News of the Week; July 12, 2017

GAMES

1. Singer Suing Bethesda Over Use Of His Music In “Repugnant” Fallout 4 Commercial: The musician finds the ads to be “repugnant and morally indefensible.”
2. Riot files suit against alleged League of Legends mobile clone maker
3. Riot Games suing Chinese developer behind League of Legends clone: Lawsuit is reportedly the third time Shanghai Moonton has infringed Riot’s IP
4. Making game development global again: Meet the Syrian and Iranian developers making an opportunity of Donald Trump’s travel ban – with a little help from Unity
5. Still under threat of Vivendi takeover, Ubisoft aims to expand its board
6. Most of Japan’s top-selling 2017 games are on Nintendo platforms
7. Nintendo rules out move into PC publishing: Mobile push was made to help expand the console business, president Tatsumi Kimishima said
8. Nintendo first-party line-up designed to inspire third-party studios: Company says Zelda, Mario Kart 8, Arms and Mario Odyssey show developers what is possible on Switch
9. How Nintendo is using first-party Switch games to inspire third-party devs: “It was important to have these three very different [launch games] to be able to transmit to the people the originality of the console.”
10. Nintendo could have supported Super FX long before the SNES Classic: Despite rumors, Nintendo always had the rights to the chip’s architecture.
11. Bootleg NES Classics flood market to fill demand that Nintendo won’t: Convincing fakes differ from the real thing only in small details.
12. Where are all the Nintendo Switch game ports?: Despite healthy hardware sales, plenty of big-name games aren’t making the switch.
13. What developers are saying about the design of Nintendo’s Arms
14. Nintendo Switch finally has a streaming video app, and it works—kind of: Comes from Japan’s popular Niconico video service, but it works in any region.
15. Players appreciate variety over high performance, argues Miyamoto
16. Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app launching July 21
17. How Many Times Has Mario Died? Announcing A Wired Investigation
18. Ark: Survival Evolved price increase is “outrageous”, says DayZ creator – RocketWerkz CEO Dean Hall believes Ark is “nowhere near” stable enough for $60 Early Access price and retail release
19. Amazon acquires cloud service provider GameSparks – report: Back-end service provider is now part of Amazon Web Services
20. Pokémon Go and Plymouth: How games are impacting urban design – Pokémon Go has created a new breed of conscientious urban wanderer; developers and town planners take heed!
21. How Pokémon Go has transformed the brand: The mobile game may be past its peak, but its impact is permanent
22. Bandai Namco signs publishing deal with Duelyst dev Counterplay
23. Sega embraces “grassroots” games-as-a-service: John Clark details organic approach led by studios, focused on communities, and applied to everything from recurring revenue to PC ports
24. Former Sega America boss says lack of company support killed the Dreamcast: “[The Dreamcast] was so successful at launch … but the company was just not putting money behind it. We had bankers running it.”
25. PS4 games added to PlayStation Now streaming library
26. PlayStation Now updated with PS4 game support—and a hint at its future: Ars tests newer games on streaming service, notices some interesting categorization.
27. Playstation’s VR Gun Is a Deeply Satisfying New Way to Slaughter Aliens
