News of the Week

GAMES

1. Oculus verdict: Judge awards ZeniMax $500 million: Facebook owned VR company did not misappropriate trade secrets as ZeniMax alleged, however
2. Oculus, execs liable for $500 million in ZeniMax VR trial: Court finds Rift maker broke NDA but didn’t steal trade secrets.
3. Lawsuit over NBA 2K facial scanning privacy concerns falls flat
4. Ohio State researcher’s study retracted from journal: Research from an Ohio State communication professor was retracted from a scientific journal after two outside researchers found discrepancies in variables from the original experiment when they replicated the study.
5. A Professor Claimed Video Games Make People Better Shooters — Then His Study Got Retracted: Brad Bushman has some explaining to do
6. 2012 Research Paper Linking Video Games And Violence Finally Retracted Over Massaged Data Accusation
7. Report: GameStop staff under fresh pressure to sell used games over new ones
8. ‘NBA 2K’ Video Game Maker Beats Lawsuit Over Biometric Face-Scanning: A judge rejects gamers’ privacy complaint because they haven’t alleged a concrete injury.
9. FBI reveals 173-page Gamergate file
10. EA’s earnings show revenues are up, losses are better than expected
11. Nintendo’s nine-month profits soar on Pokémon and Seattle Mariners sale: Pokémon Sun & Moon sold 14.7m units worldwide, full-year profit forecast almost doubled to ¥‎90 billion
12. Nintendo addresses “weak” Switch launch lineup: President Tatsumi Kimishima says company wants to avoid long gaps without new games, pledges continued support for 3DS
13. Two speed market drove over $30 billion in games deals in 2016: Tim Merel of Digi-Capital on how 2016 broke the industry M&A record by 77%
14. Deep dive in the data of Games on Kickstarter in 2016
15. Mad Catz threatened with stock market delisting
16. Microsoft’s games revenue continues to slip due to falling hardware sales
17. Microsoft fails to impress tech media by selling thousands of HoloLenses: $3,000 enterprise headsets experience lower sales than mass-market consumer devices.
18. Disney shuts down Club Penguin: Original kid-friendly virtual world going dark, to be replaced by mobile-exclusive Club Penguin Island in March
19. Devs, don’t post positive Steam reviews of your game under fake names
20. Valve to start blocking accounts that gamble Team Fortress 2 gear
21. eSports: The missed billion-dollar opportunity for publishers and platforms
22. Resident Evil 7’s Denuvo protections cracked in under a week: Quick turnaround by hackers could have profound business implications.
23. Hackers unlock NES Classic, upload new games via USB cable: It’s not as simple as drag-and-drop, but no screwdriver or hardware mods needed.
24. The Founder’s Dilemma: A terrifying new video game is a little too real.
25. Kojima says games and movies must ‘converge’ to survive
26. Working with influencers: “The internet can smell disingenuity a mile off”: Space Ape’s Simon Hade discusses the perks and pitfalls of working with YouTubers and streamers
27. In Berlin, refugees become friends—through board games: Building bridges with board games.
28. The Radical Environmentalism of the Sega Genesis
29. King on diversity: “No company will succeed on its own here.” – Diversity and culture manager Natalie Mellin says more firms need to “show role models together” in order to address gender imbalance
30. How closing borders kills understanding, and censors art
31. GDC responds to Trump’s travel ban, refunds affected attendees: Organisers of upcoming developer conference says they are “horrified” by President’s decision
32. ESA urges caution on US immigration policy: Trade group tells Trump administration that foreign workers are vital to domestic game industry
33. ‘It breaks my heart’: Engaredev responds to U.S. travel ban: “What makes me sad is that I hear in the game industry that there are all these diversity programs, but then, if you’re looking for diversity, for new perspectives, there are really a lot of new perspectives in those countries the US is blocking.”
34. “Immigration ban will harm us as a company” – Insomniac: Ratchet and Clank and Spider-Man maker joins chorus of game developers condemning executive order
35. Trump is bad for the US games industry: An isolationist, nationalist administration can’t help but harm an increasingly diverse and global industry
36. 1979 Revolution proceeds to benefit ACLU in wake of immigration ban
37. 2017 Trends in Mobile Gaming
38. PETA demands plastic Warhammerfigures stop wearing fur: In the grim darkness of the far future, it’s the animals that have it worst.
39. Namco founder and “Father of Pac-Man” has died: Masaya Nakamura was instrumental in kickstarting the video game revolution of the 1980s

DIGITAL

1. Intellectual Property Owner Awarded Control of Infringer’s Social Media Accounts
2. Perfect 10, Inc. v. Giganews, Inc.
3. Facebook Live Is the Right Wing’s New Fox News: How the rough-around-the-edges live-streaming tool became the perfect incubator for conservative news in the Trump age.
4. The Data That Turned the World Upside Down
5. Axel Springer CEO: Facebook should not fact check ‘fake news’ — it is not a news organization
6. Flush with anti-Trump donations, ACLU gets Y Combinator’s mentorship
7. China’s Response To Study Confirms It Uses ‘Strategic Distraction’ To Prevent Collective Action. Sound Familiar?
8. Copyright Trolls Overplay Their Hand In Finland, Bringing A Government Microscope To Their Practices
9. RIP, “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System: The anti-piracy accord between ISPs and entertainment industry meets its demise.
10. Ding Dong: Silly Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Scheme Is Dead
11. Internet Service Providers, Studios and Record Labels Call It Quits on Copyright Alert System
12. The US ‘Six Strikes’ Anti-Piracy Scheme is Dead: The “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System is no more. In a brief announcement, MPAA, RIAA, and several major US ISPs said that the effort to educate online pirates has stopped. It’s unclear why the parties ended their voluntary agreement, but the lack of progress reports in recent years indicates that it wasn’t as successful as they had hoped
13. Venezuelan officials arrest four Bitcoin miners on charges of stealing electricity: With the economy in shambles, Bitcoin miners have tried to side-step currency woes.
14. Monero, the Drug Dealer’s Cryptocurrency of Choice, Is on Fire
15. Sony missed writing on the wall for DVD sales, takes nearly $1B writedown: Or, in corporate-speak, loss was “mainly driven by an acceleration of market decline.”
16. Thanks to YouTube, Vevo Nears 100 Million Active Monthly Users
17. Lawyer for “inventor of e-mail” sends threat letter over social media posts: Shiva Ayyadurai’s attorney, who sued Techdirt, goes after another blogger.
18. Thousands of College Kids Are Powering a Clickbait Empire: How a 29-year-old built Odyssey, a vast network of college students happy to fuel multi-million dollar marketing campaigns for peanuts.
19. The internet of toys
20. Robot knows when to hold ‘em, wins huge in poker tournament: 120,000 hands and a $1.7 million margin of victory later, Carnegie Mellon’s AI wins out.
21. Click Here to Kill Everyone: With the Internet of Things, we’re building a world-size robot. How are we going to control it? (Bruce Schneier)
22. The merging of humans and machines is happening now: Her organisation invented the internet. It gave us the self-driving car. And now DARPA’s former boss sees us crossing a new technological boundary
23. Tech Leaders Are Just Now Getting Serious About the Threats of AI: Apple joins a leading AI ethics group, one of several tech-led initiatives preparing for a highly automated future.
24. The Gates Foundation Emerges As A Leader In The Fight For Full Open Access And Open Data
25. Apple will move its entire international iTunes business to Ireland: International HQ will move from one tax haven to another.
26. Apple sets revenue and iPhone sales records in Q1 of 2017
27. TV shows go into overdrive on Snapchat
28. Can One App Revolutionize TV Ratings For The Streaming And Binge-Watching Era?
29. Causality in machine learning
30. Canada’s Supreme Court Is Preserving Every Website Mentioned In Its Rulings
31. What We Buy When We Buy Now (Aaron Perzanowski & Chris Hoofnagle)

CREATIVITY

1. Fairness Confirmed Again: Federal Court of Appeal Upholds Copyright Board’s Fair Dealing Ruling (Michael Geist)
2. Supreme Court rejects appeal against B.C. Election Act: Registration rules for political ad sponsors don’t restrict individual political expression, court finds
3. Back To The Stampede: Court Upholds Forum Selection Clause Requiring Copyright Action To Return to Alberta
4. Actress in Viral Video Can’t Prevent Video From Being Made Into an Advertisement–Roberts v. Bliss (Eric Goldman)
5. Ninth Circuit Finds First Amendment Protects Against Right-of-Publicity Claim Involving Film “The Hurt Locker” 
6. Woman Claims Her Picture is Worth $2 Billion in Right of Publicity Suit
7. Court of Appeal endorses Data Protection Act as alternative to defamation claim
8. The Federal Court of Appeal Rules on Access Copyright’s K-12 Tariff
9. The New Joint DOJ/FTC Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property 
10. Judge Gorsuch On Copyright And Technology (James Grimmelmann)
11. Apple sued over singer’s right of publicity in iPhone ad singing: No copyright, but can an artist’s voice sustain a “right of publicity” case?
12. Mac Repair Company iGeniuses Sends Legal Threats To Unhappy Customers, Demanding $2500 Per Negative Review
13. Michael Jackson Is Worth More Than Ever, and the IRS Wants Its Cut: Jackson’s star lawyer made a mint for his heirs, so now the government has to be startin’ somethin’.
14. Germany Finally Dumps Law That Says It’s A Crime To Insult Foreign Leaders
15. Jose Cuervo Loses Bid To Block Trademark Registration For Il Corvo Wine
16. The Shattered Mirror, Part One: Fair Dealing Reform Isn’t the Answer for News in the Digital Age (Michael Geist)
17. How the arts helped kill off the NEA — by trying to play the conservative “economic value” game: Our strategy of ditching “Art for Art’s Sake” in favor of “ArtWorks” hasn’t saved the arts — and it never will
18. Trump Advisor Pens Almost Totally Clueless Piece About ‘Intellectual Property Theft’
19. How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content
20. Strategies for Discerning the Boundaries of Copyright and Patent Protections (Pamela Samuelson)
21. Freeing Buskers’ Free Speech Rights: Impact of Regulations on Buskers’ Right to Free Speech and Expression (John Jurich)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Ajit Pai on net neutrality: “I favor an open Internet and I oppose Title II”: New FCC chairman won’t say whether he’ll enforce net neutrality rules.
2. FCC Chairman Pai takes Wheeler’s set-top box plan off the table: Cable industry was open to compromise, but no Republican plan has been offered.
3. FCC exempts small ISPs from broadband truth-in-billing rules: Rule requiring disclosure of hidden fees won’t benefit customers of small ISPs.
4. Pai FCC’s First Commission-Level Vote Targets Rural Broadband Access 
5. Sen. Franken asks AT&T to prove Time Warner merger is good for customers: AT&T won’t commit to public interest statement as it tries to avoid FCC review.
6. Eliminating Net Neutrality likely to raise the cost of using the Internet
7. New York AG Sues Charter For Slow Broadband Speeds, Says Company ‘Ripping Off’ Users With Substandard Service
8. Republican-led FCC drops court defense of inmate calling rate cap: FCC lawyers no longer authorized to defend intrastate calling caps.
9. Verizon Eyes Charter Megamerger, Because Who Likes Broadband Competition Anyway?
10. Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes: Xfinity beta app is now on Roku; for now, customers still need a Comcast TV box.
11. 13 Years Ago at the Last Houston Super Bowl – Janet Jackson’s Impact on FCC Indecency Rules 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Suspecting arson, cops subpoena homeowner’s pacemaker logs, then charge him with multiple felonies
2. Trump’s Executive Order Eliminates Privacy Act Protections for Foreigners (Michael Geist)
3. New Trump Executive Order Says Federal Agencies Should Exclude Foreigners From Privacy Protections
4. President Trump’s Executive Order May Impact the Privacy Shield 
5. Already Under Attack In Top EU Court, Privacy Shield Framework For Transatlantic Data Flows Further Undermined By Trump
6. Trump Orders The Cyber To Be Fixed In The Next Sixty Days
7. Twitter Reveals Two National Security Letters After Gag Orders Lifted; Rightly Complains About Gag Orders
8. Court Says Location Of FBI’s Utility Pole-Piggybacking Surveillance Cameras Can Remain Secret
9. Bodycam footage leaks, resisting arrest charges dropped – Girl screams: “I just recorded everything.” Police officer responds: “Me too.”
10. Appeals court rules that stolen laptops class action against payer can proceed
11. Live Streaming: The Privacy Concerns of Behind-the-Scenes Access
12. Site that sold access to 3.1 billion passwords vanishes after reported raid: LeakedSource garnered criticism for actively cracking the passwords it sold.
13. Majority of Android VPNs can’t be trusted to make users more secure: Study of nearly 300 apps finds shocking omissions, including a failure to encrypt.
14. St. Louis Cardinals Hacking Scandal: A Real-World Example of the Importance of Password Management 
15. Amidst Increased Government Surveillance, Chinese Internet Users Finally Gain Important Online Privacy Protections
16. One More Time With Feeling: ‘Anonymized’ User Data Not Really Anonymous
17. FTC Report Reinforces the Rules for Cross-Device Tracking
18. “You took so much time to joke me”—two hours trolling a Windows support scammer: “Albert Morris” and team get taken for a ride while we tried to track their tradecraft.
19. Blue Lies Matter: BuzzFeed News reviewed 62 incidents of video footage contradicting an officer’s statement in a police report or testimony. From traffic stops to fatal force, these cases reveal how cops are incentivized to lie — and why they get away with it.
20. In not-too-distant future, brain hackers could steal your deepest secrets: Religious beliefs, political leanings, and medical conditions are up for grabs.

jon

GAMES

1. Controversial video game gun study gets retracted
2. “Boom, headshot!” Disputed video game paper retracted
3. Ohio State U Retracts Paper that Claimed Violent Video Games Gave Players Better Aim with Real Guns
4. Study Claiming Video Games Make Players Better Real-Life Shooters Gets Shot Down
5. Ark: Survival Mod That Replaces Dinos With Pokemon DMCA’d, Possibly By Another Rival Modding Group
6. Milwaukee is still talking about Pokemon Go, and still trying to make it (and future games) pay up
7. Game Developer Tried Threatening Game Reviewer And Posting Fake Steam Reviews To Be Successful; It Didn’t Work
8. Skin in the Game: Counter-Strike has spawned a wild multibillion-dollar world of online casino gambling; it’s barely regulated and open to any kid who wants in.
9. Robot Tales: Malicious game clones
10. Disney Infinity dev revived and re-opened by Warner Bros.
11. Leslie Benzies incorporates five new studios amid Rockstar legal dispute: Former GTA developer also trademarks potential title Time For A New World under Royal Circus Games
12. The U.S. video game industry pulled $30.4B in revenue last year
13. Revaluing Zynga’s $527 Million Acquisition Of NaturalMotion
14. Beyond 50/50: Breaking Down The Percentage of Female Gamers by Genre
15. Around $5B in Counter-Strikeskins were wagered in 2016
16. Fox opens full-fledged video game division, FoxNext
17. Fox creates new video games division: FoxNext: New division will also handle location-based entertainment, VR and AR
18. Outfit7 purchased by Asian consortium for $1 billion
19. The horror, the horror: Coppola announces Apocalypse Now video game 
20. PlayStation VR owners can now watch 360-degree YouTube videos
21. Experts Share 6 Legal Considerations to Know Before Jumping into the VR/AR Industry
22. “Notorious $5000 deals with YouTubers and streamers will fade. It’s a matter of honesty”: Loots co-founder Marc Fuehnen discusses the increasing need for transparency when marketing through influencers
23. Assetto Corsa developer Kunos Simulazioni acquired by Digital Bros
24. “Teabagging” will get you banned from a major Killer Instinct tournament: Is the in-game taunt “unprofessional” or an important “psychological play”?
25. Big Ten Universities Entering a New Realm: E-Sports
26. Big Ten Network, Riot Games Launch League Of Legends College Season
27. Brazilian Football Legend Ronaldo Invests In eSports Organization
28. Eredivisie The Latest Football League To Create eSports Competition With FOX Sports Backing
29. Why ESPN, the NBA, and Big Brands All Want a Piece of the $900-Million E-Sports Industry: That’s right–video games are now a sport.
30. National Rugby League Referees Work Out Mentally With Brain Training Games, STRIVR
31. “The Global Game Jam is a counter-movement to increased nationalistic tendencies”: President and co-founder Gorm Lai discusses through the rise of GGJ, the benefits for participants and the need for better worldwide collaboration
32. South Korea Joins The Club That Uses Video Game Footage To Proclaim Themselves Awesome At War
33. Classic FM launching UK’s first game music radio show
34. Here’s why the UN is getting interested in video games: New report praises games that build understanding
35. Why games are a key focus in UNESCO’s efforts to promote world peace: “If you read the literature on conflict resolution, perspective-taking is very important in order to reconcile opposing points of view. It’s difficult to have empathy if you can’t put yourself into somebody else’s perspective. Video games allow you to assume perspectives in an embodied form.”

DIGITAL

1. Struggling Canadian News Agencies Ask Government For A ‘Google Tax’
2. Canadian retailers will be able to offer discounts on ebooks by three major publishers: Competition Bureau takes fourth publisher HarperCollins to the Competition Tribunal
3. Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer found guilty, again, of source code theft – Court: It’s silly to let Sergey Aleynikov go free just because he stole digital files.
4. Apple sues Qualcomm, saying chipmaker withheld $1B as “extortion”: Suit claims payment was withheld after Apple talked to Korean regulators.
5. Apple sues Qualcomm in China, expanding fight over patent licensing: Qualcomm is under legal attack, now in two of the world’s biggest markets.
6. Section 230 Helps Snapchat Defeat Personal Injury Claim Due to ‘Speed Filter’–Maynard v. McGee
7. Samsung chief avoids arrest in South Korean corruption scandal: The bribery investigation continues, but for now Lee Jae-yong remains free.
8. California Man Brings Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple For Not Preventing Drivers From Doing Stupid Stuff
9. Perfect 10 Loses Once Again, Sets More Good Copyright Precedent
10. Amazon wants to skip to the end of EU’s e-book antitrust case: “We disagree with some of Vestager’s ideas,” says Amazon as it tables settlement offer.
11. Snapchat To Enable Ad Targeting Using Third Party Data
12. Netflix added over 7 million new subscribers last quarter
13. How Social Cash Made WeChat The App For Everything: A centuries-old tradition gave rise to China’s most valuable company and captured the attention of everyone from teens to Silicon Valley.
14. Facebook Journalism Project is Nothing But A Much-Needed PR stunt
15. Source: Facebook encouraged Antonio Brown to do locker-room live broadcast
16. Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Obama stock photo draws backlash
17. Welcome to the world of trolling in virtual reality: Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of faceless avatars screaming at you.
18. As PC sales shrink, the gaming PC market grows faster than expected: Report shows PC gaming hardware worth over $30 billion, well ahead of schedule.
19. What the Five Year Anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA Blackout Can Teach Congress About Tech
20. Copyright Office Says Current Law Addresses Concerns about Software-Enabled Consumer Products
21. EU MEPs Call Again For ‘Robot Rules’ To Get Ahead Of The AI Revolution
22. How artificial intelligence can be corrupted to repress free speech: It’s easier than you think, even here in America.
23. Can We Balance Human Ethics With Artificial Intelligence?
24. The Ethics and Governance of AI: On the Role of Universities (Urs Gasser)
25. The Real Story Of 2016: What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong. (Nate Silver)

CREATIVITY

1. Supreme Court Delves Into Question Of Whether Or Not You Can Trademark ‘Disparaging’ Terms
2. Transcript of Oral Argument in In Re Tam
3. Lee v. Tam post-argument (Rebecca Tushnet)
4. Tiffany & Co. Successfully Asserts Trademark Infringement Claims Against Costco
5. Trump Campaign Wants To Trademark ‘Keep America Great’
6. CBS, Paramount Settle Lawsuit Over ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film
7. CBS & Paramount Finally Settle With Fan Film Axanar
8. Axanar Productions, Paramount, and CBS settle Star Trek copyright lawsuit: Axanar says it’s “not paying anything,” will turn its feature into two 15-minute shorts.
9. CJEU rules that EU law does NOT prevent punitive damages in IP cases
10. France: Any Alteration/Modification of a Work in Public Domain is Infringement of Moral Rights
11. Sir Paul Will Not Let It Be: McCartney Makes Preemptive Strike Against Music Publishers to Reclaim His Copyrights 
12. Apple Sued Over Use of Jamie XX Song in iPhone Advertisement
13. Is A ‘Fattened’ Version Of A Famous Jorge Luis Borges Story Artistic Re-Creation, Or Copyright Infringement?
14. Author Sued for “Children’s Versions” of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
15. Copyright Has A Real & Serious Free Speech Problem
16. Want to double-down on fixing the Copyright Law? Fix ELUAs.
17. Producers Pressured to Disavow
18. Arrested Flag Burner Sues Arresting Officers
19. Original “patent troll” law firm is shutting down: The Niro firm made tech companies shudder and made a few inventors wealthy.
20. What does post-truth mean for a philosopher?
21. What Do You Mean by ‘The Media?’: The term has been weaponized.
22. Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ after spike in demand
23. The Top Ten TTAB Decisions of 2016 [Part 1]

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Chairperson, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Appointment Opportunity
2. 18 bogus arguments about the CRTC and Super Bowl ads
3. Outgoing Obama trade chief urges Canada to reverse Super Bowl ad decision
4. Super Bowl Commercials Set to Air North of the Border
5. NFL Gets Involved In Plan To Keep American Super Bowl Commercials Out Of Canada
6. Report: President Trump Picks Former Verizon Lawyer Ajit Pai To Head FCC
7. FCC Chairman Pai vows to close broadband “digital divide”: Pai voted against previous broadband expansion orders, but has plans of his own.
8. FCC to be led by Ajit Pai, staunch opponent of consumer protection rules: Ex-Verizon lawyer Pai will take “weed whacker” to net neutrality under Trump.
9. Comcast, AT&T, and ISP lobbyists are excited about Trump’s FCC chair: Ajit Pai repeatedly sided with ISPs on FCC rules, will be “formidable opponent.”
10. GOP asks Ajit Pai to kill plan for helping customers avoid cable box rentals: Wheeler’s attempt to remake cable box market nears official demise.
11. The U.S. Without Net Neutrality: How An Internet Nightmare Unfolds: Today, we take the freedom of the web for granted. Under Trump, maybe we shouldn’t
12. Google and Netflix join fight against municipal broadband restrictions: Internet companies and advocacy groups battle Virginia anti-muni broadband bill.
13. Google, Ting, Netflix Dare To Suggest That Maybe Giant, Anti-Competitive ISPs Shouldn’t Be Writing State Telecom Laws
14. Netflix is so big that it doesn’t need net neutrality rules anymore: But small video providers still need network neutrality, Netflix says.
15. Netflix May Not Be Worried About The Looming Death Of Net Neutrality, But Startups Should Be Terrified
16. Netflix calls out HBO for not letting subscribers binge on new shows
17. Trump voters need fast broadband and net neutrality too, Tom Wheeler says: Wheeler talks to Ars about “Cablewood,” competition, regulation on last day at FCC.
18. Outgoing FCC Boss Reminds Trump Supporters That Net Neutrality Is Good For Them, Too
19. When home Internet service costs $5,000—or even $15,000: We talked to two homeowners who grudgingly paid thousands to RCN and Comcast.
20. AT&T raises phone activation fee another $5, now charges $25: $25 fee for AT&T users who bring own device or buy phone on installment plan.
21. Through Price Hikes And Annoyance, AT&T Still Waging War On Unlimited Data Users
22. The FCC Fines Straight Path $100 Million for Failing to Meet License Obligations 
23. The trouble for Canadian digital policy in an ‘America first’ world (Michael Geist)
24. What’s in the box? Not a valid agreement to arbitrate! (Rebecca Tushnet)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Court ruling stands: US has no right to seize data from world’s servers – Outcome means hot-button privacy topic could reach US Supreme Court.
2. State Appeals Court Says Unlocking A Phone With A Fingerprint Doesn’t Violate The Fifth Amendment
3. China announces mass shutdown of VPNs that bypass Great Firewall: China says all VPN providers must get permission from government to operate.
4. China Bolsters The Great Firewall, Cracks Down Harder On VPN Use
5. Megaviral Meitu “beauty” app’s data grab is anything but skin-deep: Android version seeks intrusive permissions, sends lots of data to servers in China.
6. Kaspersky Lab’s top investigator reportedly arrested in treason probe: Charges ignite concern that other researchers could be prosecuted as well.
7. Chicago Mayor Promises To Turn Over Emails From His Private Accounts Following Courtroom Losses
8. Snowden’s Favorite Email Service Returns, With ‘Trustful,’ ‘Cautious,’ And ‘Paranoid’ Modes
9. CIA Slightly Scales Back Its Domestic Surveillance Powers In First Major Policy Update In Over 30 Years
10. Proposed CIA Chief Seems Happy To Spy On Americans, Even If Using Info Hacked By Russians
11. Ransomware app hosted in Google Play infects unsuspecting Android user: “All Your Data Is Already Stored On Our Servers!” malicious app warned.
12. UK Government Refuses To Impose Privacy Rules On Surveillance Cameras In Hospitals
13. Should Celebrities Be Able to Stop Fake News Sites Using Their Faces?

jon

GAMES

1. US court says PSN data doesn’t get Fourth Amendment protection: Sony could hand info to the police without a warrant.
2. Microsoft, Epic sued over Gears of War character: Former football player and pro wrestler claims his likeness, voice were stolen for Cole Train
3. Zuckerberg testifies against claims that Oculus stole IP from Zenimax
4. At trial, Zuckerberg is “highly confident” Oculus built its own technology: Facebook CEO says he’d “never even heard of ZeniMax before” trial.
5. Oculus accused of destroying evidence, Zuckerberg to testify in VR theft trial: Id Software’s parent co. says it created VR tech. Carmack says claims are “absurd.”
6. Oculus VR destroyed evidence regarding Rift’s creation, ZeniMax claims: “ZeniMax and id Software are the visionary developers of breakthrough VR technology”
7. Facebook Study Finds Introverts Feel More Comfortable with VR Social Interaction
8. Inside IMAX’s Big Bet to Rule the Future of VR
9. Esports Games Tiers
10. GDC State of the Industry: For the first time, devs favor Android over iOS
11. Where are the Xbox One’s exclusives?: Scalebound’s cancellation draws attention to this year’s anaemic Xbox line-up; is this Scorpio’s rain shadow, or a more worrying trend?
12. Nintendo Switch: One last roll of the dice
13. Nintendo sets a high price for Switch peripherals: Additional charging dock will be $90, and an extra Joy-Con controller and Grip will be $110
14. Nintendo should unswitch the Switch to avoid a Kinect-astrophe: New system’s bundled “home” kit already appears to be the worst of all worlds.
15. Nintendo stock value dips following Switch showcase
16. Reports: PS4 is selling twice as well as Xbox One, overall
17. Respawn cancels Titanfall mobile game: First title in Nexon partnership canned after its beta test, heaping more uncertainty on Respawn’s shooter franchise
18. How a robot got Super Mario 64 and Portal “running” on an SNES
19. First-ever computer sports game recreated at The Strong museum
20. GameStop CEO laments ‘disappointing’ holiday period as sales tumble
21. What To Expect – Video Game Cybersecurity In 2017

