GAMES
- inXile legal challenge forces indie dev to rebrand game: The Alien Wasteland now called Action Alien following cease and desist letter over “Wasteland” trademark
- Steam’s Sega Genesis mods: Tweaks, translations, and copyright infringement – New Steam Workshop support allows for uploading of arbitrary ROMs.
- Blizzard agrees to meet with team behind shut-down “pirate server”: “We are the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire WoW community”
- PS4 boosts Sony to first full-year profit in three years
- Sony’s games business bolstered by rising PS4 sales
- Sony shipped 17.7 million PS4s in the last fiscal year: Operating profit for games up 84 per cent, while Network revenue doubled year-on-year
- How consoles survived the rise of the smartphone
- Nintendo stops selling indie game in an attempt to cut off 3DS hackers
- Smart device pivot could cost Nintendo at home
- Nintendo’s president gets grilled on its mobile business, NX plans
- “The roadmap for a successful Nintendo console is unclear”
- Nintendo to sell majority stake in Seattle Mariners
- Chinese mobile games market is now the most valuable in the world: Newzoo and TalkingData report pegs annual revenue for 2015 at $7.1 billion, rising to $10 billion this year
- Zynga’s latest results: Steady as she goes, under new CEO Gibeau
- Vivendi increases its stake in Ubisoft to almost 18%
- Gears of War 4 would have cost Epic $100m – Sweeney: Epic CEO also laments how “toxic and destructive” some publishing arrangements can be
- Survey: Less than half of U.S. households own dedicated game consoles
- Game over: Windows 10 update crashes pro gamer’s broadcast session on Twitch
- 7 million unsalted MD5 passwords leaked by Minecraft community Lifeboat: Worse still, service recommended “short, but difficult to guess passwords.”
- ZOMG! ACCC beats US gamers Valve and proves ACL applies to foreign companies
- How Games Are Helping Veterans Recover From Injury: Amputees and PTSD patients turn to virtual worlds
- Australian Parliament report calls for renewed game industry funding
- ESA loses three members
- Riot’s path to building a collegiate eSports program
- Social media is most common way to follow eSports – Survey
- Almost twice as many UK games now supported by Games Tax Relief
- Greenlighting a Niche Game: The Long Journey Ahead
- Guinness Record Set With 25 Continuous Hours in Virtual Reality
- Researcher Espen Aarseth wins $2.3M grant to create a theory of games
DIGITAL
- On Trolling ([Aristotle] translated by Rachel Barney)
- How IBM’s new five-qubit universal quantum computer works
- Strange Smoke Signals From the NFL: The drama surrounding Laremy Tunsil underlined the ludicrousness of NFL Draft weekend, and the surreal environment of modern digital life
- Could YouTube Replace Your Cable TV?
- FTC strikes a blow against Amazon in IAP lawsuit: US judge calls out, “millions of dollars billed to Amazon customers without a mechanism for consent”
- Redaction Failure In FTC/Amazon Decision Inadvertently Allows Public To See Stuff It Should Have Been Able To See Anyway
- FTC rules don’t explain excessive redactions in FTC v. Amazon
- Voltage Pictures Launches Canadian File Sharing Lawsuit With Reverse Class Action Strategy (Michael Geist)
- Done properly, can a Creative Commons license make for an easy defense?
- Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Withdraws Google Subpoena As Google Appeals Court Ruling
- EU Regulators Can Barely Contain Their Desire To Attack Google And Facebook, Believing It Will Help Local Competitors
- Google Isn’t Required To De-Index Negative Ripoff Report (Eric Goldman)
- YouTube amends Content ID dispute process: Videos can now earn revenue while a Content ID claim is being disputed
- French National Assembly Votes (Sorta) To Finally Kill Its Three Strikes Hadopi Program
- Lessons From Prince’s Legacy And Struggle With Digital Music Markets
- Public Opinion toward Internet Freedom in Asia: A Survey of Internet Users from 11 Jurisdictions
- Nvidia and Samsung settle all existing patent litigation
- Death by GPS: Why do we follow digital maps into dodgy places?
- Bad drivers don’t think they’re bad: What Twitter tells us about road rage – Road deaths may be down, but accidents are on the rise.
- 10-year-old gets $10,000 bounty for finding Instagram vulnerability: Facebook pays out as part of its bug bounty program.
- Yahoo Just Lost a Deal Worth $100 Million a Year: More bad news for Marissa Mayer.
