News of the Week; December 2, 2015
GAMES
- Blizzard Sues Bot Maker Over ‘World Of Warcraft,’ ‘Heroes Of The Storm,’ ‘Diablo 2’ Cheats And Copyright Infringement
- Grand Theft Auto 5 is better with lightsabers
- Video games blamed for Packers’ string of losses
- Dead or Alive publisher denies game is too sexist for Western audiences
- HoniePop dev offers $1 million for the rights to release Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 in the US
- Equity Crowdfunding: Gateway To Games Industry Diversity
- Activision Blizzard raises Hearthstone eSports prize to $1 million
- From Clash of Clans to Hay Day: the secrets of Supercell’s success
- Sony confirms ‘Remote Play’ is in the works for PC and Mac
- The new Gear VR proves virtual reality is finally consumer-ready: $100 headset turns compatible phones into convincing portals to another world.
- The year of Pokémon: the potential & pitfalls of AR gaming
- Is it the beginning of the end for fantasy eSports in the US?
- Does eSports need a players’ union?: Players, team owners and lawyers give their opinions on the controversial subject.
- Mobile gaming and intellectual property – a sport of kings?
- As Mastertronic goes bankrupt, Just Flight flies solo
- The worldwide effort to disarm Metal Gear Solid V’s nuclear weapons
- Key trends in the games industry that will define 2016
DIGITAL
- What Canadian Heritage Officials Didn’t Tell Minister Mélanie Joly About Copyright (Michael Geist)
- CBC v. SORAC 2003 Inc. (SCC decision 11.26.15)
- A Supremely Cool Day in Ottawa At and From the Supreme Court of Canada
- SCC requires tech neutrality in copyright negotiations
- Why the Supreme Court’s Endorsement of Technological Neutrality in Copyright May Be Anti-Technology (Michael Geist)
- Canadian Supreme Court Says Tech May Advance, But It Will Never Outrun Collection Societies
- Supreme Court update – ephemeral copies, technological neutrality and the Copyright Act
- A brief history of the broadcast reproduction right
- Authors side with Apple in e-book price-fixing Supreme Court appeal
- After Illegally Censoring Websites For Five Years On Bogus Copyright Charges, US Gov’t Quietly ‘Returns’ Two Domains
- Quebec Law Would Violate First Rule of the Canadian Internet (Michael Geist)
- Online Defamation: Linking and Liking
- Half a tweet equals defamation
- User behaviour: Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?
- Why We Trade Privacy for Facebook Likes: A legal theorist’s new book explains how our desires are woven into the surveillance state.
- Once again, the RCMP calls for warrantless access to your online info. Once again, the RCMP is wrong
- What Now? Privacy and Surveillance in Canada After the Paris Attacks (Michael Geist)
- America’s super-secret court names five lawyers as public advocates: “Very impressive” group has longstanding ties to Washington.
- Could the Third Amendment be used to fight the surveillance state?
- UK’s Snooper’s Charter Hands Over Access To User Data To Several Non-Law Enforcement Agencies
- The NSA’s Bulk Collection Of Phone Records Ended Saturday. Long Live The Bulk Collection Of Phone Records!
- Judge In FBI Case Was Forced To Redact His Mocking Of FBI’s Ridiculous Arguments
- How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce
- Fort Simpson’s Senga Services outs overdue customers on Facebook: ‘If I were struggling to pay bills, I wouldn’t want my community knowing,’ says frustrated resident
- When children are breached—inside the massive VTech hack: 4.8 million records from a Hong Kong toy company were compromised.
- Hacked toymaker leaked gigabytes’ worth of kids’ headshots and chat logs: Company encouraged parents to use the pictures and chats with the apps it sold.
- Toy Maker Vtech Hacked, Revealing Kids’ Selfies, Chat Logs, & Even Voice Recordings
- Hackers Could Take Control Of Your Car, But You Can’t Sue Carmakers For That Risk (Eric Goldman)
- Tor Devs Say They’ve Learned Lessons From Carnegie Mellon Attack, But Worries Remain That They’re Outgunned And Outmanned
- The Serial Swatter: Internet trolls have learned to exploit our over-militarized police. It’s a crime that’s hard to stop — and hard to prosecute.
- ‘Cloud’ Jokes Aplenty After China Blamed for Australian Meteorology Bureau Hack
- Stockholders Can’t Sue Yelp Because Of Fake Reviews
- Rogers Media Inc. pays $200,000 for alleged “unsubscribe” failures
- Finding Fuboy: one man spent four years and $35,000 to unmask his internet troll
- Patent troll claims HTTPS websites infringe crypto patent, sues everybody: Netflix and others are fighting back while Scotttrade and others are settling.
- EFF Files Legal Complaint Against Google At The FTC
- Facebook bows to Belgium, will stop tracking non-Facebook users: Also promises not to use long-life and unique identifier cookies for Belgian non-users.
- After Safe Harbor ruling, legal moves to stop Facebook from sending data to US
- Renewing transatlantic data transfers: how close are we to a revised Safe Harbor agreement?
- The Internet of Things: guidance, regulation and the Canadian approach
- “Random Darknet Shopper” is back, and it just bought a £20 polo shirt: Starting December 11, the bot will be on display at a London art gallery.
- It’s illegal to make private copies of music in the UK—again: You’re also forbidden from format-shifting or uploading to the cloud.
- How A Kid Running An Obscure Music Forum Became The Target Of The Uk’s Biggest Ever Piracy Case
- Germany’s Supreme Court rules that ISPs can be ordered to block piracy websites: But only if all other avenues have been explored by the copyright holders first.
- Google Books is transformative and therefore a fair use
- Microsoft Lobbying Group Forces ‘Pirate’ To Get 200,000 Views On Anti-Piracy Video… Whole Thing Backfires
- Kickstarter-launched drone startup denies it cheated customers: Discrepancies “affected the basic performance” of many production units.
- Judge: There’s no proof Yelp manipulates reviews – Claims that Yelp punishes non-advertisers fail to persuade yet another judge.
- Privacy & free speech at risk with terms of service (ToS) enforcement on social media content
- How The Gates Foundation Reflects The Good And The Bad Of “Hacker Philanthropy”
- Disrupting Mr Disrupter: Clay Christensen should not be given the last word on disruptive innovation
- Telepresence Robot for the Disabled Takes Directions from Brain Signals: Brain control becomes a more practical way to control robots when the machines can do some things for themselves.
- Robotic race car series will support Formula E next year: Same cars, but each team will develop its own AI.
- WarGames for real: How one 1983 exercise nearly triggered WWIII – Newly released documents reveal the KGB software model that forecasted mushroom clouds.
- The Big Laughs of Mexico’s ISIS Threat
- Click it to Stick it: Guide to Creating Binding Online Agreements
- ESPN Ignored Cord Cutting Threat, Paid For It With Huge Viewership Losses
- YouTube wants to compete with Netflix, seeks movie and TV show deals
CREATIVITY
- Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet to Death and Threatens to Sue Critics of Penal System
- Saudi Arabia Says It Will Sue Twitter Users Who Compare It To ISIS; Apparently Skips The NY Times
- Thai Printers Scrub Front-Page Article From The International New York Times
- The Hollywood Reporter, after 65 years, addresses its role in the blacklist
- Freedom of UK media to publish pictures of children curtailed after landmark ruling (Robin Callender-Smith)
- Tanya Tagaq’s music to be removed from controversial film, Inuk singer tweets
- Banksy – an item of disrepair?
- A.O. Scott Defends the Art of Criticism
- Parody of copyrighted work entitled to copyright protection
- Transformative parody entitled to independent copyright protections
- Sahand Sahebdivani: ‘The Main Thing That Storytelling Does Is It Makes You Human’
- America Is Too Dumb for TV News – Trump and others are proving it: we can’t handle the truth
- Blushing with Sexism: The Makeup Secrets of Fox News
- The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images
- The Science Of Why Scarcity Makes Us More Creative: Being surrounded with ready-made solutions to problems can inhibit our creative growth.
jon
News of the Week; November 25, 2015
GAMES
- Before you circumvent, circumspect! Nintendo TPM triumphs in Italy
- Backlash fears halt global Dead Or Alive Xtreme 3 launch
- Riot to lock trolls out of new League of Legends systems
- Riot’s New LCS Player Contracts – A Legal Analysis
- Judge Tosses Donkey Kong Record Holder’s Lawsuit Against Cartoon Network
- First Amendment Protects Use of Videogamer’s Likeness in Cartoon Network Animated Series
- ‘Gamer’ isn’t a single identity; we need diverse critics too
- Kotaku, blacklisting, and the independence of the gaming press: Actually, it’s about the relationship between the press and the game industry.
- Rhode Island lawmakers sign subpoena to compel Curt Schilling to testify at 38 Studios hearing
- Campus Police Chief Says Former Faculty Member A Threat To Public Safety Because Of A Game He Made 10 Years Ago
- Afro Samurai 2 pulled from PS4, Steam by publisher: Versus Evil gives full refunds, apologises to all purchasers for “failure”
- GameStop: Halo, Star Wars and Assassin’s Creed sold below expectations
- The PS4 can now emulate PlayStation 2 games: The results are rather impressive: 4x the resolution, anti-aliasing, and 60fps.
- PlayStation 4 has sold 30 million units in two years
- Will mobile games in India be different from China?
- Google Play poised for Chinese launch in 2016 – report
- Fans can back – and profit from – crowdfunded games in U.S. next month
- Jason Rohrer to be subject of a solo art exhibition
- Virtual Planes, Virtual Airports And Absolutely No Rogering: Inside The Fascinating World Of VATSIM
- If You Want To See Gaming’s Future, See Guitar Hero Live
DIGITAL
- YouTube Says It Will Offer Legal Protection Of Up To $1 Million For Select Video Creators Facing DMCA Takedowns
- For a few truly bad DMCA takedowns, YouTube offers to cover legal costs: The company will protect some video makers who lean on fair use.
- What creators are saying about YouTube’s help with copyright claims
- Is intellectual property law the new protectionism? Canada should be wary
- One Year on, the Private Copying Exception is now Dead
- Judge sides with Rightscorp, says DMCA doesn’t protect Cox: In what could be a landmark copyright case, an ISP loses its “safe harbor.”
- Chinese Company Learns From The West: Builds Up Big Patent Portfolio, Uses It To Sue Apple In China
- For Auto Enthusiasts, the Right to Tinker With Cars’ Software
- Adele’s new record is not on online streaming services – except where it is – the difference between interactive and noninteractive streaming
- Fox News LLC v. TVEyes, Inc.—does the courts’ expansion of fair use copyright protection promote the “progress of science and useful arts” when it requires increasing judicial oversight over activities that otherwise would be regulated by the marketplace?
- Judge Mocks Public Interest Concerns About Kicking People Off Internet, Tells Cox It’s Not Protected By The DMCA
- German Publisher Axel Springer Just Can’t Stop Suing Ad Blockers, And Attacking Its Own Readers
- Facebook’s Piracy Problem: Are plagiarized YouTube videos helping fuel the social network’s astonishing video growth?