DIGITAL

1. Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier
2. Brexit leads to iOS App Store price jump: Apple raising prices by just under 25% to account for pound’s depreciation since vote to leave the EU
3. Labor Department sues Oracle for racial discrimination: Regulators say white male workers paid more than non-white counterparts.
4. Feds sue Qualcomm for anti-competitive patent licensing: Regulators say “no license, no chip” policy amounts to an illegal monopoly.
5. BuzzFeed’s Bombshell: Why the site published the explosive memos about Trump and Russia—and why no one beat them to it.
6. Was BuzzFeed wrong to publish the Trump dossier? This media ethicist says yes.: “They were serving themselves and their own clicks.” –Kelly McBride, vice president of Poynter
7. Here’s Why BuzzFeed Was Right to Publish Those Trump Documents
8. Exclusive interview with BuzzFeed editor: BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief talks to Brian Stelter about the decision to publish the unsubstantiated dossier on President-elect Donald Trump
9. Trump Is Making Journalism Great Again: In his own way, Trump has set us free.
10. Techdirt’s First Amendment Fight For Its Life
11. How To Use Facebook And Fake News To Get People To Murder Each Other: In South Sudan, a country where the vast majority of people lack internet access, fake news and hateful speech leap from Facebook to the real world — with possibly deadly consequences.
12. Yet Another Lawsuit Hopes A Court Will Hold Twitter Responsible For Terrorists’ Actions
13. Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier
14. Land Court Finds that Texting Can Bind Parties 
15. Online Price Advertising: Amazon to Pay $1.1 Million to Settle Canadian Competition Bureau Investigation 
16. New York Times report: ‘The Internet is brutal to mediocrity’
17. The Great Unbundling
18. Software Copyright Litigation After Oracle v. Google
19. No, you do not have to pay a ‘settlement fee’ if you get an illegal download notice
20. San Francisco sues local drone maker, drone maker then shuts down: Lily Robotics never shipped a single drone.
21. YouTube livestreams now have their own tip jar
22. The Inside Story of BitTorrent’s Bizarre Collapse: How a group of valley outsiders blew through the company’s cash and nearly left it for dead.
23. How Netflix Lost Big to Amazon in India: The streaming company botched its chance to own India’s huge new video market.
24. The next best thing to teleportation: Living in one country and working in another will soon be common, thanks to remote-control robots. Future Now spoke with economist Richard Baldwin about how this trend could change the world.
25. Student Disciplined for Posting Threatening Mashup Video to Instagram–AN v. Upper Perkiomen School District (Eric Goldman)
26. Drone maker Lily Robotics sued by San Francisco district attorney
27. Why Blockchain Will Trump Populism
28. The entire modern copyright was built on one fundamental assumption that the Internet has reversed
29. Treat robots as “electronic persons” but with kill switches, argue MEPs: Committee approves proposal that mulls “electronic personality” for robots.
30. Using Tinder in Your Hometown Is Like Visiting an Alternate Reality: Surfing the app on a trip back home can be a way of regressing, or imagining what life would be like if you never left.
31. Siri-ously 2.0: What Artificial Intelligence Reveals About the First Amendment (Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton, Margot E. Kaminski)

CREATIVITY

1. Fake News, Fake Art?  Richard Prince Disavows Work Depicting Ivanka Trump
2. Ceci n’est pas une Prince*: Richard Prince Appropriates and Repurposes Himself 
3. How the Killers & a fortune cookie turned philanthropic
4. Star Trek fan-fiction copyright suit tests ‘fair use’ defence
5. Louis Vuitton’s appeal fails in parody case
6. LA Chargers Already Face Trademark Opposition To Their Name Over The Term ‘L.A.’
7. Artist creates “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” memes to stop people from whitewashing MLK
8. How Reality TV Builds Narrative Is Crucial to Understanding Trump
9. For Hollywood, The Best Way To Win Against Disney Is To Not Be Disney
10. New Study Essentially Suggests That Publishers Should Do CwF + RtB Instead Of Going Legal To Combat Piracy
11. What If China’s Money Stream Stops Flowing to Hollywood?
12. Austria: Tattoos and Copyright
13. Billions of Bilious Barbecued Blue Blistering Barnacles: Tintin Gets Color Makeover!
14. Lucasfilm: Carrie Fisher will not return to Star Wars in CGI form: Still leaves major questions about Leia’s role in Episode IX unanswered.
15. Beware! Academics are getting reeled in by scam journals: The number of predatory publishers is skyrocketing – and they’re eager to pounce on unsuspecting scholars.
16. Copyright Reform in Canada – the 2017 Section 92 Review (Howard Knopf)
17. Quick Links, Part 10: Marketing, Uber, Airbnb, Taxes & More (Eric Goldman)
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 11: Social Media, Harassment, E-Discovery & More (Eric Goldman)
19. Free speech debates are more than ‘radicals’ vs ‘liberals’ (Eric Heinze)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Not Exactly a Netflix Tax: Where Canada Stands on a Digital Sales Tax (Michael Geist)
2. Careful: a digital tax isn’t the same as a Netflix tax
3. Killing net neutrality at FCC is “not a slam dunk,” departing chair says: While Republicans could end net neutrality, Wheeler explains why they shouldn’t.
4. Outgoing FCC Boss Warns New FCC About The Perils Of Killing Net Neutrality
5. FCC Report Clearly Says AT&T & Verizon Are Violating Net Neutrality — And Nobody Is Going To Do A Damn Thing About It
6. Report: Verizon Considering Comcast Merger In Supernova Of Dysfunction
7. Trump team reportedly wants to strip FCC of consumer protection powers
8. Trump’s Plan Is To Gut All FCC Consumer Protection Powers
9. Don’t Touch That Dial: Why attempts to improve AM and FM radio technologies tend to land with a thud—a thud no harder felt than with the FMX standard, circa 1989. 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Assange weasels out of pledge to surrender if Manning received clemency: WikiLeaks founder now says it’s not good enough Manning will be released in May.
2. Chinese Officials With Government Access To Every Kind Of Personal Data Are Selling It Online
3. Court rules against man who was forced to fingerprint-unlock his phone: Unlocking a phone like this “is no more testimonial than furnishing a blood sample.”
4. Mississippi AG Jim Hood sues Google—again
5. Syrian Migrant Says He’s Tired Of Being The Subject Of ‘Fake News,’ Sues Facebook For Posts Linking Him To Terrorism
6. It’s shockingly easy to hijack a Samsung SmartCam camera: Web management interface susceptible to command-execution bug.
7. Empirical Data on the Privacy Paradox
8. Cell Phone Hacking Company Hacked; 900 GB Of Logins, Log Files, And Forensic Evidence Taken
9. Did The FISA Court Finally Reject The FBI’s Advances?
10. Top UK Cop Says Hackers Should Be Punished Not With Prison, But With Jammed WiFi Connections
11. VR as the Most Powerful Surveillance Technology or Last Bastion of Privacy? It’s up to Us.
12. Law Enforcement Has Been Using OnStar, SiriusXM, To Eavesdrop, Track Car Locations For More Than 15 Years
13. NSA to share data with other agencies without “minimizing” American information: Rules opposed by civil liberties and privacy advocates.
14. It’s Official: Sixteen Government Agencies Now Have Access To Unminimized Domestic NSA Collections
15. After Lawsuits And Denial, Pacemaker Vendor Finally Admits Its Product Is Hackable
16. Cloudflare Finally Able To Reveal FBI Gag Order That Congress Told Cloudflare Couldn’t Possibly Exist
17. Our Apathy Toward Privacy Will Destroy Us. Designers Can Help: The loss of security and privacy online may seem inevitable, but designers can help the public help themselves.
18. Privacy’s Trust Gap (Neil Richards & Woodrow Hartzog)

jon

GAMES

1. Atari Being Sued for Alleged Unpaid Rollercoaster Tycoon Royalties: Developer Frontier believes the game sold more than Atari said it did.
2. Oculus VR condemns “wasteful litigation” as ZeniMax lawsuit begins: A Dallas court heard the opening statements yesterday, trial is expected to last three weeks
3. China blocks Pokemon Go and others to protect ‘information security’
4. Study estimates Pokemon Go has added over 144 billion steps to US physical activity
5. Unofficial Sims Online revival buckles under unexpected player counts
6. The Mystery Account Destroying Online Go Was Google’s
7. 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.
8. Activision hands out comical punishment to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare exploiters: 48 hour bans handed out for economy-busting key harvesting glitch.
9. Team-owned eSports org suspends CS:GO league after a majority of players bail
10. Counter-Strike league shuts down after player revolt: Professional eSports Association abandons inaugural season after players refuse to play, citing misleading contracts
11. 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.
12. “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
13. Milwaukee Bucks Owner Wesley Edens Confirms Formation Of eSports Team
14. 1.5M accounts exposed after eSports org balks at hacker’s ransom demand
15. Why Japan’s arcades are its game industry’s cutting-edge labs
16. 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.
17. 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
18. Brain-Controlled VR Experiences: Challenges & Potentials
19. 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
20. An AI has learned to drive on Mario Kart 64’s Luigi Raceway
21. 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
22. App Store revenues up by 40% to $20 billion in 2016
23. Apple: App store devs earned $20 billion in 2016
24. Steam hosts record-breaking 14M concurrent users
25. 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
26. Vegas eRace: Racing drivers and gamers ready for $1M showdown
27. Lionsgate invests in eSports team Immortals: Hunger Games movie firm makes another move in professional gaming
28. Disney intros Kids TV streaming box: $99 ad-free media and games player in the works from Snakebyte, will support optional Bluetooth controllers
29. New hardware, new approaches and new directions; three areas in which the industry will evolve significantly this year, and one that will remain stagnant
30. 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
31. Elon Musk plays Overwatch, thinks storytelling is neglected in modern games
32. Final Fantasy 7An oral history
33. Game psychologist wants to help design game characters, not just systems

DIGITAL

1. 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.”
2. Bureau closes Apple iPhone investigation: No abuse of dominance found related to contracts with Canadian wireless carriers (January 6, 2017 — Ottawa, On — Competition Bureau)
3. France’s ‘Right To Disconnect’ Is Now Live, For Reasons Passing Understanding
4. Linking to illegal content can constitute a copyright infringement – CJEU Sanoma interpreted by a German Court
5. EFF to Court: Don’t Let the Right of Publicity Eat the Internet
6. 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
7. 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.
8. 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
9. How a week of Trump tweets stoked anxiety, moved markets and altered plans
10. Snapchat Accused of Misleading Investors in Ex-Employee’s Lawsuit
11. Yahoo is dead, long live Altaba!: Following Verizon purchase, only Asian investments and some patents remain.
12. Verizon Insists Higher Phone Upgrades Are Being Used To Enhance The Network Instead Of Make Up Revenue Decline
13. 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
14. The Humans Working Behind the AI Curtain
15. Why We Can’t Fix Twitter: Social media is broken. When will we realize that we’re the problem?
16. How should Twitter respond to WikiLeaks threats to track its verified users?
17. France does not currently need the new 3D printing laws that parliament is considering, say experts
18. Martin Shkreli harasses Teen Vogue writer, has Twitter account suspended
19. 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
20. 2016 sees Internet Explorer usage collapse, Chrome surge
21. Netflix Downloader Pulled Offline Following Trademark Complaint
22. 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.
23. Vancouver-based BroadbandTV expands to Southeast Asia, Middle East
24. The Internet of Things: U.S. Copyright Office Releases Report on Software Enabled Products
25. 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?
26. Blockchains for Artificial Intelligence: From Decentralized Model Exchanges to Model Audit Trails
27. Hacking the Attention Economy (danah boyd)
28. Top 10 Internet Law Developments of 2016 (Eric Goldman)
29. Honest YouTube Rewind: The Most Controversial YouTube Stories of 2016
30. Why Trolls Won in 2016
31. 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.
32. Aaron Swartz and me, over a loosely intertwined decade: Remembering the talented activist who lived in our Internet neighborhood.

CREATIVITY

1. US Supreme Court loaded with First Amendment cases: Can you trademark an offensive name or not? Justices to decide.
2. 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.
3. Court gives jury mission to explore strange world of copyright and fair use
4. Copyright in Klingon
5. Why Unreleased Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Beach Boys Tracks Are Suddenly Appearing: EU Copyright Law
6. Bill O’Reilly accused again of sexual harassment. Ratings to spike!
7. 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.
8. Judge Rules ‘Krusty Krab’ Restaurant Violates Viacom’s ‘SpongeBob’ Rights
9. Indian High Court Blocks Rent-Seeking Collection Societies From Seeking Any More Rent
10. Ontario Court of Appeal confirms $80,000 libel judgment against Ezra Levant: Saskatchewan lawyer brought suit in response to blog posts
11. <i>Walking Dead</i> creator lives to fear others’ trademark applications
12. Tresona Multimedia, LLC v. Burbank High School Vocal Music Association
13. Now BMI takes on the US Radio industry
14. Bulgarian Public Radio Forbidden To Play 14 Million Pieces Of Music By Copyright Collection Society
15. China & Hollywood: What Lies Beneath & Ahead In 2017
16. Congressman Appoints Himself Censor, Removes Painting Critical Of Cops From Congressional Halls
17. A Seismic Ruling Revisited: No Common-Law Public Performance Rights in Pre-1972 Sound Recordings in New York–Flo & Eddie v. Sirius
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 8: Fake News, Terrorist Content, Censorship & More (Eric Goldman)
19. 2016 Quick Links, Part 9: Privacy/Security (Eric Goldman)
20. Copyright Law & The Drummer (Ronojoy Basu) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Canadian Regulators Declare 50 Mbps To Be The New Broadband Standard
2. Why a media coalition is decrying a CRTC ruling on Super Bowl feeds (Michael Geist)
3. NFL Blitzes Trudeau in Arcane Super Bowl Advertising Dispute
4. Norway Set to Be First Country to Switch Off FM Radio: Move to all-digital radio sparks debate
5. ISPs Get Right To Work Pushing For Elimination Of New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules
6. Verizon Cracks Down On Unlimited Data Users, Claims Nobody Wants Unlimited Data Anyway
7. FCC Denies Reconsideration of Noncommercial Broadcasting Ownership Report Requirements – But Signs that New Commission May See Things Differently 
8. 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.
9. AT&T Intends To Dodge FCC Review Of Time Warner Mega-Merger, But Trump Remains A Wild Card
10. AT&T Already Backing Off Its Biggest Time Warner Merger Promise: Cheaper TV
11. 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.
12. Ad Industry Wants New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules Gutted Because, Uh, Free Speech!
13. Don’t Gut Net Neutrality. It’s Good for People and Business
14. Verizon raises upgrade fee to “cover increased cost”—but its costs declined
15. Verizon purges unlimited data customers, targets those using 200GB: Heaviest unlimited data users must switch to limited plans or be disconnected.
16. The Fox News nighttime lineup has shed its last element of real journalism
17. The huge challenge of covering Trump fairly
18. Yes, Donald Trump ‘lies.’ A lot. And news organizations should say so.
19. The U.S. Media’s Problems Are Much Bigger than Fake News and Filter Bubbles
20. It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’
21. How to Reverse Journalism’s Decline: American journalism is in dire straits. Is a robust public subsidy the antidote?
22. 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.”
23. Did Media Literacy Backfire? (danah boyd)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. 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.
2. LA Community College paid $28,000 to free itself from ransomware
3. CSIS assessing ‘bulk data’ collection, records show
4. 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.
5. Court Says 791 Days Of Warrantless Location Tracking ‘Unreasonable,” But Refuses To Toss Evidence
6. What The US Intelligence ‘Russia Hacked Our Election’ Report Could Have Said… But Didn’t
7. 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.
8. FBI Releases A Stack Of Redactions In Response To FOIA Request For Info On Its Purchased iPhone Hack
9. Unsecure routers, webcams prompt feds to sue D-Link: D-Link failed to maintain confidentiality of private key used to sign its software.
10. US warns of unusual cybersecurity flaw in heart devices
11. 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.
12. ‘For The Children’ Cyberbullying Law Running Into Opposition From Groups Actually Concerned About Children
13. How hackers made life hell for a CIA boss and other top US officials
14. Big Surprise! – Fraud and identity theft a real problem for online dating sites! 

jon

GAMES

1. Planet Coaster dev suing Atari over $2.2M in unpaid royalties
2. Frontier suing Atari over RollerCoaster Tycoon royalties: Cambridge-based developer claims it is owed $2.2m, has attempted to resolve situation without legal action
3. Iranian government blocks access to Clash of Clans: An official committee backed restrictions based on fear that Supercell’s game could incite tribal conflict
4. Platinum’s Ninja Turtles game pulled from digital stores after eight months
5. Former Project IGI devs buy IP back from Square Enix: But developer Artplant not announcing new game just yet, re-releases and remasters are off the cards
6. Porsche’s exclusive deal with Electronic Arts is no more: After 17 years, the exclusive deal ends, freeing Porsches to appear in new games.
7. Minecraft expansion successfully tricks students into learning: Tiny preliminary study suggests that it worked reasonably well.
8. World of Warcraft featured in exhibit on world-changing tech
9. Experimental VR Alzheimer’s Therapy App Made Just Hours After Plea by Child of Afflicted Father
10. Managing Pain & Anxiety in Hospitals with AppliedVR
11. Virtual Therapy for Stroke Neurorehabilitation & Skill Relearning
12. Opinion: Technology Killed 1v1 Esports
13. Super Mario Run’s missed opportunity
14. Nintendo switches off Devil’s Third servers for good
15. Hearthstone devs reluctant to make community videos for fear of harassment
16. Nvidia makes it easier for gamers to stream live to Facebook
17. Nvidia brings GeForce Now game streaming to any PC or Mac
18. NHL Involvement, Conversation Around eSports Currently ‘A Sperm Cell’
19. The Best of the Rest: Ars Staffers’ favorite games of 2016 – They’re not the “Game of the Year,” but these games were still important to us.
20. Historians discuss Civilization VI
21. Someone Is Destroying Online Go, And Nobody Knows Who It Is

DIGITAL

1. ‘Copyright Trolls’ Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Theft by Deception
2. Browsewraps, fair dealing and Blacklock’s Reporter v Canada: a critical commentary
3. Failure to Introduce Source Code of Original Work Fatal to Claim Against Alleged Derivative Work
4. Apple pulls New York Times apps from Chinese App Store by China’s request: Apps have been missing from the store since December 23.
5. Honest Shanghai app gives citizens public credit score
6. China has made obedience to the State a game: China has created a social tool which gives people a score for how good a citizen they are
7. Web of tax breaks and subsidies keeps iPhone production in China: Foxconn’s clout as Apple’s manufacturing partner nets billions in incentives.
8. Apple’s FaceTime blamed for girl’s highway crash death in new lawsuit: Family claims Apple should have deployed patented tech to “lock-out” motorists.
9. Victims Of Car Crash Sue Apple For Not Preventing Distracted Driver From Hitting Their Vehicle
10. Families of Orlando nightclub shooting victims sue Facebook, Google and Twitter
11. Follow Buddies and Block Buddies: A Simple Proposal to Improve Civility, Control, and Privacy on Twitter (Danielle Citron & Benjamin Wittes)
12. Google Apparently No Longer Humoring Court Orders To Delist Defamatory Content
13. The Most Important Law in Tech Has a Problem: How “safe harbor” turned into a protector of privilege.
14. Facebook scrubs — then restores — post that called Trump supporters ‘fascists’
15. Now Italy Wants To Make ‘Fake News’ Illegal
16. How Amazon, Google, and Facebook Will Bring Down Telcos
17. Op-ed: Five unexpected lessons from the Ashley Madison breach – This is the first FTC complaint involving lying bots – there will be more.
18. Pirates: You Can Click But You (Can’t) Can Hide
19. LG threatens to put Wi-Fi in every appliance it introduces in 2017: Its new fridge includes Amazon’s Alexa and a bunch of cameras.
20. Snapchat using machine learning to introduce greater targeting to its ad stack
21. Ridiculous Congressional Proposal Would Fine Reps Who Live Stream From The Floor
22. From Tape Drives to Memory Orbs, the Data Formats of Star Wars Suck (Spoilers)
23. 2016 Was The Year Torrent Giants Fell
24. Is an NSA contractor the next Snowden? In 2017, we hope to find out: These 5 cases touch on the near-future of drones, privacy and IP law.
25. Glasses From eSight Help Legally Blind Indianapolis Colts Fan See First Game
26. The Chatbot Will See You Now
27. The Bot Politic: Silicon Valley’s usual solution to designing an inoffensive, eager-to-please technology has been to make it a woman. But why use gender at all?
28. The most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016: Google v. Oracle; Prenda lawyers arrested; and much more.
29. Our Unfortunate Annual Tradition: A Look At What Should Have Entered The Public Domain, But Didn’t
30. Fighting for Fair Use and Safer Harbors: 2016 in Review (EFF)

CREATIVITY

1. ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film Not Fair Use, Will Be Tried by Jury
2. Aussie Productivity Commission Doubles Down On Fair Use And Serious Copyright & Patent Reform
3. Surrender Dorothy: Court Upholds Damages, Injunction for Movie Content Infringement
4. Welcome, Mr. Walt Disney, to the Canadian Public Domain (Howard Knopf)
5. Milo Yiannopoulos’s Cynical Book Deal
6. Milo Yiannopoulos Inks Book Deal With Simon & Schuster: The “alt-right” icon was banned from Twitter after launching a widespread attack on actress Leslie Jones.
7. Simon & Schuster Threatened with Boycott for $250K Book Deal with Alt-Right Homocon Troll Milo Yiannopoulos
8. Our Murrow Moment: The time for hand-wringing and hysteria is over. The Trump presidency promises a civic stress test. In a time of principled fights, citizens and journalists need to respond with fearlessness rooted in fairness.
9. Librarians must resist trumpism
10. Actors rush to protect their image from ‘digital resurrection’ after they have died following eerie Star Wars: Rogue One reanimation of Carrie Fisher
11. Fox News Opinions Get Wide Berth Under Defamation Law
12. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ‘The Bachelor’ Is Killing Romance in America
13. Creative solutions to cultural appropriation – fashion industry
14. The most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016: Google v. Oracle; Prenda lawyers arrested; and much more.
15. Tesla Gave Up Its Patents, But People Are Freaked Out That Faraday Future Put Its Own Into A Separate Company
16. Ten Worst Section 230 Rulings Of 2016 (Plus The Five Best)
17. 2016 Quick Links, Part 3: Trademarks And Domain Names (Eric Goldman)
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 4: Counterfeits And Olympics (Eric Goldman)
19. 2016 Quick Links, Part 5: Patents, Other IP, Employment, CFAA (Eric Goldman)
20. Functionality Screens (Christopher Buccafusco & Mark Lemley)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Terence Corcoran: The CRTC needs to stop playing this game and let networks decide what ads run during the Super Bowl
2. Canada Classifies Broadband as a Basic Telecommunications Service
3. Tucker Carlson delivers sexism for Fox News
4. Megyn Kelly Is Leaving Fox News for NBC
5. Canada among the ‘most expensive mobile data countries,’ report says: People are worried about ‘crazy, huge overage fees,’ OpenMedia spokeswoman says
6. FCC Approves Up to 49% Foreign Ownership of Univision – What Guidance is Provided to Potential Foreign Investors in US Broadcast Stations? 
7. FCC Settles Largest Lifeline Enforcement Case for $30 million and Permanent Ban from the Program 
8. FCC Denies Petition for Declaratory Ruling on Fax Advertisements 
9. Dutch Regulators Demand T-Mobile Stop Zero Rating, Remind Users That Free Data Isn’t Really Free
10. Cord-Cutting Forces Cable Networks to Make Hard Choices
11. CASL — Year in Review

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. A French court case against Google could threaten global speech rights
2. Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference
3. White House Kicks Russian Diplomats Out Of The Country, Releases Preliminary Report On Russian Hacking With More To Come
4. Obama tosses 35 Russians out of US, sanctions others for election meddling: Intelligence dump from DHS and FBI bolsters claims of Russian election interference.
5. Singapore Will Add Iris Scans As Identifier For Citizens And Permanent Residents Starting January 1
6. UK Councils Used Massive Surveillance Powers To Spy On… Excessively Barking Dogs & Illegal Pigeon Feeding
7. Surveillance in Latin America: 2016 in Review (EFF)
8. Facebook buys data on users’ offline habits for better ads: And opting out is a lot more complicated than it should be.
9. Man Has To Beg LG To Uncripple His ‘Smart’ TV After Ransomware Attack
10. Malware Purveyor Serving Up Ransomware Via Bogus ICANN Blacklist Removal Emails
11. Online and Mobile Tracking Company Settles FTC Charges It Deceptively Tracked Consumers
12. Watch out hackers: Deploying ransomware is now a crime in California: Previously, prosecutors had to rely on the state’s extortion statute.
13. Confirmed Horrible Person James Woods Continues Being Horrible In ‘Winning’ Awful Lawsuit To Unmask Deceased Online Critic
14. EU Binding Corporate Rules For Transferring Data: A Comparison of US Law, EU Law, and Soon-To-Be EU Law
15. The Real Name Fallacy
16. When Do Data Breaches Cause Harm? (Daniel Solove)

jon

GAMES

1. Nintendo Opens Up New Front In War On Fans: ROM Mods
2. Denuvo Spins Doom Dropping Its DRM Into A Victory Dance
3. Super Mario Run’s inevitable backlash: Consumers bemoan the $10 price point, other consumers rage against them in turn; Nintendo’s attempt to upend the dominance of F2P is as contentious as we expected
4. After Blizzard shutdown, legacy World of Warcraft server returns this month: Nostalrius team no longer waiting for Blizzard, helps launch spiritual successor.
5. Clash of Clans banned in Iran after suggestions game causes ‘tribal conflict’
6. Brianna Wu, Boston game developer and critic of GamerGate, to run for Congress
7. Owlboy dev on piracy: ‘We’re very happy people get the chance to play the game’
8. Crytek Shuts Down Five Studios Amid Financial Difficulties: Only two Crytek studios to remain open.
9. Recently shuttered Crytek studio reborn as Black Sea Games
10. Star Citizen dev drops CryEngine in favor of Lumberyard
11. The Growth Opportunities In Video Game Live Streaming
12. YouTube VR now supports PlayStation VR
13. These 5 Women May be Changing the Landscape of Virtual Reality
14. Not Just For Gaming: Virtual Reality Meditation Helps Women Through Labor Pains
15. Fifa: the video game that changed football – Fifa belongs to a select group of titles familiar to people who have no interest in gaming – or even real football. What’s the secret of its success?
16. In 2017 publishers will need indies more than indies need publishers
17. Three years later, the console wars are more confusing than ever: We walk you through the changes upending the console market in 2016 and beyond.
18. The Gamasutra crew dissects the top games of 2016
19. Ars Technica’s best video games of 2016: Unique shooters, compelling indies, and even one VR title make the cut.

