News of the Week; February 21, 2018

By Jon Festinger on March 11, 2018

GAMES

  1. Gameloft facing lawsuit from outsourcing firm over copyright infringement
  2. Outsourcer suing Gameloft over Asphalt assets and trade secrets: Vietnamese studio Glass Egg claims employees created assets without company’s knowledge
  3. Despite increased downloads, Gameloft sees drop in daily and monthly average users
  4. European regulator: Nintendo’s strict eShop refund policy is unlawful
  5. After 600 days of being banned, former CS:GO streamer sues Twitch
  6. Ubisoft Perma-Bans Creator Of Cool, Non-Cheating Tool For ‘The Division’ Because It Was Made With Cheating Software
  7. Add-on dev Flight Sim Labs under fire for using malware as DRM
  8. Flight-sim devs say hidden password-dump tool was used to fight pirates: Developer says tool was intended to target one specific cracker.
  9. Streamer Sues Twitch Over Suspension: James ‘PhantomL0rd’ Varga says he was a “scapegoat”.
  10. Banned Twitch streamer files lawsuit against platform for loss of earnings and “reputational harm”: James “Phantoml0rd” Varga argues he was never given adequate explanation for the ban
  11. Twitch delays enforcement of new community guidelines over clarity concerns: Video platform criticised for new guidelines being vague
  12. Twitch Just Launched Chat Rooms And It’s The 90s All Over Again
  13. EVE Online to permanently ban repeat offenders using bots
  14. Eugen Systems devs on strike after claiming violation of rights 
  15. Video games, not guns, to blame for school shooting, says Kentucky gov.: “It’s the same as pornography…. we are reaping what we’ve sown here.”
  16. Game industry pushes back against efforts to restore gameplay servers: DMCA exemption fight shows mistrust over limited “preservation” claims.
  17. ESA argues against DMCA exemption for abandoned online games
  18. ESA opposes potential DMCA rule change aimed at preserving abandoned online games: “Preservation of online video games is now critical,” says Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
  19. Hawaii proposes landmark legislation against loot boxes: State representative who previously declared legislation a “slippery slope” affirms support for efforts toward regulating loot boxes; expects more states to follow Hawaii’s lead
  20. U.S. Senator calls on ESRB and FTC to review loot box practices 
  21. Blog: Much ado about loot boxes
  22. Report: 69% of consumers find cosmetic microtransactions acceptable: Only 6% of consumers never spend money on microtransactions
  23. 27% of Brits have purchased 18-rated games while still underage: While still underage, 65% of millennials have played an 18-rated video game and 35% bought one
  24. Microsoft: “Representation isn’t just good common sense, it’s good business sense” – At the DICE Summit today, Phil Spencer urged the industry to pursue diversity and inclusivity or risk missing out on the growth opportunities to come
  25. Learning from scantily clad dancer scandal, Xbox exec calls for inclusivity: Phil Spencer sees “opportunity and responsibility to make gaming for everyone.”
  26. For Xbox boss Spencer, inclusivity is key for successful company culture 
  27. Rovio partners with GSN Games for cash-wagering Angry Birds game
  28. Nightdive puts crowdfunded System Shock reboot on hiatus: The project lost focus after raising more than $1.3 million from Kickstarter backers
  29. Atari launching two cryptocurrencies: Shares spike 52% after company unveils Atari Token and Pong, announces plans to allow cryptocurrencies in its gambling business
  30. Atari stock jumps 52% on plans for nostalgia-backed cryptocurrencies: “Atari Token” and “Pong Token” continue long trend of zombie corporate licensing.
  31. Doom on Switch may have changed everything with new motion controls: Nintendo teased this brilliant idea in Splatoon. Will other shooters follow?
  32. UK Charts: Nintendo Switch push sends FIFA back to No.1: Kingdom Come –  Deliverence makes No.2, Bayonetta 2 back at No.5
  33. Super Rare Games bringing limited edition indie games to Nintendo Switch
  34. How Nintendo Labo is using the Switch’s IR Camera and HD Rumble features
  35. How Switch’s success is impacting devs in the game porting biz
  36. Nintendo To Expel Members From ‘Creators Program’ In Accordance With New YouTube Policy
  37. Starbreeze banking on The Walking Dead after posting pre-tax loss of $22.2M
  38. Ubisoft Berlin’s growth ambitions will need government support: “We intend to grow to a considerable size,” says studio director Istvan Tajnay, “but we could grow to a huge size if parameters were right”
  39. How Augmented Reality Is Shaping The Future Of Play
  40. Gree VR Fund invests $18.3m into 17 augmented and virtual reality startups: San Francisco-based venture capital fund re-brands to reflect commitment beyond just virtual reality
  41. The Difference Between Smartglasses & AR Glasses, and Why Everyone is Confused
  42. Could Esports Become Part Of Olympics By 2024?
  43. Daytona 500 Race Week Features Esports Tournament On Mobile Stage
  44. How Major League Baseball Is Approaching Future Entry Into Esports
  45. Blizzard using in-game rewards to promote OverwatchLeague streams on Twitch
  46. The CEO of esports team Splyce explains the human side of professional play
  47. Learning to love older games: The recent boom in remastered games isn’t just business as usual; it signifies an underlying shift in how consumers value older games
  48. Meet the brewery making its own video game: Tiny Rebel Games teams up with its sister company to create Beer Money
  49. A Videogame Developer Who Finds Power In Pathos
  50. Nightdive Studios puts System Shock remake on hold 
  51. Blog: Building my courtroom drama game, Twelve Absent Men
  52. How multimedia trade marks could kill cloned games: Harbottle & Lewis’ Kostya Lobov believes a new form of IP protection will greatly benefit developers – as shown by Rebellion’s Sniper Elite 4
  53. Bandai Namco opens two virtual reality arcades in south England: Plans to further expand the operation across the UK throughout 2018
  54. Blog: Flash games aren’t dead, they’re just in a coma
  55. Blog: How marketing drives engagement in free to play games
  56. Opinion: Why there’s no such thing as ‘the game industry’
  57. “History is our playground”: Bringing Assassin’s Creed into the classroom – We speak to Maxime Durand, franchise historian behind the publisher’s flagship series, about its new violence-free Discovery Mode
  58. Blog: Listen to a Harvard Egyptologist discuss Assassin’s Creed: Origins