- Transmission not accessible to the public “not a communication to the public”, rules court
- Clinging To Relevance, Yahoo Prevents Ad Block Users From Checking Yahoo Mail
- Paris and Beirut: Data suggests how Social Media shapes the Coverage
- Dumb Idea… Or The Dumbest Idea? Seize Terrorists’ Copyrights And Then Censor Them With The DMCA
- Anonymous’ #OpParis campaign against ISIS goes horribly awry: Anon mass-reporting of Twitter accounts submits thousands with no ISIS connection.
- File Says N.S.A. Found Way to Replace Email Program
- It’s official—NSA did keep its e-mail metadata program after it “ended” in 2011: The New York Times gets a new NSA doc confirming what some had long suspected.
- NSA Collected Americans’ E-mails Even After it Stopped Collecting Americans’ E-mails (Bruce Schneier)
- What’s The Evidence Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much
- The Paris Attacks And The Encryption/Surveillance Bogeyman: The Story So Far
- Terrorist attacks: Mass surveillance is the problem, not the solution – Time to stop blaming encryption and Snowden, and to address the real problem.
- French state of emergency allows website blocking, device search powers: Hints it may make it illegal to merely visit sites connected with terrorism.
- ISIS’ OPSEC Manual Reveals How It Handles Cybersecurity
- Influencers: Paris attacks don’t justify government access to encryption
- Australian Police Officials Smacked Around By Judge For Support Of Illegal Surveillance Of A ‘Closed’ Facebook Account
- Digital defamation update: recent decisions highlight issues with tweets, hyperlinks
- Another Court Logically Concludes That Linking To Allegedly Defamatory Content Isn’t Defamation
- Case Law, Australia: Duffy v Google Inc, Google liable for search results, hyperlinks and autocompletes – Lorna Skinner
- Bell is lobbying the Canadian government for a “free pass”: Bell is invoking an obscure, rarely-used parliamentary process to play politics with your Internet bill.
- Chinese Company Learns From The West: Builds Up Big Patent Portfolio, Uses It To Sue Apple In China
- Dear ZDNet: Comcast Has Been Sketchily Injecting Messages Into User’s Browsers For Years
- Comcast Tests Net Neutrality By Letting Its Own Streaming Service Bypass Usage Caps
- Whither the “Nigerian Prince”? Another Canadian business pays penalty under anti-spam law (David Elder)
- CRTC settles alleged CASL violation — deficient unsubscribe mechanism (Bradley Freedman)
- FCC fines more companies for Wi-Fi blocking
- Kickstarter has no clue how drone startup raised $3.4M then imploded: “We sent an e-mail to the Zano team informing them of their obligations to backers.”
- From the computer to the courtroom: daily fantasy sports websites to take on New York Attorney General in high stakes legal battle
- Young ‘digital natives’ naive about internet advertising
- The Last Days Of Marissa Mayer?
- Can Someone — Anyone — Please Explain To Me Why Marissa Mayer Is Still Employed?
- Yahoo Scorecard: Measuring Marissa Mayer Against Her Words
- Nokia layoffs strike a blow against diversity at Microsoft
- It’s Not About Yik Yak: app enables bullying and hate speech on campus. But the bigger problem is college students who don’t want to be in college.
- Free Amazon scriptwriting app lets scribes pitch directly to Amazon Studios: Amazon Storywriter replaces former Storyteller app, can work in offline Chrome form.
- Netflix Now Used By Over Half of American Internet Users
- A New Business Model for the Web? The Subscription Wars Are Here.
- Amazon backtracks after covering NYC subway car in Nazi symbols
- New Jersey makes swatting a felony
- Is Hello Barbie every parent’s worst nightmare?
- Online Shopping While Black: Until racial profiling stops, the internet has an edge over the mall
- How Railroad History Shaped Internet History: It’s no accident that Iowa, where the first transcontinental railroad began, is now home to a huge data-center industry.
- Canadian versus U.S. Copyright Law
CREATIVITY
- Eagles of Death Metal Discuss Paris Terror Attacks
- Okay, Now A Survivor Member Really Did Sue Mike Huckabee For Using ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ At Kim Davis Rally
- Parody of copyrighted work entitled to copyright protection
- The Hollywood Ten: The Men Who Refused to Name Names: When the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed filmmakers to testify about communism in the industry, a few held their ground — and for a time, lost their livelihood.
- The appropriation artist who can’t get George Lucas to sue him
- Quebec artist “borrows” Tanya Tagaq’s music: Nunavut singer furious
- You say “Tomaydo”, I say no copyright infringement: recipe book not an original compilation
- Conde Nast guilty of contempt in U.K. over phone hacking story
- Iranian Cartoonist Who Drew Sadness of Paris Attacks Jailed
jon
News of the Week: November 18, 2015
GAMES
- How the Baseless ‘Terrorists Communicating Over Playstation 4’ Rumor Got Started
- How Paris ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PlayStation 4 To Discuss And Plan Attacks (Forbes)
- Nintendo wins major victory in Italian court against PC Box
- Nintendo wins court ruling against modchips and homebrew software: Security measures ruled proportionate, despite preventing legitimate use.
- Nintendo Victory Against Piracy Mod Doesn’t Set Precedent, Says Lawyer: European Court rules in favour of platform holder, but that doesn’t make all modchips illegal.
- Blizzard sues ‘World of Warcraft,’ ‘Diablo 3’ and ‘Heroes of the Storm’ bot maker
- Yet Again, Blizzard Looks To Twist Copyright Law To Use It To Go After Bot Makers It Considers Cheaters
- Rockstar Whips Out The Ban-Hammer On GTAV Players Over Mod
- That Didn’t Take Long: MLB Plans Action Against Fallout 4 David Ortiz Mod
- Nintendo wins another patent case against Wii U, 3DS
- Plaintiff loses in-app gambling suit
- Players are value creators – Paradox CEO
- Understanding this year’s biggest video game copyright ruling
- ESAC report shows healthy growth of Canadian video games industry
- Video games contributed $3bn to Canada’s GDP in 2015
- Canadian video game industry catching up to TV & film production: Video game industry spent $2.36 billion in Canada in 2014, up 50% from 2013
- Fallout 4 ships 12 million
- Unpacking the $5.9BN King acquisition price
- Kim Kardashian game points to underserved audience
- Mobile study reveals F2P gender preferences: FPS titles 90% male, hidden object 90% female, says DeltaDNA
- Lessons from the PC video game industry: The future of media is here — it’s just not evenly distributed
- From Cartridge To Club: A Look At The Labels That Recontextualise Video Game Music
- Research: professional game critics more respected by older consumers
- “Gap between console and mobile is not as big as it seems” – Newzoo
- Why these comedians can’t stop playing the worst game in history: Members of the sketch comedy group Loading Ready Run tell CNET about their strange journey for charity, driving from Phoenix to Las Vegas and back again (and again and again) in the game Desert Bus.
DIGITAL
- Anonymous Vs. The Islamic State: For nearly a year, a war has been unfolding in strange corners of the Internet. But can a bunch of hackers really take on the world’s deadliest jihadi group?
- Post arguing for separation of church and state gets pulled by Facebook: Moderators for the site seem to either intervene too much or not enough.
- FCC chairman suggests expanded wiretap laws in response to the Paris attacks
- Metadata Surveillance Didn’t Stop the Paris Attacks: And yet intelligence officials and politicians are now saying it could have. They’re wrong.
- After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
- Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism (NY Times Editorial Board)
- NY Times Gets It Right: Officials Calling For More Surveillance Are Proven Liars; Don’t Listen To Them
- Edward Snowden Explains How To Reclaim Your Privacy
- No one has beat the government in court on spying
- Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users?
- Tor Project Claims FBI Paid Carnegie Mellon $1 Million To Deanonymize Tor Users
- Tor Says Feds Paid Carnegie Mellon $1M to Help Unmask Users
- Academics ‘Livid,’ ‘Concerned’ Over Allegations that CMU Helped FBI Attack Tor
- FBI: “The allegation that we paid CMU $1M to hack into Tor is inaccurate” – Revelation raises more questions than it answers, Carnegie Mellon still silent.
- Why the attack on Tor matters – Op-ed: Comp sci researchers have a blind spot to ethical issues in their field.
- Why the G20’s new “anti-hacking” agreement is pointless: Members claim to protect against “unlawful and arbitrary interference of privacy.”
- Not the way the datr cookie crumbles. Belgian courts on soggy jurisdictional grounds in Facebook privacy ruling.
- Microsoft building data centers in Germany that US government can’t touch: Microsoft will then hand the keys over to a local “data trustee.”
- Why Microsoft’s ‘Data Trustee’ Model is a Potential Game-changer in the Privacy War
- Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC: Privacy advocates warn feds about surreptitious cross-device tracking.
- Despite Aereo Supreme Court Ruling, TV Cloud Service CloudAntenna Insists It’s On Solid Legal Ground
- Here’s a Spy Firm’s Price List for Secret Hacker Techniques
- Password-pilfering app exposes weakness in iOS and Android vetting process: Vetting process for both App Store and Google Play failed to spot suspicious app.
- This startup makes it easy for anyone to launch their own streaming TV service: Will the future see a million tiny Netflixes bloom?
- FCC Refuses To Force Websites To Adhere To ‘Do Not Track,’ And That’s A Good Thing
- Time Warner Promises To Adapt To Cord Cutting With Fewer TV Ads, Gets Punished By Wall Street For It
- Comcast sent collection agencies after customer who paid all his bills: And it took 18 months to fix Comcast’s mistake.
- Quebec Bets on Internet Blocking: New Bill Mandates ISP Blocking of Gambling Websites (Michael Geist)
- No Liability for Linking to Defamatory Content–Life Designs Ranch v. Sommer (Eric Goldman)
- Ontario Passes Law Targeting Bogus Defamation Lawsuits
- The Ethics of Virtual Reality Storytelling
- The Cost of Canadian Copyright Term Extension Capitulation in the TPP – Estimates Based Upon New Zealand Study (Howard Knopf)
- Head Of House Judiciary Committee Dines With MPAA, Joins Their Fundraiser, Following LA Copyright Hearing
- TPP treaty: changes to Canadian copyright and trade secret laws
- FilmOn Loses A Second Case, Meaning That Supreme Court May Get A Second Shot At Aereo Decision
- Judge: Internet broadcaster FilmOn isn’t a cable system – Win in LA, lose in DC: High court may have to reconsider half-baked Aereo opinion.
- Leval On Fair Use And Google Books: A Sketch Of A Story
- Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’: A new report suggests that the marriage of AI and robotics could replace so many jobs that the era of mass employment could come to an end
- New Yahoo survey shows blacks, Hispanics see tech as a more positive force in politics than whites do
- Hackathons Have a Gender Problem: And they might explain why it’s so difficult to attract women to work in cybersecurity.
- On Gawker’s Problem With Women: A former staff writer describes how a media company founded on whistleblowing and radical transparency failed its female employees.
- Tensorflow And Monetizing Intellectual Property
- Comprehensive crowdfunding rules published in final form
- The new kings of YouTube botting
- AS Roma, Maker team up for online
- Failed Windows 3.1 system blamed for shutting down Paris airport: And the people who understand the old operating system are all retiring.
- Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s Then Totally Blew It
- Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold Plan For The Future Of Facebook: Facebook is firing on all cylinders. Now Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the decade ahead, from AI to VR to drones.
- I Don’t Want My MTV
- Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • October 2015
- The Doomsday Invention: Will artificial intelligence bring us utopia or destruction?
CREATIVITY
- The Paris Court of Appeals Gives Freedom of Expression the Ax in Favor of Droit Moral
- Judge throws out $42 million copyright case against Taylor Swift, quotes Swift hits in lawsuit dismissal
- Charity claims it now owns lucrative “Happy Birthday” copyright: The most valuable “orphan work” has attracted a new claimant.
- Anne Frank foundation moves to keep famous diary copyrighted for 35 more years: Group says Otto Frank was a “co-author,” throwing a wrench into online projects.
- Anne Frank And The Lasting Legacy Of The Public Domain
- How Disney Is Making Sure You’ll Never Be Able to Escape Star Wars
- Did The Jian Ghomeshi Allegations Teach Us Anything?: It’s been a year since the allegations against the former Q host were made public. Plenty of us thought it was a watershed moment, but when it comes to assault and violence against women, can anything be?
jon
News of the Week; November 11, 2015
GAMES
- Blizzard Sues Bot Maker For Copyright-Infringement
- ‘Kim Kardashian: Hollywood’ Sets Off $10 Million Lawsuit
- Steam ad runs afoul of ASA: Standards agency upholds complaints over GTA V bundle offered in Steam Summer Sale
- GTA 5 modders claim Take-Two sent private investigators to their home: Take-Two “aren’t willing to accept any solution other than ceasing my activities.”
- ASU Police Chief deems ‘Super Columbine Massacre RPG!’ creator a public safety concern
- SPJ reveals ‘Bill Kunkel Awards’ to honor ethical games journalism
- Zoe Quinn publishing Gamergate memoir
- Zoe Quinn’s newly-announced memoir optioned by Pascal Pictures
- Videogames And ’80s Hollywood Masculinity: A Love Story
- The Gaming Industry is Losing Billions by Ignoring This Group
- “No one is actually good at Candy Crush” – Divnich
- Candy Crush sours King’s financials
- Ubisoft admits that bug-ridden Assassin’s Creed Unity affected Syndicate sales
- Indian mobile market will hit $1.2 billion revenue in 2018
- How Eye Tracking Will TOTALLY Change the Way You Game.
- The Tetris Effect: What Video Games Can Teach Law
- Meet the Guy Who Thinks Video Games Are the Future of TV
- Activision Blizzard launches TV and film studio
- YouTube Red marks a turning point for games media
- New DMCA exemption keeps enthusiasts in the game
- ESA-backed survey claims half of gamers are ‘conservative’
- The Gamer Who Didn’t Leave His House For Over a Year
DIGITAL
- Full Text of Controversial TPP Trade Deal Finally Released
- Release of the Full TPP Text After Five Years of Secrecy Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights (EFF)
- Full Text Of TPP Released: And It’s Really, Really Bad
- TPP deal: Activists urge Trudeau to reject intellectual property changes
- Jim Balsillie Warns TPP Could Cost Canada Billions
- TPP is about many things, but free trade? Not so much
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement May Authorize Cross-Border Data Flows
- The Three Industries That Love The TPP: Hollywood, Big Pharma & Wall St.
- Flawed Copyright Case Places Spotlight on Canada’s Digital Lock Problem (Michael Geist)
- Judge Restricts Sharing of Fox News Clips Through Email and Social Media: In Fox News’ lawsuit against the media monitoring service TVEyes, a permanent injunction is issued that is primed to go into effect next month.
- A Boring Invisible Braces Lawsuit that Could Have Resurrected SOPA Dies Again
- Court Says ITC Can’t Ban Digital Imports
- Sorry, MPAA, Court Rejects Your Plan For A Secret SOPA At The ITC
- Google Books held “fair use” in the U.S. — but would it also be “fair dealing” in Canada?
- The Most Unsocial Network: A new class-action lawsuit accuses Facebook of being a matchmaking service for would-be Palestinian terrorists.
- Appeals court allows NSA bulk phone spying to continue unabated: Nobody has successfully convinced US court system to stop the NSA surveillance.
- DC judge rips into the NSA over mass surveillance
- Judge Again Says NSA Phone Records Program Is Unconstitutional; Orders NSA To Stop Collecting Phone Records Of Plaintiffs
- The Effects of Surveillance on the Victims
- Confession of a Russian internet provider
- NSA says how often, not when, it discloses software flaws
- FCC to tackle issue of broadband privacy
- Tor director: FBI paid Carnegie Mellon $1M to break Tor, hand over IPs – Feds may have obtained Tor IP addresses with no warrant during Silk Road 2 case.
- The Snooper’s Charter would devastate computer security research in the UK: What happens when you are forbidden from disclosing that backdoor you found?
- UK law will allow secret backdoor orders for software, imprison you for disclosing them
- Hacked Data Obtained By The Intercept Highlights Wholesale Spying On Inmate, Attorney Privileged Communications
- Microsoft to offer cloud services from Germany in bid to quell privacy fears
- Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament And The Council on the Transfer of Personal Data from the EU to the United States of America under Directive 95/46/EC following the Judgment by the Court of Justice in Case C-362/14 (Schrems)
- Yik Yak social media service popular among college students can reveal user data to police
- Dear Idiots and Racists: Yik Yak Is a Bad Place to Make a Death Threat – Yik Yak, the anonymous social media app, isn’t all that anonymous. And after its second massacre threat in a month, the company wants to make it clear: It knows where you are.
- Why a Belgian court ordered Facebook to stop tracking users or pay hefty fines: A commercial court agreed with privacy regulators that Facebook’s use of a tiny file that can track people who don’t have a Facebook account violates local privacy laws.
- Man-in-the-middle attack on Vizio TVs coughs up owners’ viewing habits
- OPC comment to Transport Canada on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Submission of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to the Canadian Aviation Regulation Advisory Council (CARAC)
- Websites can keep ignoring “Do Not Track” requests after FCC ruling: Petition to impose Do Not Track requirements rejected by commission.
- Ad Blockers and the Next Chapter of the Internet (Doc Searls)
- Let’s look to magicians to better understand technological deception
- Google Open Sources Its Artificial Intelligence Engine TensorFlow
- Tech Is Eating Media. Now What?
- Media and Internet Concentration in Canada Report, 1984 – 2014
- House Judiciary Committee Hears Concerns From Silicon Valley About Copyright Law
- Death by a thousand likes: How Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web
- Can Medium Be Both a Tech Company and a Media Company?
- Is it time for the world to ban killer robots?
- Inside the economics of hacking
- The Rise of the Internet-Addiction Industry: Treatment centers are opening across the U.S., but mental-health experts still disagree on whether excessive time on the web qualifies as a disorder.
- UN hopes to have revised ‘cyber violence’ report available by year’s end
- Ad Blockers Will Change How Ads Are Sold
CREATIVITY
- Is an Award-Winning Photo of a Haitian Immigrant Bathing in Brazil Unethical?
- Pakistani Taliban Faction Claims Responsibility for Killing of Journalist
- NFL Player Files Suit Against FanDuel Over Likeness Rights
- Will the real monkey who snapped those famous selfies please stand up?: Even if apes could own copyrights, PETA is representing wrong monkey, publisher says.
- Monkey See, Monkey Sue… Defendants Ask Judge To Toss Out Ridiculous Monkey Copyright Lawsuit
- Second Circuit Court Holds That Director Does Not Own Separate Copyright for His Contribution
- Russian Performance Artist Detained for Setting Fire to Federal Security Service HQ
- Books are dangerous: Contagion, poison and trigger. The idea that books are dangerous has a long history, and holds a kernel of truth
- Police Union Boss: Quentin Tarantino Needs To Patch Up Cop-Citizen Relationships, Not Us
- The Fight Against Sexist Stock Photography
- Copyright conundrums for collaborators
- Villains and Vigilantes creators crowdfunding to cover legal fees in trademark dispute
- Registration for SPEED QUEEN expunged on appeal for not showing evidence of use
jon
News of the Week; November 4, 2015
GAMES
- Judge Tells Plaintiff That Paying Real Money For Virtual Gold Doesn’t Somehow Lead To Gambling Law Violations
- Nintendo censors Xenoblade Chronicles X costumes for western release
- Warner Bros. offers refunds for Arkham Knight PC… Again
- Facebook to crack down on game invitations
- Princeton Police blame swatting incidents on ‘gamers’
- Will the justices be game and tackle EA’s cert petition?
- Sony Reveals Playstation Plus League Esports Platform
- Smite, Sexism And The Soul Of Esports
- Research: 42% of women own gaming consoles compared to 37% of men
- Analysis: Sony continues to widen its console sales lead over Microsoft
- Realm Pictures Goes All In On Real First Person Shooter; Brilliant New Form Of Interactive Entertainment
- ESA: over 1600 game developers and publishers in the U.S.
- Activision Blizzard to buy King for $5.9 billion
- Activision and King: Wrong price, poor fit
- Activision Blizzard Q3 sales, profits slide
- Halo 5 generates $400 million in software and hardware sales
- Activision Blizzard to stop reporting Warcraft subscribers
- Konami closes down studio responsible forMetal Gear Online: But promises development on Metal Gear Solid will continue.
- Zynga CFO resigns
- How eSports are saving the PC industry
- eSports: Where are the big sponsors?
- Ad-blockers “devastating for smaller channels” – PewDiePie
- CEO Of Mobile Company Blames Everyone For Wanting Coffee Rather Than His Game
- The History Of Gaming: An Evolving Community
- Is the videogame market ready for polarizing games?
- “There were no rules…we made them up as we went along” – Sex & Drugs and Video Games: Tim Chaney’s book on the industry of the ’90s
DIGITAL
- United States and European Union reach agreement in principle for continued transatlantic data transfers following Safe Harbor invalidation
- Court says it’s legal for NSA to spy on you because Congress says it’s OK: “An abrupt end to the program would be contrary to the public interest….”
- Senate approves legislation to encourage disclosure of online threats despite opposition
- Google held to be a publisher of defamatory autocomplete and related search terms
- In the UK, Web browsing history must now be stored for a year: UK gov’t backs down on crypto bans, but calls for major extension of surveillance powers.
- FBI planes gathered days of video, electronic surveillance over Baltimore: ACLU obtained FBI records of high-definition video and “other electronic surveillance.”
- After guilty plea, judge confused as to why prosecutors still want iPhone unlocked: “I respectfully direct the government to explain why the application is not moot.”
- Feds explain (sort of) why they really want data on seized iPhone 5S
- UK Gov’t Pretends That It’s ‘Backed Down’ On Snooper’s Charter
- Does a Teen’s Sex Crime Deserve Extra Punishment if He Used the Internet to Commit It?
- Facebook Beats Privacy Lawsuit Alleging Persistent Tracking
- John McAfee: No one in government cares about your privacy.
