News of the Week

GAMES

1. Nintendo asks GitHub to make Javascript-based Game Boy emulator disappear: More than 20 games— Pokémon Silver and Gold included—were formerly available.

2. Randy Pitchford on ‘Aliens Colonial Marines’ lawsuit: ‘a huge waste of time’

3. Multiple Epic Games forums suffer security breach

4. Time study: boys think women are over-sexualised in games

5. Tale of Tales takes aim at game industry’s support of violent content

6. Konami removes ‘ Kojima’ branding from ‘Metal Gear Solid V’ cover art

7. Ubisoft selling twice as many games on PS4 as on Xbox One: Xbox One games only selling at the same rate as last-gen Xbox 360 and PS3.

8. If consoles can’t crack China, their future is limited

9. iOS game revenues show top 20 dominate – Newzoo

10. “It’s down to having to be in the top 10 to actually turn a profit”

11. Capcom signs first-ever 3D printing deal for ‘Street Fighter V’

12. Microsoft: First version of HoloLens won’t be for games

13. EA offers game streaming through Comcast

14. Games deals fell 89% in first half of 2015 – Digi-Capital

15. The UK National Videogame Arcade is the inspirational mecca that gaming needs: More interactive installation than arcade, the NVA shows you what makes games tick.

16. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has died at age 55

+ Obituary: Satoru Iwata

DIGITAL

1. Right to be forgotten: Supreme Court of British Columbia denies injunction to compel a search engine to remove search results worldwide Niemela v. Malamas, 2015 BCSC 2014 

2. British Columbia Court of Appeal orders Google to remove search results worldwide

3. ACLU to appellate court: Please halt NSA’s resumed bulk data collection

4. China’s new Internet law introduces stricter censorship, surveillance powers

+ How China Tamed The Country’s Top Bloggers, And Took Back The Net

5. Putin Aide, Apparently Non-Ironically, Gives Facebook A Lecture On Free Speech

6. Internet censorship reaching dangerous levels in Turkey

7. Patent troll lawsuits head toward all-time high: Of high-tech patent suits, 90 percent are filed by “non-practicing entities.”

8. Troubling Trademark Ruling Over Amazon’s Internal Search Results

9. Here are EFF’s most influential cases from its first 25 years

10. FTC exploring whether Apple’s 30% cut from music streaming apps is legal

11. Creepy or Cool? Your Phone Knows When You’re Depressed: A new study from Northwestern used an individual’s smartphone habits to predict whether or not the individual was depressed.

12. Panopticon For Sale: Trade between authoritarian regimes and corporations peddling cyber-surveillance systems has all but eradicated notions of privacy.

13. Hacking Team orchestrated brazen BGP hack to hijack IPs it didn’t own

14. The Web We Have to Save: The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

15. EU Parliament Rejects Bad Proposals On Copyright Over Outdoor Photography And Links

+ EU parliament defends Freedom of Panorama & calls for copyright reform

16. Canada Completes Ratification of Convention on Cybercrime

17. Conservative MP says Bill C-51 reflects the teachings of Jesus

18. Ellen Pao steps down as reddit CEO: Exit comes one week after massive user backlash against site management.

+ Reddit’s secrets are being leaked by the company’s former CEO

19. reddit loses another prominent female employee as chief engineer quits

20. Canada’s Thriving Tech Sector: By The Numbers

21. Apple is China’s top brand device – Newzoo

22. Nobody can link to this article: considering the legal issues involved in the Pan Am games website’s terms of use prohibition on linking without permission

23. Maybe passwords on sticky notes are the way to go?

24. The HoloLens’ limited field of view doesn’t matter, and here’s why

25. Virtual reality creates potentially real legal issues

26. Intel confirms tick-tock-shattering Kaby Lake processor as Moore’s Law falters 

CREATIVITY

1. Judge Rejects New “Blurred Lines” Trial, Trims Damages to $5.3 Million

2. U.S. museums and Looted art—is it whether you win or how you play?

3. Federal court upholds cancellation of REDSKINS trademark registration

4. Europe Frees Zorro From Trademark Restrictions

5. Why give away your work for free?: What do acclaimed authors Cory Doctorow, Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Hugh Howey all have in common? They give away their best work — for free.