DIGITAL

1. Amazon workers sleep in tents near firm’s Scottish depot to avoid travel costs: Undercover probe finds series of “intolerable conditions” at mega-warehouse.
2. Stop blaming Facebook for Trump’s election win
3. The blame-game in a post-Trump world
4. Publishing Lobbyists Suck Up To Trump With Lies About Copyright, Ask Him To Kill DMCA Safe Harbors
5. Universal Studios Misses A Chance To Be Awesome And Instead Tries To DMCA Leak Of Unfinished ‘Mummy’ Trailer
6. A free press is all of us now
7. First Amendment Victorious: Protects Anonymous Critics On PubPeer
8. Blacklock’s Must Pay $65,000 for Litigation that “should never have been commenced let alone carried to trial” (Howard Knopf)
9. Merry Christmas: Kamala Harris Files Brand New Criminal Charges Against Backpage Execs After Last Ones Were Tossed Out
10. Lawsuit dropped: Jawbone can sell devices in the US (if it can sell devices at all) – Several other lawsuits still divide the two wearable companies.
11. Smartphone patent wars redux: Nokia sues Apple, big time: Apple has accused Nokia of working with patent trolls to spawn lawsuits.
12. Company Bricks User’s Software After He Posts A Negative Review
13. Microsoft Finally Admits Its Malware-Style Windows 10 Upgrade Sales Pitch Went Too Far
14. Uber is losing money hand-over-fist: The ride-sharing company is disrupting the notion of profit.
15. South Korea slaps Qualcomm with record-setting $850M fine: Largest-ever penalty said to be warranted by Qualcomm’s unfair patent licensing.
16. Watch Tesla’s Autopilot Avoid a Major Accident With Just Seconds to Spare
17. The Secret History Of American Robot Law: New Paper Is A Primer In Future’s Past
18. These three 2016 cases gave new life to software patents: It’s harder, but not impossible, for owners of software patents to win cases.
19. More Evidence Why Keyword Advertising Litigation Is Waning (Eric Goldman)

CREATIVITY

1. MOB receives early Xmas present: 2d Circuit affirms LV’s loss (Rebecca Tushnet)
2. Judge rules parody Louis Vuitton bags don’t infringe designer’s copyright
3. Pawn to E4: Chess Website Kept in Check over Digital Rights to Publish Players’ Moves
4. Why Does The USTR Still Think Any Website That Might Upset Hollywood Is Illegal?
5. I Thought Piracy Was Killing Entertainment? New Record In Scripted Shows In 2016
6. Anish Kapoor Is Now Banned From Buying the World’s Most Glittery Glitter
7. With Streaming, Musicians and Fans Find Room to Experiment and Explore
8. Winery Loses Trademark Suit Against Other Winery Over The Term ‘Signature’
9. Butterball Sues Australian Wine Company Over Its ‘Butterball’ Chardonnay
10. Sufferin’ Trademarks: The Trademark Dispute Over The Word Succotash
11. 2016 Quick Links, Part 1: Special Election Edition (Eric Goldman)
12. 2016 Quick Links, Part 2: Copyright & Open Access (Eric Goldman)
13. A Kat’s 2016 Copyright Awards
14. 2016 The Copyright Year

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. CRTC Sets New World-Leading Broadband Basic Telecommunications Service Objective
2. Canada sets universal broadband goal of 50Mbps and unlimited data for all: $750 million fund created to connect rural and remote areas.
3. Historic or Immaterial?: Making Sense of the CRTC Ruling on Broadband Access as a Basic Service (Michael Geist)
4. FCC and CRTC Sign Memorandum of Understanding on Robocalls and Spoofing

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Facebook already has a Muslim registry—and it should be deleted: Facebook stands alone in the breadth and depth of personal data it collects.
2. Yahoo’s email scanning part of push to change Fourth Amendment rights
3. Police Request Amazon Echo Recordings For Homicide Investigation
4. Police ask: “Alexa, did you witness a murder?”: Drowning in hot tub was followed by 140-gallon hose-down recorded by utility.
5. Amazon Refuses To Comply With Police Request For Amazon Echo Recordings In Murder Case
6. Court Says Government Needs Better Excuses If It Wants To Keep Hiding DEA Surveillance Docs
7. DHS Now Asking Visa Applicants For Their Social Media Account Info
8. Obama Pulls Cybercommand Control From NSA; Changes To Take Effect Whenever
9. The Surveillance Oversight Board Is Dead And It’s Unlikely President Trump Will Revive It
10. Obama administration is close to announcing measures to punish Russia for election interference
11. FDIC Latest Agency To Claim It Was Hacked By A Foreign Government
12. Congressional Encryption Working Group says encryption backdoors are near unworkable
13. Top US Surveillance Lawyer Argues That New Technology Makes The 4th Amendment Outdated
14. Recent Rule 41 Changes: A Catch-22 for Journalists
15. Googler sues his employer after he’s scolded for press leaks – Leakers are implored: “For the love of all that’s Googley, please reconsider!”
16. I Know What You Downloaded on BitTorrent….: Most people know that BitTorrent is far from anonymous, but seeing all your recent downloads listed on a public website is still quite a shock.
17. Uber said it protects you from spying. Security sources say otherwise
18. City Passes Ordinance Mandating CCTV Surveillance By Businesses, Including Doctors And Lawyers Offices
19. How The Citizen Lab polices the world’s digital spies: University of Toronto professor Ron Deibert launched The Citizen Lab in 2001 to become the ‘CSI of the internet.’ Since then, it has become one of the leading watchdogs for digital censorship and online suppression. 
20. An update on all the legal cases we thought would be huge in 2016: Beyond Apple’s clash with DOJ, these surveillance cases got our attention in 2016.
21. If 2015 was historic for privacy, then 2016 was pivotal
22. The Best of Privacy for 2016
23. The Surprisingly Weak Reasoning of Mohamud (Orin Kerr)
24. When Do Data Breaches Cause Harm? (Daniel Solove)
25. Top 5 Threats to Transparency: 2016 in Review (EFF)

jon

GAMES

1. Pokémon ROM hack stopped by Nintendo four days before launch: In highly unusual move, Nintendo targets a ROM hack—essentially, a mod.
2. Super Mario Run slower to top charts than Pokémon Go
3. Nintendo shares fall despite Super Mario Run’s instant success
4. Overwatch comic locked in Russia due to “gay propaganda”: Latest comic not readable in Russia as Tracer character established as homosexual
5. Survey: Men play games to compete, women play to complete
6. Brianna Wu running for US Congress in 2018: Games developer and victim of hate campaign wants a place on technology subcommittee, plans to combat cyber-bullying and revenge porn
7. How Christine Love makes sex in games believable, engaging, and funny: Ladykiller in a Bind avoids making any character “the avatar of queerness.”
8. Ex-Crytek dev crowdfunding legal fees to sue for unpaid salaries: Former FX artists claims he has not been paid since September, pay troubles began in May
9. No tears for Crytek: It’s one thing for a company to go under, but another to take its unwilling employees with it
10. Crytek to shutter five studios during restructure
11. Street Fighter V ragequitters to be publicly shamed with profile icon: Capcom hopes peer pressure will stop epidemic of intentional disconnects.
12. Like Flies: Doom The Latest Game To Remove Denuvo Via Patch
13. Denuvo says devs don’t get refunds if its anti-piracy tech is defeated
14. Netmarble buys Kabam’s Vancouver studio: Developer behind Marvel Contest of Champions joins Korean mobile company ahead of new Transformers game launch
15. Wicked leaks: what legal weaponry is available to fight game launch hacks?: Stevens & Bolton’s Grace McNulty-Brown advises devs on how to protect their project’s secrets ahead of release – and what to do if leaks do occur
16. The Luck and Loss Behind Loot Boxes
17. Riot and MLB Advanced Media finalize League of Legends deal: Baseball web business to pay at least $50 million annually through 2023 for the commercialization and monetization rights to LoL eSports
18. NFL Teams To Hold Madden Tournaments Streamed On Twitch In 2017
19. Esports Predictions: Great Growth in 2016, Storm Clouds for 2017
20. Fnatic: “We opened an eSports store to prove it was possible”: The professional gaming team opened a retail outlet in London last month – and it could be a sign of things to come
21. Bigben Interactive acquires rights to Test Drive brand from Atari
22. Where do consoles go from here?: 2016 marks the beginning of a new era of console iteration – what does it mean for the industry?
23. Can we go back in time and wipe Assassin’s Creed film from our DNA?: Michael Fassbender is the only light in this slow, nonsensical waste of a franchise.
24. How 1979 Revolution: Black Friday Let Me Relive My Father’s History
25. Twitch wants its users to start streaming their ‘everyday lives’
26. 30 Years of Ubisoft: “The Guillemots are critical to our success”
27. Games have a place in higher education, but where they are now isn’t working.
28. Gamasutra’s Best of 2016: Top 10 Games of the Year
29. 2016: The year in games – The big events that shaped an extraordinary 12 months
30. 2016 games industry brings in $94 billion – Superdata: Research firm says mobile dominated the year, bringing in $41 billion compared to retail’s $26 billion and free-to-play online’s $19 billion
31. GamesIndustry.biz presents… 2016: The Year In Numbers: Check out some of the key facts and figures from the past twelve months with our handy infographic

DIGITAL

1. Google Is Battling Global Censorship In Canada’s Supreme Court
2. Families Of Orlando Shooting Victims Sue Twitter, Facebook, And Google For ‘Supporting Terrorism’
3. Kurt Eichenwald Sues Twitter Troll Over Alleged ‘Epileptic’ Image Assault
4. Google Finally Wins One Of Those Nutty Defamation Lawsuits Down Under
5. Manhattan Attorney Sues Google Over Three-Word ‘Libelous’ Review That Isn’t A Review Or Libelous
6. Google, Apple, Uber, IBM Say They Would Not Help Build A Muslim Registry: Meanwhile, Oracle declined to comment.
7. How to bump Holocaust deniers off Google’s top spot? Pay Google: Google ‘is unhappy’ with Holocaust denial beating the truth in its search results – but it probably makes more money that way
8. Washington Post automatically inserts Trump fact-checks into Twitter: Chrome plug-in comes 6 months after Trump revoked Post’s campaign press credentials.
9. Backpage Executives Defeat Pimping Charges Per Section 230–People v. Ferrer
10. Jury Rules for Arista in Cisco Copyright Case: Networking equipment makers had sparred over technology for hardware commands
11. Command Line Interface Copyright Case: Not Fair Use… But Not Infringing Thanks To Scenes A Faire
12. Prenda Law “copyright trolls” Steele and Hansmeier arrested: Lawyers who turned porn lawsuits into big business now face criminal charges.
13. Take a minute and read Yahoo’s 238 word CONFESSION about the Cyber theft of 1+ billion user accounts! 
14. Verizon Wants A Yahoo Price Cut After Company Reveals Another, Massive Hack Attack
15. Facebook charged with misleading EU over $22 billion WhatsApp takeover: Social networking giant “intentionally, or negligently, gave incorrect info.”
16. Facebook Pins a Scarlet Letter to Fake News: New tools and policies take on the News Feed’s worst offenders. But our truth problems are bigger than Facebook.
17. Facebook Announces Its Pilot Plans To ‘Deal’ With Fake News — Not With Censorship, But With More Info
18. Facebook will outsource fact-checking to fight fake news: Seven US fact-checking groups become Facebook News Feed’s new de-facto gatekeepers.
19. Conservative Media Freak Out Over Facebook’s Plan To Address The Fake News Problem
20. It’s time to get rid of the Facebook “news feed,” because it’s not news: Fake news didn’t throw the election. It was a symptom, not a cause.
21. Facebook is a monopoly, so why shouldn’t it be nationalised?
22. I was a victim of a Russian smear campaign. I understand the power of fake news.
23. The real history of fake news
24. Fake news and online harassment are more than social media byproducts — they’re powerful profit drivers
25. German law would fine social media sites “publishing” fake news: Social media sites must kill hoaxes within 24 hours, offer prominent corrections.
26. Now Germany Wants To Criminalize Fake News
27. Ridiculous German Court Ruling Means Linking Online Is Now A Liability
28. Dental Firm Tries To Dodge Section 230 With Trademark Claims; Runs Headfirst Into Anti-SLAPP Law
29. Uber’s Self Driving Cars Are Running Red Lights, Uber’s Blaming “Human Error”
30. Uber is losing money hand-over-fist: The ride-sharing company is disrupting the notion of profit.
31. Are eBay sellers the ultimate customer, or the ultimate consumable? #brickscam
32. Internet companies forced to block The Pirate Bay, bittorrent websites in Australia, Federal Court rules
33. First Aussie Pirate Bay Block Gets Defeated in Seconds
34. You can no longer be sued for leaving negative reviews online
35. President Obama Signs Law Making Ticket Buying Bots Illegal
36. Online Influencers Called Out in Second Letter to FTC
37. DMCA Process Abused To Nuke Post About Researcher Who Faked Data On Federally-Funded Study
38. Bitcoin Is Being Monitored By An Increasingly Wary U.S. Government
39. Supreme Court Will Hear A Case That Could Finally Shut Down East Texas As The Patent Troll Mecca
40. How The DMCA And The CFAA Are Preventing People From Saving Their Soon-To-Be-Broken Pebble Watches
41. How Imposter Buster, a Twitter Bot, Is Besting Anti-Semites: Some of these racists have been suspended by Twitter. Others have abandoned their trolling in frustration. And more are being added to the bot’s hit list by the day.
42. French drones to deliver the mail once per week: Trial limits drones to a nine-mile route.
43. Instagram reaches 600 million monthly active users; numbers doubled in two years
44. Apple given favorable treatment on tax? No way, insists Ireland: European Commission accused of “selectively” targeting Apple—according to Apple.
45. Someone published the wrong Mummy trailer and now it’s a meme
46. The holographic anime “robot” that will keep house for lonely salarymen: Gatebox connects home devices to an interactive anime “waifu” for “a new, shared lifestyle”.
47. CEIPI/EAO Conference–“Copyright Enforcement in the Online World”
48. How Do App Stores Challenge the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem?
49. Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy: Today, the White House released a new report on the ways that artificial intelligence will transform our economy over the coming years and decades.
50. How to Fix the Internet: Anonymity has poisoned online life. (Walter Isaacson)
51. Appeals Court Deals Rebuke To Controversial Prosecutor Who Targeted Aaron Swartz: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office “overstepped its bounds” in pursuing federal charges, the ruling said.

CREATIVITY

1. Locked & Loaded: The Gun Industry’s Lucrative Relationship With Hollywood – The NRA and the entertainment industry interact publicly as mortal enemies. But as the number of weapons shown in movies and TV steadily increases — and stars like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie make fortunes wielding guns onscreen — a co-dependence that keeps both churning is revealed: “making the liberal bias a lot of money”
2. TV Networks, Studios Shifting Program Strategies in the Trump Age: “Are We Telling the Right Stories?”
3. Sirius XM wins New York appeal over older songs
4. New York stops the litigious sprawl of pre-1972 sound copyrights: Sirius XM comes back after The Turtles won early copyright victories.
5. The Battle Over Public Performance Rights Of Old Music Heats Up: NY Rejects, Supreme Court Petitioned
6. Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc. (Dec. 20, 2016, 2nd Circuit C.A.)
7. Nestle loses EU Kit Kat trade mark tussle with Cadbury
8. Crunch time for Kit Kat’s 3D shape as EU judges show teeth in trademark row: Foretaste of a future food fight between rival four-finger products?
9. Branding Names: from Air Jordan to Linsanity and Trump Toilets
10. Review of the Copyright Act in 2017
11. Productivity Commission: Tales of the Widespread Demise of Canadian Publishers are Just That (Ariel Katz)
12. Australian report shows fair use vital in copyright reform
13. Fair Use… The Final Frontier?
14. U.S. Bill Would Introduce a Copyright Claims Board
15. Our copyright laws are holding us back, and there’s a way out
16. Federal Statute Barring Non-disparagement Clauses Is Enacted
17. No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals
18. Seeking Open Access Deal, 60 German Academic Institutions Ditch All Subscriptions With Elsevier
19. Police Department’s Social Media Policy Is Unconstitutional–Liverman v. Petersburg (Eric Goldman)
20. Blacklock’s Must Pay $65,000 for Litigation that “should never have been commenced let alone carried to trial” (Howard Knopf)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. CRTC rules high-speed Internet a ‘basic telecom service’
2. CRTC declares broadband internet a basic service: Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says it can’t make full access to ultra-high speed services a reality on its own, and will require business and government help.
3. Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-496: Modern telecommunications services – The path forward for Canada’s digital economy
4. CRTC’s ‘cornerstone’ ruling on basic telecom service expected to have repercussions for telcos
5. Internet bills reduced for thousands of Canadians after CRTC decision
6. A ‘Netflix Tax’ for the New Year? Maybe so
7. Ontario Government Tells Ottawa It Is Open to New Internet Tax to Fund Cancon (Michael Geist)
8. License Renewal Shows FCC Does Not Regulate Content – Implications for Calls to Regulate Fake News?
9. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to Step Down
10. Tom Wheeler to leave FCC on January 20 when Trump becomes president: Wheeler says being FCC chair was “greatest honor” of his professional life.
11. FCC Boss Tom Wheeler Resigns, Signaling The Beginning Of The End For Net Neutrality
12. Remaining FCC Commissioners Promise To Gut Net Neutrality ‘As Soon As Possible’
13. FCC Republicans vow to gut net neutrality rules “as soon as possible”: Pai and O’Rielly also promise not to enforce disclosure rules on small ISPs.
14. AT&T, Verizon Laugh At The FCC’s Last-Minute Attempt To Crack Down On Zero Rating
15. AT&T and Verizon try to fend off net neutrality case before Trump takes over: Net neutrality investigation likely on last legs because of Trump’s victory.
16. Comcast Admits Net Neutrality Rules Had No Real Impact On The Company
17. Happy New Year From Comcast: Usage Caps, Rate Hikes, And More Sneaky Fees In 2017
18. Sky agrees to £11.7 billion Fox takeover—handing full control to Murdoch: 21st Century Fox revives push for Sky after phone hacking saga killed last bid in 2011.
19. IOC, USOC And NBC Universal Announce Olympic Channel Partnership In The United States: New Linear Olympic Channel in the U.S. Devoted to Olympic Sports, Athletes and Stories to Launch in Second Half of 2017 – Partnership Includes Significant Commitment of Olympic Sports Programming Hours on NBC & NBCSN

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. EU’s highest court delivers blow to UK snooper’s charter: Indiscriminate collection of emails is illegal, court rules in response to challenge originally brought by David Davis
2. Investigatory Powers law setback: Blanket data slurp is illegal—top EU court: UK gov’t to appeal against judgment; says it’s a blow for everyday policing, other agencies.
3. Court Says Abandoned Phone Locked With A Passcode Still Has Expectation Of Privacy
4. U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack
5. Lawyer’s Twitter “parody” and #Pizzagate: ethics violation? 
6. Congrats, hackers: you’re now a munition (sort of): Wassenaar rules require export licenses for anything that could be considered “intrusion software”—but not in US, yet.
7. European Information Security Advisory Says Mandating Encryption Backdoors Will Just Make Everything Worse
8. James Clapper’s Office To Finally Reveal NSA’s ‘Incidental Collection’ Numbers
9. U.S. to disclose estimate of number of Americans under surveillance
10. Canadian telecoms push back on proposed police powers: Rogers, TekSavvy and others say the government hasn’t justified why it needs expanded digital powers
11. What can you do with a billion Yahoo passwords? Lots of bad things: Now, Yahoo user data could be behind scores of spear-phishes or other breaches.
12. Twitter Cuts Off Fusion Spy Centers’ Access to Social Media Surveillance Tool (ACLU)
13. Snowden’s ‘Proper Channel’ For Whistleblowing Being Booted From The NSA For Retaliating Against A Whistleblower
14. Surveillance Oversight Board Was Fun While It Lasted, But That’s Pretty Much Over For Now
15. How to rethink what’s ‘top secret’ for the Internet age
16. “Life Is Short. Settle with the FTC” – The Cost of Ashley Madison’s 2015 Data Breach 
17. Op-ed: Why I’m not giving up on PGP – Key discovery is an issue, but Signal can’t replace PGP.
18. UK schoolkid data shared to “create hostility” against illegal migrants: Up to 1,500 names a month pass between department for education and home office.
19. EFF Ad in Wired: Your threat model just changed
20. Risk And Anxiety: A Theory Of Data Breach Harms (Daniel J. Solove & Danielle Keats Citron)
21. Future of Privacy Forum’s “Must Read” Privacy Papers for Policymakers

jon

GAMES

1. Russia Accuses EA Of LGBT Propaganda Over Including Rainbow Shoelaces Soccer Players Wore In Real Life
2. California man spent $1 million playing Game of War: Mobile game described as “like gambling, but with no possibility of winning.”
3. China forces devs to reveal loot box drop rates in game: Players must be aware of the percentages behind random prizes, says new law
4. Loot box odds in all videogames available in China go public on May 1 (if devs listen)
5. Bethesda Bullies One Of Its Creative Fans Over Website Metatags
6. Report: Crytek once again failing to pay its developers on time
7. A dev is trying to crowdfund legal action against Crytek over unpaid wages
8. Vivendi stake in Ubisoft passes 25%, increasing takeover threat: French media company needs to acquire 30% of publisher’s stock before it can offer to buy the company
9. Ubisoft dev fears ‘constraints that kill creativity’ if Vivendi takes over: “Obviously [concern about a potential takeover] has struck us at some point. We are a company that has been creating and has been leading through independence and that is something that is key to our success, key to the way we are organized.”
10. French regulators fine Ubisoft execs 1.27 million euros for insider trading
11. Ubisoft says AMF claims “unjustified, unfounded and illegal”: Ubisoft has decided to appeal the French AMF’s decision to sanction its team members
12. White House hosts Girls Make Games game dev workshop
13. Super Mario Run is online-only to combat piracy, says Nintendo’s Miyamoto: Fans must have an Internet connection to play Nintendo’s latest game.
14. Hands-on: Super Mario Run might be the weirdest Mario game yet: Four-level demo looks and sounds like Mario but doesn’t play like it.
15. Game Review Site Says Square Enix Blacklisted Them To Punish Low Review Scores
16. Koch and Square Enix clarify review code policy: “We would never impose a blacklist or ban on any media for a review score”
17. Rocketwerkz’ Dean Hall defends VR devs who make exclusivity deals
18. Dean Hall on VR: “There is no money in it” – RocketWerkz CEO says medium currently relies on subsidies from platforms
19. The eSports Explosion: Legal Challenges and Opportunities (Jas Purewal & Isabel Davies)
20. To avoid conflicts of interest, 2 Twitch-owned eSports teams go independent
21. On the eSports Failure of Heroes of the Storm
22. How Riot Games used sports technology to help pro players communicate in tournaments
23. Boom.tv Raises $3.5 Million As World’s First 3D Live Streaming Platform For eSports
24. Ex-AAA devs form Drifter and raise $2.25M to develop VR eSports
25. Twitch divests itself of Evil Geniuses, Alliance eSports teams: Streaming company transfers team ownership to players, citing obligation to avoid preferential treatment
26. Twitch rolls out automated tool to stem wave of chat harassment: “AutoMod” uses machine learning to keep up with the trolls.
27. Twitch introduces automatic moderator tool to curb chat abuse: AutoMod evolves thanks to machine learning
28. Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian: The Last of their Kind – The end of two of the industry’s longest-running and most troubled development processes is a reminder of the excesses of the 2000s
29. Majesco Entertainment exits the video games business: Merger with medical firm marks the end for the Zumba, Cooking Mama, and Psychonauts publisher
30. Porsche’s exclusive deal with Electronic Arts is no more: After 17 years, the exclusive deal ends, freeing Porsches to appear in new games.
31. Report: Sony Considering Merging Film And Gaming Divisions
32. Did crowdfunding survive 2016?: Fig raised $8m of the $20m in gaming campaigns this year – was it enough?
33. South Korea To Tackle Video Game Cheating By Criminalizing Breaking A Game’s ToS
34. After cracks, developers remove Denuvo DRM from their games: Is Denuvo issuing refunds when its protection stops working?
35. The future of the European games industry is written in the telecom regulations: Jari-Pekka Kaleva examines the impact of EU negotiations
36. Where now for Call of Duty?: The world’s biggest shooter series is under threat, but Activision still holds all the cards
37. Game over for law outlawing pinball in Indiana town: Pinball ban included a $300 fine, six months in jail.
38. 2016: Did the “Year of VR” deliver? – Highs and lows of 12 months in a new medium
39. The 5 trends that defined the game industry in 2016

DIGITAL

1. Arista beats Cisco’s $335M copyright claim with an unusual defense: Jury found that Cisco command lines were “scènes à faire.”
2. Court endorsement of fair dealing rights splits bar
3. German judges explain why Adblock Plus is legal: Spiegel argued there’s no right to de-link its “unified offer” of news and ads.
4. Mediaplayers and streaming: AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona in Filmspeler proposes broad interpretation of notion of ‘indispensable intervention’
5. Hollywood Studios Win Injunction Against Streamer VidAngel
6. Commercial sites must check all their links for piracy, rules Hamburg court: Case shows “devastating consequences” of EU copyright ruling for the Web, MEP warns.
7. Application of problematic CJEU ruling on copyright infringement by hyperlinks is getting out of hand
8. Legacy Recording Industry To Trump: Please Tell Tech Companies To Nerd Harder To Censor The Internet
9. Canadian Copyright Reform Requires Fix to the Fair Dealing Gap (Michael Geist)
10. How the Supreme Court can avoid turning the Web into a Wild West (Michael Geist)
11. Magic Leap is actually way behind, like we always suspected it was
12. The Reality Behind Magic Leap
13. Magic Leap CEO: “we are making mini-production test runs of our first system”
14. How Streaming Is Changing Music (Again)
15. In 2017, media companies will finally realize they are being disrupted by the very platforms that distribute their content: “Smart pipes” are changing the way consumers interact with their favorite content — and traditional delivery systems want in on the future.
16. Casting Agency Looked to Fill Role of Alt-Right Neo-Nazi for Cadillac Commercial: Have the alt-right (and their ideas) become a target demographic? Apparently so.
17. The DDoS vigilantes trying to silence Black Lives Matter: The Web lets anyone be a publisher—or a vigilante.
18. Short Sighted Newspaper Association Asks Trump To Whittle Down Fair Use, Because It Hates Google
19. Can journalism be virtual? (Taylor Owen)
20. Right of Publicity Claims in a Digital Age
21. Why it’s dangerous to outsource our critical thinking to computers: It is crucial for a resilient democracy that we better understand how Google and Facebook are changing the way we think, interact and behave (Evan Selinger & Brett Frischmann)
22. Seeing without knowing: Limitations of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic accountability (Mike Ananny & Kate Crawford)
23. IEEE Just Published the First Draft Report on How to Make an ‘Ethically Aligned’ AI
24. The Public Policy Implications of Artificial Intelligence
25. Donald Trump has weaponized Twitter — with dangerous consequences
26. Source: Twitter cut out of Trump tech meeting over failed emoji deal
27. An Inconvenient Truth About Silicon Valley and Donald Trump: The President-elect’s disruptive platform sounds awfully familiar to the valley’s leaders.
28. Fake News: How a Partying Macedonian Teen Earns Thousands Publishing Lies
29. Iran The Latest Country To Use ‘Fake News’ As An Excuse For Widespread Censorship
30. Fake news peddlers and muckrakers risk “sickness of coprophilia,” says Pope – Pontiff: publishing fake news “probably the greatest damage that the media can do.”
31. In the era of fake news and broken politics, should we let computers decide how to rule the world
32. Gawker’s Demise And The Trump-Era Threat To The First Amendment: Hulk Hogan’s smashing legal victory shows us that publishing the truth may no longer be enough.
33. Schadenfreude with Bite
34. Is Doxing Unethical For Lawyers?
35. Attorney wants Google to unmask reviewer who only wrote, “It was horrible”: Attorney decries review as an opinion “to disparage a person in his profession.”
36. The Obligation To Experiment: Tech companies should test the effects of their products on our safety and civil liberties. We should also test them ourselves.
37. There Is No Neutral Interface: “What are we optimizing for? Is it for civic responsibility? Personal relevance? Quality? Truthiness? Diversity of sources and viewpoints? Time on site? Time well spent?”
38. PewDiePie claims he will delete his YouTube channel today: Problems with YouTube’s suggested and recommended lists affect high-traffic channels.
39. Yik Yak fires 30 of 50 employees, still has no business model: CEO still calls app a “special place for college students around the world.”
40. Looking for a Mind at Work: The FTC Presents a Staff Summary of its September 2016 Workshop on Disclosure Effectiveness
41. The Freedom to Yelp: Congress Curbs ToS Overreach 
42. Every US taxpayer has effectively paid Apple at least $6 in recent years: If you think Apple is cheating via overseas tax trickery, you’ll hate this move.
43. When robots read books: Artificial intelligence sheds new light on classic texts. Literary theorists who don’t embrace it face obsolescence
44. Selfless Devotion: Giving robots “feminine” personalities implies human women should stick to the program
45. New Publications Examine Harmful Speech Online (Berkman Klein Center)
46. The internet is broken. Starting from scratch, here’s how I’d fix it.