DIGITAL

  1. Instagram, YouTube Face Full Block In Russia After Billionaire Wins A Privacy Lawsuit Over Pictures With An Alleged Escort
  2. OCA upholds $700,000 award in internet defamation case
  3. Playboy says linking to Playmate archive violates copyright; judge says no way: Boing Boing linked to an Imgur-hosted archive that has since been taken down. 
  4. Scraping Is OK, Copying Proprietary Software Is Not 
  5. Terrible Copyright Ruling Over An Embedded Tweet Undermines Key Concept Of How The Internet Works
  6. A Ruling Over Embedded Tweets Could Change Online Publishing
  7. Are news publishers directly liable for embedding tweets that contain images not created by that tweeter?
  8. Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Redbox Automated Retail, LLC 
  9. 32 lawsuits filed against Intel over Spectre and Meltdown flaws
  10. Court Realizes It Totally Screwed Up An Injunction Against Zazzle For Copyright Infringement 
  11. John Perry Barlow and the Foundational Values of the Net
  12. Twitter “bot” purge causes outcry from trollerati as follower counts fall: Right-wing tweeters see thousands of followers purged for “suspicious account behavior.”
  13. Even If The Russian Troll Factory Abused Our Openness Against Us, That Doesn’t Mean We Should Close Up
  14. NRA Goes Quiet on Twitter, Just Like After Previous Mass Shootings
  15. Parkland Conspiracies Overwhelm The Internet’s Broken Trending Tools
  16. Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting
  17. Special Counsel indicts 13 people, Russian troll farm on conspiracy charges: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says Russians conducted “information warfare.”
  18. How the Internet Companies That Sold Ads to Russian Trolls Can Fix the Problem: Mueller’s indictments describe a sprawling Russian scheme to sow discord in our elections using social media. The platforms now have a duty to protect our democracy 
  19. DOJ Russia Indictment Again Highlights Why Internet Companies Can’t Just Wave A Magic Wand To Make Bad Stuff Go Away
  20. TWiT takes on Twitter in trademark dispute
  21. Conservative Twitter Users Lose Thousands of Followers, Mass Purge of Bots Suspected
  22. A Blockbuster Indictment Details Russia’s Attack On US Democracy
  23. The Toolset Of An Elite North Korean Hacker Group On The Rise
  24. U.N. chief urges global rules for cyber warfare
  25. YouTube’s Top Trending Video This Morning Promoted Conspiracy Theory About Florida Shooting Survivor
  26. YouTube Outlines New Official Punishments For ‘Egregious Cases’
  27. As “Demonetization Day” Arrives On YouTube, Small Creators Offer Advice To One Another
  28. Why Artificial Intelligence Researchers Should Be More Paranoid
  29. Algorithmic Impact Assessments: Toward Accountable Automation in Public Agencies 
  30. Big Data Suggests Big Potential For Urban Farming
  31. Canadian Competition Policy Focuses in on “Big Data”
  32. Toward ethical, transparent and fair AI/ML: a critical reading list
  33. A Biohacker Regrets Publicly Injecting Himself With CRISPR: “There’s no doubt in my mind that somebody is going to end up hurt eventually.”