6. What Is Canada’s International Copyright Policy?

7. Chain, Chest, Curse: Combating Book Theft In Medieval Times

jon

GAMES

1. Vegas casinos going for video-game gambling

2. Daybreak CEO rages at hacker on Twitter

+ Lizard Squad member ordered to fight against other hackers, gets no jail time for Xbox Live and PSN attacks

3. Square Enix pulls Mac Final Fantasy XIV from sale

+ Square Enix blames OpenGL for Final Fantasy 14 Mac refunds: Publisher Square Enix pulls game from sale and offers refunds.

4. New governance system having a real impact on ‘League of Legends’ community

+ Homophobia, sexism, racism reduced to 2% of League of Legends matches

5. Fallout Shelter shatters the dogma of core gamers hating F2P

6. Funcom reboots LEGO Minifigures Online as pay-to-play

7. European devs are moving from mobile to PC

8. Evolutionary biologist: we play violent games, because sex

9. Inside the world of India’s badass girl gamers

10. Anti-game-violence legislator pleads guilty to racketeering: State Senator Leland Yee faces up to 20 years for bribery, money laundering.

11. Corporate crowdfunding might not be all bad: Sony’s First Flight is a morally uncomfortable development – but could result in better games and products

12. Minecon breaks records with 10,000 attendees

13. Inafune: Kickstarter is “confidence-building” for Japanese devs

14. Reactions to Nintendo’s E3 “not that unfavorable” – Iwata

15. Nintendo’s alleged nationalism and “awful” working conditions killed Wii game

16. We’ve lost the trust of older fans – Sega CEO

17. Anxious Greeks Buy Macs and PlayStations While They Still Can

18. PlayStation Now will give new long tail to industry, says Sony

19. Hear how Steve Ballmer bailed out Xbox after Red Ring of Death

20. 3 video games teach kids on summer vacation about politics

21. PewDiePie responds to “haters” over $7 million YouTube earnings

22. Amazon now lets you create customized 3D printed figures of video game characters

23. Former Valve economist is now a former Greek finance minister too

24. How Video Games Changed Popular Music

DIGITAL

1. Meta-morphosis: tag, you’re it: Federal Court decision gives no copyright or trademark protection to metatags 

2. Appeals judges hear about Prince’s takedown of “Dancing Baby” YouTube vid: Years after Stephanie Lenz uploaded a video to YouTube, precedent will be set.

3. The battle to reform 300-year-old copyright law for the digital age

4. Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

5. Hacking Team gets hacked; invoices suggest spyware sold to repressive govts: invoices purport to show Hacking Team doing business in Sudan and other rogue nations.

6. Secret US court allows resumption of bulk phone metadata spying

7. Quebec’s Website Blocking Plan Gambles With the Open Internet (Michael Geist)

8. The Saudi Cables beyond the Saudi Cables: How to Assess the Impact

+ Should some secrets be exposed? (Bruce Schneier)

9. Appeals court says Apple is liable for e-book price-fixing: Apple lost a price-fixing case, fought the charges, but found no help in higher court.

10. Judge tosses jury’s $533M patent verdict against Apple, orders new trial: Jury may have had a “skewed damages horizon,” judge explains.

11. Will the European Parliament criminalize street photography?

12. DOJ shifts position on web access: stating in court filings that public accommodations have a “pre-existing” obligation to make websites accessible

13. Top five mistakes when drafting website privacy policies

14. A most unpatriotic YouTube hijacking: America the Beautiful

15. As Reddit Burns, Some Hard-Earned Lessons on Building an Open Community

16. Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children

17. The Loud Fight Against Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism

18. Microsoft renames Xbox Music Groove Music, drops Xbox branding from video store: Xbox Music doesn’t require an Xbox. Obvious, right? The renaming may help, but the service still lacks subscribers.

