural Works (Moon Hee Lee)
28. The Right to Attention in an Age of Distraction
29. On Bias, Clickbait, And The Future Of Journalism: Insight And Advice From Staffers At The Washington Post

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Canadian TV in the Netflix Age: In Defence of the CRTC Television Licensing Decision (Michael Geist)
2. Diversity and competitive equity underline the CRTC’s recent decisions on television services operated by Canada’s large French- and English-language ownership groups
3. Montreal Economic Institute isn’t ready for internet reality: No, cat videos aren’t going to interfere with self-driving cars and the internet of things. (Peter Nowak)
4. Breaking down the FCC’s proposal to destroy net neutrality: The agency is asking if we even need any rules at all
5. Net neutrality going down in flames as FCC votes to kill Title II rules: GOP’s 2-1 majority starts repeal process, with final vote coming later in 2017.
6. The FCC Just Voted. They Are Going to Start Dismantling Net Neutrality.
7. FCC Ignores The Will Of The Public, Votes To Begin Dismantling Net Neutrality
8. FCC Commissioner Wants To Ban States From Protecting Consumer Broadband Privacy
9. Internet Providers Insist They Love Net Neutrality. Seriously?
10. Cable Companies Refuse To Put Their Breathless Love Of Net Neutrality Down In Writing
11. Comcast vendor sent cease-and-desist to operator of anti-Comcast website: Net neutrality website stays online as Comcast agrees to take no further action.
12. The FCC Doesn’t Care That Somebody’s Spamming Its Net Neutrality Proceeding With Fraudulent Comments
13. FCC Refuses to Release Evidence of the ‘DDoS Attack’ on Its Website
14. Examining the FCC claim that DDoS attacks hit net neutrality comment system: Attacks came from either an unusual type of DDoS or poorly written spam bots.
15. Journalist allegedly “manhandled by FCC guards” for asking questions: FCC apologizes, says guards were on “heightened alert” due to threats.
16. FCC Guards ‘Manhandle’ Reporter Just For Asking Questions At Net Neutrality Vote
17. Senators ask FCC why reporter was “manhandled” after net neutrality vote – Senators to FCC: Don’t roughhouse journalists who are trying to ask questions.
18. If Net Neutrality Dies, Comcast Can Just Block A Protest Site Instead Of Sending A Bogus Cease-And-Desist
19. It’s Not Too Late to Save Net Neutrality From a Captured FCC: The Trump-appointed FCC chairman has ushered in a virulent strain of market libertarianism. He can and must be stopped.
20. A Trump FCC advisor’s proposal for bringing free Internet to poor people: Trump advisor says net neutrality hindered free data services for the poor.
21. California Noncommercial TV Station Licensee Faces $20,000 Proposed Fine for Public Inspection File and Related Violations
22. Wireless Data Revenues Dip For First Time in Seventeen Years — Thanks To A Crazy Little Thing Called Competition
23. Viacom wants to leave sports in the dust with future $20 “skinny” TV bundle: How many people really want cable TV with no live sports?
24. The Worldwide Leader in Schadenfreude: For the first time in 40 years, people aren’t just criticizing ESPN. They’re savoring its decline.
25. How Deregulation Gave Us FM Radio, HBO, and the iPhone
26. What toppled Bill O’Reilly? A reporter’s hunch, a cold call, and a Pilates class.
27. A Fox News Host Was Racist Enough to Actually Get Fired
28. Roger Ailes, who built Fox News into a powerhouse, dies at 77
29. Roger Ailes: Brilliant and Destructive – Fox News may be the greatest business investment Rupert Murdoch ever made. It was Roger Ailes who led it to massive success and controversy. Some think he destroyed sane, constructive political dialogue in America and gave birth to a sinister breed of news.
30. Roger Ailes will be remembered as a lecherous, misogynistic and terrible boss — and that’s a good thing: Ailes spent his life fighting for a world where men are free to exploit women — and the good news is, he lost
31. I’m Sorry To Report That Roger Ailes Ever Lived
32. Alex Jones’ InfoWars Claims To Have White House Press Credentials: A guy who thinks Sandy Hook was a ‘hoax’ now has access to the same White House briefing room as ‘fake news’ outlets
33. How the big TV networks are adapting to ad-skipping viewers … and Google, Snapchat and Facebook
34. Upfronts week just concluded, which means it’s time to take stock of the TV business: Ratings are down, live events are up, and IP is more important than ever
35. Federal Judge Triples Damages Against Dish In Telemarketing Lawsuit, Resulting in $61.34m in Damages
36. Plot twist: Cheesy soap opera script is deceptive drug ad, doctors warn – General Hospital character gets rare disease. Drug company has just the pill for that.
37. The Tricky Ethics of Big Pharma Soft-Selling on Soap Operas

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Russian Military Apparently Using Cell Tower Spoofers To Send Propaganda Directly To Ukrainian Soldiers’ Phones
2. Wikimedia wins small victory in challenge to NSA “Upstream” spying: “This surveillance will finally face badly needed scrutiny in our public courts.”
3. Appeals Court Revives Wikimedia’s Lawsuit Against The NSA
4. “Yahoobleed” flaw leaked private e-mail attachments and credentials: Yahoo promptly retired ImageMagic library after failing to install 2-year-old patch.
5. Vermont DMV Caught Using Illegal Facial Recognition Program: Local, state, and federal law enforcement were allowed to search DMV photo database, documents show
6. Get Ready for the Next Big Privacy Backlash Against Facebook
7. Google and Facebook lobbyists try to stop new online privacy protections: Lobbyists try to kill “opt-in” privacy standard before it can be implemented.
8. Facebook whacked with piddly fine after breaching French data law: But free content ad network insists it complies fully with EU data protection rules.
9. British Human Rights Activist Faces Prison For Refusing To Hand Over Passwords At UK Border
10. New EU Lawsuit Claims Google Failed To Forget ‘Sensitive’ Information, Such As Their ‘Political Affiliation’
11. Inspector General’s Report Shows Section 702 Isn’t The Only Thing Being Abused By The NSA
12. Some Android Phones Keep Listening After ‘OK Google’ Is Disabled
13. RNC, Chamber Of Commerce Want Robocallers To Be Able To Spam Your Voicemail Without Your Phone Ringing
14. Something about Trump cybersecurity executive order seems awfully familiar: Trump’s cybersecurity order cribs from his predecessor, despite campaign bluster.
15. GOP lawmaker who helped kill ISP privacy rules proposes new privacy rules: Bill requires opt-in consent, but prohibits states from imposing stricter rules.
16. The everyday habits that reveal our personalities: From dining on spicy food to singing in the shower, seemingly innocuous behaviours may say a lot about your character.
17. Ontario court finds Information and Privacy Commissioner’s decision to order disclosure of a commercial contract between bank and university reasonable
18. Anti-Lawful Access Tide Continues: Security Consultation Finds Public Strongly Opposed to New Reforms (Michael Geist)
19. Corporate Surveillance Is Turning Human Workers Into Fungible Cogs: Emerging technologies are enabling more invasive management practices.
20. Tech Leaders Say You Could Be Storing Data in Your DNA in the Next 10 Years
21. The Organization That’s Tracking People With Mental Illnesses: An experimental Florida program that aims to use big data to treat the mentally ill raises privacy questions
22. Famed Hacker Kevin Mitnick Shows You How to Go Invisible Online

Jon