CREATIVITY

1. It Begins: Congress Proposes First Stages Of Copyright Reform, And It’s Not Good
2. China’s Richest Man Tells MPAA’s Chris Dodd To Tell Donald Trump To Be Nice To China… Or Else
3. 37 Professors and Scholars Respond To IPO’s “Call For Views: Modernising the European Copyright Framework”
4. RIAA, newspapers ask Trump to limit fair use, toughen copyright: Content companies still have a grudge against Google, and they’re telling Trump.
5. Freedom of Expression? Fair Use? Thank These Artists You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
6. “Is There Something I Should Know?” – Duran Duran loses High Court copyright battle
7. Lights. Camera. Legal Action! Jury finds iconic ‘Jersey Boys’ musical infringes copyright
8. Artist Sues Universal Music Over Plagiarism, Gets Called Out by Fellow Artist: The artist Kendell Geers has penned a scathing open letter against Attia in response.
9. Not Gone with the Wind: IP Rights Despite Public Domain Images
10. Media Organizations (Correctly) Worry That Rolling Stone Verdict Will Make Saying Sorry Actionable
11. Vegas Golden Knights trademark denied by U.S. government
12. What Rogue One Can Teach You about… Trade Dress?
13. Late Shift, the world’s first interactive cinema movie, reviewed: Does the protagonist kiss the girl? Kill the old man? Steal the car? You decide.
14. ‘Westworld’ Co-Creator Keeps Her Law License Active, Just In Case
15. Gender, IP, And Innovation: Open Air’s Future Research
16. The CEIPI Publishes An Opinion on the EU Commission’s Copyright Reform Proposal 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. CRTC says it holds power over website blocking in Quebec gambling case
2. CRTC rules that website blocking provisions of Québec’s Bill 74 violate federal law: Pro-Internet advocates welcome ruling, having argued that Bill 74’s website blocking raises censorship concerns and violates rules which keep our Internet free and open
3. Upon Further Review, the Ruling Should Stand: Why the CRTC Made the Right Call on the Super Bowl Simsub Ban (Michael Geist)
4. Unnecessary at Best, Harmful at Worst: Melanie Joly Seeks Global Consensus on Culture Contributions from Digital Services (Michael Geist)
5. Canada leads charge to force Internet giants to support more localized content
6. Amazon Prime video service launches in Canada: E-retailer’s streaming service expands out of U.S. to more than 200 territories
7. FCC’s Ajit Pai says net neutrality’s “days are numbered” under Trump: Pai wants to “fire up the weed whacker” and cut down FCC regulations.
8. FCC Commissioner Pai Says Net Neutrality’s ‘Days Are Numbered’ Under Trump
9. FCC’s Tom Wheeler willing to “step down immediately” to make deal with GOP: Wheeler seeks deal as GOP refuses to reconfirm Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel.
10. FCC Chair Tom Wheeler won’t resign, for now, as FCC enters 2-2 deadlock: Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel must leave after Wheeler offer to GOP is rejected.
11. A big change to U.S. broadcasting is coming — and it’s one Putin might admire
12. A Comcastic odyssey: $2,000 billing error becomes bureaucratic nightmare – Once again, Comcast fixes a problem only after customer alerts the media.
13. Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees $48 per year: Comcast also raising Internet and TV prices 3.8 percent in 2017.
14. Samsung Issues Update To Brick Remaining, Spontaneously Combusting Galaxy Note 7 Phones, Verizon Refuses To Pass It On
15. AT&T’s DirecTV Now plagued with outages and sports blackouts: AT&T vows to fix technical errors; licensing restrictions may also be a problem.
16. AT&T customers get $88 million in credits and refunds for illegal charges: 2014 cramming settlement finally gives money back to nearly 3 million customers.
17. Here’s How the AT&T-Time Warner Deal Is Influencing Fox’s Bid for Sky
18. Mossberg: Why the AT&T-Time Warner merger is dangerous
19. Last Minute Congressional Change Will Give Trump His Own Trump TV, Financed By Taxpayers

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Yahoo admits it’s been hacked again, and 1 billion accounts were exposed: That’s a billion with a b—and is separate from the breach “cleared” in September.
2. Hacked cheating site Ashley Madison will pay $1.6 million to FTC for breach
3. Vladimir Putin was directly involved in US election hack, report says: The hack was designed to harm Clinton and potentially aid Trump
4. President Obama Orders Intel Agencies To Produce Report On Russian Election Influence
5. Obama asks intel community to conduct “full review” of election-related hacks: As Trump denies Russian involvement, Congress calls for investigations—and consequences.
6. Fancy Bear ramping up infowar against Germany—and rest of West: Russian hackers part of broader campaign against West, German intel chief warns.
7. Did the Russians “hack” the election? A look at the established facts: No smoking gun, but evidence suggests a Russian source for the cyber attacks on Democrats.
8. Goodale weighing CSIS use of metadata gathered on innocent people
9. Google Publishes Eight National Security Letters That Have Been Freed From Their Gag Orders
10. Snowden leaks reveal GCHQ and NSA snooped on in-flight mobile calls: Increasing availability of airborne calls potentially makes this a rich source of information.
11. No, there’s no evidence (yet) the feds tried to hack Georgia’s voter database: State election official bungles the case that DHS tried to breach his office.
12. Evernote’s new privacy policy raises eyebrows: You cannot opt out of having humans read your notes.
13. The FCC Suggests Some Wishy Washy, Highly Unlikely Solutions To The Poorly-Secured Internet Of Things
14. Google just dodged a privacy lawsuit by scanning your emails a tiny bit slower: The company won’t do ad scans until after a message hits your inbox
15. Maker of Internet of Things-connected vibrator will settle privacy suit: Lawsuit says company chronicled “vibration settings” and how long toy was used.
16. Researchers Find Vulnerability That Enables Accounting Fraud, PwC Decides The Best Response Is A Legal Threat
17. Another Lawsuit Highlights How Many ‘Smart’ Toys Violate Privacy, Aren’t Secure
18. Disgraced IT worker stole confidential Expedia e-mails even after he left: Insider-trading scheme netted more than $331,000 in illegal profits.
19. Op-ed: I’m throwing in the towel on PGP, and I work in security – “If you need to securely contact me… DM me asking for my Signal number.”
20. Recoding Privacy Law: Reflections on the Future Relationship Among Law, Technology, and Privacy (Urs Gasser)

jon

GAMES

1. FIFA 17 under fire in Russia following EA’s support of LGBTQ campaign: Custom rainbow kits have been met with calls for a ban among Russian MPs citing 2013 “gay propaganda law”
2. Russian officials allege FIFA 17 violates law against gay propaganda
3. Alleging theft of trade secrets, Zynga takes 2 ex-employees to court
4. Konami issues cease and desist against Unreal Castlevania fan remake: But publisher has allowed all current files to remain available, developer hopes to acquire an official licence
5. What Gamergate should have taught us about the ‘alt-right’: The 2014 online hate-storm presaged the tactics of the Trump-loving far right movement. Prominent critics of the president elect should take note
6. Appeals Court Dumps Infringement Lawsuit Against EA After Plaintiff Fails To Produce Evidence
7. DoomRL creator says ZeniMax threatened legal action: Creator of Doom-inspired rogue-like told to remove trademark-infringing content from site
8. Zenimax threatens legal action against Doom-inspired roguelike, DoomRL
9. Doom-inspired roguelike goes open-source in a bid to outrun Zenimax lawyers
10. South Korea cracks down on cheaters with law targeting illicit game mods
11. Inside one modder’s seven-year quest to revive The Matrix Online
12. Devs are recovering games (if not payments owed) from bankrupt publisher BulkyPix
13. Lifetime PS4 sales surpass 50 million in the wake of Black Friday
14. Sony already the market leader in virtual reality: New report suggests successful launch of PlayStation VR and PS4 install base puts platform holder ahead of Oculus and Vive
15. Mafia III has “allowed me as a white developer to make connections with people of color”: Hangar 13’s Haden Blackman on tackling race and pushing the medium forward
16. Don’t ignore the trolls: After another grueling year full of heightened antagonism in the games industry, it’s time to take a different approach
17. That Dragon, Cancer co-dev: “You chose to love us through our grief”: Ryan Green gave a heartfelt acceptance speech as tale of child cancer picked up Game Award
18. “The end of comfortable publisher-journalist relationships will lead to better journalism”: The impact of publishers going direct to consumers is having a liberating impact on the games press
19. Tall Pikachu, no whip: Starbucks to launch Pokémon Go crossover – Most cafés should become game-specific locations, teeming with new Pokémon.
20. Game Jolt offers YouTubers, Twitch streamers 10% of game sales: New Partners program offers free games and revenue share for video or livestream promotion
21. League of Legends’ latest World Championships prize pool hits $6.7M
22. Anti-tobacco group takes games to task: Truth Initiative calls for tobacco use to trigger an automatic M rating from ESRB and for devs to stop featuring it in games kids play
23. Opinion: Now is the time to unionize the game industry
24. Worlds-as-a-service: Charting the future of location-based games: Mantle CEO Dean Gifford on why his team can finally build the tech that will take geo-location game design from Pokémon Go to GTA Worldwide
25. So, You Were the Blue Zombie! Actors Play Videogame Characters in the Dark: Gaming world, rife with competition, keeps plots a mystery
26. New games on Steam in 2016 rose 40% over last year: Over 4200 games hit the store in 2016, Steam Spy says, equivalent to 38% of its lifetime total
27. A slow Atari 2600 emulator is now inside Minecraft—and it’s pretty cool: 3D interface, slow speeds expose the machinations of the ancient 6502C processor.
28. To promote tech education, Canada’s Prime Minister made his own game
29. Copyright, Culture, and Community in Virtual Worlds (Dan Burk)

DIGITAL

1. Internet freedom at stake in Supreme Court of Canada case: B.C. Court of Appeal ordered Google to enforce a worldwide ban on website links in intellectual property battle, thus unilaterally deciding to regulate the free flow of information worldwide
2. Google brings internet free-speech battle to Supreme Court: Search engine says ruling could pave way for countries to use their courts to block content worldwide
3. Google v. Equustek: The SCC Hearing on Internet Jurisdiction and Free Speech (Michael Geist)
4. Should Canadian Courts Have the Power to Censor Search Results?: The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision may be a landmark in the history of free speech
5. Google’s auto-search results have become slightly less offensive: Google says, “we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas, and cultures.”
6. Samsung victorious at Supreme Court fight with 8-0 opinion against Apple: Apple can’t automatically get Samsung’s full profits due to patent infringement.
7. Embedding isn’t copyright infringement, says Italian court: Website blocks lifted, but new EU copyright rules may make unauthorised embedding illegal.
8. Copyright Troll Ordered To Pay $17k To ‘Pirate’ It Falsely Accused
9. Internet giants will join forces to stop online sharing of terrorist material: Facebook, Twitter, et al to use hashes to quickly spot, takedown terrorist imagery.
10. We Built a Bot That Trolls Twitter’s Worst Anti-Semitic Trolls: On Twitter, racists like to impersonate minorities like Jews and say viciously bigoted things in order to defame them. So we created a sheriff who calls them out on it.
11. A photo of a 4-year-old with Hillary Clinton was used as a disgusting meme. Her mom fought back.
12. Hate speech crackdown: EU says Silicon Valley needs to do a better job
13. Op-ed: Stop pretending there’s a difference between “online” and “real life” – Seriously just cut it out. The stakes are too high.
14. Google, democracy and the truth about internet search: Tech-savvy rightwingers have been able to ‘game’ the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and… Donald Trump becomes president
15. How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind “Pizzagate” Was Spread: A man was arrested Sunday for bringing a gun into a pizza place named in Clinton conspiracy rumors.
16. Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible With News
17. Dunja Mijatović: Why bother? A quick take on lying on social media
18. Fake News About Fake News Leads To (Fake?) Defamation Threat
19. Antigua Says It Will Certainly, Absolutely, Definitely Use WTO Permission To Ignore US Copyright And Set Up A Pirate Site, Maybe
20. China Files A Million Patents In A Year, As Government Plans To Increase Patentability Of Software
21. How Algorithms Can Bring Down Minorities’ Credit Scores: Analyzing people’s social connections may lead to a new way of discriminating against them.
22. Why Russia Is Using the Internet to Undermine Western Democracy: Powerful Russians were terrified by the internet in 2011. Now they’ve made sure we are, too.
23. Lawyers: New court software is so awful it’s getting people wrongly arrested – Problematic Odyssey Case Manager software package is used nationwide.
24. Court Rubber Stamps IRS’s Demand To Get All Coinbase User Data
25. NFL loosens its policies on teams posting GIFs and videos: Just don’t expect to see sweet replays during games.
26. YouTube Reports $1 Billion Paid to Recording Industry Through Advertising This Year
27. YouTube Creators Can Now “Remove Access” from MCN’s Via YouTube’s Dashboard
28. PewDiePie quit plan prompts YouTube reply
29. Law Firm That Sued 20-Year-Old Crash Victim Over Negative Review Now Owes $26,831 In Legal Fees
30. Lawyer sues 20-year-old student who gave a bad Yelp review, loses badly: Law firm said student Lan Cai must cough up $100k for online complaints, judge disagreed.
31. Law Passed To Protect Customers From Non-Disparagement Clauses And Other Ridiculous Restrictions
32. Netflix to Offer Subscribers Video Download Option
33. The proposed new VAT rules on e-publications: do they have any implications for copyright and digital exhaustion?
34. Microsoft-LinkedIn deal cleared by regulators, opening new doors for people around the world
35. EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month: Streaming cloud-based content: Invention “contains little more then rote recitations of long-existing technologies.”
36. W3C at a crossroads: technology standards setter or legal arms-dealer?
37. When robots read books: Artificial intelligence sheds new light on classic texts. Literary theorists who don’t embrace it face obsolescence
38. The Future Of Digital: 2016
39. Every Website Needs To Re-register With The Copyright Office, Who Can’t Build A Functioning System

CREATIVITY

1. Duran Duran lose High Court battle over US song rights in copyright test case
2. Duran Duran ‘shocked’ after losing legal copyright battle
3. SiriusXM agrees to pay up to $99M in copyright class action brought by Turtles members
4. McDonald’s slapped with lawsuit by New York graffiti artist 
5. One for the Little Guy! Community Church Defeats Adidas in Trademark Dispute
6. Who Gets To Trademark Iceland?
7. Iceland vs Iceland Trademark Spat More Clear: Iceland Foods Opposed Iceland’s Trademark Application
8. Streaming Won’t Kill the Radio Star: The rise in popularity of Beats 1 and independent stations like Rinse, NTS, and Radar shows just how much we still desire a human touch over algorithm-curated playlists.
9. Disney’s Bob Iger Among Donald Trump’s ‘Strategic and Policy’ Advisory Committee
10. Music Canada Reverses on Years of Copyright Lobbying: Now Says WIPO Internet Treaties Were Wrong Guess (Michael Geist)
11. Hooked For Life: Inside the NFL’s relentless, existential, Big Tobacco-style pursuit of your children.
12. A Dark, Tangled “Tango”: Brando, Bertolucci and the Question of an Actor’s Consent
13. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson has no business lecturing about journalism ethics
14. In a time of many questions, literary journalism provides an answer: Media in the Age of Trump
15. Librarians, Act Now to Protect Your Users (Before It’s Too Late) (EFF)
16. Fifth Circuit reverses multimillion-dollar antitrust verdict based on false advertising, remands: Retractable Technologies, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co. – 5th Cir. Dec. 2, 2016 (Rebecca Tushnet) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Football Association Premier League Limited v Luxton [2016] EWCA Civ 1097
2. Aaron Wudrick: Taxing Netflix and the Internet won’t make Canada more cultured
3. Canada’s Attempt To Force Cheaper, More Flexible Cable Packages Is A Bit Of A Joke
4. Cable TV is about to be disrupted, and the CRTC knows it
5. Comcast Loses Just $5.50 Per Month When You Cut The Cord Thanks To Its Growing Broadband Monopoly
6. Nashville fights Comcast lawsuit over rules that help Google Fiber: Nashville seeks dismissal of lawsuit Comcast filed to delay utility pole access.
7. Wall Street Is Dreaming Of Megamergers Under Trump — Including A Verizon-Comcast Super Union
8. Trump team reassures AT&T over Time Warner merger review: Trump vowed to block sale during campaign, but early signs look good for AT&T.
9. Altice Promises Massive New Fiber Network, Again Proving Net Neutrality Didn’t Stifle Broadband Investment
10. FCC says AT&T is violating net neutrality with DirecTV data cap exemption: Verizon also in trouble with FCC over charging competitors for zero-rating.
11. FCC Warns AT&T, Verizon They’re Violating Net Neutrality With Zero Rating Schemes
12. AT&T-Time Warner Deal: Highlights From Senate Hearing
13. AT&T’s CEO just made an important promise to his rivals
14. Trump Appoints Third Anti-Net Neutrality Advisor To Telecom Transition Team
15. T-Mobile Applauds Likely Death Of Net Neutrality Under Trump
16. T-Mobile excited about life under Trump, reversal of net neutrality rules: T-Mobile predicts more “innovation” once Title II net neutrality rules are gone.
17. Trump supporters bought bogus Obama conspiracy theory peddled by Fox Business

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. China’s New “Social Credit Score” Brings Dystopian Science Fiction to Life
2. Uber knows where you go, even after ride is over: “We do this to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service, and to enhance safety.”
3. These Toys Don’t Just Listen To Your Kid; They Send What They Hear To A Defense Contractor
4. FTC Explores Privacy Concerns Raised By Smart TVs
5. How ‘Just Metadata’ Helped Ruin A Career Diplomat’s Life
6. The Internet of Things is making hospitals more vulnerable to hackers: The attack potential grows exponentially as IoT technologies are implemented, warns European cyber security agency.
7. Internet Archive Successfully Fends Off Secret FBI Order
8. Activist Appeals Court Decision Stating Public Has No First Amendment Right To Record In Public Areas
9. MyDemocracy.ca Responses Don’t Count If You Refuse To Disclose Household Income and Other Personal Information (Michael Geist)
10. Intelligence Committee Senators Call On Obama To Declassify Evidence Of Russian Election Interference
11. UK terror watchdog: I applaud strong, responsible, less intrusive spy laws: David Anderson QC rejects “hostile narrative of power-hungry security services.”
12. How industry can protect privacy in the age of connected toys
13. Gap Between Wiretaps Reported By US Courts And Recipient Service Providers Continues To Grow
14. Legal raids in five countries seize botnet servers, sinkhole 800,000+ domains: At one point, Avalanche network was responsible for two-thirds of all phishing attacks.
15. Millions exposed to malvertising that hid attack code in banner pixels: Manipulated images are almost impossible to detect by the untrained eye.

jon

GAMES

1. ASA Ruling on Valve Corporation and Hello Games Ltd
2. No Man’s Sky’s Steam page didn’t mislead gamers, rules UK ad watchdog: ASA rejects complaints, citing game’s procedural generation as valid defense.
3. Hello Games didn’t falsely advertise No Man’s Sky, says ad regulator
4. Advertising Standards rules No Man’s Sky Steam page did not mislead consumers: After detailed defence from Hello Games.
5. Insider Trading Claims Levied Against Ubisoft Executives: Regulatory body claims five Ubisoft executives sold stock before the company delayed Watch Dogs and The Crew.
6. Ubisoft’s developers “can’t live with the threat” of Vivendi takeover: Michel Ancel explains the difficulty of staying focused in a time of great uncertainty
7. Zynga Sues Rival Under Federal Trade Secrets Law
8. Zynga sues 2 former employees over alleged massive data heist – Before returning work laptop, employee searched: “How to erase my hard drive.“
9. Zynga sues two former employees over data theft: Both creators now at rival firm Scopely
10. Game Developer Updates Game To Remove Denuvo DRM As Fans Cheer
11. Google DeepMind could invent the next generation of AI by playing Starcraft 2: How Google’s AI research team has teamed up with Blizzard to further deep learning in AI.
12. Gaming Technology for Patenting Inventions
13. Hello Games responds to “intense and dramatic” reaction to No Man’s Sky: And responds in the best possible way – with a huge content update – “a foundation for things to come”
14. Weak AAA launches are a precursor to industry transition: As top games under perform, the industry must prepare to shift with consumer behaviour
15. HTC calls on co-operation with PlayStation and Oculus: “We need to help consumers navigate this world that might be initially confusing”
16. “It made me feel less alone, realising other girls want to make video games”: Last month’s XX+ Game Jam was a new initiative to bring more women into games development, but what impact did it have for its participants?
17. UKIE exhorts British officials to jumpstart the UK’s eSports scene
18. Signing a Free Agent in Esports—A Practical Guide for Teams
19. Treadmills to endless hallways, tech has some sick solutions for VR nausea: Startups and researchers aim to blur the lines of reality for your subconscious.
20. Adaptive music in competitive games

DIGITAL

1. Adding Derogatory Caption To Photo Meme Can Be False Light–S.E.V. Chmerkovskiy
2. Quebec Court Awards Damages to Canadian Artist for Wrongful Copyright Takedown Notice by Record Companies
3. Adblock Plus wins its 6th court case, brought by Der Spiegel: Eyeo GmbH has beaten back German court cases seeking to shut down its business.
4. Russia Draws On Chinese Expertise And Technology To Clamp Down On Internet Users Even More
5. With Trump win, the Internet Archive wants to move to Canada
6. Ahead Of President Trump, The Web’s One And Only Backup Wants To Make A Backup Of Itself (In Canada)
7. Internet Archive preps Canadian safe haven to swerve Donald Trump: Asking for donations to head north
8. The Entire Internet Will Be Archived In Canada to Protect It From Trump
9. The Internet Association Sends Trump Its Wish List: The letter papers over the tech industry’s discomfort with the President-elect’s incendiary stances on social issues and tries to get down to business.
10. US election recounts campaign—citing hack attacks—raises $3M in one day 
11. Donald Trump’s Twitter lies need to be taken seriously
12. Why fake news stories thrive online
13. Beyond fake news: the “constructed realities” of the polarized world
14. This Hyperpartisan Conservative Facebook Page Owner Says Facebook’s Fake News Plan is “Terrifying”
15. Mossberg: Facebook can and should wipe out fake news – You’re a media company now, Facebook. Behave like one.
16. How to solve Facebook’s fake news problem: experts pitch their ideas: A cadre of technologists, academics and media experts are thinking up solutions, from hiring human editors, to crowdsourcing or creating algorithms
17. Social Media Is Killing Discourse Because It’s Too Much Like TV: We need more text and fewer videos and memes in the age of Trump.
18. Breitbart declares war on Kellogg’s after brand pulls advertising
19. Reddit Is Tearing Itself Apart
20. Reddit CEO who altered comments apologizes, unveils subreddit filtering: Huffman says the current climate of disrespect on Reddit “is not sustainable.”
21. How Google is tackling fake news, and why it should not do it alone: What can Google do to combat fake news? Columnist Ian Bowden illustrates some ways the search giant can tackle — and already is tackling — this problem.
22. Social media loves echo chambers, but the human brain helps create them
23. A new study suggests online harassment is pressuring women and minorities to self-censor
24. People Censor Themselves Online for Fear of Being Harassed: New research reveals that when tech companies don’t police abuse, it can put a damper on free speech.
25. Has the internet become a failed state?: The internet was once a land of promise, with few fears about crime or privacy. Thirty years on, scammers, thieves and spies have created a place of chaos
26. Cameroonian Government Calls Social Media A ‘New Form Of Terrorism’
27. Confessions of an Instagram Influencer: I used to post cat photos. Then a marketing agency made me a star.
28. Technology for inequality: how chatbots can help shape an (even more) uneven world
29. Adblock Plus wins its 6th court case, brought by Der Spiegel: Eyeo GmbH has beaten back German court cases seeking to shut down its business.
30. It will soon be illegal to punish customers who criticize businesses online: Consumer Review Fairness Act bans customer gag clauses, awaits Obama signature.
31. The Subtle Ways Your Digital Assistant Might Manipulate You
32. Magic Leap – Separating Magic and Reality
33. Why Deep Learning Matters and What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence
34. Cyber college for wannabe codebreakers planned at UK’s iconic Bletchley Park: Plan is to enroll 500 students each year and put them on a heavy diet of infosec.
35. How Facebook has rewritten the rules of love and dating
36. Controversial New AI Can Tell Whether or Not You’re A Criminal
37. Another Nation Has Developed a National Currency That’s Entirely Digital
38. Apple is in the midst of removing outdated games and apps from the App Store
39. CNN buys YouTuber Casey Neistat’s company Beme to start extension brand: CNN hopes to bring in millennial viewers by letting Neistat shape a new media brand.
40. Four Lessons for Silicon Valley from Its First Startup: A new book on Hewlett-Packard’s management history offers cautionary tales for today’s leading tech companies.
41. Facebook Must Stay Out of China: A Faustian pact with Beijing would almost certainly make user behavior around the world visible to Chinese state security.
42. One App, Two Systems: How WeChat uses one censorship policy in China and another internationally

CREATIVITY

1. SiriusXM Settles Turtles’ Copyright Lawsuit for $99 Million: Band led class action suit against satellite radio giant for playing songs recorded before 1972 without paying
2. Jersey Boys Creators Guilty of Copyright Infringement: A Nevada court finds that the show copied unlawfully from an unpublished biography.
3. Prince Estate Sues Tidal, The Streaming Service That’s Kind To Artists, For Copyright Infringement
4. Corporations Have No Moral Rights over Works in France, Even if They Commissioned It
5. Legal Drama at the 2016 World Chess Championship
6. Jayme Gordon Guilty On All 4 Counts Of Wire Fraud In Scheme To Sue Dreamworks For Copyright Infringement
7. What is “Fair Use” in the Defence of Comparative Advertising to Trade Mark Infringement in Singapore?
8. No copyright over our judgments: SC
9. Richard Prince May Offer the SDNY Another Chance to Define Transformative Use of a Work
10. “Litigation, Jim, but not as we know it”: Dr Seuss, Star Trek and Copyright Infringement in the US
11. 8th Wonder Entertainment, LLC v. Viacom International, Inc.
12. The Icelandic government is suing Iceland supermarket over the use of its name
13. Police in Canada have a new punishment for suspected drunk drivers: Listening to Nickelback
14. The Globe And Mail Tries Something Revolutionary: Actually Giving A D–n About User Comments & Conversation
15. Referring To Your Unenforced Trademark As A ‘Lottery Ticket’ Is A Great Way To End Up With Nothing
16. Nestlé Loses Another Battle to Protect KitKat Design as a Trademark
17. Former CNN anchor: 4 things media must do when covering Trump
18. Trump’s threat to democracy isn’t free speech, it’s this
19. Donald Trump, the First President of Our Post-Literate Age
20. Revolution at The Washington Post
21. The Odd Case of Dennis the Menace
22. Incredible discovery of 40,000-year-old tools for art and engineering: Humans began making paint and glue at roughly the same time with the same tools.
23. (Ir)Rational Choice Theory: Prof. Chris Buccafusco’s Search for the Biases of Creativity

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Melanie Joly’s Tough Choice on Canadian Content: New Thinking or New Taxes (Michael Geist)
2. Interplay between Broadcasting Act and Copyright Act Considered in Respect of Retransmission: 2251723 Ontario Inc. v Bell Canada, 2016 ONSC 7273
3. Competition Bureau’s scrutiny of BCE-MTS deal goes into overtime
4. Protectionism in Reverse: Treaties drafted to protect Canadian investors from erratic regimes are now backfiring, as investors abroad, like Wind Mobile’s former Egyptian backer, take aim at Canada’s ‘cultural protectionism.’
5. Catch Me If You Can: Broadcaster Settles Long-Running Investigation into the Use of Pseudonyms in FCC Applications
6. The limits of AT&T’s DirecTV Now: No DVR and limited ability to pause live TV: DirecTV online lacks key functions, and AT&T is vague on when it’ll be fixed.
7. AT&T Just Showed Us What The Death Of Net Neutrality Is Going To Look Like

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Appeals court: It doesn’t matter how wanted man was found, even if via stingray – Dissenting judge: “It is time for the stingray to come out of the shadows.”
2. Brazil Superior Court Rules in Google’s Favor, Against ‘Right to Be Forgotten’
3. Facebook could face ‘additional action’ for WhatsApp data sharing policy
4. Libraries promise to destroy user data to avoid threat of government surveillance: New York Public Library changed its data retention policies, and the American Library Association apologized for ‘normalizing’ the Trump administration
5. 1 million Google accounts compromised by Android malware called Gooligan: 86 apps available in third-party marketplaces can root 74 percent of Android phones.
6. US Navy warns 134,000 sailors of data breach after HPE laptop is compromised: Names and social security numbers accessed by “unknown individuals”—probe underway.
7. FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump
8. Game over: New US computer search law takes effect Thursday – Senate declines to vote on proposals to block or delay the administrative rule.
9. FBI’s NIT Hit 8,000 Computers In 120 Countries… As Did The Child Porn It Was Redistributing
10. Canada’s Police Allowed Journalists to ‘Embed’ to Argue For More Surveillance
11. Uber begins background collection of rider location data
12. Locky ransomware uses decoy image files to ambush Facebook, LinkedIn accounts: Low-tech malware snares users via flaws in social networks’ code to spread automatically.
13. Your Earbuds Can Be Made Into Microphones With Just A Bit Of Malware
14. Webcam blackmail linked to four suicides, reported cases double in the UK: 864 cases this year, and massive under-reporting means true figure likely much higher.
15. Lawyer who argued for landmark SCOTUS privacy decision says Trump “is a moron”: Pivotal judge in 1967 Katz case says privacy will be a “tough ride” from here.
16. Lawyer in pivotal snooping case: Privacy will be a “tough ride”: Harvey Schneider, who argued for appellant in 1967 Katz case, is worried.
17. Key Congressional Staffers Who Helped Rein In Surveillance Overreach In The 1970s Ask Obama To Pardon Snowden
18. The European Court of Human Rights and Access to Information: Clarifying the Status, with Room for Improvement

jon

GAMES

1. Robin Antonick v. Electronic Arts, Inc. (USCA 9th Circuit, November 22, 2016)
2. Australian Competition Commission wants to fine Valve $3m: Courts to decide how much Valve must pay over lack of refunds policy
3. Fallout 4 mods are coming to PlayStation 4 after all: Bethesda announces detente with Sony; patch coming this week
4. Fan-made Pokemon Uranium and AM2R cut from The Game Awards nominees
5. Two Nintendo-themed fan games have been locked out of The Game Awards: Nominations revoked for games that were previous targets of Nintendo’s legal ire.
6. Report: Riot Games partnering with MLBAM for $90M streaming deal
7. Riot looks to finalize eSports streaming deal with MLB – report: Major League Baseball Advanced Media’s tech unit may buy eSports streaming rights for $200m
8. Amazon launches eSports tournament for casual mobile games: Champions of Fire Invitational set for December 2nd
9. How the growth of esports compares to traditional sports trends
10. Why Every Esports Player Needs a Contract (Pete Lewin)
11. I came in 35th in a professional (e-)race and you can, too: As e-sports at large grows, e-racing is quietly picking up speed, too.
12. GameStop sales down as blockbuster franchises fail to deliver at retail
13. Voice Actor Union Pickets Ratchet & Clank Dev, as Strike Continues: 400+ people picketed at Insomniac Games today.
14. Android users spend more time playing games than iOS users, says Unity report
15. Zelnick: Annual releases burn out franchises – Take-Two CEO says publisher doesn’t exhaust its IP the way its rivals do, aims to have at least one blockbuster launch per year
16. How clones and copycats shaped the Brazilian games industry
17. Blocked From Attending Last Year, Hideo Kojima to Receive Award Next Month: The Metal Gear Solid creator was reportedly prevented from attending by Konami’s lawyers.
18. On Breitbart, Stephen Bannon, and the Question of “Does Gamergate Have Anything to Do With Trump?”
19. Tomb Raider and the clash between story and violence in games
20. DIGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of Digra and Fdg: 65 Articles or Papers
21. Electronic Arts Unveils New Policy For Marking YouTube Videos As ‘Supported’ Or ‘Advertisement’
22. Games Industry Should Do More For Charity – Harris: Democracy 3 Developer Hoping “To Shame Some Bigger Companies” By Donating 12 Days Of Sales To War Child