19. ICANN’s Threat To Privacy Is Not Theoretical

20. FCC Chairman lays out schedule for future broadband actions

21. Salon writers and editorial staff demand representation by the News Guild – union organizing in electronic media continues to grow 

22. Why Bitcoin is good for law enforcement 

23. Not-so-guilty pleasure: Viewing cat videos boosts energy and positive emotions

24. Witness ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ Through Google’s Deep Dream: Neural network algorithm makes film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic even more trippier

CREATIVITY

1. Appeals Court Rules Producer, Not Director, Gets Film Copyright

2. The Southern District of New York finds play to be fair use parody of “Three’s Company”

3. Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944)

4. Handbook on laws protecting free expression launched

jon

GAMES

1. Report: Apple reinstating historical war games on Apple App Store that use confederate flag

2. Australia sees surge in banned games

3. Parents of rampage killer Elliot Rodger sued by one of his victims

4. A Brief History Of Gay Marriage In Video Games

5. Cliff Bleszinski makes a business case for diversity

6. France reforms cultural tax breaks for games

7. Batman: Arkham Knight PC sales suspended

8. Destiny’s business model leaves Bungie walking on eggshells

9. Fallout Shelter was a top five earner in 37 countries

10. Sony claims up to 90% market share in Europe

11. How Sony Won Call of Duty DLC Exclusivity Away From Microsoft

12. Sony launches a crowdfunding platform for internal projects

13. Suzuki: Sony won’t get “a cent” of Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter cash

14. Minecraft just hit 20 million sales on PC

+ Microsoft wants to see Minecraft in the classroom

15. Industry’s days of stability are over – Square Enix CEO

16. Final Fantasy VII remake director didn’t realise he’d got the job

17. Demi Lovato latest star to sign game deal

18. Miyamoto: VR isn’t a good fit for Nintendo’s philosophy

19. How Tetris Can Prevent PTSD: Playing The Game While The Memories Are Still Forming Can Create A “Cognitive Blockade.”

20. The fear you experience playing video games is real, and you enjoy it, IU study finds

21. Why Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

22. Single Player Game: An essay retrospective of computer games, esports, and DotA.

DIGITAL

1. Digital Privacy Act: mandatory breach notification and other important changes to Canadian privacy law

2. Sony data breach suit to proceed

3. The Pope, Lonely on the Internet: Francis says the Internet is undermining people’s relationships, and the media isn’t helping.

4. The psychology of emojis

5. Professor Says Facebook Can Help Informal Learning

CREATIVITY

1. Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling

jon

GAMES

1. Bandai Namco overhauls US executive team

2. Over 12,000 sign petition to cancel Metroid Prime: Federation Force

3. Game-over HTTPS defects in dozens of Android apps expose user passwords

4. Sony’s Yoshida admits he was nervious about a female lead in Horizon

5. HoloLens’ field-of-view may be a problem without a solution

6. Warren Spector on E3: VR is a fad

7. Hitman dev: Season pass “wrong approach” for gamers

8. Nintendo should pull out of E3 entirely

9. It’s time for game financing to catch up with distribution – Marks

10. The average game on Steam sells only 32,000 copies

11. Original vision for Xbox One hasn’t changed – Xbox CMO

12. Bethesda wins E3 coverage race – ICO

13. Unity’s users can now access its internal roadmap

14. Roblox integrates SuperAwesome’s ad platform

15. Unity’s users can now access its internal roadmap

16. Scientists weigh in on the effect of games on players

DIGITAL

1.  B.C. ruling on jurisdiction over Google ‘disastrous’

2. Google calls for anti-Isis push and makes YouTube propaganda pledge: Executives vow video site will not be used as a platform for ‘brutally violent propaganda produced by terrorists’, but argue against blanket censorship

3. The “world wide” web: a recent UK approach to determining copyright jurisdiction

4. BC Privacy Act does not oust Facebook’s forum selection clause: BC Court of Appeal

5. Canada moves forward with mandatory federal security breach notification law 

6. The Internet That Was (and Still Could Be): As corporations like Facebook gain control over more and more online activities, the web’s core values are at stake.