- How The EU’s Proposed New ‘Privacy’ Rules Will Be A Tool For Massive Censorship
- Canadian Judge Says Asking For A Copy Of A Legally-Obtained But Paywalled Article Is Circumvention
- Google Books and Fair Use: From Implausible to Inevitable? (Jane Ginsburg)
- MPAA Touts Big Legal Success Against Popcorn Time
- MPAA Whacs A Few More Moles, Declares Premature Victory While Making Movie Fans Worse Off
- Copyright As Censorship: Sketchy Food Scanning Company Abuses DMCA To Censor Critical Reporting
- Amazon opens its first real-world bookshop in Seattle: Book selection is based on online ratings, and online reviews are printed out on cards
- Can pro sports players legally demand payment from online fantasy sites?: Wagering on player performance deemed right of publicity violation, lawsuit says.
- Bell playing politics with your Internet bill by appealing CRTC ruling
- Why a Battle over the Internet and Canadian Cultural Policy is Brewing (Michael Geist)
- Title II kills investment? Comcast and other ISPs are now spending more: ISP earnings reports contradict Republican claims of reduced investment.
- SXSW Interactive changes tune, announces day-long Online Harassment Summit: Canceled panels return along with 19 more speakers; SXSW is “truly sorry.”
- SXSW plans Online Harassment Summit: Festival restores cancelled panels as part of day-long event, but key speaker says the show might not go on after all
- I Was on One of Those Canceled SXSW Panels.
- Here’s How Iranian Women Are Protesting Forced Hijab: “Facebook is our weapon,” says their advocate, exiled journalist Masih Alinejad.
- Former Instagram Model Edits Her Posts To Reveal Truth Behind The Photos
- Anonymous plans to ‘unhood’ 1,000 Ku Klux Klan members online
- Copyright Trolling in Canada: Is Blacklock’s a Copyright Troll & “Frequent Flyer” Litigator? (Howard Knopf)
- EFF asks appeals court to “shut down the Eastern District of Texas”: An (unintended) “absurd situation of forum shopping and forum selling.”
- How Congress Can Protect Online Consumer Reviews
- The Orwellian Story About CafePress Takedowns By Orwell’s Estate… Was Really CafePress Screwing Up
- Maybe Spotify Isn’t Killing The Music Industry After All
- Google Inbox will reply to e-mails for you with machine learning
- Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and Deep Learning
CREATIVITY
- Fox News Anchor’s Suit Over Toy Hamster Likeness Results In Hilarious Point-By-Point Hasbro Rebuttal
- US judge denies copyright over 3-word phrase ‘Everyday I’m Hustlin’’
- Kit Kat and the registrability of shapes as trade marks
- Iran’s Film Industry Hopes Nuclear Deal Will Help Open Up Biz Internationally
- The Tangled Cultural Roots of Dungeons & Dragons
- Can a monkey own copyright?
- Happy Birthday to you: the final verse?
- The dubious relationship between Lego and the art world
jon
News of the Week; October 28, 2015
GAMES
- Judge: Losing in Game of War’s virtual casino isn’t a real-world problem: Pinball also isn’t an illegal gambling “device,” court rules.
- Mind Candy branded non-compliant by ASA for “direct exhortations to children”
- US gov’t grants limited right to revive games behind “abandoned” servers: Players can circumvent defunct server checks but can’t create their own multiplayer.
- Harmonix fesses up to reviewing Rock Band 4 on Amazon
- Report: Ubisoft not pleased with Vivendi investment
- Activision’s move into eSports belated, but shrewd – Analysts
- Anita Sarkeesian reviews Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
- Microsoft stops reporting console sales
- “The beauty of PSVR is that we have the PS4 to power it”
- Don’t expect original IP to sustain your studio
- Activision Hires Former ESPN Boss To Run New eSports Division
- How Israel’s $1B game business thrives in a cutthroat global industry
- Bandai Namco expands with Indian subsidiary
- The spooky, twisted saga of the Deep Web horror game ‘Sad Satan’
DIGITAL
- My Unsolicited Advice to Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau & his Team on TPP, Copyright, CBC, Cabinet & Committees (Howard Knopf)
- Copyright concessions may be downside of TPP deal
- Activists urge Trudeau to defend Canada’s copyright regime from TPP changes: Under current laws, copyright holders must convince a court if they want the offending content removed but, under the TPP, content will be blocked or removed as soon as the first complaint is made.
- Copyright Decision Would Squelch Any Right to Read Paywalled Content in Canada (Teresa Scassa)
- Canadian Judge Says Asking For A Copy Of A Legally-Obtained But Paywalled Article Is Circumvention
- Google Books, fair use, and visual art—Second Circuit writes decision that would have helped two years ago
- Google seeks to compel studios to respond to third-party subpoenas in case against Mississippi AG alleging speech suppression and retaliation
- Annotating competitor’s ad is fair use
- US regulators grant DMCA exemption legalising vehicle software tinkering
- Pandora will pay RIAA $90 million for playing pre-1972 songs: The maze of state copyright laws is an expensive headache for online music.
- Internet Radio Copyright Is Bad and Dumb: A Comprehensive Explainer
- Spotify reduces piracy, but also cuts into digital track sales
- Netflix sued for streaming Bicycle Thieves ‘without copyright’
- Judge overturns ban on ballot selfies: Indiana law criminalized posting pictures to social media of your marked ballot.
- Judge: Pinterest can’t force Pintrips to change names – Pinterest can’t stop a travel app—or anyone else—from “pinning” stuff online.
- Senate Approves a Cybersecurity Bill Long in the Works and Largely Dated
- Feds: Since Apple can unlock iPhone 5S running iOS 7, it should – DOJ doesn’t know of “any prior instance in which Apple objected to such an order.”
- The Darknet: Is the Government Destroying ‘the Wild West of the Internet?’
- Judge tosses Wikimedia’s anti-NSA lawsuit because Wikipedia isn’t big enough: Not enough facts to “plausibly establish that the NSA is using upstream surveillance.”
- Safe Harbor was for EU privacy: But how safe is US data in Europe? – While all the talk has been about the now-defunct Safe Harbor deal and protecting European data in the US, a recent case involving Google flips that debate on its head.
- The Need for Transparency in Surveillance (Bruce Schneir)
- California law requiring warrant for digital searches is ‘a landmark win for digital privacy’
- Cars That Talk to Each Other Are Much Easier to Spy On
- Why the death of the iPod was the end of privacy
- Right To Be Forgotten Now Lives In Australia: Court Says Google Is The ‘Publisher’ Of Material It Links To
- With Tim Wu’s Help, New York AG Launches Belated Investigation Into Whether ISPs Intentionally Slowed Netflix
- Net neutrality: EU votes in favour of Internet fast lanes and slow lanes
- The European Union’s New Net Neutrality ‘Protections’ Are A Joke
- After receiving threats, SXSW cancels panel about online harassment: SXSW also cancels “Savepoint” panel about “integrity of gaming’s journalists.”
- This Is Not a Game: How SXSW Turned GamerGate Abuse Into a Spectator Sport
- BuzzFeed To Withdraw From SXSW Over Canceled Gaming Panels
- 6 Experts On How Silicon Valley Can Solve Online Harassment
- What Snapchat’s High-Profile Exec Departures Really Tell Us About Ceo Evan Spiegel: The Fast-Growing Messaging And Media App Has Seen Star Talent Exit Quickly. What’s Behind Those Buzzy Departures And What They Really Mean.
- The plan to save Yahoo
- How the Internet Has Changed Bullying
- Like it or not, your employees can like it
- Why one software CEO agreed to meet a patent troll—and then fought it to the end: He seemed sad… but for whatever reason, he decided to take this path.”
- First ever online-only NFL game draws over 15 million viewers
- Stanford Researchers Treat Autism With Google Glass
- How Much Does Venture Capital Drive the U.S. Economy?: Two scholars measure the economic impact of VC-funded companies.
- The Ethics of Digital Disruption
- Software Is The New Oil
- The Rise of the Internet of Things and the Race to a Zero Marginal Cost Society (Jeremy Rifkin)
- Haunted by hackers: A suburban family’s digital ghost story
- Autonomous Cars and Their Ethical Conundrum
- Why Alien Life Will Be Robotic: If life off Earth exists it has probably transitioned to machine intelligence.
CREATIVITY
- Orwell Estate Sends Copyright Takedown Over The Number “1984”
- Lego Tells Political Artist To Hit The Bricks, Refusing To Sell Him Legos
- Artist Ai Weiwei banned from using Lego to build Australian artwork
- Judge Rules That Egyptian Moral Rights Don’t Provide Standing In Tangled Lawsuit Over Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin’
- “Desperate Housewives” star’s whistleblower case revived by Court of Appeal
- Why Is Elton John’s Career Winding Down? The Russian Orthodox Church Has the Answer: It’s not age but his sexuality, the Archpriest reportedly said, and the marginalizing connection is depressingly familiar
- Gender in the Music Industry
jon
News of the Week; October 21, 2015
GAMES
- 2K Games takes heat for using game journalist’s likeness in ‘WWE 2K16’ video
- 12 arrested in eSports match fixing scandal – Report
- Egyptian TV News Uses Video Game Footage As Proof Of Russian Precision Strikes Against ISIL
- Konami Ingeniously Fuses Two Things Everybody Hates: Insurance And In-Game Microtransactions
- Payday 2 players in revolt over micro-transactions
- Payday 2 rolls back microtransactions after fan outrage
- Square Enix Tries Being Cool And Embraces Fan-Conversion Of Original Deus Ex
- Ending the Cycle of Abuse in Publisher-Developer Relationships
- For Brianna Wu, VR offers a chance to broaden gaming and escape Internet hate
- The Natural: The Trouble Portraying Blackness in Video Games
- Why Did Hideo Kojima Leave Konami?
- It’s OK everyone, Kojima hasn’t left Konami—he’s just “on vacation”
- Vivendi buys stakes in Ubisoft, Gameloft
- Ubisoft: “We’re going to fight to preserve our independence” – CEO Yves Guillemot reassures staff about “unwelcome” Vivendi share purchase
- Nexon sells shares in NCSoft, ending takeover bid
- EA not interested in remakes – Moore
- Star Citizen hits 1 million backers, entire game unlocked for all
- China now leads the world in game revenues – Newzoo
- 82% of Brazilians 18-59 play games – NPD
- 5 Reasons Why The TPP Is Scary And Gross For Games
DIGITAL
- Guy Who Won Original Right To Be Forgotten Case Loses His Attempt To Have New Story About His Past Forgotten
- Tim Berners-Lee: ‘Just Say No’ To Facebook’s Plan To Bastardize The Internet
- Appeals court rules that Google book scanning is fair use: After nearly a decade of litigation, a landmark win.
- Google’s audacious project that scanned millions of books has been declared legal
- Appeals Court Gives Google A Clear And Total Fair Use Win On Book Scanning
- Factor four: the most interesting part of the Google Books decision (Rebecca Tushnet)
- Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. (United States Court Of Appeals For The Second Circuit) October 16, 2015
- Commenting on Viral Video Is Fair Use–Equals Three v. Jukin Media
- By-passing paywall and circumventing TPM sinks fair dealing defense: Blacklock’s Reporter v CVA (Barry Sookman)
- Another Censorious Copyright Case Results In a Big Fee Shift–Inglewood v. Teixeira (Eric Goldman)
- ACLU Supports Apple in Case Raising Key Legal Question For Age of Encryption
- Apple Tells Judge FBI’s Phone Unlocking Demands ‘Burdensome’ At Present, ‘Impossible’ In The Future
- Apple CEO Tim Cook blasts encryption backdoors: “It’s in everyone’s best interest that everybody is blocked out,” Cook said.