- The White House Considers Artificial Intelligence an Important Policy Issue
- Digital Gerrymandering and the Dangerous Influence of the Internet on Politics
- Rethinking Knowledge in the Internet Age (David Weinberger)
- Yes, All DRM (EFF)
CREATIVITY
- Looking for art in artificial intelligence
- Supervising Automated Journalists in the Newsroom: Liability for Algorithmically Produced News Stories
- Supreme Court to hear copyright fight over cheerleader uniforms: 3D printing companies are cheering for a cheerleading industry underdog.
- Did litigation kill the Beatles?
- ‘Zappa Plays Zappa’ Pits Zappa vs. Zappa
- Zappa Threatens Zappa Over Zappa Plays Zappa
- Copyright Holders Try To Stop Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ From Entering Public Domain Using Co-Author Trick
- Summary Judgment Upheld In Avatar Creators’ Favor After California Appellate Court Determines That Film Is Not Substantially Similar To Plaintiff’s Sci-Fi Work
- The potential impact of Brown v. Canada on ownership of intellectual property by employers
- The New ‘Defend Trade Secrets Act’ Is The Biggest IP Development In Years (Eric Goldman)
- Productivity Commission calls for free import of books, copyright shake-up
- Australian Gov’t Commission: Copyright Is Copywrong; Hurting The Public And Needs To Be Fixed
- Productivity Commission’s recommendations on IP reform likely to be lost in election haze
- Illegality doesn’t negate copyright protection
- This Amicus brief written partially in Klingon is the nerdiest legal document you’ll read today
- Paramount Copyright Claim on Klingon Language Challenged in Klingon Language
- Salvatore Ferragamo Brings Trademark Claims Against Former NFL Quarterback’s Ferragamo Winery
- Vice Media Sends Cease And Desist To ViceVersa Over Trademark Infringement
- What Happens in the U.S. Stays in the U.S.: IP Dispute Against Canadian Company Will Not be Moved to Canadian Forum
- High Court finds that there was no goodwill in colours
- Why Do So Many Asian Brands Hire White Models?
- How Superman Defeated the KKK
COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING
- The Digital CanCon Review: Be Wary of Old Whine in New Bottles (Michael Geist)
- The challenge of reshaping Canada’s cultural landscape
- New tariffs on the horizon after CRTC revamps rate-setting process for wholesale broadband Internet services
- FCC proposes new price regulations for cable—but not for home Internet: New “special access” rules would put cable and phone companies on equal ground.
- Tom Wheeler: Comcast’s TV app proves the FCC is right about set-top boxes – Rules are needed, because “that which Comcast giveth, Comcast can taketh away.”
- ‘Broadcast’ rights do not cover internet streaming rights, says Australian Court
- EU slashes mobile roaming charges again, debuts net neutrality rules
- Brazil Has To Pause Adoption Of Broadband Usage Caps After Consumers Revolt
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Challenges with the implementation of a right to be forgotten in Canada
- Canada’s spies in spat over privacy breach reporting: Communications Security Establishment says reporting details of privacy breaches would jeopardize secret spying operations.
- Secret US spy court approved everysurveillance request in 2015: Perfect batting average continues with the FISA Court two years in a row now.
- FBI Spent $1.3 Million To Not Even Learn The Details Of The iPhone Hack… So Now It Says It Can’t Tell Apple
- US woman forced to provide her fingerprint to unlock seized iPhone
- The government wants your fingerprint to unlock your phone. Should that be allowed?
- National Intelligence Office’s Top Lawyer Fires Off Spirited Defense Of Bulk Surveillance, Third Party Doctrine
- Legal quirk enabling surveillance state expansion absent Congressional vote
- Toymaker’s website pushes ransomware that holds visitors’ files hostage: Out-of-date Web app on Maisto.com causes site to attack its visitors.
- Privacy Commissioner of Canada cracks down on Mobile Health Devices
- You Can’t Escape Data Surveillance In America: The Fair Credit Reporting Act was intended to protect privacy, but its provisions have not kept pace with the radical changes wrought by the information age.
- The Chilling Effect Of Mass Surveillance Quantified
- Can Americans Resist Surveillance? (Ryan Calo)
- Norms of Computer Trespass (Orin Kerr)
- Incoded counter-conduct: What the incarcerated can teach us about resisting mass surveillance (Jessa Lingel, Aram Sinnreich)
- Berkeley Technology Law Journal Volume 30, Issue 3 (Open Data, Privacy Issue)
- If the Empire in Star Wars Had Big Data . . (Daniel Soleve)
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