7. Apple Music and the Future of the Music Industry

8. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver takes aim at online harassment

9. Apple Reverses Course, Will Pay Artists During Apple Music Free Trial

10. BitLicense: New York issues licensing and regulatory framework for virtual currencies

11. Senate of Canada releases report on digital currencies

12. California’s Eraser Law: what IP attorneys and owners need to know

13. AT&T to face $100 million FCC fine for throttling unlimited data

14. Microsoft stealthily backs away from free Windows 10 promise: We thought this would happen.

15. Hack and Field: The Cardinals allegedly hacked the Astros. But is it really hacking if you have a password?

16. Internet of Things: continued regulatory focus and consistent themes, but not without discord 

17. Internet of Things, news websites fare poorly in security and privacy review

18. Curation and Algorithms

19. Is the NFL-Yahoo Streaming Deal the Start of a Sports Television Revolution?

CREATIVITY

1. Speaker’s Corner: Surprise copyright changes have no place in omnibus budget bill

2. Creators frustrated with Copyright Office’s outdated technology, procedures (U.S.)

3. Freedom of Panorama is under attack: On 9 July 2015, the European Parliament will vote on whether to abolish our right to freely take and share photographs, videos and drawings of buildings and works of public art.

4. Beastie Boys win sizeable attorney’s fee award from Monster Energy

5. The ‘super powered’ rule of stare decisis defeats Spider Man

+ US Supreme Court decision in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC leaves Brulotte’s Ban on post-expiration royalties intact but confirms how to escape its web

6. Steroid parody strikes out against the Yankees

7. Translating Seinfeld: Translator Sabine Sebastian tried to bring Seinfeld to Germans, yada yada yada, it flopped

jon

GAMES

1. YouTube Announces YouTube Gaming, A Standalone App To Compete With Twitch

2. Shenmue 3 Raises More Than $1M On Kickstarter In Less Than Three Hours

3. Winko Games raises $1.4 million for core mobile title

4. €2m for eSports startup Dojo Madness

5. No Man’s Sky E3 2015 Gameplay Shows Universe-Sized Sandbox

6. Arc System Works buys Double Dragon rights

7. Xbox One to be Backward Compatible with Xbox 360 Games, Microsoft Reveals at E3 2015

8. 3DS tops 15 million sold in US

9. EA: “We have to start building new IP that might feel like a big risk today”

10. EA VP: “It’s not worth paying for Paris Hilton”

11. Minecraft “Playdate”

12. Amazon embraces “long-form” mobile gaming 

DIGITAL

1. B.C. Court of Appeal decision prohibits Google from delivering offending search results

+ BC Court of Appeals affirms worldwide injunction against search engine

+ Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Google Inc., 2015 BCCA 265 (CanLII)

2. Russian Roulette and the Right to be Forgotten: The newest Russian proposal to restrict free speech on the internet

3. Entrepreneurs And Investors In Turkey Emboldened By Election Results

4. USA Freedom Act to end NSA bulk data collection

+ Thought bulk data collection was gone? Think again

5. What The U.K. Surveillance Powers Review Says On Encryption And Hacking

6. An Online Refuge for Venezuela’s Intellectuals

7. Stephen Witt: ‘Music piracy is illegal – but morally, is it wrong?’ – Kitty Empire talks to Stephen Witt about his eagerly awaited book charting the rise of the MP3 file, the online pirates who exploited it and the record industry that ignored its cultural impact until it was far too late

8. Juror ruling prompts call to look at Criminal Code

9. Reddit Bans Five Harassing Subreddits, Its Trolls Respond Exactly As You’d Expect

10. Facebook Now Cares About How Long You Look At Stuff In Your News Feed

11. The FTC Goes After Its First Failed Crowdfunding Campaign

12. The FCC will now take your net neutrality complaints: File complaint on FCC.gov, and your ISP has to respond within 30 days.