- Sony Pictures settles employee class action lawsuit over The Interview hack: Company could pay up to $8 million (£5.1 million) to employees affected by the breach.
- Microsoft wants US government to obey EU privacy laws: Company’s chief legal officer says “privacy is a fundamental human right.”
- German parliament passes new, comprehensive data retention law: Requires that all telecoms & Internet metadata be held on air-gapped servers in Germany.
- Fallout from EU-US Safe Harbor ruling will be dramatic and far-reaching: Clever ruling by the Court of Justice will be almost impossible to circumvent.
- Data Transfers from EU to US “unlawful”; EU Signals Enforcement Actions Possible After January, 2016
- TPP IP chapter summary released – are more IP changes coming?
- USTR Fishing For Academics To Astroturf In Favor Of TPP
- Why Internet Users Should be Very Angry about the TPP
- Amazon sues 1,114 reviewers, some selling their opinions for $5
- False reviews equal real fine – Bell Canada agrees to pay $1.25 million penalty for misleading online
- Canada’s Biggest Net Neutrality Offender Rogers Has Change Of Heart After Having Its Traffic Discriminated Against
- Amazon AppStore and Google Play Defeat Lawsuit Over Infringing App Name
- The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives’ Digital Policy
- The Cable Industry Thinks Cord Cutting’s A Fad That Will End Once Millennials Procreate
- ‘I thought the tech world would be full of new voices and people. It hasn’t happened. The number of women in the sector is tiny. It’s such a waste’
- African governments are stepping up surveillance of their own people
- AdBlock Plus tried to expand its empire by buying adblocking app Purify
- Viacom Once Sued YouTube For A Billion Dollars; Now It’s Just Released Over 100 Movies For Free On YouTube
- Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Keynote Address at the Future of Video Competition and Regulation Conference Hosted by Duke Law School
- UK High Court rules Uber’s app is legal in London
- Microsoft Researchers Are Working on Multi-Person Virtual Reality
- Why It’s OK to Block Ads
- Women In The Developing World Are 50% Less Likely To Access The Internet As Men
- How Social Media Fuels China’s Growing Love of Cosmetic Surgery
- How Can We Achieve Age Diversity in Silicon Valley?
- The first rule of zero-days is no one talks about zero-days (so we’ll explain): Just as defenders find their feet, lawmakers move to outlaw security research entirely.
CREATIVITY
- American Publishers Take a Stand Against Censorship in China
- The Timothy McVeigh case and its impact on media law
- How The Fast Times Of The Paparazzi Came To A Screeching Halt: In the end, the paparazzi machine that came to dominate the early 2000s was no match for the Great Recession, celebrity revolt, and the rise of social media.
- Barney Fife comparison does not equal defamation
- ROBOJOURNALISM: I just wrote 7 blog posts in less than 3 seconds. Here’s the secret.
- Tracing the long, strange history of ‘Tom’s Diner’: A 30-year journey from café curio to 2015 chart-topper
- Drawing a Line in the Floor—Courts Are Struggling With the Overlap Between Design Patent and Copyright
- In fashion, cultural appropriation is either very wrong or very right
jon
News of the Week; October 14, 2015
GAMES
- Can Apple stop you re-downloading a delisted game?
- Call of Duty dev apologizes for fake terrorist “news” Twitter promo: Marketing stunt featured live updates on fictional attack in Singapore.
- Zynga launches gamified ads: Sponsored Play program puts ad games within games, touted as “the next wave in mobile advertising”
- O’Bannon v. NCAA
- Popular FIFA YouTubers Hit By Cyber-Thieves
- Xbox chief: We want to regain trust more than we want to beat Sony
- Bandai Namco pulls plug on Rise of Incarnates
- Brianna Wu: “I see a generation with almost no innovation”
- Faster In The Head: Can Video Games Make Soccer Players Better?
- Riot Games bans G2A esports sponsorship
- How are eSports gamers different?: EEDAR research finds competitive gamers skew male, are younger, more social, more likely to work out than their counterparts
- BBC Three to stream League of Legends World Championship
- ESA butts heads with UN over online harassment report
- Researchers examine placebo effect in video games
- UK government’s Games Prototype Fund launches today
- Cemu, the first working Nintendo Wii U emulator, publicly released
DIGITAL
- Canada Caves on Copyright in TPP: Commits to Longer Term, Urge ISPs to Block Content (Michael Geist)
- Once More: The TPP Agreement Is Not A Free Trade Agreement, It’s A Protectionist Anti-Free Trade Agreement
- The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared (EFF)
- Trans-Pacific Partnership text won’t be available before election
- How the TPP Puts Canadian Privacy at Risk (Michael Geist)
- Why the TPP Creates a Backdoor Copyright Takedown System in Canada (Michael Geist)
- Consideration of fair use before sending a DMCA takedown
- DMCA Considerations Following the “Dancing Baby Case” – Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.
- Chinese Web censorship may have claimed another victim: Apple News – The New York Times says Apple is the latest company to remove features due to local law.
- Here’s why Deadspin is right, and the NFL and Twitter are wrong
- New EU Law Will Tell U.S. What Can Be Said — And Built — On the Internet
- Spies and internet giants are in the same business: surveillance. But we can stop them
- Female technology journalists report abuse is still the name of the game: Women in tech forced to disguise their identity – and even quit the industry – after facing threats online, study finds
- Obama administration won’t seek encryption-backdoor legislation
- In China, Your Credit Score Is Now Affected By Your Political Opinions – And Your Friends’ Political Opinions
- Behind the European Privacy Ruling That’s Confounding Silicon Valley
- Facebook’s Stop and Frisk: How its terrible real name policy put this feminist from India in danger.
- The Murky Ethics of Publishing Data on Russian Servicemen ‘Bombing Syria’
- The Cyber Activists Who Want to Shut Down ISIS: Somewhere in Europe, a man who goes by the name “Mikro” spends his days and nights targeting Islamic State supporters on Twitter.
- Arrest and Prison Time for Journalists and Bloggers over Facebook Posts in Lebanon
- Linkedin “Add Connection” costs them $13 million
- Bell Canada reaches agreement with Competition Bureau over online reviews
- Periscope, Meerkat, HBO and the Live-Stream Dilemma
- Dumbing down your smart TV: California prohibits the use of voice recognition for advertising purposes
- Our double lives: Dark realities behind ‘perfect’ online profiles
- Raiders of the Lost Web: If a Pulitzer-finalist 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.
- The Future of Transparency in the Music Biz — and the World: The trend for more openness is directly related to the rise of the web, and a broader desire for more accountability in general
- The Carrot Or The Stick?: Innovation vs. Anti-Piracy Enforcement
- New patent lawsuits down, driven by drop in East Texas “troll” cases
- Quantifying and Visualizing the Reddit Hivemind
- The Hacking Quandary
- Sports video clips are now ubiquitous on social media. Can the NFL put the genie back in the bottle
- How Has Technology Changed the Concept of Community?: For some, making connections has become easier, but others say that life has become more isolated.
- Are you happy now? The uncertain future of emotion analytics
CREATIVITY
- Guru denied copyright protection for Bikram yoga sequence of postures
- Moschino sued for misappropriating graffiti
- One Reason You Might Still Be Paying $120 for a TI-89 Calculator: Copyright
- Appeals court hits largest public patent troll with $1.4M fee
- To the Batmobile, let’s go! A review of copyrightable subject matter
- When bands meet brands: the mutual benefits of music partnerships
jon
News of the Week: October 7, 2015
GAMES
+ Pokemon Wants To Totally Bankrupt One Of Its Biggest Fans, Thanks To Copyright
+ Fan turns to the crowd for Pokemon PAX party settlement
2. EA Takes Right-of-Publicity Case to Supreme Court
6. Moneyball, but for Mario—the data behind Super Mario Maker popularity
7. Changes to UK Consumer Rights Act are good news for gamers
+ A Practical Video Games Industry Guide To The Uk’s Consumer Rights Act 2015
9. Trade Mark Trouble – Is Your Game Protected?
11. Report: Curt Schilling and Rhode Island officials tried to keep 38 Studios deal a secret
12. Why video games have launch problems
13. NBA 2K16 breaks new milestones
14. “We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4”
15. eSports to bring in $1.8 billion by 2020 – Analyst
16. Destiny introduces microtransactions
17. Train Simulator 2016 And How We’ve Reached The Crest Of The Dumb DLC Wave
18. Three steps to help ensure the enforceability of your website’s terms of use
DIGITAL
+ Safe Harbour deal ruled invalid by top European court
+ How a Law Seminar Inspired a Student to Bring a Case to Europe’s Top Court
2. The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P.
3. Harper government facing court challenge over secret OIC
4. Intermediary Liability And User Content Under Europe’s New Data Protection Law
5. Ashley Madison – a new era in privacy class actions for Canada?
6. HK backspace, backspace: Censors delete news of Hong Kong’s protests, but not quite fast enough
8. Amazon to ban sales of Apple TV, Google Chromecast to boost Prime Video
+ Amazon Bans Sale Of Competing Apple TV, Chromecast Devices To ‘Avoid Customer Confusion’
9. David Cameron & The Pig: Revenge Porn & The Right To Be Forgotten
10. Highly personal data for 15 million T-Mobile applicants stolen by hackers
11. Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘Privacy Is A Fundamental Human Right’