28. ‘Fantastic Contraption’ Gets PSVR Release Date & Price – Exclusive Levels, Native 120 FPS Rendering
29. Google Blocks, The Company’s Newest VR Play, Is All About Stuff, Man
30. Oculus cuts Rift price for second time this year, now $399 with Touch: Unexpected price slashing raises questions about hardware’s costs, sales, future.
31. Oculus’ Jason Rubin: Exclusivity deals won’t stop VR game dev from growing: “I stole a lot from Donkey Kong Country when I made Crash Bandicoot. Insomniac stole a lot from Crash Bandicoot when they made Ratchet & Clank. Including our crates.”
32. Is high-end VR a dead end? The Rift, Vive, and PSVR could fall short of success on their own while still securing a brighter future for VR
33. “So what the hell is Magic Leap doing?”: At the Develop conference today, Graeme Devine described the pitching process that helped Magic Leap discover the true nature of mixed reality content
34. Why Valve’s new SteamVR Knuckles are important for VR
35. Steam Greenlight vs. Steam Direct: What indies need to know
36. Valve dismisses Steam Direct concern: Alden Krol says “a bunch of low effort, low quality games” aren’t hurting better titles, details changes for discoverability, curators
37. Two years in, Steam is Rocket League’s least popular platform
38. Valve bans over 40,000 Steam accounts as summer sale entices cheaters: Largest mass banning of accounts in the digital platform’s history
39. How One Game Developer Views Steam’s Refund Policy As A Boon In The Face Of Over $4 Million In Refunds
40. Game names are getting shorter over time, and other Steam fun facts
41. Netflix for indie games: How Jump aims to help devs beat discoverability issues
42. Halo backward-compat news may spell death knell for Master Chief Collection: Every Xbox 360 Halo game will soon work on Xbox One, but why the MCC silence?
43. The Sleeper Autistic Hero Transforming Video Games
44. University of California Irvine will soon offer Overwatch scholarships
45. University of California to add Overwatch scholarship: UC Irvine introduced a League of Legends scholarship last year
46. DOTA 2 breaks eSports prize pool record again: Over $20.75 million at stake as Valve’s seventh The International tournament surpasses last year’s total with almost a month left to raise more funds
47. Athletics, eSports, and tech leaders buy in as Overwatch League names inaugural teams
48. Patriots’ Robert Kraft, Mets’ Jeff Wilpon Buy Into Overwatch League
49. Gree calls time on Western operations as focus shifts to Japan
50. Report: 50 laid off as Gree shutters Melbourne studio
51. Netflix’s Castlevania Turns the Video Game Series Into a Bloody Great TV Show
52. Minecraft: Education Editionheads up 2017 Games for Change finalists
53. Castlevania on Netflix falls one whip short of a good crack: A few quality bits, but bizarre game conversion is somehow too short and too long.
54. Could there be a speculative script industry for narrative games?: Falmouth University lecturer and games writer Hannah Wood ponders whether writing can be done upfront for story-driven games
55. Video: Lessons learned from citizen science efforts in EVE Online
56. Study: Lumosity boosts brain function as much as normal video games – by 0% – But taking cognitive tests repeatedly makes you better at taking cognitive tests.
57. What Killed the MMOG?
58. 15 Years Later, Here’s Why A Gamer Was Duct-Taped To A Ceiling