DIGITAL

1. Montreal musician wins small claim against record labels
2. Montreal rapper wins fight against major label over collaboration with Kendrick Lamar
3. Twitter Defeats ISIS “Material Support” Lawsuit Again–Fields v. Twitter (Eric Goldman)
4. Court (Again) Tosses Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Twitter Accountable For ISIS Terrorism
5. How The 2016 Election Blew Up In Facebook’s Face: As Facebook attempted to capture the fast-moving energy of the news cycle from Twitter, and shied away from policing political content, it created a system that played to confirmation bias and set the stage for fake news.
6. Twitter reminds everyone it won’t cooperate with government or police surveillance: Twitter doesn’t want third parties spying on its users.
7. Twitter Says Its API Can’t Be Used For Surveillance, But What Does It Think The FBI’s Going To Do With It?
8. Obama wades in on Facebook fake news spat, warns “democracy will break down”: Zuckerberg on the defence as finger of blame for Trump is pointed at social media.
9. Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s fake news: We’re working on it – NYT opines: Zuckerberg has let “liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
10. Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say
11. This infamous troll is almost certain his fake Facebook news helped Trump get elected
12. Most Students Don’t Know When News Is Fake, Stanford Study Finds: Teens absorb social media news without considering the source; parents can teach research skills and skepticism
13. How tech and media can fight fake news
14. Yes, There’s Lots Of Fake News On Facebook, But Is It Really Changing Anyone’s Mind?
15. It’s time to get rid of the Facebook “news feed,” because it’s not news: Fake news didn’t throw the election. It was a symptom, not a cause.
16. China Uses US Concern Over Fake News To Push For More Control Of The Internet
17. Beware of Data Mining
18. Facebook, China, Fake News And The Slippery Slope Of Censorship
19. The shift in media’s business model played a critical role in Trump’s victory
20. Why Twitter’s Alt-Right Banning Campaign Will Become The Alt-Right’s Best Recruitment Tool
21. Russia Orders LinkedIn’s Service To Be Blocked, Supposedly For Failing To Store Personal Data Locally
22. Germany Wants To Hold Facebook Criminally Liable If It Doesn’t Find & Delete ‘Hate’ Speech
23. Fixing Discrimination in Online Marketplaces
24. Federal Judge Now Taking A Closer Look At Bogus Libel Lawsuits Filed By Unscrupulous Reputation Management Companies
25. Woman Sues Google Because SEO Guy Wrote A Mean Blog About Her Company
26. You Are More Likely to Survive a Plane Crash than Click a Banner Ad: You’ll probably win the lottery and have twins before you click a banner ad
27. Warner Bros. Now Wholly Owns YouTuber Network Machinima: Studio investing heavily in YouTube.
28. More Thoughts On Trump’s Technology And Innovation Policies — It All Goes Back To Freedom Of Speech
29. Netflix 4K streaming comes to the PC—but it needs Kaby Lake CPU: You will also need latest version of Windows 10, Edge browser to get 4K video.
30. Trump says he’s going to get Apple to “build a big plant” in US: “We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.”
31. New federal guidelines seek to lock out apps on drivers’ phones: Gov’t believes better pairing and a simplified driver mode could improve safety.
32. Therapy’s Digital Disconnect: Some digital natives struggle with a psychological culture that they say doesn’t understand the effects of life in the internet age

CREATIVITY

1. Court Dismisses $1 Billion Copyright Claim Against Getty
2. The CJEU decision in Soulier: what does it mean for laws other than the French one on out-of-print books?
3. Judge Allows Bid to Free “We Shall Overcome” From Copyright
4. Ridiculous Hot News And Copyright Battles As World Chess Seeks To Block Others From Broadcasting Moves
5. Star Trek fan film says CBS and Paramount don’t own “the idea of Star Trek”: Axanar calls Prelude to Axanar a “mockumentary,“ offers to change film script.
6. How Reality TV Made Donald Trump President
7. Trump’s Constant Whining About The NY Times Isn’t Just Bad For The First Amendment
8. Gone To Pot: The Toronto Maple Leafs And Snoop D-Oh-Double-G In Trademark Spat
9. Japan’s Universal Entertainment loses defamation appeal against Reuters
10. ‘Love & Hip Hop’ creators win dismissal of copyright lawsuit
11. ASA bans Heinz Beanz’s Can Song advert for safety concerns: Watchdog rules can-drumming commercial encourages potentially dangerous behaviour in viewers copying it
12. Plaintiffs’ Law Firm Can Reference Targeted Business’ Name In Ad Copy–McHugh Fuller v. Pruitt (Eric Goldman)
13. Librarians, Archivists, Call On WIPO Members To Create Safe Harbour Against Copyright Liability
14. The Year Disney Started to Take Diversity Seriously: From Moana to Queen of Katwe, the studio has become more inclusive than ever.
15. It only took 17 years: Metallica’s full catalog is now on Napster
16. Tidal Claims Exclusive Streaming Rights to Prince Catalogue
17. Truthful report about injunction not misleading, even if injunction shouldn’t have been issued (Rebecca Tushnet)
18. Incidental Intellectual Property (Brian L. Frye)
19. Introduction: Values, Questions, and Methods in Intellectual Property (Jeremy Sheff)
20. Richard Prince May Offer the SDNY Another Chance to Define Transformative Use of a Work
21. Looks Are Not Everything; Professor Amy Adler’s Future of Art

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Goliath won: Judge sides with Bell in VMedia battle over future of TV – Ruling cites VMedia’s ‘aggressive business tactics’ in awarding $150,000 in costs
2. VMedia loses legal battle with Bell over new TV streaming service, ordered to pay $150,000
3. Why Navdeep Bains and Melanie Joly Are on a Collision Course on Digital Policy (Michael Geist)
4. Why We Need the CBC as an Ad-Free Digital News Competitor (Michael Geist)
5. Cable’s Broadband Monopoly Is Becoming Stronger Than Ever
6. FCC Announces MOU with Canadian Counterpart to Combat Robocalls, Issues Enforcement Advisory on Automated Texts Tom Wheeler urges Trump to protect consumers, not corporations: FCC chair proud of legacy, but major initiatives could be reversed under Trump.
7. Trump, GOP Prepare To Gut FCC Boss Tom Wheeler’s Populist Reforms…Under The False Banner Of Populist Reform
8. Fox News Had To Explain To Trump’s Attorney Why Killing Megyn Kelly Would Be A Bad Thing, Politically
9. Woman sexually assaulted by man claiming to be Bell employee: Incident happened Friday night in the east end, say Toronto police
10. AT&T defends DirecTV’s data cap exemption in net neutrality case: FCC has allowed data cap exemptions to spread without issuing clear guidelines.
11. AT&T Tells FCC That Giving Its Own Content An Unfair Market Advantage Is Good For Consumers
12. Charter’s Mega Merger Results In Higher Prices, Slower Speeds, And Worse Customer Support Than Ever
13. The FCC Releases Final Consumer Broadband Privacy Rules

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. After All That, E-Voting Experts Suggest Voting Machines May Have Been Hacked For Trump
2. Supreme Court of Canada weighs in on “implied consent” under PIPEDA (Teresa Scassa)
3. Supreme Court Of Canada Rules With A Bout Of Common Sense In Interpreting Privacy Laws
4. Powerful backdoor/rootkit found preinstalled on 3 million Android phones: Firmware that actively tries to hide itself allows attackers to install apps as root.
5. Canadians want judicial oversight of any new digital snooping powers for police: Poll
6. RCMP is overstating Canada’s ‘surveillance lag’: The RCMP lobbying efforts paint an image of crisis where none exists. Surveillance capacities of other countries are overstated, while the formidable powers already available to Canadian agencies are disregarded.
7. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper resigns: Clapper, asked directly if NSA collected data on Americans, said it didn’t.
8. President Obama Will Soon Turn Over the Keys to the Surveillance State to President-Elect Trump
9. Parliament Passes Snooper’s Charter, Opens Up Citizens To Whole New Levels Of Domestic Surviellance
10. GCHQ may be forced to respond to FoI requests after European court ruling: European Court of Human Rights’ judgment says citizens have right to obtain gov’t info.
11. Going with the flow: The global battle for your personal data: Should governments be allowed to impose localisation requirements to protect privacy?
12. Trump’s pick for CIA director has called for Snowden’s execution: Gen. Michael Flynn will be key adviser, Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
13. Trump’s Picks For AG & CIA Happy To Undermine Civil Liberties, Increase Surveillance
14. Massachusetts Police Dept. Files DMCA Takedowns On News Stories Using Mugshots Taken By Police
15. Journalists report Google warnings about ‘government-backed attackers’
16. Google warns journalists and professors: Your account is under attack: A flurry of social media reports suggests a major hacking campaign has been uncovered.
17. Court Rejects Effort To De-Index Search Results–Manchanda v. Google (Eric Goldman)
18. Facebook halts WhatsApp data sharing across Europe over privacy concerns: But Facebook disputes UK and Germany claims, insists it complies with data law.
19. Firefox Focus: new app offers very private browsing – Mozilla is back with a second try at mobile browsing with a new browser, which hopes to be the go-to for iPhone users
20. Companies Keep Asking Us To Track You; We’d Rather You Be Protected From Tracking
21. Apple Uploading Call Data, Including From Third-Party Call Apps, To Users’ iCloud Accounts
22. Why Spy on Reporters When You Can Spy on CEOs?
23. Tor phone is antidote to Google “hostility” over Android, says developer: An Android phone hardened for privacy and security that plays Google at its own game.
24. Obama says he can’t pardon Snowden: Snowden may be loved in Germany, but US lawmakers aren’t keen on forgiveness.
25. Hacking into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: The CFAA at 30 (The George Washington Law Review)

jon

GAMES

1. Mean Girls v. The Right of Publicity: Lessons Learned From the Lohan and Gravano Lawsuits
2. Ubisoft execs accused of insider trading, publisher denies claims: Five executives, including Montreal CEO, allegedly sold stocks ahead of delay announcements
3. PSN user gets suspended for sharing in-game Watch Dogs 2 nudity: Ubisoft promises to patch out some of the offending naughty bits.
4. Amazon ordered to issue refunds for children’s IAP: The e-tailer will set up a year-long process to reimburse parents for in-app purchases their children made without permission
5. EA puts influencers in check with disclosure rules for sponsored content: It includes two new hashtags and watermarks
6. EA wants to ensure that streamers disclose sponsorships: The publisher is requiring influencers to use hashtags and watermarks on their content
7. EA CEO stresses diversity and representation in games: “If you’re going to make games for a community, you have to have a true representation of that community,” says Andrew Wilson
8. ‘Why we won’t just log off’: Online harassment in the game industry
9. Your Life Will Be A Video Game (Andrew Wilson)
10. Video games Trump hate
11. Breaking Down Blizzard’s New Overwatch League For 2017
12. Justice O’Connor Has An ‘Educational’ Video Game About Elections And It’s Entirely Wrong
13. EA cautious over Nintendo Switch potential: Publisher says it is committed to bringing ‘one or two’ of its biggest IP to the platform
14. Why Virtual Sports Games Will Drive the Next Wave of Growth for Esports: We’re past the point of debating whether esports is “here” or not. It’s time to take a look why and how virtual sports games will drive the next phase of growth of this global phenomenon.
15. 14% of Americans over 13 follow eSports – Nielsen: Overwatch appeals to a younger demographic than other eSports titles
16. Dishonored 2 Is One of the Most Fascinating Game Worlds Ever
17. ‘Tomb Raider’ Turns 20: The Complex Legacy of Lara Croft
18. D&D inducted into Toy Hall of Fame, lauded for its influence on video games

DIGITAL

1. Facebook Acts to Restore Trust After Overstating Video Views
2. Here’s How Facebook Actually Won Trump the Presidency
3. Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate: A BuzzFeed News analysis found that three big right-wing Facebook pages published false or misleading information 38% of the time during the period analyzed, and three large left-wing pages did so in nearly 20% of posts.
4. How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News: BuzzFeed News identified more than 100 pro-Trump websites being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
5. Obama: Fake news on Facebook is creating a ‘dust cloud of nonsense’
6. Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?: The company is being accused of abdicating its responsibility to clamp down on fake news stories and counter the echo chamber that defined this election 
7. Facebook Alone Didn’t Create Trump—The Click Economy Did
8. Facebook’s Fight Against Fake News Was Undercut by Fear of Conservative Backlash
9. Zuckerberg Hits Back: Don’t Blame Facebook For Donald Trump – Facebook is struggling to distance itself from Trump, even as its largest shareholder is leaning in.
10. Mark Zuckerberg vows more action to tackle fake news on Facebook: Facebook chief acknowledges problem but continues to argue that spread of hoax stories on the social network did not influence US election 
11. Zuckerberg claims just 1% of Facebook posts carry fake news: Facebook boss on defensive about misinformation in the wake of Trump’s election.
12. Facebook won’t allow racially targeted ads for jobs, housing: Change comes after reporters bought their own discriminatory housing ad last month.
13. Facebook is telling everyone that they’re dead
14. Edward Snowden just told us we should rely less on Facebook for news. This is why.
15. Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial (Zeynep Tufekci)
16. The Real Problem Behind the Fake News: Facebook is under fire for spreading falsehoods. But it’s getting away with a bigger lie.
17. How Twitter bots helped Donald Trump win the US presidential election: What happens when biased robots with unknown agendas join the online conversation?
18. Twitter is finally taking abuse seriously
19. Twitter bots can reduce racist slurs—if people think the bots are white: Results of two-month study revealed on same day as new Twitter “muting” updates.
20. Don’t Fret About Fake Political News
21. Sony Wants To Patent A System For Scoring Journalists’ ‘Veracity’
22. Will Cutting Off Ads From Google & Facebook Really Stop Fake News?
23. Teaching an Algorithm to Understand Right and Wrong
24. Court Dismisses Anti-Muslim Troll Pam Geller’s Lawsuit Against The DOJ For Facebook’s Moderating Actions
25. White nationalist says losing Twitter account was a “digital execution”: Company won’t say why it finally felt some alt-right accounts crossed the line.
26. How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History: Putin, Wikileaks, The Nsa And The Dnc Email Fiasco That Gave Trump And Clinton Another Reason To Be At Odds.
27. E-books can be lent by libraries just like normal books, rules EU’s top court: CJEU says it only applies to one copy at a time; must be obtained legally.
28. CJEU on e-lending: The right to lend books includes the right to lend electronic books.
29. Top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide: October 2016
30. Maybe Spotify Isn’t Killing The Music Industry After All
31. Google responds in EU antitrust case: “Android hasn’t hurt competition” – Search giant faces $7.4 billion fine if found to have blocked competitors in the market.
32. Federal Court affirms “right to read” in paywall copyright case (Teresa Scassa)
33. Federal Court Rules Against Blacklock’s: Business Models Always Subject to Copyright Fair Dealing Rights (Michael Geist)
34. Yelp avoids liability for allegedly biased filter yet again: Albert v. Yelp, Inc., 44 Media L. Rep. 2357 Cal. Ct. App. July 15, 2016 (Rebecca Tushnet)
35. Section 230 Doesn’t Protect Amazon From Products Liability Claims–Mcdonald v. LG
36. Section 230 Ruling Against Airbnb Puts All Online Marketplaces At Risk–AirBNB v. San Francisco (Eric Goldman)
37. Now The Seventh Circuit Is Sh—ing On Section 230–Huon V. Denton (Eric Goldman)
38. Navy denies it pirated 558K copies of software, says contractor consented: Military admits widespread install, but says its 38 licenses were not “limited.”
39. Apple tax case: Ireland to formally appeal EU state aid ruling – Irish government says it “fundamentally disagrees” with Brussels’ judgment.
40. The Spanish Government The Latest To Try To Ban Memes
41. Gambling sites eyeballed by UK data watchdog over spam texts: ICO urges Brits to dob in repeat offenders as it pens missive to 400 gambling firms.
42. Microsoft offers antitrust concessions to EU over LinkedIn purchase: Salesforce claims Microsoft’s planned buyout of LinkedIn is an unfair data grab.
43. Kaspersky accuses Microsoft of anticompetitive bundling of antivirus software: In some situations, Windows 10 will disable third party anti-malware products.
44. Network security company CEO resigns after “joking” about killing Trump: PacketSled’s Matt Harrigan declares on Facebook, “Bring it, Secret Service.”
45. Take Note: Copyright Troll Gets Stiff Response From Someone It Tried To Bully, Immediately Runs Away
46. CNN Uses Copyright To Block Viral Clip Of Van Jones’ Impassioned Statement
47. U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves
48. There’s Legal Intrigue at the World Chess Match
49. How to build a more civil internet
50. New study from Packet Clearing House and CIRA looks at Canadian Internet traffic patterns
51. Indiegogo follows in Fig’s footsteps by allowing equity crowdfunding
52. A digital levy on Google and Facebook isn’t the answer to UK newspaper woes – Op-ed: You want good journalism? Time to start paying for it.
53. BuzzFeed’s pro tennis investigation displays ethical dilemmas of data journalism
54. Conflict Of Laws Has Caught Up With Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley Needs To Catch Up On Conflict Of Laws 
55. PK/EFF/CDT Amicus Brief in BMG v. Cox

CREATIVITY

1. Blacklock’s Fails in Copyright Litigation Against the Government of Canada – Fair Dealing is Upheld and Even Extended
2. U.S. Justice Department to appeal music licensing court loss
3. Just before trial, The Turtles settle copyright suit against Sirius XM
4. Copyright case against Bieber, Usher should be dismissed – judge
5. Internet Giants Warn of Mass User Terminations If Recent Appellate Ruling Left Untouched: A 2nd Circuit rehearing is demanded in the MP3Tunes case.
6. Music Composer For ‘A Clockwork Orange’ Sues Australian Who Created ‘A Trumpwork Orange’ Parody Trailer
7. Donald Trump Parody Results in Clockwork Orange Copyright Suit
8. Examining Trump’s History: The New President And Trademark Rights
9. China Finds Something Else To Regulate, Brings In Its First Law For The Film Industry
10. IMDb Sues The State Of California Over New ‘Ageism’ Law
11. Dr. Seuss estate sues over Star Trek“mashup” book: Is it fair use? “We may spend time… proving it to people in black robes.”
12. Dr Seuss estate sues Star Trek writer over comic book
13. One Fish Two Fish, We Will Sue Fish: Seuss Lawyers Hop On Pop Art
14. EU Court Of Justice Says The Shape Of Rubik’s Cube Should Not Be Trademarked
15. French law on digital versions of out-of-print books flouts EU directive: Ruling could have big impact on copyright legislation across the 28-member-state bloc.
16. Dispute Over Cheerleader Uniforms Could Have a Chilling Effect on Cosplay 
17. Toto, I Don’t Think We’re In The Public Domain Anymore
18. Can Artists Stop Brands from Using Their Lyrics?: When an artist’s lyrics go viral, they often aren’t the only ones to cash in on the craze.
19. Should a Work in the Public Domain Be Able to Become a Trademark?
20. Term of protection of copyright in the EU is not set to revive rights that were in the public domain
21. The 7 Most Unfortunate Brand Names Ever Trademarked
22. Trump Victory May Kill the TPP, But Reopening NAFTA Could Bring Back the Same IP Demands (Michael Geist)
23. Using others’ product photos to advertise same product isn’t fair use: Minka Lighting, Inc. v. Bath Kitchen Decor, 2015 WL 12743863 C.D. Cal. Feb. 13, 2015 (Rebecca Tushnet)
24. Jeffrey Katzenberg Pens Open Letter to Hollywood After Trump Victory: One of the industry’s Democratic leaders, the Hillary Clinton supporter writes for THR about her “heart-wrenching” loss and his cautious optimism: “Whatever path President-elect Trump chooses, the way of Candidate Trump will not be our way.”

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. The Billion Dollar Question: How to Pay for Melanie Joly’s Digital Cancon Plans (Michael Geist)
2. Trump and net neutrality: How Republicans can make the rules go away – Republican FCC or Congress could get rid of Title II and net neutrality rules.
3. GOP tells FCC to just stop what it’s doing until Trump is inaugurated: Set-top box rules and other changes could be dead in Obama’s final months.
4. Trump’s FCC: Tom Wheeler to be replaced, set-top box reform could be dead
5. Liberty Media CEO Says Trump Likely “Positive” for Cable Regulation, Sees Time Warner Deal Approval
6. Time Warner Cable Sued Again Over Sneaky Hidden Fees…By Plaintiff Not Seeking Monetary Damages
7. AT&T zero-rating of DirecTV data may violate net neutrality, FCC says: AT&T exempts its video from caps, charges other companies for same treatment.
8. Will Skinny Bundles Like AT&T’s DirecTV Now Destroy Pay TV?
9. Too Little Too Late: FCC Finally Realizes AT&T’s Zero Rating Is Anti-Competitive
10. Comcast suspends data caps—but only in Maine
11. Charter customer sues over hidden fees, claims “massive billing fraud” – Lawsuit: Charter falsely advertises lower prices without mentioning extra fees.
12. Charter Says Its Sneaky, Unnecessary Fees Are A Consumer Benefit
13. Premier League scores in latest dispute with pub broadcasting football matches 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Pleading the Case: How the RCMP Fails to Justify Calls for New Investigatory Powers
2. Russian Hackers Launch Targeted Cyberattacks Hours After Trump’s Win
3. Pre-installed phone software transmitted user information to China
4. Long Time Mass Surveillance Defenders Freak Out Now That Trump Will Have Control
5. VP Elect Mike Pence Goes To Court To Keep His Emails Secret
6. Security News This Week: What Trump’s Win Means for Cybersecurity
7. Data-Driven Policing Still Problematic; Now Being Used By Government Agencies For Revenue Generation
8. Officer charged with manslaughter in live-streamed death of motorist: Dying man’s final words, prosecutor said, were “I wasn’t reaching for it.”
9. Yahoo admits some staff knew of mega breach in 2014: Independent committee probes who knew what when as more hacker claims surface.
10. FBI operated 23 Tor-hidden child porn sites, deployed malware from them
11. Tesco Bank reimburses £2.5 million to 9,000 customers after attack: Bank reinstates online current account transactions as NCA and GCHQ hunt culprits.
12. Despite Trump Fears, Snowden Sees a Hopeful Future
13. Argentina Orders Telecoms To Create A Permanent Database Of All Mobile Phone Users
14. This Year’s Five Must-Read Privacy Papers: The Future of Privacy Forum Announces Recipients of Annual Privacy Award
15. Privacy is an essentially contested concept: a multi-dimensional analytic for mapping privacy (Deirdre Mulligan, Colin Koopman & Nick Doty)

jon

GAMES

1. Fatal ‘Pokemon Go’ accident spurs police to ask Niantic for game-disabling function
2. New York Times publishes U.S. voter suppression op-ed in video game form
3. Football Manager 2017 review: Thanks to Brexit, it’s the deepest game yet – This is a game that doesn’t just entertain, but makes a political statement too.
4. CCP: Outlawing in-game gambling protects the EVE Online experience
5. First eSports arbitration court opened by WESA
6. An Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Esports (and WESA’s Arbitration Court)
7. Cleveland Cavaliers’ Dan Gilbert, Miami Dolphins’ Stephen Ross Continue Pursuit Of eSports Teams
8. Ted Leonsis on Team Liquid purchase and the future of esports: “I do believe this will be as mainstream as Hollywood and the NBA.”
9. Blizzard’s Overwatch eSports league to emphasise financial stability: Teams will be based in specific cities, with players guaranteed a minimum salary and benefits
10. Zynga CEO: I’ll never go back to console and PC
11. Vivendi increases Ubisoft stake to 24%: Media giant continues interest in Assassin’s Creed publisher
12. Vivendi now owns nearly 25% of Ubisoft as it continues to snap up shares
13. Profits falter at Square Enix despite rising game sales
14. Zynga reports a Q3 loss, with slots and poker games as top earners
15. Blizzard powers Activision Blizzard results: Revenues from Warcraft maker nearly double year-over-year as Call of Duty and Skylanders label sees business slip 36%
16. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood dev buys fashion game specialist for $45.5M
17. New York Times publishes U.S. voter suppression op-ed in video game form
18. PS4 Pro with HDR and 4K: “The biggest improvement since B&W went colour”: Devs talk PS4 Pro HDR and 4K upgrades for GT Sport, Nioh, and For Honor.
19. Google DeepMind’s next gaming challenge: can AI beat Starcraft II? – Blizzard and DeepMind are releasing an open research environment
20. 167 games received tax relief from UK Government last year: Number of games utilising UK tax support jumps 117 percent
21. Games Industry post-Brexit: Who Will Profit?: Cutting corporation tax to counter the effects of leaving the EU only helps the richest
22. Hook Turn: How the Aussie game industry turned a corner
23. Video Games Are Boring: Maybe everything we know is wrong, says Brie Code
24. NRA offers new versions of kids games, including ‘Target Land’ take on ‘Candy Land’ 
25. Virtual realty: can a computer game turn you into an ‘evil’ property developer? – Delaying repairs to save money and dehumanising your tenants … Adam Forrest becomes a virtual landlord and learns some interesting – and depressing – lessons