  34. Internet rages after Google removes “view image” button, bowing to Getty: Getty drops lawsuit against Google in exchange for controversial image search changes.
  35. Google’s New Ad Blocker Changed The Web Before It Even Switched On
  36. A Lack of Emotional Intelligence is Fueling Misogyny and Racism at Google — and Across Silicon Valley
  37. Misogyny Online: Death by a Thousand Cuts
  38. Google Fired and Disciplined Employees for Speaking Out About Diversity
  39. Ex-Google Employee Claims Wrongful Firing For Criticizing James Damore’s Memo
  40. Ex-Google engineer: I was fired for being too liberal – Tim Chevalier sues Google, claims only employees “who represent the majority” speak.
  41. Infamous Google memo author shot down by federal labor board: Damore’s gender-focused memo was “discriminatory, constituted sexual harassment.”
  42. Good news: Chrome debuts automatic blocking of annoying ads – Starting this week, Chrome took aim at some of the Internet’s most intrusive ads.
  43. Glitch on Bitcoin Exchange Drops Prices to Zero Dollars, User Tries to Make Off With Trillions 
  44. Taxation of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies
  45. NSA Exploit Now Powering Cryptocurrency Mining Malware
  46. Tesla cloud resources are hacked to run cryptocurrency-mining malware
  47. Cryptocurrency-mining criminals that netted $3 million gear up for more: Attackers who mined 10,829 Monero coins over 18 months target a new server platform
  48. Cryptocurrency Mining Company Coinhive Shocked To Learn Its Product Is Being Abused
  49. Blockchain Just Isn’t As Radical As You Want It To Be
  50. Instagram’s Latest Direct Messaging Feature Challenges Snapchat Again
  51. One Down: Instagram Caves To Russian Censorship As All Eyes Turn To YouTube
  52. Facebook’s secret weapon in the fight against foreign meddling? Postcards 
  53. Copycat: How Facebook Tried To Squash Snapchat
  54. Facebook Notification Spam Has Crossed The Line
  55. Facebook ‘Security’: A New VPN That’s Spyware And Two-Factor Authentication That Spams You 
  56. Wired’s Big Cover Story On Facebook Gets Key Legal Point Totally Backwards, Demonstrating Why CDA 230 Is Actually Important
  57. NFL Thursday Night Digital Rights: Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Verizon Again at Bidding Table
  58. YouTube, Amazon, Twitter May Bid Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars For NFL Rights
  59. Amazon To Bring Ad-Supported Options To Its Channels Program 
  60. Amazon uses cash back benefits to entice Prime members to Whole Foods
  61. UberEats Driver Kills Customer During Delivery in Atlanta 
  62. Why are we still struggling with hyper-linking and copyright law? (Andres Guadamuz)
  63. Could 5G Break Facebook And Google’s Grip On Online Content, Cut ALL Cords?
  64. Iran’s National Information Network: Faster Speeds, but at What Cost?
  65. Apple’s Excellence in Design Leads to Employees Smacking Into Glass Walls
  66. NBA’s Adam Silver Focused On Tech That Creates Magical Experiences
  67. Kudos To The Crock-Pot People For Handling The Online Fallout From ‘This Is Us’ So Well
  68. Everyone Creates: New Empirical Data Shows Just How Much The Internet Has Enabled A New Creative Economy 