13. YouTube trains its sights on traditional TV: ‘It’s a no-growth business’

14. Periscope, Piracy, Profit? What the future holds for live-streaming apps: An intellectual property attorney and video streaming executive discuss the possible outcomes of this new form of media infringement.

15. AMC’s streaming move sends shudders through cable but will the bubble burst?: As AMC tests Shudder, its horror-only streaming service, Brian Moylan sees the future less in a proliferation of niche subscriptions than in mergers

16. Will Bitcoin Finally Bring Down The House Of Medici?

17. Will Shazam Break the Video-Recognition Logjam?

18. Canadian Competition Bureau issues draft update of Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines

19. This Is How Men and Women Handle Email Differently

20. Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy: New technologies offer important tools for empowerment — yet democracy is stagnating. What’s up?

CREATIVITY

1. Numaish Karachi – can art installations change this violent megacity’s image?: Pakistan’s largest city has suffered 13,500 killings in the past five years – a level of violence that has severely restricted the use of its public spaces. So a group of local residents decided it was time to reclaim them for the people of Karachi

2. Are We All Mistuning Our Instruments, and Can We Blame the Nazis?: A small cadre of fanatics insists music would sound better if instruments were tuned differently.

3. PC Music And The Limitations Of Parody

4. Divining the Future of Television

5. Why a groovy 1970s sex ed comic book sparked lawsuits and loathing

jon

GAMES

1. Report: some ‘The Witcher 3’ Xbox One owners can’t play the game at all

2. Dota 2 breaks e-sports prize record with $11.5 million crowdfunded pot

3. Steam refunds: Young Horses and The Indie Stone react

4. Desura to devs: “We are not refusing to pay you”

5. ‘Rock Band 4’ not planned for PC, because piracy

6. XCOM 2 vows all-out support of modding

7. Windward is what happens when Sid Meier says it’s ok to ‘copy’ his game

8. Facebook’s Messenger Platform Gets Its First Game

9. Digital-only games account for 66% of console releases – EEDAR

10. Angry Birds strike Lego deal

11. Project Cars sells one million copies

12. Controversial Magic: The Gathering card sells for $14,900 on eBay, half goes to charity

13. Inside the World’s Biggest ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Tournament: Battling it out in Las Vegas with Tarmogoyf, Vraska the Unseen and more than 11,000 card-carrying members of the Multiverse

14. The real scars of Korean gaming

15. Dota 2 tournament prize-pool is the largest in eSports

16. The persistent myth of the “MOBA market”

17. The Witcher 3 sold 4 million in two weeks

18. This Week in Video Game Criticism: From race in Witcher 3 to local level design

19. Ninja Theory’s Hellblade to tackle mental health, backed by Wellcome Trust

20. Paid betas hurt Early Access – Tripwire

21. How Electronic Arts stopped being the worst company in America: Being named the worst company in America two years in a row was a wake-up call for the video game maker. Interviews with current and former executives, employees and partners show how EA changed the way it worked as it tries to redeem itself.

22. The post-apocalyptic dimensional space of Native video game design: First-ever summit explores how games can preserve cultural stories, languages.

23. Super Mario, Pong among World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees 

DIGITAL

1. The Online Privacy Lie Is Unraveling

2. 2015 is a transition year to the (somewhat creepy) machine learning era. Apple, Google, privacy and ads.

3. Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance

4. Canada greenlights an anti-terror law that hurts internet privacy

5. Erasing History: EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ case will have global ramifications

6. Copyright Board issues landmark decision in government copying proceeding

7. Netflix: piracy helped prepare Spain for watching content online

8. Sorry Bell, accessing U.S. Netflix is not theft: Geist – Mary Ann Turcke’s comments provide evidence of the mounting frustration among Canadian broadcasters over Netflix’s remarkable popularity.

9. Emails between USTR and ESA, MPAA, and RIAA show influence on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

10. Defamation suit against EFF dropped three days after it’s served: EFF is fine and still thinks Scott Horstemeyer’s patent is stupid.