12. Yelp settles suit with bankruptcy lawyer over allegations of fake reviews
13. Epic Minds’ $70k Kickstarter cash is gone, needs $120k to finish
15. YouTube’s Young Viewers Are Becoming Its Creators
16. DMCA considerations following the “Dancing Baby case” – Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.
17. Apple Watch Is Being Severely Underestimated
19. The importance of human innovation in A.I. ethics
CREATIVITY
1. Scientology Ramps Up ‘Going Clear’ Smear Campaign, Contacts Academy Members
5. The Dangers When Financiers Think They Can Produce Movies, Too
7. Are patent trolls taking over the fashion industry?
8. How The Media Inspires Mass Shooters
jon
News of the Week; September 30, 2015
GAMES
1. Wizards of the Coast settles Hex lawsuit
2. Dev Offers Free Games For Steam User Reviews, Gets Nuked By Valve
3. Black Forest Games loses Diesel trademark dispute
4. Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and more take aim at cyber harassment against women in new report
7. Valve blames developers for lingering VR nausea issues
8. Carmack: Minecraft is “the single most important application for VR”
9. Hothead Games opens new Halifax studio
10. FarmVille creator Mark Skaggs leaves Zynga
11. Over 20,000 attend first Twitchcon: 1.9 million unique online viewers for streamer show
12. Twitch policy on nudity a “disgrace” – Yang
13. Turner forms Counter-Strike eSports league, TV series
14. Five factors key to making eSports a $1bn business by 2020
DIGITAL
1. NSA snooping may endanger Safe Harbor Agreement with the EU
+ Opinion by ECJ Advocate General finds Safe Harbor invalid
2. Federal Judge Says Law Enforcement Can’t Make You Hand Over Your Smartphone Passcode
3. The Era Of Automatic Facial Recognition And Surveillance Is Here (Bruce Schneier)
4. Snowden Treaty Launched: Effort To Get Countries To End Mass Surveillance
6. Facebook Ads Are All-Knowing, Unblockable, and in Everyone’s Phone
7. The Increasing Attacks On The Most Important Law On The Internet
8. Online activism and why the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act must die
9. Malware Outbreak in App Store Alerts Tech Companies to Security Risks of China’s Great Firewall
10. DARPA is implanting chips in soldiers’ brains, according to this new book
11. When Online Kremlin Propaganda Leaves the Web, It Looks Like This
12. Beyond ad blocking — the biggest boycott in human history
14. Why Universal, Affordable Internet Access Should be 2015 Election Campaign Issue (Michael Geist)
15. No, You Don’t Need to Post a Facebook Copyright Status
17. Focus: Companies responding to copyright infringement in creative ways
19. Spotify but for the Titanic: A Proposal for the Future of News and Publishing
20. Waiting for a Drop in Corporate Hacks after U.S.-China Deal
21. Taylor Swift Deleting Periscope Concert Streams: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
22. Why Apple Music Missed a Beat
23. Election advertising gets with the #times
24. Creative Robots Replacing Artists And Writers…
25. John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus
26. What are the implications of the right to be forgotten in the Americas?
27. Will that be cash, credit or bitcoin? The pros and cons of digital currency
29. The Man Who Created Second Life Thinks We Can Make an Earth-Sized Virtual World
30. Moon-Landing Equivalent for Robots: Assembling an IKEA Chair
31. Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software
+ Volkswagen Scandal Proves It’s Time To Stop Being Passive About Our Tech
+ Should research on vehicle software be hidden from the public?
CREATIVITY
1. Pow! Appeals court assigns copyright to the Batmobile
+ Appeals Court Says The Batmobile Is A ‘Character’ Covered By Copyright
2. The Copyright Issue of Using Music in Election Campaigns
3. Gallagher v. Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc.
jon
News of the Week; September 23, 2015
GAMES
2. EA forced to pull 13 women from FIFA 16 due to NCAA rules
3. Andrew House: the PS4 is struggling against censorship in China
5. Canadian Cineplex invests in esports
6. Research: ESRB’s descriptors on tobacco use in games are lacking
7. “The console installed base is as big as it’s ever going to get”
8. Old-school game cartridges are coming to your smartphone
10. Unionized video game voice actors are considering a strike
11. Collectors preserve nearly lost Sonic arcade game through emulation
DIGITAL
1. Congrats to EFF and the dancing baby
+ How a Dancing Baby Struck a Blow for Balanced Copyright Law (Michael Geist)
+ 9th Circuit Sides With Fair Use in Dancing Baby Takedown Case
2. EU decides that US Safe Harbor is invalid!
3. The Arrival of Artificial Intelligence and “The Death of Contract” (Ian Kerr)
4. How Useful Is the Theory of Disruptive Innovation? (Andrew A. King and Baljir Baatartogtokh)
+ French Regulating Body Says Google Must Honor Right To Be Forgotten Across All Of Its Domains
6. Social media providers prevail in quashing subpoenas in criminal proceedings
7. Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web
8. Face analysis can tell what you’ll buy after watching ads
+ Appeals court grants injunction to Apple, bans some features from Samsung phones:
10. The decision won’t impact market too much as affected phones are from 2012.
+ Apple Bans Non-Graphic, VR Representation Of Ferguson Shooting For No Coherent Reason
12. South Korea-backed app puts children at risk
13. The Internet And Its Discontents
14. American Mass Surveillance of EU citizens: Is the End Nigh?
15. White House Realizes Mandating Backdoors To Encryption Isn’t Going To Happen
16. Big cable companies are fighting to stall new tech that would improve cellular service
17. Broadband is a “core utility” like electricity, White House report says
18. The most crucial item that migrants and refugees carry is a smartphone
19. CFTC determines that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are commodities
22. Kickstarter becomes public benefit corporation
23. Americans’ Attitudes About Privacy, Security and Surveillance (Pew Research Center)
24. Robots, Holograms And Wearables: A Tech History Of Fashion Week
CREATIVITY
+ I’d be smiling, too, if I owned the copyright to this photograph
3. Impact of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement on intellectual property law in Canada
4. Chilean Musician Victor Jara’s Rethinking of Power Lives on Long After His Murder
jon
News of the Week; September 16, 2015
GAMES
1. Machine Zone resolves trade secrets lawsuit with Kabam
2. State court orders Kickstarted game creator to pay $54k for failing to deliver
3. Blizzard sues uCool and Lilith games for copyright infringement
4. GamerGate: A Culture War for People Who Don’t Play Video Games
5. Video games have a diversity problem that runs deeper than race or gender
6. Refugee Mario is turning Europe’s migrant crisis into a video game
7. Hi-Rez Studios: Players make the content everyone is trying to monetise
9. Wales Interactive: YouTuber requested $17,600 for coverage
10. Guess which console manufacturer requested a name change to ‘Bombing Bastards’
11. PC gaming pushes US digital up 11% in August
12. Nintendo names new president—and it isn’t Shigeru Miyamoto
+ What path now for Kimishima’s Nintendo?
13. AppleTV has games potential, but its limitations disappoint
+ Apple’s So-Called Gaming Console Is A Major Bust
15. Microsoft sunsets XNA Creator’s Club and Xbox Live Indie Games
16. Rhode Island settles 38 Studios case with four defendants to the tune of $12.5 million
DIGITAL
+ Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (USCA 9th Circuit)
+ Fair Use vs. Algorithms: What the Dancing Baby Did to Copyright
+ Carry on dancing: Lenz v. Universal (Rebecca Tushnet)
2. Facebook’s dilemma: Its filtering algorithms just aren’t smart enough
3. BC Court Ruling Offers Strong Defence of Internet Keyword Advertising (Michael Geist)
4. ISPs don’t have 1st Amendment right to edit Internet, FCC tells court
5. Seven years of malware linked to Russian state-backed cyber espionage
7. Intellectual Property? Why Words Matter In The Copyright Debate
8. Larry Lessig Tells New Zealand Court That DOJ’s Case Against Kim Dotcom Is A Sham
9. The Sentient Surveillance Camera
10. Crime and Punishment: The Criminalization of Online Protests
11. High-tech consumerism, a global catastrophe happening on our watch
12. How tech exposed the evil in the NFL, and made me quit watching
14. GM Took 5 Years to Fix a Full-Takeover Hack in Millions of OnStar Cars
15. Ellen Pao drops lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, agrees to pay legal fees
16. The Impact of Apple TV Universal Search on Content Apps
17. Microsoft’s New President And Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith: On The Issues, In His Own Words
18. Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level
19. Donald Trump duped into retweeting picture of Jeremy Corbyn
20. The Story Behind MIT And Boston University’s New Legal Clinic For Student Innovation
CREATIVITY
1. Umida Ahmedova оn the Burden of Censorship and Being a Female Artist in Uzbekistan
2. Big Fee Shift in Unsuccessful Copyright Lawsuit To Suppress Unflattering Photo–Katz v. Chevaldina
3. Colorado Judge Ignores First Amendment, Allows Prior Restraint In Banning Aretha Franklin Film
4. China’s State-Run Central Television Slammed for Plagiarizing a Photographer’s Work
jon
News of the Week; September 9, 2015
GAMES
1. Arbitrator settles in favour of Marty O’Donnell in Bungie case
+ The Story Behind the Story (Tom Buscaglia)