DIGITAL

1. Over many objections, W3C approves DRM for HTML5: Contentious feature is added, without mandate to protect security researchers.
2. Global Web standard for integrating DRM into browsers hits a snag – EFF: Protections needed to “engage in lawful activity that DRM gets in the way of.”
3. Tim Berners-Lee Sells Out His Creation: Officially Supports DRM In HTML
4. EFF Officially Appeals Tim Berners-Lee Decision On DRM In HTML
5. People Would Pay A Hell Of A Lot More If DRM Were Gone
6. Head of Mt Gox bitcoin exchange on trial for embezzlement and loss of millions: Mark Karpelès faces up to five years in jail as Japanese authorities press charges in bankruptcy case that lost 850,000 bitcoins and $28m of user money
7. Vizio sues Chinese tech giant LeEco over failed merger
8. Vizio sues LeEco in the wake of their failed $2 billion deal: It filed two lawsuits seeking $110 million in damages.
9. Vizio’s Tolerance for LeEco’s B.S. Has Come to an End
10. Court Refuses to Dismiss Photojournalist’s Complaint Against Clothing Company for DMCA Violation 
11. Court Says DMCA Safe Harbors Disappear Once Infringing Images Are Printed On Physical Items
12. Here’s the brutal reality of online hate: Death threats. Mutilated animals. Damnation. The victims of online hatred share their experiences.
13. Why Protecting The Free Press Requires Protecting Trump’s Tweets
14. The Great Firewall Of China Grows Stronger As China Forces App Stores To Remove VPNs
15. China’s Surveillance Plans Include 600 Million CCTV Cameras Nationwide, And Pervasive Facial Recognition
16. China Bans Online Videos Showing Homosexuality And Activists & Communist Youth League Are Outraged
17. Yelp, Twitter and Facebook Aren’t State Actors–Quigley v. Yelp (Eric Goldman)
18. News industry decries Facebook’s “digital duopoly,” wants government help: Newspapers “forced to surrender their content” want to team up and negotiate.
19. Free Speech Fans Sue Donald Trump for Blocking Them on Twitter
20. Twitter users blocked by Trump sue, claim @realDonaldTrump is public forum: Lawsuit adopts a unique constitutional theory about social media rights.
21. Social media driving risky behaviour in Lynn Canyon, North Shore mountains 
22. Supreme Court of Canada Upholds Order for Google to Block Search Results Globally
23. No, The Canadian Supreme Court Did Not Ruin the Internet
24. Court Won’t Let Patent Troll Dismiss Its Way Out Of A Lawsuit, Orders It To Pay Legal Fees
25. Study: Dutch Piracy Rates In Free Fall Due Mostly To The Availability Of Legal Alternatives
26. Pirate Bay Re-enters List of 100 Most Popular Sites on the Internet 
27. There Is An Easy Answer To Whether Machines Should Get Copyright Rights And It Comes Down To Copyright’s Purpose
28. Could a Robot Be President?: Yes, it sounds nuts. But some techno-optimists really believe a computer could make better decisions for the country—without the drama and shortsightedness we accept from our human leaders.
29. Waymo drops most of its patent case against Uber: Judge questioned whether Waymo’s patent case is “worth the salt.”
30. Waymo v. Uber: Alphabet CEO Larry Page will be deposed – Also, Uber’s attempt to get documents from competitor Lyft gets squashed.
31. Responding to the “Campaign for Accountability” report on academic research
32. Setting the record straight on WSJ Google “Paying Professors” Article
33. You should be outraged at Google’s anti-competitive behavior
34. There Are Only a Few Possibilities for the Future of News
35. Press Association wins Google grant to run news service written by computers: News agency gets €706,000 to use AI for creation of up to 30,000 local stories a month in partnership with Urbs Media
36. A Blueprint For Coexistence With Artificial Intelligence
37. Latest experiments reveal AI is still terrible at naming paint colors: Or maybe Janelle Shane’s neural network is secretly making fun of humanity?
38. Prince’s Music Videos Hit YouTube
39. Wiz Khalifa’s See You Again is now the most-viewed YouTube video of all time
40. Valuable Branded Posts Make Stephen Curry Top NBA Player On Social
41. Native Advertising, Influencers, And Endorsements: Where Is the Line Between Integrated Content And Deceptively Formatted Advertising?
42. Facebook, Snapchat could pay millions for World Cup 2018 highlight rights: Where will you watch clips from the biggest soccer tournament next year?
43. Nothing Bums Me Out Like Scott Walker’s Instagram Feed
44. Microsoft to Lay Off an Estimated 3,000 Employees
45. Disney Feels The Heat As Children Lead The Cord Cutting Revolution
46. Disney Invests in 11 Tech and Media Companies for 2017 Accelerator Program 
47. Struggling for survival, SoundCloud closes San Francisco, London offices: Audio startup has lost over $150M from 2010 through 2015.
48. Insights: In The Digital Future, What Do Studios Look Like (If Anything At All)?
49. The Technology That Will Make It Impossible for You to Believe What You See: With these techniques, it’s difficult to discern between videos of real people and computerized impostors that can be programmed to say anything.
50. Scientists Upload A Galloping Horse Gif Into Bacteria With CRISPR
51. Online Harassment 2017: Roughly four-in-ten Americans have personally experienced online harassment, and 62% consider it a major problem. Many want technology firms to do more, but they are divided on how to balance free speech and safety issues online (Pew Research Center)