11. The Cuban Internet Crisis: Ninety miles to our south, young people’s dreams are dashed because they have no digital access

12. PSA: net neutrality rules go into effect June 12

13. Man vs. machine: why Apple doesn’t want to pick

+ Flipboard CEO: Apple didn’t surprise us because it’s always been watching us

14. Intel creates $125 million fund for tech firms led by women and minorities

15. Holus Is A Tabletop Device That Turns Digital Media Into A 3D Hologram

16. Weaving The Future of Textiles With Google’s Project Jacquard

17. The Dawn of Virtual Reality

18. YouTube trains its sights on traditional TV: ‘It’s a no-growth business’

19. Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Pay for Facebook

20. Billboard Cover: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Taylor Swift, His ‘Freemium’ Business Model and Why He’s Saving the Music Industry

21. Looking For A Connection In An Infinite Jukebox: With Millions Of Songs At Our Fingertips, Is The Idea Of Owning Music A Thing Of The Past?

22. Why Can’t Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

23. A Periodic Table Of Wearable Technology

24. Ray Kurzweil: Humans will be hybrids by 2030

25. Artificial intelligence?: AI scares us because it could be as inhuman as humans.

26. The Good, The Bad and The Robot: Experts Are Trying to Make Machines Be “Moral”

27. Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy: New technologies offer important tools for empowerment — yet democracy is stagnating. What’s up?

28. Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy

29. Stephen Witt: ‘Music piracy is illegal – but morally, is it wrong?’

30. The Emerging Science of Human Computation: The Web has turned the wisdom of the crowd into a valuable, on-demand resource. Now scientists are asking how best to put crowdsourced cognition to work.

31. How To Build A Cutting-Edge Digital Strategy From World-Class Art

CREATIVITY

1. 1 million streams = $90? NeYo reveals the truth about how songwriters get paid

2. The 3 ways women are photographed for the cover of Rolling Stone

3. CBC host Evan Solomon fired after Star investigation finds he took secret cut of art deals: CBC journalist facilitated sales of art to wealthy Canadians he dealt with in his job — including one buyer who had no idea Solomon was collecting a commission.

4. Life after Snowden: Journalists’ new moral responsibility

5. No Money, No Space, No Time: How London Has Forced Out Musicians

jon

GAMES

1. Rockstar sues BBC

+ Take-Two sues BBC over ‘Grand Theft Auto’ movie

2. These two Diablo III players stole virtual armor and gold — and got prosecuted IRL

3. ‘League of Legends’ player admits swatting and stalking multiple victims in the U.S. and Canada

+ 17-year-old pleads guilty to swatting: British Columbian admits to 23 offences, harassment mostly aimed at young women who played League of Legends

4. Wii blamed for RV Fire in Colorado Springs

5. Dodgy Elder Scrolls Online keys deactivated from today

6. Desura addresses delays in payments to developers

7. GTA Player Says He Hired Cheater To Rescue Him From…Another Cheater

8. BioWare Writer Talks Gay Romances and Sexual Diversity in Gaming: “Ultimately, it hasn’t really affected our sales insofar as we can tell.”

9. Multiplayer video games may improve cooperation, mitigate aggression: Research suggests cooperative gamers play nicer, even when the game is violent.

10. F2P Comes of Age: How to make money without being ‘evil’

11. Zynga’s old sports team hired by FanDuel – Report

12. Double Fine regains Iron Brigade publishing rights

13. How Sony Or Microsoft Could Use Subscription To Win Video Games

14. Kickstarter, or, Every Publisher’s New Greenlight Process

15. The First First-Person Shooter

16. This Is What Pac-Man‘s Creator Thinks 35 Years Later

17. My son has $23.6 billion. How is yours doing?

DIGITAL

18. The Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2015 Report

19. »Intellectual property rights are not human rights«, UN special rapporteur tells European Parliament

20. Garcia v. Google reversed; many sigh in relief (Rebecca Tushnet)

21. The NSA tried to use app stores to send malware to targets

22. The End of Privacy

23. Young Saudis, Bound by Conservative Strictures, Find Freedom on Their Phones

24. Anti-NSA Pranksters Planted Tape Recorders Across New York and Published Your Conversations

25. Which Students Get to Have Privacy?: There’s a fresh push to protect student data. But the people who need the most protection are the ones being left behind. (danah boyd)

26. If You Know About It, You’re the Publisher – Website Operator Liability for Defamation (Bob Tarantino)

27. This Is What It’s Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn’t Exist: Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud – a multiyear hoax that depended on stealing someone else’s life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.