2. Serious Games pulls controversial slave content from Steam
3. Report: Germany will get an uncensored version of ‘Fallout 4’
4. Beware of the ‘Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain’ save corruption bug
7. TM/right of publicity mismatch claims another video game victim (Rebecca Tushnet)
8. Can Apple TV shake up living room gaming?
9. Harmonix raises $15 million from 14 undisclosed investors
10. Ubisoft will open a theme park in 2020
11. Peter Moore: Some of our most powerful franchises are overseen by women
12. How Microsoft enlisted a Native American tribe to design a Killer Instinct character
13. The downfall of Kinect: Why Microsoft gave up on its most promising product
14. Will the Video Game that Cures ADHD Ever See the Light of Day?
15. Using People’s Names And Likenesses In Video Games (Tony Basich)
16. The GTA 5 Wildlife Documentary Is Why Rockstar Was Smart To Embrace Fan Films
17. PewDiePie videos viewed over ten billion times
18. This Week in Video Game Criticism: From philosophy inPillars of Eternity to demystifying MOBAs
DIGITAL
+ Apple and Other Tech Companies Tangle With U.S. Over Data Access
+ Apple Refused Court Order To Decrypt iMessages For DOJ; DOJ Debates What To Do
2. Delayed European Legal Opinion On Facebook NSA/PRISM Coming Later This Month
3. The Red Web: In Putin’s Russia, Internet watches you
4. How Colombia Built a Massive Surveillance ‘Shadow State’
5. Facebook sued for storing biometric face prints
6. That Facebook post you just liked is an ad—and you didn’t even realize it
8. YouTube dislikes for sale, DDoS-style
9. City Of Peoria Offers $125,000 Non-Apology To Owner Of Twitter Account That Parodied Its Mayor
10. Ashley Madison breach reveals the rise of the moralist hacker
11. Spotify has updated the language of its new privacy policy so that everyone understands it
12. Top 3 legal issues of 3D printing!
13. Billie Holiday to return to New York stage — by hologram
14. Can You Really Be A Copyright Expert If You Think Copyright Should Last Forever?
15. Don’t Worry, Smart Machines Will Take Us With Them: Why human intelligence and AI will co-evolve.
16. TiVo’s new patent creed: Even Samsung’s cell phones infringe our DVR patents
17. Now Fitbit sues Jawbone over alleged patent infringement
18. Getty Images Goes Copyright Trolling After A Meme Penguin
19. Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Bet on Oculus Rift Might One Day Connect Everyone on Earth
20. Sending Vr Cameras Into Space Will Create A “Transformational Cultural Shift” For Humanity
21. No names attached: college students drive anonymous apps trend
CREATIVITY
1. Getty Images Tries To Copyright Troll 2600 Magazine Over Content It Has No Copyright Over
2. Seven And Nine Call A Truce, Agree To Quit Copying Each Other’s Reality Shows
3. Sherlock Holmes case settles
4. Kimble v. Marvel: a cautionary tale for post-expiration royalties
jon
News of the Week; September 2, 2015
GAMES
1. Square Enix, SNK settle legal dispute
2. Convicted Murderer Says Video Games Made Killings Easier
3. Brad Bushman compares Virginia shooter’s horrific video to a ‘first-person shooter game’
4. Pokemon Company Hates Fun. Sues To End PAX Party
5. FTC slaps Machinima for deceptive Xbox One ad campaign
6. Online games site RockyFroggy reprimanded by ASA
7. Super Mario Maker pulls the curtain back on game design’s promise and peril
+ ‘Super Mario Maker’ YouTube Videos Being Hit WIth Copyright Claims – From Playboy
+ Someone Built A Troll Level In Mario Maker, And Nintendo Actually Promoted It
8. Amazon Underground turns free-to-play into “actually free”
9. Americans spending more time than ever on smartphones, but gaming time is falling
11. Chinese mobile market will rise 66 per cent in 2015
12. 46% of US social casino gamers spend money – Newzoo
13. The Full Counter-Argument To Game Studios Claiming A Need For DRM: The Witcher 3
14. Play it straight and they’re still irate: reporting on a hostile controversy
15. Shady government dealings alleged to have led to 38 Studios deal
16. Why the new Apple TV will kill your Xbox or Playstation
17. 881 E.T. cartridges buried in New Mexico desert sell for $107,930.15
18. Hearthstone exhibited as modern art at the V&A Museum in London
DIGITAL
1. U.S. court hands win to NSA over metadata collection
2. Iranian Phishing (Bruce Schneier)
3. Hashtags Are Not Trademarks—Eksouzian v. Albanese
4. Gmail Terms of Service Apply to reCAPTCHA During Account Formation–Rojas-Lozano v. Google
5. Google Books Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Using 512(c)–Avdeef v. Google
6. Federal Court Conditionally Certifies Privacy Breach Class Action
7. Sony Pictures, Which Hyped Up ‘Harm’ Of Hack, Now Tells Court No Harm Done To Employees
8. Popcorn Time lawsuits continue as 16 are sued for watching Survivor
10. Machinima Agrees To 20-Year FTC Oversight In Settlement Over Deceptive Practices
13. Users of Lizard Squad’s DDoS attack tool arrested in UK
15. Facebook introduces new tools to crack down on video copyright violations
17. Associated Press sues FBI over fake news story
+ AP Sues FBI Over Impersonating An AP Reporter With A Fake AP Story
20. Ashley Madison abusing DMCA “to put genie back in the bottle,” EFF says
+ CEO of Ashley Madison parent company quits
21. Microsoft accused of adding Windows 10’s spy features to Windows 7 and 8
23. Websites, apps often fail to protect children’s privacy, probe finds
24. The right to be forgotten: Privacy or censorship?
25. T-Mobile promises to “eliminate” customers who abuse unlimited data
26. Researchers built a robot that can paint as well as Vincent Van Gogh
28. Nielsen is scanning 1,000 Netflix shows to break the streaming “black box”
29. European publishers’ key aim: Limit Google’s power as an advertising platform
30. Steve Ballmer Shrugs Off $60 Million TV Offer For Clippers Games, Considers Streaming Instead
31. Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics?
CREATIVITY
1. Canadian Music Industry Hit With Competition Complaint Over Public Domain Recordings (Michael Geist)
3. Official Portrait For Pope’s US Visit… Being Investigated For Copyright Infringement
4. NYPD Asks Disney, Marvel To Abuse IP Law To Help Rid Times Square Of Spiderman, Mickey Mouse
jon
News of the Week; August 26, 2015
GAMES
1. APA Says Video Games Make You Violent, but Critics Cry Bias
+ 200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association’s Violence/Gaming Study
2. Party foul: Game of War studio sues rival Kabam after friendly soirée banter got out of control
3. Derek Smart Threatens To Sue Star Citizen Developers Unless They Meet His Demands
4. Machine Zone sues Kabam over trade secrets
+ Another day, another trade secrets leak for Machine Zone
5. Pair arrested at Pokemon World Championship after death threats
6. ‘Toxic’ League of Legends players won’t get rewards from Riot
7. EverQuest II is getting a ‘prison server’ for bad-behaved players
8. Moshi Monsters, Bin Weevils slapped by ad watchdog
9. UK video content creators get new guidelines on advertorial content
10. RI Watchdog groups call for independent investigation in 38 Studios loan deal
11. Rovio lays off 260 employees
12. Konami to close 31 premium mobile games in Japan
13. Mobile players only spend in an average of 1.6 games – NPD
14. Nintendo is once again open to movies based on its games
15. Google squares off against Twitch tomorrow by launching YouTube Gaming
16. Investors go wild for new funding platform Fig
+ Equity crowdfunding is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
+ Counterpoint: In Defense of Equity Crowdfunding and the “Professional Investor”
17. Analysts suspect Nintendo has shelved Quality of Life
DIGITAL
2. Ashley Madison faces proposed class-action suit over half-deleted data
+ Lawyers smell blood in wake of Ashley Madison hack
3. Keyword advertising not passing off: Vancouver Community College v. Vancouver Career College
4. FTC can sue companies with poor information security, appeals court says
6. Google ordered to remove links to stories about Google removing links to stories
7. As Part Of Its War On Encryption, Russia Briefly Blocks All Of Wikipedia Over One Weed Reference
9. Did Kaspersky Fake Malware?
10. The Advertising Value of Intrusive Tracking
11. Netflix escapes liability under the Video Privacy Protection Act
12. U.S. postpones plan to transfer Internet governance
13. There’s not much you can do about Spotify’s new privacy policy
14. Twitter yanks murder video posted by killer of VA journalists
15. Google Disappears Techdirt Article About Right To Be Forgotten Due To Right To Be Forgotten Request
16. Will Hollywood’s Whining Thwart Better TPP Copyright Rules? (EFF)
17. Yelp reviewers are not “employees”
18. The Rhetoric Of The Right To Be Forgotten
19. Artificial Intelligence, Legal Responsibility And Civil Rights
20. TV Channel Guide from the Future
CREATIVITY
1. Supermarket chain must pay Michael Jordan $8.9 million for use of name
2. Graffiti Artist Sues Moschino for Copyright Infringement
3. A chicken sandwich cannot be copyrighted, court rules
4. Sixth Circuit gives copyright protection to cheerleading uniforms
jon
News of Week; August 19, 2015
GAMES
1. Scholars are (still) calling on APA to stop linking violent games to aggression
+ ESRB has no plans to change ratings system after APA report
+ Researcher Chris Ferguson takes aim at APA study in Sky News interview
4. Fan-created ‘Resident Evil 2’ remake project shut down
5. Microsoft EULA lets it disable pirated games
6. SPJ AirPlay event evacuated after multiple bomb threats
7. Nintendo allegedly fires employee for revealing game localisation secrets
+ Nintendo fires employee over podcast appearance
8. King revenues, profits shrinking
9.Hearthstone on Phones is Costing Blizzard Millions of Dollars
10. Amazon halts game trade-ins in UK, Germany
12. EA exec says complaints about “on-disc DLC” are “nonsense”
13. Microsoft EULA lets it disable pirated games
14. Dead Realm Publisher Flouts FTC Disclosure Guidelines
+ Dead Realm publisher disregards FTC disclosure guidelines for YouTubers
+ Former Double Fine COO launches new funding platform
16. Del Toro: “If I join another video game, World War III will start”
17. ‘Hitman: Agent 47’ Producer Predicts New Era In Video Game Film Adaptations
18. Survey says video games and technology are an integral part of teen friendships
19. Students dig deep into soil science with mobile game
DIGITAL
1. Second Circuit Enforces Terms Hyperlinked In Confirmation Email–Starkey v. G Adventures
2. Yes, The Appeals Court Got Basically Everything Wrong In Deciding API’s Are Covered By Copyright
3. Lawsuit over two-word tweet—“actually yes”—can move ahead, judge finds
4. Even FDA is keeping up with the Kardashians
5. Why patent trolls go to East Texas, explained
6. Manufacturer warned by FDA for Kardashian Instagram post about morning sickness drug
7. Twitter, the DMCA and Copyright in the Age of Sharing
8. Ashley Madison Sent Me a DMCA Request for Tweeting 2 Cells of a Spreadsheet
+ Ashley Madison Still Trying To Abuse The DMCA To Hide Leak
9. Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
11. The New Cold War Is Going Digital
12. We need to engineer the racism out of apps
CREATIVITY
1. LMFAO, The Band, Sends Cease And Desist Over LMFAO, The Beer
2. Paramount Pictures Goes After The Codfather Fish Shop Over A Fish That Looks Like Marlon Brando
4. Creators, Innovators, and Appropriation Mechanisms
5. The Emotions That Make Us More Creative
jon
News of the Week; August 12, 2015
GAMES
2. Zenimax lawsuit against Oculus will proceed to trial
3. More settlements in Rhode Island’s 38 Studios court case
4. Steam offers full, unconditional refunds for ‘Journey of the Light’
5. Chicago Blackhawks Right Wing Patrick Kane removed from ‘NHL 16’ cover
6. Shots fired: video game argument ends in gunplay for two Columbus gamers
7. Kings of Poverty: Super Arcade and the Fighting Game Community vs. the City of Azusa
8. Cheating at Candy Crush Saga
9. ESL details new drug testing policies
10. Donald Trump’s disdain for video games
11. Angry Birds 2 hits 20 million downloads in week one
12. Hearthstone makes $20m a month – SuperData
13. Blizzard registers trademark for Compete eSports service
15. Core console software sales are higher than ever – EEDAR
16. Gamescom sets attendance record
17. Challenge accepted: interviewing an Internet #hashtag
18. Konami sees profit growth of 160%
19. Konami’s draconian workplace raises no eyebrows in Japan
20. USC initiative to turn student devs into pros
21. How the TV show in Xbox One exclusive ‘Quantum Break’ works
22. SURPRISE: Online Gaming Builds Stronger Connections Between Friends
23. Living Room Wars: Remediation,Boardgames,and theEarly History of Video Wargaming (Sebastian Deterding)
24. Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research; Volume 15, Issue 1, July 2015)
- Meta-Game Studies (Espen Aarseth)
- The Demarcation Problem in Multiplayer Games: Boundary-Work in EVE Online’s eSport (Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, Michael Arnold)
- Me and Lee: Identification and the Play of Attraction in The Walking Dead (Nicholas Taylor, Chris Kampe, Kristina Bell)
- No Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime (Daniel Vella)
- Self-Reflexivity and Humor in Adventure Games (Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone)
- A Manifesto, With Footnotes. A Review of Miguel Sicart’s “Play Matters” (Sebastian Deterding)
- Jørgensen’s “Gameworld Interfaces” (Hans-Joachim Backe)