CREATIVITY

1. York University Loses On “Mandatory” Issue And Fair Dealing (Howard Knopf)
2. CAUT disappointed with Federal Court copyright ruling against York University
3. Did you hear the one about a monkey suing a photographer for infringement?: “Monkey see, monkey sue is not good law.”
4. Law banning filming Utah slaughterhouses ruled unconstitutional: “Were the law otherwise,” judge says, Utah could outlaw “creating music videos.” 
5. The Supreme Court just totally, brilliantly fixed Canada’s long-running patent fiasco
6. What’s Next For The Founder Of The Slants, And The Fight Over Racial Slurs 
7. Three Questions from the Supreme Court’s Decision on “Offensive” Trademarks
8. New York State Fails to Extend the Scope of its Right to Publicity Statute
9. Bob Murray Demands John Oliver Be Silenced… While HBO Moves Case To Federal Court
10. Don’t Let The Alt-Right Fool You: Journalism Isn’t Doxing
11. The Guerrilla Journalists Defying Isis One Video At A Time
12. House Appropriation Committee Demolishes Hollywood’s Excuses For Moving Copyright Office Out Of Library Of Congress
13. State Department concocting “fake” intellectual property “Twitter feud”: “Our public diplomacy office is still settling on a hashtag,” State Department says.
14. How “fake news” could get even worse
15. Two Wangs Of Ireland Battle Over Trademarks Nobody Will Confuse
16. Brooklyn Coffee Shop Locks Unicorn Horns With Starbucks
    The diplomatic crisis of Qatar and Gulf Cooperation Council’s IP
17. Possibly most intense Star Wars v. Star Trek argument ever ends in arrest
18. 20 years after ‘Contact’ came out, the rest of pop culture still hasn’t caught up
19. Donald Trump Jr.’s Free Speech Defense: It’s as bogus as it sounds.