28. Reddit CEO: Getting Rid of Salary Negotiations Helps Everyone, Not Just Women -Ellen Pao says her fight against gender discrimination in Silicon Valley isn’t over.

29. What If Facebook Actually Paid People For Content?

30. Lawyers circling lawyers in frenzied Facebook ownership flap: Attorneys who assisted fugitive’s claim to Facebook are fighting Zuckerberg back.

31. Trivial thoughts on substantial parts (Bob Tarantino)

32. Why It’s Time to Stop Hating Spotify

33. Robot Journalism: Algorithms are More of a Tool than a Threat

34. Will Periscope and Other Live-Streaming Apps Kill the Cable TV Star?

+ Fan streaming apps have sports world debating TV rights

35. David Letterman and the long, Internet-enabled decline of the nightly talk show

36. More Provinces Crowd into Crowdfunding, but Not Yet Ontario or Alberta

37. This Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Has a Few Concerns

38. Hacking Our Moral Compass

39. How The Raspberry Pi Sparked A Maker Revolution

40. What’s Hot in the Art World? Algorithms: Admirers hold on to computerized formulas; paying $2,500 for a ‘qrpff’ necktie 

CREATIVITY

41. Brands, The New Merchants of Cool: What happens when corporations replace major labels as patrons of independent music?

42. Creative Thinking Can Inspire Unethical Behavior

43. Pop Music Is More About Advertising Now Than Before — And Nobody Realizes It

44. 7 Deadly Sins: Where Hollywood Is Wrong About The Future Of TV

45. Jorge Ramos: Of journalists and dinosaurs

46. How Indie Rock Changed the World: The influence of geeks with guitars on culture, from DIY to social media

jon

GAMES

1. Rockstar sues BBC

+ Take-Two sues BBC over ‘Grand Theft Auto’ movie

2. These two Diablo III players stole virtual armor and gold — and got prosecuted IRL

3. ‘League of Legends’ player admits swatting and stalking multiple victims in the U.S. and Canada

+ 17-year-old pleads guilty to swatting: British Columbian admits to 23 offences, harassment mostly aimed at young women who played League of Legends

4. Wii blamed for RV Fire in Colorado Springs

5. Dodgy Elder Scrolls Online keys deactivated from today

6. Desura addresses delays in payments to developers

7. GTA Player Says He Hired Cheater To Rescue Him From…Another Cheater

8. BioWare Writer Talks Gay Romances and Sexual Diversity in Gaming: “Ultimately, it hasn’t really affected our sales insofar as we can tell.”

9. Multiplayer video games may improve cooperation, mitigate aggression: Research suggests cooperative gamers play nicer, even when the game is violent.

10. F2P Comes of Age: How to make money without being ‘evil’

11. Zynga’s old sports team hired by FanDuel – Report

12. Double Fine regains Iron Brigade publishing rights

13. How Sony Or Microsoft Could Use Subscription To Win Video Games

14. Kickstarter, or, Every Publisher’s New Greenlight Process

15. The First First-Person Shooter

16. This Is What Pac-Man‘s Creator Thinks 35 Years Later

17. My son has $23.6 billion. How is yours doing?

DIGITAL

18. The Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2015 Report

19. »Intellectual property rights are not human rights«, UN special rapporteur tells European Parliament

20. Garcia v. Google reversed; many sigh in relief (Rebecca Tushnet)

21. The NSA tried to use app stores to send malware to targets

22. The End of Privacy

23. Young Saudis, Bound by Conservative Strictures, Find Freedom on Their Phones

24. Anti-NSA Pranksters Planted Tape Recorders Across New York and Published Your Conversations

25. Which Students Get to Have Privacy?: There’s a fresh push to protect student data. But the people who need the most protection are the ones being left behind. (danah boyd)

26. If You Know About It, You’re the Publisher – Website Operator Liability for Defamation (Bob Tarantino)

27. This Is What It’s Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn’t Exist: Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud – a multiyear hoax that depended on stealing someone else’s life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.