DIGITAL

1. EMI Christian Music Group, Inc. v. MP3tunes, LLC
2. What The Second Circuit Just Got Wrong About The DMCA In EMI v. MP3Tunes (Annemarie Bridy)
3. Court Orders Landmark Mass Blocking of 152 Pirate Sites
4. Adobe Asked Google To Censor Techdirt’s Story On How Adobe’s DRM Got Cracked
5. Google Loses Two Section 230(C)(2) Rulings–Spy Phone v. Google And Darnaa v. Google
6. TiVo’s “TV Guide” patents are DOA at appeals court: TiVo and Rovi made big bets on software patents. They haven’t worked out.
7. The cruelty of Facebook’s algorithmic newsfeed
8. Facebook is harming our democracy, and Mark Zuckerberg needs to do something about it
9. Facebook users sue over alleged racial discrimination in housing, job ads – Spokeswoman: “Multicultural marketing… helps brands reach audiences.”
10. HUD Has ‘Serious Concerns’ About Facebook’s Ethnic Targeting: Federal officials are taking a close look at a sales practice that allows advertisers on the social network to include or exclude people who have an “affinity” with specific ethnic groups.
11. Facebook leadership faces German lawsuit for failing to remove hate speech
12. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp blocked in Turkey: Internet access in Turkey restricted after political arrests, says monitoring group.
13. Google Rebuts Antitrust Claims in Europe
14. Google refutes EU antitrust charges on comparison shopping, AdSense: Original complainant Foundem counters Google’s claims on Amazon, eBay competition.
15. Why Is Your Bigoted, Luddite Uncle Crafting Internet Policy In Europe?
16. Court Upholds Airbnb’s Terms Of Service–Selden v. Airbnb (Eric Goldman)
17. Is hyperlinking copyright infringement? EU vs. US
18. Finally Come The Calls In Major Media To Rethink Canada’s ‘Notice And Notice’ Copyright System
19. Canadians are getting “blackmailed” by US copyright trolls
20. TPP at odds with Australian copyright law: Law Council – The intellectual property rights chapter of the TPP raises issues of complexity and inconsistency with domestic law and other treaties, with Open Source Australia saying it will stymie innovation.
21. The Copyright Law Behind a $600M Startup and Millennials’ Favorite Form of Expression
22. Adobe Asked Google To Censor Techdirt’s Story On How Adobe’s DRM Got Cracked
23. Judge Refuses To Block NY No-Selfie Ballot Law Because It Would ‘Create Havoc To Not Enforce It’
24. Judges in New York, California won’t halt ban on ballot selfies: Overturning law this close to Nov. 8 is a “recipe for delays and a disorderly election.”
25. Bank halts online transactions after money stolen from 20,000 accounts: Tesco Banks promises to issue refunds, track down culprits.
26. Stop junk food ads on kids’ apps – WHO
27. Japan: Bitcoin to Be Regulated
28. Facebook video pays off: Mark Zuckerberg’s drive to “put video first” is also putting money in Facebook’s pockets. The more organic videos Facebook users watch, the more high-priced video ads Facebook can slip into the feed. Now Facebook’s strategy around auto-play video, paying Live content producers and offering more creative tools is helping to propel its massive revenue growth.
29. Facebook’s “Free” Internet Will Harm Low-Income Consumers
30. Clicks vs. Satisfaction: How media went for the click and forgot about you
31. The “Facebook impact” on elections is real, and significant—just look at Hong Kong’s last vote
32. The age of vitriol: Edward Luce on US politics and social media – Social media is enabling prejudice to slip back into the mainstream. As the US goes to the polls, what does this mean for democracy?
33. Election Day CyberFest: Hackers, Hacking, ‘Journalism,’ The FBI, And Jiveass Baloney
34. Here’s The Truth: Shiva Ayyadurai Didn’t Invent Email
35. Actual Creators Of Email Not At All Happy The Fake Creator Of Email Got Paid For His Bogus Claim
36. Expert: When an AI Invents Something, It Should be Credited as the Inventor
37. Mark Cuban Pulls Credentials Of Two Human Reporters For Mavs Games To Stave Off Robot Journalist Apocalypse
38. Inside Magic Leap, The Secretive $4.5 Billion Startup Changing Computing Forever
39. Is The Internet Changing Democracy As We Know It? (Andres Guadamuz)
40. Utopia?: A Technologically Determined World of Frictionless Transactions, Optimized Production, and Maximal Happiness (Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger)

CREATIVITY

1. Rolling Stone gets just what it deserves
2. The German Bundesgerichtshof changes its concept of parody following CJEU Deckmyn v. Vrijheidsfonds/ Vandersteen
3. Firing journalists won’t save the media: Media in the Age of Trump
4. New pro-Donald Trump ad appeals to NFL fans who favor keeping Redskins name
5. Wall Street Journal Error Filled Editorial Buys Into Ridiculous Copyright Office Conspiracy Theory
6. U.S.-China Hollywood Panel: Without Chinese Elements “It Does Not Meet Our Standards”
7. Drone Journalism: Cleared for Take-off
8. Jury Balks At Trademark Claim Against Ex-Member Of Rock Group Boston
9. Tattoo Copyright Cases Give an Inkling of What’s to Come 
10. The Missing Public Voice: My Comments on the Copyright Board at the Senate Banking Committee (Michael Geist)
11. The Copyright Board of Canada: A Regulator Lacking a Theory of Regulation (Ariel Katz)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Bombshell from Megyn Kelly: Ex-Fox News boss Roger Ailes offered career boosts for ‘sexual favors’
2. DOJ Sues DirecTV, Calling It A ‘Ringleader’ of Collusion Over Regional Sports Programming
3. Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger: But Trump’s promise to block the merger won’t necessarily be fulfilled.
4. Court blocks FCC attempt to cap prison phone rates
5. The NFL Was a Sure Thing for TV Networks. Until Now: Why are football ratings down? Cord cutters. And smartphones. And the election, concussions, Kaepernick, global warming …
6. Despite ESPN Whining, Nielsen Confirms Historic Subscriber Losses For Channel
7. Netflix arrives on Comcast TV boxes, won’t be exempt from data cap: Comcast brings Netflix video to X1 boxes nationwide this week.
8. In Wake Of Trump Win, ISPs Are Already Laying The Groundwork For Gutting Net Neutrality
9. Colorado Voters Continue To Shoot Down Awful Comcast-Written Protectionist State Law
10. What is Canadian content?
11. CBC Threatens Podcast Apps For Letting People Listen To CBC Podcasts
12. Viacom’s Earnings Plunge After Battle for Control
13. The World’s Telecoms Are Under Threat From All Sides

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Chinese Government Implements Cybersecurity Law Designed To Spy On Citizens, Quell Dissent
2. In scathing ruling, Federal Court says CSIS bulk data collection illegal
3. Court Finds Canadian Spy Agency Illegally Collected Data In Bulk For More Than A Decade
4. Lost Confidence: Why Trust in Canadian Surveillance Agencies Has Been Irreparably Harmed (Michael Geist)
5. What CSIS Did Wrong With Your Data: Canadians can no longer be confident that security intelligence agencies are respecting our rights and freedoms (Michael Geist)
6. Media surveillance highlights privacy risk to all Canadians (Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
7. CSIS And The Metadata Muddle Pt 1: What Is This Case Really About? (Craig Forcese)
8. CSIS And The Metadata Muddle Pt 2: On Secret Law, Courts And The Rule Of Law (Craig Forcese)
9. Dissecting CSIS’ Statement Concerning Indefinite Metadata Retention
10. How the Seattle Police Secretly—and Illegally—Purchased a Tool for Tracking Your Social Media Posts
11. Geofeedia, In Damage Control Mode, Issues Bogus DMCA Over Brochure Posted By Reporter
12. Firm linked to social media surveillance loses data access
13. France to create ID database holding biometric data of 60 million citizens: Pushed through by decree on a national holiday, no democratic debate needed…
14. A year of fragmented censorship across Chinese live streaming applications
15. Chinese Police Dub Censorship Circumvention Tools As ‘Terrorist Software’
16. US Officials ‘Strategically Leak’ That US Is Ready To Hack Russia If It Interferes With Election
17. If The FBI Can’t Stop All These Leaks About An Investigation, Why Would it Be Able To Keep Encryption Backdoor Secret?
18. Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin and Mio fitness bands criticized for privacy failings
19. Hacker sentenced to 29 months in devious Photobucket image plot: “Yes, seduced by money. I will not lie,” defendant tells judge.
20. Confused Reporter Doubles Down On Bogus Trump/Russian Server Story With ‘I’m Just Asking Questions’ Non-Apology
21. Rogue FBI Twitter Bot dumps months of FOIAs, causing controversy: Software update flooded feed with already-released Clinton e-mail, Foundation doc links.
22. Man names Wi-Fi network “Daesh 21,” prosecuted under French anti-terror law: New law forbids “public praise” of terrorism, punishable by up to 7 years in prison.
23. How to block the ultrasonic signals you didn’t know were tracking you: Your phone can talk to advertisers beyond your back, beyond your audible spectrum.
24. This evil office printer hijacks your cellphone connection: It could eavesdrop on both voice calls and SMS messages.
25. Why the Privacy Shield may survive (for now)
26. Ex-Playmate faces charges for posting secret nude photo of woman on Snapchat: Dani Mathers allegedly wrote: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”

jon

GAMES

1. Sega/Steam Took Down A Bunch Of Legitimate Steam Workshop Mods Over Copyright Concerns
2. Steam bans misleading “bullshots” from its product pages: Concept art and pre-rendered shots no longer allowed on online storefront.
3. Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game
4. Skyrim Publisher Gives Up on Game Reviews—and It Won’t Be the Only One
5. How working on gross, violent games can mess with developers
6. What drives game developers to crunch?
7. No, Hello Games didn’t admit that No Man’s Sky was a mistake: A confusing morning of conflicting reports and Twitter hacking drama.
8. More proof shows Hollywood insiders leaking movies on torrent sites: Talent agency says “sharing of award screeners is commonplace” in Hollywood.
9. Star Trek Online’s PS4 and Xbox One Version Passes 1 Million Players: Free-to-play MMO reaches new heights on consoles.
10. THQ Nordic purchases NovaLogic’s assets: The Delta Force series and other military-themed titles join the publisher’s roster of “partly forgotten, but classic game IPs”
11. Big Telecom versus Video Games: Big Implications
12. Mobile gaming isn’t so mobile: New survey from PayPal and SuperData shows that most people play mobile games in the bedroom, living room or bathroom
13. Latin America will generate $4.1bn in game revenues this year – Newzoo: Console market in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico rising rapidly
14. Welcome to the New Era: Games as Media: SuperData’s Joost van Dreunen sees games, like other entertainment, being more highly targeted by advertisers
15. Attacking someone’s family over a video game is not acceptable’ – Miles Jacobson: The Sports Interactive boss talks angry gamers, Brexit and ‘very, very, very false’ SteamSpy data
16. Warren Spector: “I couldn’t care less about maximising profitability” – OtherSide’s resident genius gives his 4 criteria for success at Sweden Game Conference
17. Gaming’s rarest systems, carts, and collectibles can be found at this huge museum: We geeked the heck out at the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas.

DIGITAL

1. A New Internet Tax in Canada Would Keep Indigenous People Offline
2. Competition Bureau Conducts Internet Sweep Focusing on Online Reviews and Endorsements
3. Gawker and Hulk Hogan Reach $31 Million Settlement
4. Gawker Settles With Hulk Hogan, And The First Amendment Is Worse For It
5. Swedish Court: News Site Embedding A YouTube Video Guilty Of Copyright Infringement
6. Linking to unlicensed content: Swedish court applies GS Media
7. Swedish File-Sharing in Decline, Anti-Piracy Lawyer Says
8. Copyright Office Gratuitously Kills The DMCA Safe Harbor For Thousands Of Websites (Eric Goldman)
9. Another Tortured DMCA Online Safe Harbor Ruling–Emi v. MP3tunes (Eric Goldman)
10. 230 provides protection against liability, not immediately appealable immunity from suit: General Steel Domestic Sales, L.L.C. v. Chumley, No. 15-1293 (10th Cir. Nov. 1, 2016) (Rebecca Tushnet)
11. It’s Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (Even Your Car)
12. Facebook lets advertisers exclude users by race: “This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”
13. How Facebook’s Racial Segmentation Is Helping Trump Campaign Try To Suppress African American Voting
14. Trolls For Trump: Meet Mike Cernovich, the meme mastermind of the alt-right. 
15. As Standing Rock Protesters Face Down Armored Trucks, the World Watches on Facebook
16. Pepe, Nasty Women, and the Memeing of American Politics
17. Smashing the Silicon Valley patriarchy: anti-Lean In strategy puts onus on men – Instead of pressuring women in the tech industry to solve sexism, this feminist activist is teaching men how to stop biased behavior
18. A collision of Chinese manufacturing, globalization, and consumer ignorance could ruin the internet for everyone
19. NFL ‘Pleased’ With Twitter Live Streaming Deal After Five Games
20. Paying to Have and Not to Hold: We’re increasingly paying extra to get the digital version of a book or movie.
21. The Inside Story Of Vine’s Demise: Former employees paint a picture of management issues, changing strategies, and existential questions.
22. Vine’s biggest stars mourn its death — but saw it coming
23. Inside the secret meeting that changed the fate of Vine forever
24. YouTube Finally Buries The Hatchet With GEMA, Meaning People In Germany Can Watch Videos Again
25. The sound of music: Youtube and GEMA finally settle
26. Samsung’s mobile division profits collapse by 96% year-over-year: Mobile giant can’t push ahead with its “new flagship products” fast enough.
27. The Bizarre Role Reversal of Apple and Microsoft
28. Apple’s new ‘TV’ app is its way of simplifying all your streaming content: Building a “unified TV experience” under the Apple umbrella.
29. Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress: In which Wix forgets what happens when you add GPL code to your closed-source app.
30. Google Strategy Teardown: Betting The Future On AI, Cloud Services, And (Tamed) Moonshots
31. Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm; no one knows how it works: Neural networks seem good at devising crypto methods; less good at codebreaking.
32. Ransomware Is Booming and Companies Are Paying Up
33. What Last Week’s Internet Shut Down Really Means: The Internet of Things era is already here. It could take down our cities if we let it.
34. The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive: Tech companies use the insights of behaviour design to keep us returning to their products. But some of the psychologists who developed the science of persuasion are worried about how it is being used
35. Ridiculous: Nick Denton Settles Remaining Charles Harder Lawsuits, Agrees To Delete Perfectly True Stories
36. How Facebook algorithms impact democracy: Its algorithms decide what you see. And they don’t distinguish fact from fiction.
37. If Palantir really cared about diversity, it wouldn’t pay its employees like this
38. The City That Was Saved by the Internet
39. Digital Exhaustion: North American Observations (Ariel Katz)

CREATIVITY

1. Hollywood Accounting Back In Court: How Has Spinal Tap Only Earned $81 In Merchandise Sales For Its Creators?
2. Appeals Court Upholds Warner Bros.’ Legal Victory Over ‘Gone With the Wind’ Merchandise
3. Text of 8th Cir decision in Warner Bros v X One X (A.V.E.L.A.) re Use of Movie Stills
4. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars Sued Over “Uptown Funk”: Minneapolis funk band Collage claim copyright infringement
5. It’s official: Oracle will appeal its “fair use” loss against Google: Case goes back to court that held APIs are copyrighted in the first place.
6. Second Circuit Finds Use of “Who’s on First” Routine Not Transformative and Not Fair Use
7. U.S. Copyright Office Is in Turmoil Amid a Firing and Lobbying Controversy: Personality clashes and mission creep may explain it.
8. Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes
9. MPAA: EFF Just Jealous It Doesn’t Control Copyright Office Like Hollywood Does
10. Australian Teen With Wacky Mullet Sues The Media For Making A Meme Out Of His Haircut
11. ‘Citizen Journalism’ Is a Catastrophe Right Now, and It’ll Only Get Worse
12. Huge Casino Threatens Small Blues Club For Using The Word ‘Live’ In Its Name
13. Inside the Budding Trademark Battle for “Nasty Woman” Apparel
14. Understanding Michael Jordan v. Qiaodan: Historical Anomaly or Systemic Failure to Protect Chinese Consumers (English and Chinese Versions)
15. Is Paramount “Unsalvageable”?: As the Redstones figure out how to save Viacom, they need to start by turning around Paramount.
16. Advertising Standards Canada comes out with an updated Code and new guidance on testimonials and endorsements (October 2016)
17. Where can you legally take a ballot selfie on Election Day?
18. California must awkwardly defend obsolete anti-ballot selfie law: Golden State formally approved practice, but new law doesn’t take effect until 2017.
19. Anonymous Speech Is More Important Than Ever. TED Proves It
20. The AP wants to use machine learning to automate turning print stories into broadcast ones: The experiment is part of a larger effort by the news agency to incorporate automation into its journalism.
21. The WordPress-Wix Dispute
22. “Spray” the Word: Graffiti Law is a New Legal Niche
23. My Talk At Wikimedia: Copyright Impacts Everything (Mike Masnick)
24. Copyright’s Framing Problem (Margot Kaminski & Guy Rub)
25. A Free Speech Right to Trademark Protection? (Lisa Ramsey)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. CRTC slashes anti-spam fine in first review decision
2. 7 Practical Lessons from CRTC’s First CASL Enforcement Decision 
3. Canada To Debate Banning ‘Zero Rating’ This Week
4. The CRTC’s Differential Pricing Hearing: ISPs Should Not Be Picking the Internet’s Winners and Losers
5. U.S. sues DirecTV for illegal information trading during Dodgers talks
6. UK ISPs must now advertise broadband price with line rental included: Most ISPs have now moved to all-in pricing. Hooray!
7. FCC imposes ISP privacy rules and takes aim at mandatory arbitration
8. FCC Issues New Privacy Regulations for Broadband Providers 
9. US gov’t sues AT&T/DirecTV, calls it “ringleader” of collusion scheme: Dodgers games blacked out after pay-TV companies colluded, DOJ lawsuit says.
10. The Senate Summoned The Wrong Time Warner To Talk About AT&T Merger
11. AT&T’s Already Making Things Up To Get Its Massive New Merger Approved
12. AT&T, Time Warner, and What Makes Vertical Mergers Succeed
13. AT&T falsely claimed pro-Google Fiber rule is invalid, FCC says: FCC says its rules don’t preempt Louisville utility pole ordinance.
14. FCC Lends Support To Google Fiber, Louisville In Fight To Access AT&T Utility Poles
15. The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Must Be Stopped: This deal invites unfair competition and locks in our horrible access problems. (Susan Crawford)
16. EU Advocate General Declares That Hotels Don’t Need To Pay Copyright License To Have In-Room Television
17. NAB Announces Agreements with Sony and Warner to Waive Performance Complement and Other Statutory Requirements for Broadcasters Who Stream Their Signals 
18. Nielsen Forced To Pull Report Offline After It Shows ESPN Losing More Subscribers Than Ever

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. La Presse columnist says he was put under police surveillance as part of ‘attempt to intimidate’
2. Police surveillance scandal: Quebec minister calls for new probe
3. Thai Government Demands Popular Chat App Reveal Any Time Any User Insults The King
4. The FBI Seems To Be Leaking Like A Sieve Concerning Details Of Clinton Email Investigation
5. Facebook blocks insurance company’s plan to base premiums on your posts: Plan would have set fees based on excessive use of exclamation points, among other things
6. Belgian Court Fines Microsoft For Failing To Comply With Its Impossible Order
7. Slapped wrists for “privacy law breakers” Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin, and Mio: Apps should be bound by same rules as physical products, complains Norway watchdog.
8. Digital Rights Ireland files challenge to EU-US data pact: Privacy Shield came into force two months ago after previous framework ruled illegal
9. Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?: This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting.
10. How Despots Use Twitter to Hunt Dissidents: Twitter’s ‘firehose’ of a half billion tweets a day is incredibly valuable—and just as dangerous.
11. Why Wikipedia Is Worried About Global ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Delistings
12. UK ICO recommends personal liability of directors for breaches of data protection law
13. Crimes of the future: Predictive policing uses algorithms to analyse data and cut crime. But does it really work, and should it be trusted?
14. New leak may show if you were hacked by the NSA: Shadow Brokers identifies hundreds of organizations it claims were hacked by NSA.
15. A Gaping Hole in Consumer Privacy Protection Law
16. Online Tracking: A 1-million-site Measurement and Analysis (Steven Englehardt & Arvind Narayanan

jon

GAMES

1. Game studio hits Hasbro with cloning lawsuit
2. Rockstar clears out “illegitimately gained” GTA Online cash: Developer also tightens up ban and suspension policy for the hack-addled game.
3. Rockstar beefs up suspension policy, takes in-game cash from cheaters
4. Everything We Know About Nintendo Switch
5. Nintendo Switch officially revealed
6. Nintendo Switch heralds the end of the handheld era
7. “Who else but die-hard Nintendo fans will buy the Switch?”
8. Switch marks the end of Nintendo’s mainstream console aspirations (and that’s ok)
9. Nintendo: Switch video does not represent actual game footage
10. Nintendo: Switch trailer may not show “actual game footage” – Proof-of-concept gameplay was added over dummy units in post-production.
11. Nintendo pins financial hopes on selling 2 million Switch consoles at launch
12. Nintendo shares tumble following Switch reveal
13. Sale of Seattle Mariners stake keeps Nintendo in the black: Six month figures show company shortening sales forecasts for full year
14. Xbox sales continue to pull down Microsoft’s games biz revenue
15. PlayStation VR sells 50,000 units in Japan during launch week
16. PlayStation VR Search Interest Blows Past Rift and Vive Amid Launch
17. Oculus on Platform-exclusive VR Content: ‘it’s the only viable way to jumpstart the market’
18. “Making your games inclusive is complicated and fraught with frustration”: Beamdog creative director David Gaider on the importance, and pitfalls, of promoting diversity
19. Shadow Warrior 2 Developers: We’d Rather Spend Our Time Making A Great Game Than Worrying About Piracy
20. Pokémon Go highlights legal challenges ahead for gaming: Amendments to data protection law may be needed, re:publica conference told
21. “No reviews means no possibility of negativity”: Games critics weigh in on Bethesda’s decision to withhold review codes for upcoming games
22. It’s official: Unionized video game voice actors are on strike – Members go professionally silent in effort to negotiate for long-term royalties.
23. SAG-AFTRA now on strike against EA, Activision, Warner Bros., more: Final negotiations stalled on pay, picket line will form outside EA’s offices on Monday October 24
24. French Soccer Club Paris Saint-Germain Dives Head First Into eSports
25. The News Is Now Literally a Video Game: The GOP Arcade is producing tiny, raw, irreverent games based on the news.

DIGITAL

1. Content Industry Gets Favored Interpretation of “Repeat Infringers” in MP3Tunes Appeal: MP3Tunes and its founder Michael Robertson can’t escape a determination of owing tens of millions of dollars to record labels and music publishers.
2. Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. DIRECTV, LLC, 2015-1845 (Fed. Cir., Sept. 23, 2016): Conventional business practices implemented by a generic computer are patent-ineligible under § 101
3. Newly formed patent troll makes vast claim to Web video, sues 14 big media companies: Mystery company owns a patent created by an IP lawyer and a serial litigant.
4. Lawyers file fake lawsuits to de-index online negative reviews, suit says: “The scam is not all that complicated,” using court orders to get search results removed.
5. Yelp Cannot Be Held Liable for Negative Review
6. Actor James Woods Gloats Over Death Of Random Twitter Troll He Sued To Unmask
7. No, Facebook, ‘Diversity’ Doesn’t Explain Your Support of Thiel
8. Facebook faces allegations of rule-bending for Trump, announces guideline changes: Report alleges that Zuckerberg stepped in to un-censor Trump posts.
9. Unauthorised communication to the public in an online environment as a criminal offence in the UK
10. FTC complaint blasts Disney, Google over child influencer videos: Watchdogs say they’re profiting from freebie-laden videos targeting young viewers.
11. NY governor approves fines for some rental ads—hours later, Airbnb sues: New York will levy fines up to $7,500 for illegal Airbnb ads.
12. The new French law targeting “automated image referencing services”: does EU law allow it?
13. NBA to offer virtual reality games in upcoming season
14. Online gambling probed by UK competition watchdog: Firms that fail to comply with consumer rights law face court, warns CMA.
15. Backpage.com CEO fights pimping charges, says 1st Amendment protects him: Requiring online publishers to vet third-party posts would “chill free expression.”
16. Cisco Develops System To Automatically Cut-Off Pirate Video Streams
17. When Algorithms Work Against Us
18. The darker side of machine learning
19. AI judge created by British scientists can predict human rights rulings: Artificial intelligence accurate 79% of the time—no plans to bench judges just yet.
20. Teenagers watch more YouTube than Cable TV – Piper Jaffray Teens Survey Fall 2016
21. Pediatricians revise thinking on screen time; ditch ban for kids under 2: New recommendations try to adjust to shifting media landscape and usage.
22. A.I. Computers Should Be Named as Inventors on Patents: A lawyer proposes that creative computers be elevated from the role of sophisticated tools to that of inventors.
23. AI & Ethical Determinism
24. Microsoft’s Speech Recognition Tech Is Officially as Accurate as Humans
25. Experts Assert That “Mind-Reading” Computers Are Just A Decade Away
26. Microsoft releases open source toolkit used to build human-level speech recognition: Microsoft wants to put machine learning everywhere.
27. Zuckerberg Momentarily Curbs ‘Hate Speech’ Moderation Stupidity At Facebook To Reinstate Posts By Donald Trump
28. Exclusive Leak! The German decision against Facebook/WhatsApp

CREATIVITY

1. Harris Faulkner Suit Against Hasbro Over A Toy Hamster Ends In Settlement, Hasbro To Discontinue The Toy
2. The Beatles Move to Dismiss Copyright Suit Over Footage of Famous Concert: The heirs of concert promoter Sid Bernstein assert ownership over master tapes from The Beatles’ 1965 performance at Shea Stadium.
3. Skittles Photographer Actually Sues Trump Campaign Over Infringement
4. Shameful: Perfectly Reasonable Academic Book On Gene Kelly Killed By Bogus Copyright Claims
5. How Will Courts Handle A “Poor Man’s Copyright”? (Eric Goldman)
6. Shake Up At The Copyright Office A Possible Preview To Fight Over Copyright Reform
7. The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To
8. A Hungarian newspaper embarrasses the government. Days later, it is shut down.
9. Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it
10. Jeffrey Rosen – The Deciders: The Future of Free Speech in a Digital World: 2016 Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press
11. The GOP must do something about the conservative media industrial complex if it wants to survive
12. Want to save the Republican Party? Drain the right-wing media swamp.
13. Republicans Threaten Lawsuits Over TV Ads Linking Them To Donald Trump: Saying a candidate supports Trump is basically defamation, they argue.
14. How police censorship shaped Hollywood
15. Killer Riffs: A Guide to Parody in Popular Music – From the Residents’ freakish Beatles sendups, to Spinal Tap’s meta-metal escapades, to the gastronomic goofs of “Weird Al,” a chronicle of those who have turned pastiche and mimicry into an art form across the last 50 years.
16. Mississippi county bans clown costumes as Internet meme comes to life: Local officials say the clown meme “has really gotten out of hand.”
17. Argument preview: Court to consider copyright protection for cheerleading uniforms 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Beyond a Netflix Tax: Why Melanie Joly’s Comments Point to Regulation of Internet Services (Michael Geist)
2. AT&T has $80 billion deal to purchase Time Warner Inc. (and with it, HBO)
3. Owning Time Warner would boost AT&T media ambitions, raise competition concerns.
4. AT&T and Time Warner reveal merger to create ISP, TV, and media giant: $85 billion merger may face intense regulatory scrutiny at FCC and Justice Dept.
5. AT&T Is Buying Time Warner Because the Future is Google
6. Does the AT&T Deal with Time Warner Equal A Dead Deal for Machinima?
7. Netflix CEO Wary That AT&T’s Latest Merger Could Hurt Streaming Competitors
8. Time Warner ruined AOL, says ex-AOL exec Ted Leonsis
9. AT&T/Time Warner deal could be approved without any FCC merger review: For merger opponents, Justice Department may be the only hope.
10. AT&T/Time Warner seems headed for FCC review, whether AT&T likes it or not: Time Warner has dozens of licenses that could trigger a public interest review.
11. After setback, FCC Chairman keeps pushing set-top box and privacy rules: But it’s not clear when the FCC will take final action on cable TV apps.
12. FCC Fines T-Mobile For Abusing The Definition Of ‘Unlimited’ Data
13. Comcast sues Nashville to halt rules that help Google Fiber: Both Comcast and AT&T seek invalidation of Nashville’s utility pole rules.
14. TV viewing in hotel rooms doesn’t need copyright licence fee—top EU legal eagle: CJEU advocate general says TV is an essential part of a hotel’s activity.
15. The Strange Story of Why Belize is Full of Chicago Cubs Fans: Thanks to pirated TV in the ’80s, the tiny nation is now in the grips of World Series fever.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Toronto’s Public Hearing on Bill C-51 Was Utterly Demoralizing
2. A court will decide whether Facebook used you to violate the privacy of all your friends
3. New Docs Detail How AT&T Planned To Profit Massively By Helping Law Enforcement Spy On The Public
4. Why people are freaking out about ‘AT&T spying on Americans for profit’
5. Yahoo Asks James Clapper To Please Let It Talk About The Email Scanning It Did For The Government
6. Liberals’ slow movement on Access to Information reform concerns commissioner: Information watchdog Suzanne Legault says changes so far are just ‘easy wins’
7. Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking: Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.
8. Russia-linked phishing campaign behind the DNC breach also hit Podesta, Powell: Bit.ly-based phishing links targeted former Sec. of State, Clinton campaign chair.
9. How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History: Putin, Wikileaks, The NSA And The DNC Email Fiasco That Gave Trump And Clinton Another Reason To Be At Odds.
10. Meet Fancy Bear, The Russian Group Hacking The US Election
11. Some hacked e-mails, documents from Putin advisor confirmed as genuine: Ukrainian hacking group’s haul shows Russian plans to destabilize Kiev…maybe.
12. Agents of influence: How reporters have been “weaponized” by leaks – What obligations does a journalist have when he knows he’s being used by a “state actor”?
13. To beat crypto, feds have tried to force fingerprint unlocking in 2 cases: Is being forced to press a finger on a phone in violation of the Fifth Amendment?
14. DoS attack on major DNS provider brings Internet to morning crawl: Dyn’s US East region hit hardest in attack that affected Twitter, Reddit.
15. This Is Why Half the Internet Shut Down Today
16. How one rent-a-botnet army of cameras, DVRs caused Internet chaos: Attacks that took down Dyn appear to have been “rented” from multiple botnets.
17. Yesterday’s Internet Takedown Was Powered by Chinese-made Webcams and DVRs
18. Chinese Company Recalls Cameras, DVRs Used In Last Week’s Massive DDoS Attack
19. Inside the Cyberattack That Shocked the US Government
20. Dumb & Dumber Claims About Last Week’s Internet Attack (SOPA?!? Really?)
21. Future of Privacy Forum and Carnegie Mellon University Research Leads to New Tool from California Attorney General
22. Kuwait Backtracks On Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens And Visitors
23. Privacy Is About Tradeoffs… And Things Go Wrong When Those Tradeoffs Are Not Clear
24. WikiLeaks is exposing Clinton’s duplicity, but it’s no hero
25. PINAC Director Sues Miami Beach Mayor Over Refusal To Release Social Media Blocklists
26. New Strategies for Securing Our Private Lives (Jonathan Zittrain)

jon

GAMES

1. Popular YouTubers plead not guilty to FIFA gambling offences
2. eSports taking viewership away from real sports – Newzoo: Research firm finds that 76% of eSports enthusiasts state that their eSports viewing is taking away from hours they used to spend on viewing sports
3. CCP cracking down on EVE Online gambling sites: CCP has updated its EULA to stress its anti-gambling policy and has issued account suspensions
4. CCP clamping down on EVE gambling sites with freemium switch in sight
5. Valve refutes Washington State accusations over CS:GOgambling
6. Valve pushes back against Washington State skin gambling claims: “As we have explained on multiple occasions, Valve is not engaged in gambling or the promotion of gambling, and we do not ‘facilitate gambling'”
7. Starcraft Proleague, Longest Running ESports League, Discontinued
8. Shadow Warrior 2 developers say DRM is a waste of time: “There isn’t a good way to stop [piracy] without hurting our customers.”
9. “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”™ – Pokémon™ Go Gives Rise to New Class Action Suits
10. Pokémon Go is just the beginning of an absurd copyright struggle in AR
11. DLC and Microtransactions: New Study Shows How Gamers Feel About Them
12. The merits of Star Citizen’s development openness: Chris Roberts and his team take a lot of flak for the delays to their ambitious game, but their openness has earned the forgiveness of core fans
13. See how Girls Make Games supports girls who want to be game makers
14. “Making your games inclusive is complicated and fraught with frustration”: Beamdog creative director David Gaider on the importance, and pitfalls, of promoting diversity
15. “There are not as many questions. We have more freedom now”: Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert believes the industry has changed since Remember Me’s problems over its female lead – and changed for the better
16. PlayStation VR selling out at GameStop after ‘tremendous demand’
17. PlayStation VR had “many hundreds of thousands” of pre-orders: Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Jim Ryan has some good news for the emerging VR market
18. PlayStation VR launch demonstrates Sony’s PR expertise – ICO: Analysis by ICO Partners reveals that PSVR dominated media coverage compared to the launches of Rift and Vive
19. PlayStation VR’s Killer App Is … Music
20. How Video Games Are Changing the Way Soccer Is Played: Games like FIFA that were designed to reflect the sport’s reality have helped alter it, influencing professional players and front offices.
21. $850m raised towards Tencent’s Supercell acquisition
22. Tencent raises $850M from Chinese investors to fund Supercell purchase
23. Mobile-Game Maker Kabam Evaluating Multiple Offers for Canada Studio – Vancouver studio makes ‘Marvel: Contest of Champions,’ draws bids of up to $800 million from Asian, U.S. companies
24. Kabam offered $800 million for Vancouver studio – Report: Marvel Contest of Champions studio has attracted multiple bids, according to VentureBeat
25. MTG acquires 35% of InnoGames for €90 million: Swedish entertainment firm expands interest in games beyond eSports, could raise its stake in InnoGames to 51% next year
26. Analyst: Game sales could reach $98 billion by 2020
27. Candy Crush is becoming a TV game show for some reason – Or: How can you tell when a mobile gaming phenomenon is totally played out?
28. How does storytelling differ between video games and literature?