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY 

1. Cable TV companies can charge higher prices thanks to new court ruling: Court upholds FCC decision that said cable TV faces competition nationwide.
2. Television Station Challenging the Denial of Public Access to an Official Court Recording
3. Microsoft Unveils Plan To Deliver Broadband To 2 Million, NAB Immediately Craps All Over The Announcement
4. Microsoft wants all of rural America to get high-speed broadband: Microsoft invests in white space networks, offers royalty-free access to patents.
5. AT&T Claims Forced Arbitration Isn’t Forced… Because You Can Choose Not To Have Broadband
6. Trump Hopes To Use AT&T Time Warner Merger As ‘Leverage’ Over CNN
7. White House could use AT&T/Time Warner deal as “leverage” against CNN: AT&T seemingly on track to buy Time Warner despite Trump’s anger at CNN.
8. If FCC gets its way, we’ll lose a lot more than net neutrality: Beyond no-blocking rules, Title II plays big role in overall consumer protection.
9. Cable lobby conducts survey, finds that Americans want net neutrality: NCTA touts opposition to price caps—which don’t exist for home Internet.
10. AT&T Pretends To Love Net Neutrality, Joins Tomorrow’s Protest With A Straight Face
11. AT&T joins net neutrality protest—despite suing to block neutrality rules: AT&T joins net neutrality “Day of Action” but wants to overturn Title II rules.
12. Telecom Industry Feebly Tries To Deflate Net Neutrality Protest With Its Own, Lame ‘Unlock The Net’ Think Tank Campaign
13. Facebook, Google to join net neutrality demonstration
14. Facebook, Google Wake Up From Their Coma On The Subject, Join Wednesday’s Massive Net Neutrality Protest
15. How Facebook, Google, Netflix, and others supported net neutrality today: See how websites, advocacy groups, and even some ISPs defended net neutrality
16. The Who’s Who Of Net Neutrality’s ‘Day Of Action’
17. Day Of Action: Sen. Wyden Leads The Battle For Net Neutrality
18. How The Internet Showed Up For Net Neutrality Today, From Reddit To Google
19. The FCC Insists It Can’t Stop Impostors From Lying About My Views On Net Neutrality
20. AMC To Charge Cable Customers $5 More To Avoid Advertisements
21. Cable TV companies can charge higher prices thanks to new court ruling: Court upholds FCC decision that said cable TV faces competition nationwide.
22. TCPA Jury Award Trebled to $61.3 Million Against Dish Network For Failure to Monitor its Telemarketing Vendor 
23. NAB Details Radio Stations that Could be Affected by Repacking of the TV Band 
24. Changes in FCC Rules on Third-Party Fundraising By Noncommercial Stations Effective Now – Except for the New Disclosure and Paperwork Obligations 
25. Toward an Open and Innovative Internet: What Lies Behind Canada’s Net Neutrality Success Story (Michael Geist)
26. Ofcom spectrum auction caps are “kick in the teeth” for consumers—Three UK: Regulator insists new airwaves rules will drive competition in mobile market.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Federal Appeals Court Rules that There is a First Amendment Right to Record the Police
2. Third Circuit Appeals Court Establishes First Amendment Right To Record Police
3. Judge denies DOJ effort to halt Twitter lawsuit over national security orders: Twitter wants to be able to say precisely how many secret orders it received.
4. Judge Says Twitter Can Move Forward With First Amendment Lawsuit Over NSL Reporting Limitations
5. Facebook Back In Court Challenging More Law Enforcement Gag Orders
6. FBI didn’t need warrant for stingray in attempted murder case, DOJ says – Prosecutors: “signals emitted from a phone are… not by their nature private.”
7. Your Guide To Russia’s Infrastructure Hacking Teams
8. Kaspersky under scrutiny after Bloomberg story claims close links to FSB
9. Wait, what? Trump proposed a joint “cyber security unit” with Russia: “It’s not the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”
10. Trump’s Voter Data Haul Tests the Privacy of Public Records: Just because information is “publicly available” does not mean it is, or should be, widely available.
11. Six major US airports now scan Americans’ faces when they leave country – House testimony: “It is important to note that CBP is committed to privacy.”
12. China Uses Facial Recognition To Combat Jaywalking
13. Apple Opens Data Center in China to Comply With Cybersecurity Law
14. Virgin’s CCTV images of Corbyn on “ram-packed” train didn’t break data law: But firm did breach law by exposing faces of passengers travelling on same service.
15. Former Head Of GCHQ Says Don’t Backdoor End-To-End Encryption, Attack The End Points
16. Comcast, AT&T, WhatsApp all score low on new “Who Has Your Back?” list: EFF’s annual ratings show that the industry’s biggest names have a ways to go.
17. Sorry, But You Need To Care About Blac Chyna And Rob Kardashian
18. Google Home Breaks Up Domestic Dispute By Calling the Police
19. Did an Echo Call 911 During a Domestic Assault? Amazon Says No.
20. The Petya Plague Exposes The Threat Of Evil Software Updates
21. I Gave Mattel My Email Address to Keep My Child Safe. They Used It to Send Me Spam.
22. How to Protect Your Digital Self
23. How I learned to stop worrying (mostly) and love my threat model: Reducing privacy and security risks starts with knowing what the threats really are.
24. With Bill C-58, the federal government has left the heavy lifting on access to information reform for another day/year/government.
25. Personal Liability Under Canada’s Anti-Spam Law
26. The Trudeau government redacted the details of its own transparency plan
27. Whose Speech Is Chilled by Surveillance?: Women and young people are more likely to self-censor if they think they’re being monitored. (Jonathon Penney)
28. The Hidden Force That Will Drive GDPR Privacy Compliance (Daniel Solove)
29. ATIA reform Bill creates new relationship between Information and Privacy Commissioners over “personal information” (Teresa Scasa)

Jon