DIGITAL
2. Federal court certifies action for “publicity given to private life”
3. Why Canada’s Net Neutrality Enforcement is Going at Half-Throttle (Michael Geist)
4. Google’s $6 Billion Miscalculation on the EU: Why the search leader’s antitrust deal fell apart
5. Google And EU Wrangle Over ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Law Global Implementation
7. News Corp. Makes Copyright Claim Over News Corp’s Live Video Stream Of The GOP Debate
8. Eat, Pray, Post: How virality is westernizing the entire world
10. Once Again The Economist Thinks Patents Are Hindering Innovation And Need Reform
11. It’s Operating Systems Vs. Messaging Apps In The Battle For Tech’s Next Frontier
12. Did Virtual Reality Just Have Its Google Glass “Shower” Moment?
+ Time rolls out all the stereotypical nerd tropes for VR cover
+ Oculus Rift creator: ‘I love the cover’
13. Unreal: Virtual reality is changing how college football teams train, recruit
14. What Happens When Spotify Gets Behind an Artist? A Case Study of Hozier and Major Lazer
15. Pixar will make USD software open source in 2016
16. Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”
17. Smartwatches Decimated Traditional Watch Sales Last Month
18. 10 Former Internet Trolls Explain Why They Quit Being Jerks
19. The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
CREATIVITY
1. Goodfellas’ actor’s $250m ‘Simpsons’ image rights claim shot down
4. Shakira’s hit song ‘Loca’ not plagiarism, U.S. judge rules
5. Michael Eisner: Creativity doesn’t have to be expensive
6. That’s Not Funny!: Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke.
7. Madeleine L’Engle on Creativity, Hope, Getting Unstuck, and How Studying Science Enriches Art
jon
News of the Week; August 5, 2015
GAMES
1. Inside Konami: public shaming, tyrannical management and punitive reassignment
+ Report: Konami’s treatment of employees called into question
2. ‘League of Legends’ hero killed and unplayable
3. ‘Resident Evil 2’ fan remake gets Capcom’s attention
4. Xbox One: home of the N64 classics?
5. ‘War Thunder’ producer takes YouTube channel hostage with DMCA takedowns
6. ‘Necromancer’ remains in limbo 15 months after successful crowd-funding campaign
7. Sony: 25.3 million PS4s shipped worldwide to-date
8. Activision Blizzard results up even as WoW subs plummet
9. Disney’s interactive revenue falls by $58m
10. HTC invests $10 million in VR dev community
11. EA beats guidance but sales slip
12. Marvel: Contest of Champions tops $100 million revenue
14. The $18 million Dota 2 International 2015 marks the end of an era
15. Report: The International halted by DDoS attack
16. The business of eSports in numbers
17. The Newest Job in Sports: Videogame Coach
18. Destiny Players Average 100 Hours of Gameplay Each
19. Evolution’s DriveClub passes 2m sales
20. “AR will be the biggest technological revolution in our lifetimes”
21. Racism and anti-war sentiment serve as the backdrop for ‘Mafia III’
23. Ronda Rousey Loves Pokemon
24. Leland Yee associate throws him under the bus in federal racketeering case
DIGITAL
1. The Gawker Controversy + Aftermath
3. Access Copyright, Education, PWC: With due respect to PricewaterhouseCoopers
4. New study shows Spain’s “Google tax” has been a disaster for publishers
5. Judge awards WordPress owner damages in false DMCA takedown case
6. 9th Circuit Rejects VPPA Claims Against Netflix For Intra-Household Disclosures
7. Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing (EFF)
8. Microsoft Launches Special ‘Scott McNealy’ Edition Of Windows
11. Mark Zuckerberg’s Personal News Shows Why Privacy is the True Bedrock of an “Open and Connected World” (Zeynep Tufekci)
12. Facebook kills proposed user data policy after game and app publishers panicked
13. Inside the failure of Google+, a very expensive attempt to unseat Facebook
15. NSA report shows China hacked 600+ US targets over 5 years
17. Mississippi’s All Up in Your Google Activity (ACLU)
+ Russia could ban same-sex emoji under ‘gay propaganda’ laws
19. Facing Islamic State threat, Iraq digitizes national library
20. Google to France: We Won’t Forget It For You Wholesale
21. ISPs argue that they are ‘information services,’ not ‘telecommunication services’ in federal court
22. UK peer calls for universal Internet delete button, may also want unicorns
23. Daily Dot Latest To ‘Keep Conversation Moving Forward’ By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All
24. FCC has already gotten 2,000 “net neutrality” complaints
25. Windows 10 upgrade resets your default browser to Edge; Mozilla is very unhappy
26. From Gamergate to Cecil the lion: internet mob justice is out of control
28. Self-Defense Against Robots and Drones (Froomkin & Colangelo)
30. GitHub raises $250 million at $2 billion valuation
31. Thousands of Exhausted Things, or why we dedicated MoMA’s collection data to the public domain
32. Copying And Sharing Was Always A Natural Right; Restricting Copying Never Was
33. Amazon’s Policies Rile Self-Published Authors
34. Do you date people who watch Netflix?
CREATIVITY
1. Freedom Of The Press Foundation Sues DOJ Over Its Secret Rules For Spying On Journalists
2. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter explains why he recently resigned from the Toronto Star
3. And Now Here Comes Every Other Comic Convention With Trademark Apps For The Generic ‘Comic Con’
4. No copyright in individual contributions to a film
5. Did Philadelphia inadvertently step on First Amendment and VARA in painting over Cosby Mural
6. Two Nine-Year-Olds’ Magnificent Open Letter to Disney About Racial and Gender Stereotypes
7.Less Money, Mo’ Music & Lots Of Problems: A Look At The Music Biz
8. Startup Accelerators For The Music Industry Seem To Be Popping Up Everywhere
9. Stakes Is High: Drake Ghostwriting Accusations Matter More Than You Think
jon
News of the Week; July 29, 2015
GAMES
1. ESL cracking down on ‘performance enhancing drug’ use in league events
+ World’s largest e-sports group to start drug testing in wake of Adderall scandal
+ Report: Ouya ‘Free the Games’ indie funding scheme abandoned
+ Indie devs say Ouya still owes thousands in unpaid “Free the Games Fund” earnings
+ Razer says it will pay what Ouya owes to indie devs
3. Industry must adapt to gamers as performers, not consumers – Outpost
4. Editorial: everything you know about boys, video games, and surveys might be wrong
5. Pokémon In Unreal 4 Looks Fantastic
7. Xbox committed to slow growth in China
8. Research: Australians spend 88 minutes a day playing games
9. Nintendo is closing TVii service for good
10. NetEase investing millions in mobile indies
11. Lessons from Zynga: Data is essential, but it shouldn’t rule your world
12. EA’s Söderlund on Star Wars: “There’s been a lot of guidelines and rules that you need to follow”
13. DIGRA ’15 – Proceedings Of The 2015 DIGRA International Conference – 37 Articles Or Papers
14. ‘Pixels’ is somehow even worse than I thought it could be
15. Analyzing a Dataset of Game Releases
16. The giants hiding a growing problem – Video games on Kickstarter on the first half of 2015
DIGITAL
1. The Rhetoric of Copyright Extremism
2. Anatomy of a Copyright Coup: Jamaica’s Public Domain Plundered
3. PSA: Twitter hasn’t just started removing stolen jokes
+ Conan O’Brien Targeted in Lawsuit Claiming He Lifted Jokes from Twitter
4. Study Of Spain’s ‘Google Tax’ On News Shows How Much Damage It Has Done
+ WordPress Takes A Stand Against Abusive DMCA Takedown Notices; Others Should Pay Attention
6. Bill C-51 not in keeping with Canada’s international obligations: UN
7. NSA ordered to destroy phone records it collected illegally
8. German regulator orders Facebook to allow pseudonyms
9. Campaign calls for children’s ‘right to be forgotten’
10. 5 key takeaways about Canada’s amended privacy laws
11. Clickwrap agreement available only through hyperlink enforceable under New York law
+ Mapping Out the CRTC Blueprint for Universal, Affordable Internet Access (Michael Geist)
14. Dueling Lawsuits Threaten The NFL, DirecTV’s Annoying Sunday Ticket Exclusive
15. FCC approves AT&T – DirecTV merger
+ FCC Approves AT&T’s $69 Billion DirecTV Merger, Announces It Late Friday And Hopes Nobody Notices
16. 4Channers Attempt to Scam Feminists With “FemCon2015,” Fail Miserably
19. Google Giving Away Some Of Its Patents To Startups To Help Protect Startups From Trolls
CREATIVITY
2. State Of Georgia Sues Carl Malamud For Copyright Infringement For Publishing The State’s Own Laws
3. Chilling Effects: UK Police Admit To Investigating Journalists For Covering Snowden Leaks
4. NAD finds Dollar Shave Club ads did not falsely disparage competitors’ products
5. Doobie Brothers Vs. The Doobie Decimal System In Trademark Battle
jon
News of the Week; July 22, 2015
GAMES
1. $60 million settlement approved in EA-NCAA athlete suits
4. UK agencies CMA and ASA looking into three games over questionable marketing practices
5. Nintendo flip-flops on ‘Super Mario Maker’ hand color
+ Study Finds That Men Who Attack Women Online Are, Literally, Losers
7. Women in Games conference sets date for September 2
8. FIFA 16 box to feature stars of American, Canadian Women’s National Teams
9. This is exactly how not to run a women’s esports tournament
10. Viewership up for this year’s Evolution Championship Series
11. Study: violent video games cause increased levels of frustration
13. Xfinity Games beta: Surprise, Comcast and EA can’t solve streaming games services
14. Kojima’s name removed from Metal Gear Solid V cover
15. US digital game sales up 18% in June – Report
16. Shenmue 3 breaks Kickstarter video game record
17. Game companies must temper expectations for Chinese market
18. EVO Tournament attracts record viewer numbers
19. Commercial gaming industry takes aim at daily fantasy sports
20. Mobile the new battleground for live streaming
21. Project CARS Wii U version cancelled
22. Beyond Sim City: How Video Games Are Affecting City Planning
23. The Art of Video Game Photography
DIGITAL
+ Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FilmOn X, LLC
3. Newegg wins TQP patent case after challenging judge over delays
4. High court rules data retention and surveillance legislation unlawful
7. Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet
8. President Putin Signs Russian ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Into Law
9. U.S. Supreme Court addresses criminal liability for Facebook threats
10. Is there a “constitutional right to informational privacy”?
11. Using Big Data for targeted advertising could violate Canadian privacy law
13. Snowden to the IETF: Please make an internet for users, not the spies
14. Hacking Team built drone-based Wi-Fi hacking hardware
15. Who’s peeking at your personal data?
16. Fiat Chrysler “connected car” bug lets hackers take over Jeep remotely
17. Clickthrough Agreement Upheld–Whitt v. Prosper (Eric Goldman)
18. UK High Court Goes Even Further In Emphasizing That You Cannot Rip Your Own CDs
20. How Do You Solve A Problem Like Netflix?
21. 2 Gawker Editors Resign Over Article’s Removal
22. No evidence that “personal information was ever transmitted” so Google wins privacy lawsuit!
23. Cyber-insurance: What you need to know?
24. Blame Society, Not the Screen Time (Danah Boyd)
26. Organizational Doxing of Ashley Madison (Bruce Schneier)
+ Fairly Random Thoughts on Ashley Madison & the Swiftly Moving Line
27. What claims work when D allegedly drives P down in Google rank through copying?
28. Triple Play: FCC Chairman Endorses AT&T-DirecTV Merger Under Net Neutrality Conditions
30. Enterprise-first gives Hololens the best possible start
31. Apple revenue up 33% year-on-year
32. Do We Need New Laws For Rise Of The Robots?
CREATIVITY
2. High Court quashes UK’s right to private copy Regulations
3. Is the media becoming a wire service? (Ezra Klein)
4. Charlie Hebdo Bows To Assassins’ Veto, Hecklers’ Veto; Will No Longer Mock Mohammed
5. Slam Dunk in Paris Court for French Sculptor Over Churchill Statue
jon