DIGITAL

1. Samsung doesn’t want you to see video of this GTA V exploding phone mod: YouTube takedown notice is a pretty clear abuse of the DMCA.
2. Consumer deception? That ‘Buy Now’ button on Amazon or iTunes may not mean you own what you paid for
3. Ownership and Deception in the Digital Marketplace: What really happens when you click “buy now.”
4. Backup copies of software can’t be re-sold, rules top EU court: But original media and unlimited user licence is fine to sell on.
5. European Court Revisits Resale Of Software
6. New French Act: Google Images will have to pay royalties
7. New York Fashion Company Sued Over Use of Photograph on Instagram
8. A Weekend Full Of The NFL Violating Its Own Social Media Video Content Rules
9. Trump’s been called almost everything—let’s add IP “pirate” to the list: Photog says use of his image by Trump campaign is “reprehensibly offensive.”
10. Electronic Frontier Foundation brings suit over anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA
11. George Orwell never dreamed of advertising as invasive as Yahoo’s proposal: Yahoo’s outdoor, public advertising scheme relies on what it calls “grouplization.”
12. We Must Remake Society in the Coming Age of AI: Obama
13. White House Releases Reports on Future of Artificial Intelligence
14. Robot journalists to start writing news and sports stories for Britain and Ireland’s national news agency
15. AI needs a watchdog and UK gov’t must do better on robotics, MPs warn: Ethical, legal, and societal ramifications of AI systems must be probed, says committee
16. Humans need new skills for post-AI world, say MPs: Robotics and AI have “huge potential” to reshape the way people work and live, but the government needs to do more to address the issues raised by such technology, says a report.
17. There is a blind spot in AI research (Kate Crawford & Ryan Calo)
18. YouTube points the way forward for monetising video content
19. Samsung Galaxy Note 7s are exploding and everyone has a theory as to why: Poor design? Fast-charge problems? Theories emerge to explain the Note 7 debacle.
20. What’s In A Design? A Smartphone Battle In The Highest Court
21. Breaking Down Arguments in Samsung v. Apple
22. The Surprising Backbone of the Internet of Things: Cities need to be blanketed with internet — and streetlights fit the bill. (Susan Crawford)
23. We Need to Save the Internet from the Internet of Things (Bruce Schneier)
24. The Soviet InterNyet: Soviet scientists tried for decades to network their nation. What stalemated them is now fracturing the global internet
25. Twitter has failed at controlling horrifying anti-Semitism
26. Anti-Semitic Twitter trolls are disproportionately likely to be Trump supporters
27. Twitter’s ‘Juggernaut of Bigotry’: Five takeaways from the ADL’s report on anti-Semitic targeting of journalists during the 2016 presidential campaign
28. …And Here Come The Device-Restricted Music Subscriptions
29. The Musical Twitter Bot: Who Has the Copyright for AI-Facilitated Works? 
30. Snapchat Glasses – Are Spectacles The Future Of Wearables?
31. College student 3D prints his own braces
32. The remix wars: Copyright and the Socially Awkward Penguin
33. Uber’s Ad-Toting Drones Are Heckling Drivers Stuck in Traffic: Forget billboards—motorists now have ads buzzing a few feet above their windshields.
34. Assault With a Deadly Tweet?
35. Theater Association Boss Reminds Theater Owners, Netflix To Stay In Their Own Lanes
36. France Is Pushing For a Tax on YouTube and Netflix
37. Ongoing PC sales downturn is the longest yet, says analyst
38. New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick: ‘I’m Done With The (Microsoft) Tablets’
39. After Yahoo data breach, Verizon hints that it could pull out of $4.83B deal: “I think we have a reasonable basis to believe right now that the impact is material.”
40. Verizon Wants $1 Billion Discount After Yahoo Scandals, Still Fancies Itself The New Google
41. A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
42. Inside Intellectual Ventures’ Portfolio: Nearly 500 University Patents

CREATIVITY

1. Who’s On (The) Second (Circuit)… And Why Are They Screwing Up Copyright Law?
2. Rome Court of First Instance rules that copyright exceptions for news reporting and criticism/review do not apply to entertainment TV programmes
3. Bob Dylan Makes the Case Against Today’s Copyright Climate
4. Bob Dylan’s Full MusiCares Speech: How He Wrote the Songs, a Master Class Must Read
5. 10 Copyright Cases Every Fan Fiction Writer Should Know About
6. McDonald’s facing copyright lawsuits from graffiti artists
7. Copyright war: Street artists accuse big corporations of stealing their artworks – The family of the deceased artist Dash Snow have accused McDonald’s of stealing Snow’s graffiti signature to decorate the walls of hundreds of their restaurants – and his case is not the only one
8. Harry Shearer Files $125M ‘Spinal Tap’ Fraud Suit, Copyright Termination
9. North Dakota gives up attempt to charge journalist who filmed pipeline protest
10. Charges against Amy Goodman bring national attention to a little-noticed protest.
11. Cleveland Indians can use name and ‘Chief Wahoo’ logo during ALCS games in Toronto, judge rules
12. Disney’s Lucasfilm Sues Academy That Teaches People How to Use Lightsabers
13. Lucasfilm unleashes legal Death Star on lightsaber schools: School logo looks “confusingly similar” to the Star Wars “Jedi Order” logo.
14. Disney Sued by ‘Doc McStuffins’ Actress Over Merchandise Revenue
15. Usher Sues Sony for Right of Publicity Violation for Use of Voice
16. I Hardly Expected My Letter to Donald Trump to Go Viral
17. Activist seeks injunction against use of ‘Cleveland Indians’ name and logo
18. Sanity: MasterCard Loses Absolutely Idiotic Trademark Challenge Against An Athletic Competition
19. Mediaset vs Gruppo L’Espresso: il Tribunale di Roma giudica inapplicabili le eccezioni e limitazioni ai diritti autorali e condanna il gruppo romano per illecito utilizzo di contenuti audiovisivi
20. Why the Knight Foundation president thinks we’re living through the biggest disruption since Gutenberg and the printing press
21. New York Times lawyer: Donald Trump has no reputation to protect
22. Donald Trump’s Media Threats Are Why a Free Speech Protection Law Is Needed
23. As Donald Trump Ramps Up Threats To Sue Newspapers, A Reminder Of Why We Need Free Speech Protections
24. ‘Apprentice’ Producer Denounces Trump but Won’t Release Possibly Damning Tapes
25. If Trump Outtakes Are Leaked, It Won’t Be A Copyright Violation
26. Horrified by Trump, Silicon Valley Leaders Debate Cutting Ties to Peter Thiel
27. Still A Bad Idea: Gawker Exploring Lawsuit Against Peter Thiel
28. Who’s the pirate? Lawyers join forces to fight allegedly bogus claims of pay-TV theft
29. Does Advertising Ruin Everything?: “We have to get over our addiction to free stuff. Suck it up and pay,” says Tim Wu, the author of a new book on the history of ads.
30. Technological Neutrality: Recalibrating Copyright in the Information Age (Carys Craig)
31. Reconsidering Copyright’s Constitutionality (Graham Reynolds)
32. Should it be copyright’s role to fill houses with books? (Rebecca Giblin)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. New digital taxes may be the future of Cancon (Michael Geist)
2. Stop the federal government before it taxes everything on the Internet
3. Non-cable Internet providers offer faster speeds to the wealthy: For many, the choice is between slow DSL and high-priced cable.
4. Verizon Punishes Techs That Try To Repair DSL Customers It No Longer Wants
5. FCC: Comcast Routinely Charges Customers For Hardware, Services Never Ordered
6. The FCC Responds to Comcast’s Negative Option
7. Comcast customers sue over fees that push price above advertised rate: Proposed class action takes aim at Broadcast TV Fee and Regional Sports Fee.
8. Comcast Sued For Misleading Fees It Claims Are Just Its Way Of Being ‘Transparent’
9. T-Mobile punished by FCC for hidden limits on unlimited data: Carrier to pay $7.5 million fine, provide small discounts, and improve disclosures.
10. Trump hires Bell, Telus consultant for telecom advice
11. Trump Says SNL Sketches Show Media Is Rigging the Election
12. Trump’s son-in-law held talks to set up Trump TV network: source
13. The FCC and the ‘Pre-Internet’ (John Blevins)
14. FCC Liberalizes Rules for Foreign Investment in U.S. Broadcast Licensees 
15. FCC Chairman Moves to Regulate Broadband Consumer Privacy 
16. FTC says it may be unable to regulate Comcast, Google, and Verizon: FTC seeks to reverse AT&T ruling that may gut consumer protection authority.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Clinton blasts Russian cyber-attacks as bid to install Trump as a “puppet”: “Will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this?”
2. Civil liberties groups ask for ‘moratoriums’ on face recognition tech
3. Granted Warrant Allowed Feds To Force Everyone At Searched Residence To Unlock Devices With Their Fingerprints
4. Appeals Court Affirms NSA Surveillance Can Be Used To Investigate Domestic Criminal Suspects
5. Your dynamic IP address is now protected personal data under EU law: CJEU rules that personal IPs can’t be stored, unless to thwart cybernetic attacks or similar.
6. House wants “briefing as soon as possible” to grok how Yahoo spied
7. Akamai Finds Longtime Security Flaw in 2 Million Devices
8. Half of American adults appear in facial recognition databases — and police are using them with almost no oversight
9. US renews fight for the right to seize content from the world’s servers: No access to world’s servers thwarts “criminal and national security investigations.”
10. EFF’s Challenge Of NSL Gag Orders Reaches The Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals
11. Appeal Court Revives Lawyer’s Lawsuit Against The NSA’s Email Dragnet
12. Documents Show Chicago PD Secretly Using Forfeiture Funds To Buy Surveillance Equipment
13. Bangladesh Brings In Nationwide Digital Identity Cards Linking Biometrics To Mobile Phone Numbers
14. Nokchan v Lyft: Since the Spokeo Decision Privacy Continues to be a Hot Topic as Circuit Courts Fracture 
15. British spooks’ secret citizen data slurp broke ECHR rules, says tribunal: IPT finds spymasters only complied after government’s avowal of covert snooping.
16. On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call
17. Prosecutors Changing Charges Against Reporter To ‘Rioting’ Because Her Coverage Was Sympathetic To Protestors
18. Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They are at Odds With It. (Jonathan Zittrain)
19. FBI: Czech police arrest suspected Russian hacker
20. The State Department Has Taken Over Three Years On A FOIA Request About How Long It Takes To Process FOIA Requests
21. Court Says Deleting Browser History To ‘Avoid Embarrassment’ Isn’t Destruction Of Evidence
22. Sony Wants Lawsuit Over Alleged Failure to Prevent Movie Piracy Under Arbitration Cloak
23. Who gets your selfies when you die? States seek to fill privacy law gaps

jon

GAMES

1. Oculus Founder Skips Company Event To Avoid Being A ‘Distraction’: “Palmer absolutely decided that he was not going to be here.”
2. Oculus’s big event keynote had one noticeable omission—founder Palmer LuckeyConsumer spend on VR to hit $11.2 billion by 2020 – IHS Markit
3. John Carmack says VR devs are “coasting on novelty”
4. Fallout 4 and Skyrim mods are coming to PS4—but with restrictions: Modders can’t upload external assets, and Fallout 4 mods don’t have a release date.
5. Skin in the Game: Video Game Publisher Dodges Teenage Gambling Suit, But Must Address State Regulator Concerns 
6. Uncharted Director Criticizes Triple-A Development, Says It Can “Destroy People”: Amy Hennig says she worked 10.5 years of 80-hour weeks.
7. Not A Game: Industry Labour Practices May Be Headed For a Big Change
8. “This industry is not going to protect us. We have to learn to protect ourselves”: The Chinese Room co-founder Jessica Curry calls for greater diversity in the industry, says everyone needs to do their part
9. Racing game specialist SimBin re-established in the UK
10. Meet Duran Parsi, Collegiate Starleague CEO And Law School Student
11. Dallas Mavericks’ Mark Cuban: ‘I Haven’t And Won’t Invest In (eSports) Teams’

DIGITAL

1. Mozilla trolls the EU’s nonsensical copyright laws with classic memes
2. Open Letter to the European Commission – On the Importance of Preserving the Consistency and Integrity of the EU Acquis Relating to Content Monitoring within the Information Society
3. Indonesia Government Introduces Vague Law Making Offensive/Embarrassing Memes Illegal
4. Twitter shouldn’t let itself become a tool for tyrants
5. Twitter’s Woes Signal the End of the Social Wars
6. NFL teams could face huge fines for posting game GIFs and videos on social media
7. To Combat Dropping Ratings, The NFL Thinks Fining Its Teams For Sharing Video On Social Media Is The Answer
8. Dozens of suspicious court cases, with missing defendants, aim at getting web pages taken down or deindexed
9. More Details Uncovered On Bogus Defamation Lawsuits Being Used To Delist Negative Reviews
10. Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Says He’s Stopped ‘Monitoring’ Gawker, But Still Sending It Bogus Takedown Demands
11. Prominent Pro-Patent Judge Issues Opinion Declaring All Software Patents Bad
12. Apple got its verdict back—$120M against Samsung: Federal Circuit judges revive Apple patents on “slide-to-unlock” and autocorrect.
13. Supreme Court may reel in Apple v. Samsung damage award: How much punishment is appropriate when it comes to design patents?
14. FTC Releases Big Report On Patent Trolls, Says The Patent System Needs To Change
15. An Interesting Online Personal Jurisdiction Ruling (No, Really!)–Rotblut v. Terrapinn
16. Enforcement problems with online contacts: an Uber case study
17. YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For ‘Violating Community Guidelines’
18. YouTube Crushed TV in Total Debate Viewership
19. The way YouTube stars are making millions is changing
20. Atlanta Hawks Receive 1 Million Views On Facebook Live Open Practice
21. Backpage CEO arrested, accused of running “world’s top online brothel”
22. We’re up to seven reports of “safe” Galaxy Note 7s exploding – Update: AT&T and T-Mobile halt sales as supposedly “safe” devices catch fire.
23. Samsung halts Galaxy Note 7 production, but UK carriers yet to nix sales of device: There have been at least seven reports of replacement phones exploding.
24. Galaxy Note 7 recall, Part 2: Samsung admits replacement units are unsafe: “Safe” Note 7s aren’t actually safe. Samsung starts second recall.
25. Don’t buy a Galaxy Note 7—and return yours if you already have: With production and sales of the Note 7 paused, we’ve got some alternate picks.
26. Gear VR no longer works with explosive Galaxy Note 7: Recognition that a phone exploding inches from your eyes is a bad idea.
27. How artificial intelligence is changing online retail forever
28. I have seen the future of the Internet: Millions of rogue fridges will render it unusable – Instead monetising 8K IPTV, telcos need to focus on security and DDoS mitigation.
29. WhatsApp’s data love-in with Facebook probed by Spanish watchdog: Data protection authorities shake fist at WhatsApp’s data-sharing U-turn.
30. Big Data and Competition Policy (Maurice Stucke & Allen Grunes)
31. Speak, Memory: When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence

CREATIVITY

1. Commodifying Banksy
2. Don’t call me a British artist – I’m thoroughly European
3. Ed Sheeran hits back at ‘scandalous allegations’ in $20m Photograph copyright lawsuit
4. Trump Adds To His Anti-First Amendment Legacy In Threatening To Sue Clinton For Campaign Ads
5. NBC Delayed Story About Trump’s Access Hollywood Recording Over Fear That He Might Sue
6. Dear Donald Trump And Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal
7. Trademark Infringement Suit Against Kanye West Precluded By The First Amendment
8. Sanity: MasterCard Loses Absolutely Idiotic Trademark Challenge Against An Athletic Competition
9. Why Copyright Reform Won’t Solve the Troubles Faced By the Newspaper Industry (Michael Geist)
10. The Copyright Office wants your comments on whether it should be illegal to fix your own stuff
11. In the Internet Age, Dolce and Gabbana Are Still Banning Critics, But Why?
12. New California Law Will Require Online Entertainment Database Sites to Remove Age-Based Information 
13. The Commission’s DSMS and CJEU case law: what relationship?
14. Are Prices Free Speech? The Supreme Court is set to weigh in on whether merchant surcharges are protected as free speech 
15. Remembering a journalist who was killed for standing up to Putin

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. A Cord-Cutting Battle in Canada is Brewing Between a Telecom David and Goliath
2. CRTC finds proposed wholesale high-speed access rates unreasonable
3. CRTC scolds big telecoms for ‘not just and reasonable’ wholesale rates
4. John Doyle: Why is the Canadian public subsidizing reality TV drivel?
5. Comcast fined $2.3 million by FCC for “negative option billing” practices: “It is basic that a cable bill include charges only for services and equipment ordered.”
6. FCC proposes broadband privacy rules despite opposition from ISPs: Pay-for-privacy plans won’t be banned, but ISPs face new opt-in requirements.
7. Comcast Dramatically Expands Unnecessary Broadband Caps — For ‘Fairness’
8. Charter Joins AT&T In Using Lawsuits To Try And Slow Down Google Fiber
9. Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump on broadband: She has a plan, he doesn’t: Clinton vows to defend net neutrality—Trump calls it “attack on the Internet.”

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. US government: Russia behind hacking campaign to disrupt US elections – DHS, Intelligence officials formally accuse Russian government of DNC hack, others.
2. The FBI Wants To Crack Another Dead Terrorist’s Locked iPhone
3. Welcome to the machine—Yahoo mail scanning exposes another US spy tool: Surveillance by machine “doesn’t count as spying unless you’re guilty,” right?
4. Yahoo Email Scanning May Sink EU Privacy Shield Agreement
5. Yahoo Inc. sued for gross negligence after confirmed hacking
6. ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for feeding surveillance company user data: Geofeedia touts access to Twitter’s firehose, “partnership with Instagram.”
7. Inspector General’s Report Notes Section 215 Requests Down Sharply Since 2013
8. Why we should celebrate the Elena Ferrante firestorm
9. FCC Chairman Proposes Final Privacy Rules
10. Bungling humans and systems failures outshine cyber attacks, say infosec bods: People cause more network outages than machines—and malicious actions are falling.

jon

GAMES

1. Court dismisses class action lawsuit against Valve over CS:GO gambling
2. Federal Court Rejects Online Gambling Lawsuit Against Valve–McLeod v. Valve
3. Washington state authority orders Valve to stop allowingCS:GO skin gambling
4. Valve threatened by Washington State Gambling Commission – CS:GO skins controversy continues for the Steam platform holder
5. Pokémon Go creator sued by The Hague over “nuisance” players on beaches: Beaches at Kijkduin have become a Mecca for Dutch gamers, damaging protected dunes.
6. Niantic facing court in The Hague over Pokémon Go: Fears over damage to a protected beach raise questions over efficacy of Niantic’s grievance procedures
7. Pokemon GO still generating about $2m a day – Newzoo: At its peak, the wildly popular game was generating revenues of $16m each day, Newzoo says
8. Lindsay Lohan’s Grand Theft Auto Suit Dismissed
9. With Sony’s support, Bethesda revives mods for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PS4
10. PS4 Skyrim, Fallout 4 getting user mods after all: After blaming Sony for missing features, Bethesda backtracks, also promises PS4 Pro support for both titles
11. No Man’s Sky’s advertising is officially under investigation in the UK: ASA looking at allegedly misleading screens, videos, and descriptions.
12. No Man’s Sky Subreddit Closed, Described as “Hate Filled Wastehole” By Mod: The game’s subreddit was purged of all discussion threads and shuttered.
13. Under Armour, Snapchat Team Up For Cam Newton Interactive Game
14. Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture studio co-founder calls for immediate action to improve diversity in games
15. Why the Video-Game Culture Wars Won’t Die
16. Racing Game Developers Sacrifice Playability On The Altar Of Anti-Piracy, Deliver Laggy Mess To Paying Customers
17. Forza Horizon 3 is plagued by issues on Xbox One
18. Dev who sued Steam users drops lawsuit, citing money problems
19. Digital Homicide owner cancels lawsuit against Steam users: Cites lack of funds in termination filing after “business was destroyed completely”
20. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – what next for the games industry?
21. Amazon reveals Twitch’s first currency, gambling systems: New sports-brawling game Breakaway will “integrate directly” with Twitch in many ways.
22. eSports teams attract more outside investment: Steve Aoki buys a stake in upstart Rogue as Memphis Grizzlies owner ups his share of League of Legends Championship Series squad Immortals
23. Influx of capital into eSports will force it to grow up: Traditional sports owners and executives getting into eSports will herald huge changes to the culture and business of the sector
24. The Next Great American Pastime: Major League Gaming is building the ESPN of eSports. And reshaping sports media.
25. Esports are now officially legal in France
26. First eSport Tournament Streamed in Virtual Reality
27. Sony PlayStation VR review: You know what? Sony did it. The PSVR is actually pretty great
28. PlayStation VR provides a lot of bang for your virtual reality buck – Review: VR on a game console finds a sweet spot between cheap and top-of-the-line.
29. The Mainstreaming of Augmented Reality: A Brief History
30. VR hardware will grow to $50 billion by 2021 – Juniper
31. With SEC approval, anyone can now invest in Psychonauts 2’sFig campaign
32. Ubisoft: “We won’t relax until they sell their shares” – Ubi succeeds in adding two new independent directors to the board, and reelects Yves and Gerard Guillemot
33. Vivendi bides its time as Ubisoft re-elects Yves Guillemot as chairman
34. Ubisoft fends off unwanted suitor: 10 Years Ago This Month: The Prince of Persia publisher attempts to stay independent from EA, and for good reason
35. Xbox boss admits internal goal was to sell 200m consoles: Phil Spencer says the rough start for Xbox One was partly due to the company’s misguided approach to the business at the time
36. Worldwide digital sales top $6 billion in August – Superdata: Tracking firm sees premium games getting more popular in China, with collectible card games the future of free-to-play
37. War Robots dev acquired by Russian internet giant for $30M
38. Kickstarter-Funded Game Drops DRM-Free Version It Promised, Then Promises It Again After The Backlash
39. PewDiePie’s ‘Tuber Simulator’ Tops The App Store Charts, Crashes Servers Due To Immense Popularity
40. Madden devs own up to misplacing the sun
41. DIGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings Of The First International Joint Conference Of DIGRA And FDG – 62 Articles Or Papers