CREATIVITY

  1. Court Shakes Off Dumb Copyright Lawsuit Against Taylor Swift 
  2. US Judge dismisses Taylor Swift ‘Shake it Off’ lyric as too ‘banal’ to copyright: Nick McDonald comments
  3. Judge Dismisses Taylor Swift Lawsuit While Pouring the Burn Sauce
  4. John Wiley & Sons Inc. v. DRK Photo: Second Circuit holds that stock photograph company aggregating claims for copyright infringement against third-party licensees for exceeding usage limits of licenses does not have standing  
  5. Rearden LLC v. Walt Disney Company: District court dismisses copyright and direct patent infringement claims against various film studios arising out of allegedly unauthorized use of plaintiff’s MOVA computer-graphics motion capture technology
  6. Jerry Seinfeld is being sued for allegedly stealing the idea for Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee
  7. How a Polish Holocaust Story Became the Basis of a Controversial Copyright Case in Canada’s Federal Court
  8. Germany’s Speech Laws Continue To Be A Raging Dumpster Fire Of Censorial Stupidity
  9. The Lynyrd Skynyrd Texting Case: Spoliation and Non-Party Texts 
  10. Scholastic Wants To Help Young Creators Showcase Their Works By Stripping Them Of Their IP Rights
  11. What Black Panther’s Success Means For The Future Of Movies 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 4: Absence of Court Orders Would Put Canada At Odds With Almost Everyone (Michael Geist)
  2. The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 5: The Inevitable Expansion of the Block List Standard for “Piracy” Sites (Michael Geist)
  3. The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 6: Over-Blocking of Legitimate Websites (Michael Geist)
  4. The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 7: The Likely Expansion of the Block List to Non-IP Issues (Michael Geist)
  5. Bell to Employees: Click Here To Support Our Website Blocking Proposal at the CRTC (Michael Geist) 
  6. Congress Pressures FCC Boss Over His Total Failure To Police Net Neutrality Comment Fraud
  7. AT&T’s attempt to buy Time Warner suffers a blow in court: AT&T loses bid for evidence; Trump’s hatred of CNN won’t play big role in case. 
  8. AT&T tries to prove Trump meddled in merger review because he hates CNN
  9. FCC Boss Being Investigated By His Own Agency For Being Too Cozy With The Industry He Regulates 
  10. Ajit Pai Is Reportedly Being Investigated by the FCC’s Inspector General 
  11. Ajit Pai faces investigation into moves that benefit Sinclair Broadcasting: IG examines whether Pai “improperly coordinated with Sinclair” on rule changes.
  12. Ajit Pai’s Plan Will Take Broadband Away From Poor People
  13. FCC Broadband Availability Data Derided As Inaccurate, ‘Shameful’ 
  14. To kill net neutrality, FCC might have to fight more than half of US states: Bucking FCC and Ajit Pai, lawmakers across US have proposed net neutrality laws.
  15. More Than Half Of U.S. States Now Pushing Their Own Net Neutrality Rules
  16. Charter fails to defeat lawsuit alleging false Internet speed promises: Net neutrality repeal can’t save Charter from lawsuit, NY Supreme Court says.
  17. Starting Small on Media Regulation Modernization – Rule Requiring Hard Copy of FCC Rules Repealed 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. German Court Says Facebook’s Real Names Policy Violates Users’ Privacy
  2. Facebook has been sharing our data for months to help study income inequality: In the US, just 1 percent of the population holds 40 percent of the wealth.
  3. Mountain of sensitive FedEx customer data exposed, possibly for years: Company stored customer passports, driver licenses, and more in public Amazon bucket.
  4. In terse statement, White House blames Russia for NotPetya worm
  5. Mozilla’s Open Letter To Expert Committee Drafting India’s First Data Protection Law Slams Aadhaar Biometric Identity System
  6. Internal Versus External Tracking Is Next Frontier Of Data Privacy

Jon

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