DIGITAL

1. European Court Rules On Open WIFI (Andres Guadamuz)
2. A Closer Look at the RIAA Lawsuit Against YouTube-MP3
3. New York Fashion Company Sued Over Use of Photograph on Instagram
4. Y2K 2.0: Is the US government set to “give away the Internet” Saturday? 
5. Texas and 3 other states sue to block ICANN transition (Rebecca Tushnet)
6. Judge rejects plea from states to stop U.S. from giving up control of Internet
7. The Internet Finally Belongs to Everyone
8. How countries like China and Russia are able to control the internet
9. Murky international laws threaten to break up the internet as we know it
10. After Facebook “censors” anti-Muslim posts, hate groups sue US gov’t: Gov’t lawyers now ask judge to dismiss lawsuit, as activists “lack standing.”
11. FBI’s Comey: Actually, Chasing ISIS Off Twitter Makes It More Difficult For Us To Follow Them
12. Did attackers take down Newsweek because of an anti-Trump story?: Reporter tweeted Friday: “Lots of IP addresses involved. Main ones from Russia.”
13. How 1.5 Million Connected Cameras Were Hijacked to Make an Unprecedented Botnet
14. How Facebook Live became the tool for live streaming death by police
15. How An Old Hacking Law Hampers The Fight Against Online Discrimination
16. Arduino on Arduino battle ends in reconciliation, merger: Schism in leading open source hardware project heals with new Arduino Foundation.
17. Popular YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent to Beat Censorship
18. Social media stars are helping Hollywood reach younger audiences, for a price
19. HP Apologizes for Busting People’s Printers on Purpose
20. Amazon bans reviews based on free or discounted products: Only books and reviews from the Amazon Vine program are exempt from new rules.
21. Patent troll VirnetX beats Apple again, awarded $302M in FaceTime damages: Patent holder will seek millions more over whether Apple willfully infringed.
22. Stupid Design Patent Of The Month: Rectangles On A Screen
23. Here’s Why Software Patents Are in Peril After the Intellectual Ventures Ruling
24. FTC Study on Patent Assertion Entity Activity
25. Trademarks: Trolls at the Gate – In a few short years, anyone with a couple hundred dollars will be able to register a trademark, whether it’s being used commercially or not. Trademark trafficking, and trolls, won’t be far behind.
26. Cox Wants Music Group to Pay for False Copyright Claims: Internet provider Cox Communications is demanding over $100,000 in compensation from Round Hill Music, for the legal fees it incurred based on false copyright claims. The music group sued Cox last year over alleged infringements committed by the ISP’s subscribers, without actually owning any of the copyrights in question.
27. What The Twitter Sale Reveals About Twitter, Itself: The plain truth about the struggling social-media company has become clear in its highly public, and theatrical, auction.
28. On @Jack’s One Year Anniversary, Twitter Remains a Mess
29. Trump’s Overnight Twitter Tirade Sums Up His Weaknesses
30. How I Taught A Jury About Trolls, Memes And 4Chan — And Helped Get A Troll Out Of Jail
31. Donald Trump Happily Repeating Lie About Google Autocomplete Suppressing Negative Hillary News
32. The new secret code that racists are using online is doomed to fail
33. 4chan is running out of money—and Martin Shkreli wants to help out: Cash worries have dogged the notorious troll-haven for years.
34. Virtual Reality to Help Bring the Last Nazi War Criminals to Justice
35. Facebook Video Metrics Crossed The Line From Merely Dubious To Just Plain Wrong
36. Is Twitter Really the Future of Sports Watching?
37. All That New Google Hardware? It’s a Trojan Horse for AI
38. Can A.I. help out in the executive suite?
39. The future of protest involves light, holograms and augmented reality
40. Thoughts on Neuromarketing, ZMET and Thinking Fast and Slow
41. Legally Blind Man Sees Clearly For The First Time Ever, Thanks to Virtual Reality
42. The remix wars: Originality in the age of digital reproduction
43. MIT’s “Moral Machine” Lets You Decide Who Lives & Dies in Self-Driving Car Crashes
44. Tech billionaires are asking scientists for help breaking humans out of the computer simulation they think they might be trapped in
45. A fourth law of robotics? Copyright and the law and ethics of machine co-production (B. Schafer, D. Komuves, JN Zatarain & L. Diver)

CREATIVITY

1. Dash Snow’s Family Sues McDonald’s for Copyright Infringement: The lawsuit claims that any association with McDonald’s will diminish the value of the late artist’s work.
2. Supreme Court Punts on O’Bannon v. NCAA
3. No copyright protection for sport broadcasts (Sweden)
4. Fox News’ Harris Faulkner & Hasbro Settle Lawsuit Over ‘Harris Faulkner’ Hamster
5. Can you trademark an offensive name or not? US Supreme Court to decide: US law bars trademarks if the name is immoral, deceptive, scandalous, or disparaging.
6. Phoenix Police Issues Totally Bogus Cease & Desist To Trump Campaign Claiming Copyright Infringement
7. Following Coverage Of Trademark Dispute, Lawyer Demands Image On News Story Be Taken Down As Infringing
8. Warning: This article on trademarks may include language deemed ‘scandalous, immoral or disparaging’
9. Parody product fails to squeak through the cracks in dilution/infringement claim: VIP Products, LLC v. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. (Rebecca Tushnet)
10. U.S. Court Of Appeals Upholds Ruling That New Hampshire’s Silly Ballot Selfie Ban Violated The First Amendment
11. NH Ban on Ballot Selfies Held Unconstitutional
12. EFF Asks Court To Block The DOJ From Prosecuting Researcher For DMCA Violations
13. Beyoncé’s copyright case was destined for dismissal 
14. In Pegasus-related copyright suit, judge sidelines as art critic 
15. Leaker fined $1.2 million for uploading screener of The Revenant
16. Why Are We Paying for Public Domain Photos?
17. BBC Radio Director Helen Boaden resigns, criticising state of journalism
18. Luke Cage’s Signature Hoodie Is a Tribute to Trayvon Martin
19. Stevie Wonder, Motown, and the First ‘360 Deal’: Wonder’s recommitment to Berry Gordy was a commercial coup and a creative crescendo
20. Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Consumers, industry present opposing futures for Canada’s wireless code
2. A Massive Cable Industry Disinformation Effort Just Crushed The FCC’s Plan For Cable Box Competition
3. AT&T to end targeted ads program, give all users lowest available price: Controversial traffic scanning program, Internet Preferences, meets its demise.
4. AT&T Stops Charging Broadband Users Extra For Privacy
5. Overly Broad Arbitration Clause Fails–Wexler v. AT&T
6. Verizon workers can now be fired if they fix copper phone lines
7. FCC Streamlines Foreign Ownership Review Process for Broadcasters, Common Carriers
8. The State of Traditional TV: Q2 2016 Update

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. How Ottawa revived Canada’s most controversial privacy issue (Michael Geist)
2. Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources
3. Yahoo Secretly Built Software To Scan All Emails Under Pressure From NSA Or FBI
4. Yahoo’s CISO resigned in 2015 over secret e-mail search tool ordered by feds – Reuters: Yahoo “complied with a classified US government directive.”
5. N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets
6. Feds Gagged Encrypted Communications Firm Open Whisper Systems Over Massively Overbroad Subpoena
7. Johnson & Johnson Warns Insulin Pump Owners They Could Be Killed By Hackers
8. A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy: Doctors and lawyers are prohibited from using clients’ information for their own interests, so why aren’t Google and Facebook? (Jack Balkin & Jonathan Zittrain)
9. Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and Jumpstart Fined $835,000 for Tracking Children Online
10. How hard is it to hack the average DVR? Sadly, not hard at all
11. Yahoo hack may have exposed Marissa Mayer’s emails

jon

GAMES

1. Palmer Luckey: The Facebook Near-Billionaire Secretly Funding Trump’s Meme Machine – Palmer Luckey—founder of Oculus—is funding a Trump group that circulates dirty memes about Hillary Clinton.
2. Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey is funding Trump’s racist meme machine: Admits involvement with pro-Trump nonprofit, deletes Reddit account.
3. Insomniac, other devs condemn Palmer Luckey’s support of pro-Trump troll group
4. Some developers dropping Oculus support to protest founder’s politics 
5. In Wake of Palmer Luckey Report, Multiple Devs Drop Oculus Support: After news broke of Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey’s anti-Clinton funding, game devs are dropping Oculus support.
6. Luckey on pro-Trump donation: “My actions… do not represent Oculus”: Amid fallout, Oculus founder tries to walk back impact of his political giving
7. Oculus founder apologizes as devs suspend support: Palmer Luckey denies posting as “NimbleRichMan”, Oculus CEO says employees are “free to support the issues…that matter to them”
8. Oculus “diversity” fellows struggle with cofounder’s politics: Those competing for scholarships express “surprise, shock, dismay, and disappointment.”
9. YouTube And Twitch Are Battling To End “Misogynistic Abuse In Gaming”
10. How A Washington-Based Clinic Treats Video Game Addiction
11. VR: There will be blood – The diversity of software already out there for VR is proof of a bubble; variety is great, but even if VR succeeds overall, many creators will be left behind
12. No Man’s Sky Being Investigated Over Misleading Advertising Claims: One person says they felt “properly misled.”
13. Federal Court Holds That Casino In Video Game App Is Not A Gambling Device 
14. Game Developer Chooses To Connect With Pirates, Reaps Rewards As A Result
15. Jagex punishing banned Runescape players by selling their stuff
16. Jagex now at the core of publicly-listed Chinese company
17. Star Wars: Uprising shutting down – Kabam will no longer be taking payments from players of the game as of September 22
18. Sunset Overdrive Dev Wants to Bring Game to PC, But Microsoft Gets to Make the Call: “We’d love for it to come to PC, though it’s up to Xbox on that one.”
19. You can now study EA’s lost sci-fi shooter Battlefield 2142
20. Ubisoft CEO: A Vivendi takeover ‘threatens the construction and pillars of Ubisoft’: “Yes, companies merging is normally not a problem, but in our industry, which is changing a lot of time, it’s actually risky.”
21. Ubisoft buys back €122.5 million in stock: Publisher regains 3.2% in share capital ahead of Vivendi’s request for greater board representation
22. Ubisoft buys publisher of notorious game clone 2048
23. Ubisoft opens book publishing house to ‘propel’ brands forward
24. Riot commits to revenue sharing with LoL eSports players: “We recognize that the current ecosystem isn’t consistently profitable yet for team owners or for the league”
25. In the wake of criticism, Riot promises to share more revenue with League pros: “We’re making some changes around in-game content which will create additional revenue streams for players and teams.”
26. Influx of capital into eSports will force it to grow up: Traditional sports owners and executives getting into eSports will herald huge changes to the culture and business of the sector
27. Why Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Jeremy Lin Launched An eSports Team
28. ESL One will be the first eSports event livestreamed in VR
29. Philadelphia 76ers Become First U.S. Sports Team To Purchase eSports Franchises
30. Real-world teams march further into eSports: Philadelphia 76ers become the first North American franchise to buy an eSports team, but it’s just the latest deal in an ongoing trend
31. NBA team execs purchase eSports franchise, Team Liquid
32. Iceland rejected EA’s $15k offer for FIFA 17 national team rights: “They are the ones buying these rights and they almost want it for free”
33. The rise and rise of tabletop gaming: Gentler designs with an emphasis on teamwork are fuelling a boom in board game sales. Why, in the golden age of video games, are we choosing to play with counters round a table?
34. Chris Melissions: creator and guest curator for “The Art of Videogames” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

DIGITAL

1. Teleportation across Calgary marks ‘major step’ toward creation of ‘quantum internet’: Fibre-optic system between university and city hall enables long-distance ‘disembodied’ transfer of info
2. Google and Facebook cases dominate Supreme Court fall session: The high court is set to take on big cases, including a B.C. woman’s class-action lawsuit against Facebook.
3. Record Labels Make New Grab For Website-Blocking Power in YouTube-MP3 Suit (EFF)
4. RIAA takes on stream-ripping in copyright lawsuit targeting YouTube-mp3: “The scale of Defendants’ infringing activity is enormous,” lawsuit says.
5. Major Record Labels Sue Over Ripping Audio Tracks from YouTube Videos: The target is a German company that is the “chief offender” of stream ripping, but the lawsuit also demands an order against third parties.
6. Can Someone Explain To The RIAA That SOPA Didn’t Actually Pass?
7. The Hacking Law That Can’t Hack It: The five cases that show how the frustrating and confusing 30-year-old Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is.
8. Google swallows 11,000 novels to improve AI’s conversation: As writers learn that tech giant has processed their work without permission, the Authors Guild condemns ‘blatantly commercial use of expressive authorship’
9. Revealed: How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars – For years, thousands were tricked into buying low-quality ebooks.
10. Judge Finds Sony-Spotify Agreement to Be Ambiguous in Big Royalties Lawsuit
11. Feds accuse Silicon Valley firm Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel, of hiring bias
12. The digital age has destroyed the concept of ownership, and companies are taking advantage of it
13. New California IMDb Age Law Probably Unconstitutional, Experts Say
14. Teen-Focused App Musical.ly Is the Music Industry’s New Secret Weapon
15. 46 California Cities Join Rush To Impose ‘Netflix Tax’
16. Immigration Board Says You Can Be Deported For Copyright Infringement
17. Does The FTC Get To Ignore Section 230 Of The CDA?
18. Consumer group: Microsoft should compensate unhappy Windows 10 upgraders – Survey suggested that 12 percent of Windows 10 upgraders switched back to 7 or 8.1.
19. Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
20. Facebook apologizes for feeding inflated video-view numbers to advertisers
21. Facebook is Teflon: why inflating video viewing may not change anything
22. HP Has Added DRM to Its Ink Cartridges. Not Even Kidding
23. EFF calls on HP to disable printer ink self-destruct sequence: HP firmware update rejected cheaper third-party ink cartridges.
24. New Galaxy Note 7 reportedly explodes in China, burns customer’s finger
25. Goodbye QWERTY: BlackBerry stops making hardware: BB will “end all internal hardware development” and stick to rebranding devices.
26. Judge skewers Oracle attorney for revealing Google, Apple trade secrets: Lawyer “screwed up and she never should have done what she did,” judge says.
27. Oracle’s ‘Gamechanger’ Evidence Really Just Evidence Of Oracle Lawyers Failing To Read
28. Copyright Alert: The European Union Exposes Websites to Copyright Liability for Linking to Infringing Material of Third Parties
29. Nigerian Government Officials Abusing Cybercrime Law To Silence Critical Journalist
30. Court rules that union official’s sexist and offensive blog posts are constitutionally protected
31. Donald Trump Doubles Down On Ted Cruz’s Blatantly Confused And Backwards Argument Over Internet Governance
32. ISPs Offered Service to “Protect Safe Harbor” Under DMCA
33. Journalists Blaming Facebook For Decline Is Just As Tiresome As When They Blamed Craigslist & Google
34. Canadians watched 60 per cent more YouTube in 2015 than 2014, new data shows 
35. Now you can register to vote in Snapchat
36. Yelp fighting court order requiring it to remove negative review
37. How Iran Is Building Its Censorship-Friendly Domestic Internet
38. The Democratization of Censorship
39. Instagram Is The New TV: A too-close look at Karlie Kloss’s new eBay ad
40. I Let Facebook’s Algorithms Run My Life For Weeks: How I destroyed my feed, annoyed my relatives, and maybe even found true friendship in the processWhat happens when your tweet goes viral
41. Wrap Star
42. Listen To The First Ever Pop Song Composed By Artificial Intelligence
43. Ghosts in the Machine: Female Computers in Science Fiction and History

CREATIVITY

1. How the New Star Trek Fan Film Guidelines May Change Fandom
2. Chicago Cubs: With Success Comes Trademark Lawsuit Against Street Vendors
3. SODRAC v. Quebec Artists?
4. Photographer Successfully DMCAs Trump Jr.’s Skittles Image
5. Donald Trump and the Return of Seditious Libel
6. New Hampshire law barring ballot selfies is unconstitutional, court rules: Not even the motive to limit voter coercion can bar right to ballot booth selfies.
7. N.H. ‘ballot selfie’ ban struck down
8. Federal Court of Canada decision encourages creation of historical fiction
9. TV and Film Music Supervisors Are Killing Real Songwriting
10. Spotify is causing a major problem for economists
11. Traffic Is Fake, Audience Numbers Are Garbage, And Nobody Knows How Many People See Anything
12. Texas Rangers Oppose Bacardi’s Logo For Green Tea Spirit Because Of The ‘T’
13. It Only Takes Six Seconds To Hear The World’s Most Sampled Song
14. The Filmmaking Couple Kidnapped by Kim Jong-il to Put North Korean Cinema on the Map
15. Hollywood’s new China syndrome: The country’s enormous audience means money for movie studios and some restrictions; Chinese viewers — and investors — are saving Hollywood. But is China’s influence causing studios to self-censor?

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Heritage Minister says she will not reverse Cancon rules for TV industry
2. LA Clippers Sign New TV Rights Deal, But It Does Not Include New OTT Services
3. Rogers, Shaw to shutter video streaming service Shomi in November after less than two years
4. What Cord Cutting? Cable Sector Hiked TV Prices 40% In Last Five Years
5. The Future of the Internet: Less “Walking Dead” and More “House of Cards”? The FCC and CRTC Consider Implications of Data Caps and Differential Pricing
6. ISP explains data caps to FCC: Using the Internet is like eating Oreos – “You have to pay extra for double-stuffed,” cable company Mediacom tells FCC.
7. ISP Feebly Tries To Defend Usage Caps By Comparing Them To…Oreos
8. FCC delays cable TV apps vote, needs time to work out licensing: You’ll have to wait longer for free TV apps that replace rented set-top boxes.
9. FTC won’t give up fight against AT&T unlimited data throttling: Agency also lobbies for more authority to protect Internet subscribers.
10. AT&T sues Nashville in bid to stall Google Fiber: Google Fiber’s quick access to utility poles threatened by lawsuit.
11. AT&T Sues Nashville To Keep Google Fiber At Bay
12. Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars
13. US pay-TV subscribers down to 82%
14. Law Professor Mark Lemley: Hollywood Is Simply Wrong About FCC’s Set Top Box Plan
15. Inside The Final Days Of Roger Ailes’s Reign At Fox News: For 20 years, Roger Ailes did as he pleased at Fox News. Then former anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment—and suddenly Rupert Murdoch, who’d long had his back, wasn’t there. How the most powerful man in cable news was toppled in 16 whirlwind days.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Yahoo says half a billion accounts breached by nation-sponsored hackers: One of the biggest compromises ever exposes names, e-mail addresses, and much more.
2. Hack Brief: Yahoo Breach Hits Half a Billion Users
3. As we speak, teen social site is leaking millions of plaintext passwords: i-Dressup operators fail to fix bug that exposes up to 5.5 million credentials.
4. Austrian Teenager Sues Parents For Posting Pictures From Her Childhood To Facebook
5. Cops are raiding the homes of innocent people based only on IP addresses
6. CJEU Sheds Light On Liability For Operators Of Open Wi-Fi Networks (Case C-484/14 Mc Fadden v Sony Music)
7. Leaked Oversight Report Shows Illegal Surveillance, Massive Constitutional Violations By Germany’s Intelligence Service
8. An Ongoing Lack Of Technical Prowess Is Resulting In Bad Laws, Bad Prosecutions, And Bad Judicial Decisions
9. Why the silencing of KrebsOnSecurity opens a troubling chapter for the ‘Net: “Free speech in the age of the Internet is not really free,” journalist warns.
10. New California Law Attempts To Fight Hollywood Ageism By Censoring Third-Party Websites
11. The hopes and headaches of Snapchat’s glasses

jon

GAMES

1. McRO, INc. v. Bandai Namco Games America: Federal Circuit Revives Software Patents Held Ineligible
2. Two YouTubers charged with promoting FIFA game gambling site to minors
3. YouTube star charged over ‘FIFA’ game betting: He and another video producer allegedly broke UK law by promoting video game bets.
4. Steam pulls Digital Homicide games following fan lawsuit: Indie studio alleged harassment in $18m lawsuit against Steam users, now considering legal action against Valve for its response
5. Valve bans developer from Steam after it sues customers over bad reviews: Digital Homicide’s games removed by Valve for being “hostile” to users.
6. Dev gets removed from Steam after filing a lawsuit against Steam users
7. Valve relents on Steam key reviews – well, almost: Individual reviews from non-Steam purchases will be more visible, but they are still excluded from overall score
8. Curt Schilling and others aim to exit 38 Studios lawsuit by paying $2.5M settlement
9. Jagex punishing banned Runescape players by selling their stuff
10. Dark Side of the Sun
11. Nintendo raises the banner for premium mobile gaming: A latecomer to a battle that was lost some time ago, Nintendo is choosing to champion premium games on mobile over the ubiquitous F2P model
12. Pokémon Go player is mugged live on his Twitch stream
13. Pokémon Go player assaulted in Central Park while streaming on Twitch: “Still talking to police and will go to hospital soon. My jaw is a mess.”
14. Thousands play Pokemon Go while driving, US research suggests
15. Pokémon Go Is Doing Just Fine, With or Without You
16. Catch That Bet: 888Sport Launches Pokémon Go-Style Sports Free Plays
17. AR ‘far more promising’ than VR, says Niantic CEO John Hanke
18. ITV and Sky buy stakes in 24-hour video gaming TV channel
19. ESL One will be the first eSports event livestreamed in VR
20. Yahoo Partners With Riot Games’ Collegiate eSports Division For Inaugural Campus Tournament
21. Raw Data the first VR game to make $1m in a month – report: Survios points to AAA quality and AAA price as it lays claim to revenue milestone
22. Why Successful Games in China Rarely Obtain the Equivalent Success in the West
23. Logitech buys Saitek from Mad Catz
24. Roadhouse Interactive confirms closure
25. No Man’s Sky PR strategy wasn’t great – Yoshida: Sony Worldwide Studios president criticizes Hello Games’ Sean Murray for over-promising on space exploration survival game
26. Remember that time Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack?: Years before the iPhone 7, the Game Boy Advance SP eschewed the standard as well.
27. Wasteland 2 studio aims to sell 3D models from its games to other devs
28. Microsoft Weaponizes Minecraft in the War Over Classrooms: Two years after buying the wildly popular video game, Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars.
29. National Videogame Foundation formed to ‘celebrate and preserve’
30. Believing is seeing: Orwell and surveillance sims
31. Poland puts CD Projekt Red’s Witcher on official postage stamps
32. Blizzard is saying goodbye to the 20-year-old Battle.net brand
33. Blizzard phasing out Battle.net branding: After 20 years, World of Warcraft maker decides its networking services don’t need their own moniker

DIGITAL

1. Canadian tech company Netsweeper helped Bahrain censor websites, says report: Citizen Lab says government blocked access to political opposition, human rights groups, anti-Islam sites
2. Netsweeper, tech used to censor dissent, funded by NRC in 2012: CitizenLab reports of potential use of firm’s tools for censorship pre-date 2012 grant
3. What an “MRI of the Internet” Can Reveal: Netsweeper in Bahrain (Ronald Deibert)
4. Court: With 3D printer gun files, national security interest trumps free speech – In Defense Distributed v. Department of State, the government wins this round.
5. HP detonates its timebomb: printers stop accepting third party ink en masse
6. HP Launched Delayed DRM Time Bomb To Disable Competing Printer Cartridges
7. Another Bad EU Ruling: WiFi Providers Can Be Forced To Require Passwords If Copyright Holders Demand It
8. If Printing Guns Is Legal, So Is Distributing the Plans (Noah Feldman)
9. Yet Another Report Says More Innovation, Rather Than More Enforcement, Reduces Piracy
10. Music Industry Says Business Is Good But It Still Wants YouTube to Pay Up
11. Federal judge says Bitcoin is money in case connected to JP Morgan hack: Despite definitions used by IRS and Florida judge, Anthony Murgio won’t have two charges dismissed.
12. Inside Google’s Internet Justice League And Its Ai-Powered War On Trolls
13. Is TV Doomed? Two-Thirds of Young Millennials Use an Ad Blocker to Watch, Study Says
14. YouTube Leads Facebook, Snapchat Among Teens
15. Wi-Fi providers not liable for copyright infringements, rules top EU court: But judgment spells trouble for anonymity on wireless networks, warn MEPs.
16. EU Commission Proposes New Right For Press Publications
17. Italy Proposes Law To Make Mocking People Online Illegal
18. Italy on the verge of the stupidest censorship law in European history
19. Anti-Piracy Outfits Caught Fabricating Takedown Notices
20. Inside Google’s Internet Justice League And Its Ai-Powered War On Trolls
21. Instagram’s new moderation policy is exactly how we should handle abuse on the internet
22. Chrome and Firefox Block Pirate Bay Over “Harmful Programs”
23. Creative Commons licenses under scrutiny—what does “noncommercial” mean?: Commercial v. noncommercial use of CC licenses. Where’s the line of demarcation?
24. Facebook Algorithms Take Down WordPress Lawyer’s Post About Idiocy Of Algorithmic Takedowns
25. Report: Donald Trump Would Put Peter Thiel On The Supreme Court… Wait, What?
26. MuckRock & Vice Announce Fellowship To Investigate Peter Thiel
27. Who Cares About the New iPhone Camera? The Real Change Is Apple Pay
28. The NFL Arrives on Twitter, and With It, the Future of Live TV
29. When Information Storage Gets Under Your Skin: Tiny implants can replace keys, store business cards and medical data—and eventually a lot more
30. Rihanna becomes the second artist to crack 10 billion views on Vevo
31. Apple CEO: VR Has “Lower Commercial Interest” than AR, New Hires from Magic Leap & Oculus
32. Is AR the future of the VR market?
33. Unpatent Launches Combination Crowdfunding/Crowdsourcing Platform To Invalidate Stupid Patents
34. Fitness trackers may actually make you gain weight: In two-year study, regular dieters did better than those with technology.
35. This Ebook Publisher Doesn’t Have Authors. It Has Writers’ Rooms
36. The Simulation Hypothesis: Is Reality All Just A Computer Simulation?
37. ‘The missing sense’: why our technology addiction makes us crave smells: Our online worlds are full of colors, words and sounds but lack something major – scents. Could that ever change?
38. The federal self-driving vehicles policy has finally been published
39. The George W. Bush White House ‘Lost’ 22 Million Emails
40. How Pirates Shaped The Internet As We Know It

CREATIVITY

1. Golden Oldies for $5 Available at Walmart – the Stargrove Case has been Settled (Howard Knopf)
2. Copyright Claim against Beyoncé Gets Bounced in Scène à faire Tour de Force 
3. Copyright is not a divine right: Delhi HC
4. Breaking News: Major Victory for Students and Educational Access in DU Photocopy Case!
5. Is Access Copyright “Selling the Brooklyn Bridge”? (Howard Knopf)
6. Copyright Trolls Now Threatening College Students With Loss of Scholarship, Deportation
7. Newegg Sues Over Copied Legal Filing; Judge Rules That It’s Not Fair Use
8. Former Refugee Who Took Skittles Photograph Donald Trump Jr. Used In A Stupid Meme Threatens Copyright Lawsuit
9. Boise State Somehow Got A Trademark On Non-Green Athletic Fields
10. ‘Buck Rogers’ Pitch to Syfy Network Brings Legal Trouble for Author’s Heirs
11. You can create an online avatar that lives on after you die—but what’s the point?
12. The problem with “the pursuit of financial gain” in GS Media
13. Removal of ‘Love Plane’ by Banksy sparks tension in Liverpool 
14. Who Would Inherit Darth Vader’s Estate? 
15. The Fictional Fight Over Han Solo’s Estate
16. What’s Wrong With This Picture And Where Does it Come From? (Howard Knopf)
17. Why Do Americans Distrust the Media?: Donald Trump, anti-elite sentiment, and the dark side of media abundance
18. New protocol for notifying media of discretionary publication bans
19. Legal profession ‘willing to set logic aside’ to bar cameras from courtrooms: Canadians need to understand their court system, but there’s resistance from legal profession
20. How does race affect copyrightable expression? (Rebecca Tushnet) 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Behind the Scenes of the Digital CanCon Consultation: No Netflix Regs, CRTC Review or Copyright Overhaul (Michael Geist)
2. Netflix plans to make half of its content original programming: Shows like House of Cards and Stranger Things have started a revolution.
3. CRTC gets frosted at Kellogg’s over email violations
4. New York City Threatens To Sue Verizon For Failure To Meet Fiber Deployment Promises
5. AT&T and Comcast helped elected official write plan to stall Google Fiber
6. Nashville Council Member Admits AT&T & Comcast Wrote The Anti-Google Fiber Bill She Submitted
7. Fox News’s Sean Hannity stars in Trump promotion
8. Cable Lobbyists Stop Using The Word Cable In Hopes You’ll Think Industry Has Evolved
9. Don’t let copyright box us in (Mark Lemley)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Lawsuit: Who did the FBI pay to get into the San Bernardino attacker’s iPhone? – Associated Press, USA Today, and Vice Media sue FBI for contractual records.
2. AP, USA Today, Vice Sue FBI Over Refusal To Release Information About Contractor Who Cracked iPhone For It
3. The FBI sent a massive, unprecedented, troubling emergency alert about the New York bombing suspect
4. CBP Fails to Meaningfully Address Risks of Gathering Social Media Handles (EFF)
5. Op-ed: Why Obama should pardon Edward Snowden – A former Obama advisor on civil liberties says Snowden deserves one.
6. The House Intelligence Committee’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Snowden Report
7. House Intel Committee Says Snowden’s Not A Whistleblower, ‘Cause He Once Emailed His Boss’s Boss
8. House Intelligence Committee’s List Of ‘Snowden’s Lies’ Almost Entirely False
9. Senator John McCain Uses Cybersecurity Hearing To Try To Shame Twitter For Not Selling Data To The CIA
10. ‘It Looks Like You’re Trying To Harvest Cell Phone Data…:’ Quick-Start Guides For IMSI Catchers Leaked
11. Inspector General Says FBI Probably Shouldn’t Impersonate Journalists; FBI Says It Would Rather Impersonate Companies Anyway
12. Accused UK hacker to be extradited to the US to face charges: Judge finds that “vulnerable” Lauri Love should stand trial in the US.
13. Alibaba fires employees for hacking their way to free mooncakes: Hundreds of holiday cakes were purloined through weakness in internal website.
14. Brazilian Court Agrees Wikipedia Can Use Publicly-Available Personal Information For An Article
15. Is Privacy Policy Language Irrelevant To Consumers? (Lior Jacob Strahilevitz & Matthew B. Kugler)

jon