28. Reddit CEO: Getting Rid of Salary Negotiations Helps Everyone, Not Just Women -Ellen Pao says her fight against gender discrimination in Silicon Valley isn’t over.

29. What If Facebook Actually Paid People For Content?

30. Lawyers circling lawyers in frenzied Facebook ownership flap: Attorneys who assisted fugitive’s claim to Facebook are fighting Zuckerberg back.

31. Trivial thoughts on substantial parts (Bob Tarantino)

32. Why It’s Time to Stop Hating Spotify

33. Robot Journalism: Algorithms are More of a Tool than a Threat

34. Will Periscope and Other Live-Streaming Apps Kill the Cable TV Star?

+ Fan streaming apps have sports world debating TV rights

35. David Letterman and the long, Internet-enabled decline of the nightly talk show

36. More Provinces Crowd into Crowdfunding, but Not Yet Ontario or Alberta

37. This Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Has a Few Concerns

38. Hacking Our Moral Compass

39. How The Raspberry Pi Sparked A Maker Revolution

40. What’s Hot in the Art World? Algorithms: Admirers hold on to computerized formulas; paying $2,500 for a ‘qrpff’ necktie

CREATIVITY

41. Brands, The New Merchants of Cool: What happens when corporations replace major labels as patrons of independent music?

42. Creative Thinking Can Inspire Unethical Behavior

43.  Pop Music Is More About Advertising Now Than Before — And Nobody Realizes It

44. 7 Deadly Sins: Where Hollywood Is Wrong About The Future Of TV

45. Jorge Ramos: Of journalists and dinosaurs

46. How Indie Rock Changed the World: The influence of geeks with guitars on culture, from DIY to social media

jon

GAMES

1. Duke Nukem rights suit settled

+ Duke Nukem lawsuit ends with settlement, possible license transfer: Screenshot confirms that embroiled Mass Destruction game reborn as Bombshell.

2. ASA spanks Sony and GAME over 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 competition

3. Daybreak Game Company bans nearly 25K ‘H1Z1’ players for cheating and hacking

+ Daybreak Game Company on H1Z1 banning blitz

4. Microsoft severely punishes testers who leaked ‘Gears of War’ remake info, video

+ Microsoft disables online capabilities for Gears leakers

+ Xbox One still suffers from Microsoft’s need for control

5. YouTube Reinstates Metal Gear Video Konami Took Down, Warns Konami Not To Be Jerks

6. AMD says Nvidia’s GameWorks “completely sabotaged” Witcher 3 performance: There are plenty of performance issues in The Witcher 3, but who’s to blame?

7. Keen offers $100k for Space Engineers mods: Czech studio also makes source code available to the public as an incentive to modders

8. ‘World of Warcraft’ bot maker admits defeat

9. 100,000 WoW players banned for using bots – report

10. Bethesda clarifies: ‘The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited ‘ does not use one-time activation code

11. The Witcher 3 Downgrade Controversy Sucks

12. Del Toro reacts to Silent Hills cancellation

13. GamerGate critic posts death threat voicemail, requests subpoena: Wu complains about “radio silence,” wants “to get anyone to bring a case to trial.”

14. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo: ‘Boys risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin’

15. Inside The Research That Could Change The Perception Of Kids, Gaming And Gender

16. Why Indie Video Games Can Be Great For Kids

17. Gaming cooperatively makes you more sociable, say scientists

18. Let Your Children Play Video Games, Mark Zuckerberg Says: “I definitely wouldn’t have gotten into programming if I hadn’t played games.”

19. How Violence is Perceived in Game Design

20. Barriers breaking down for disabled videogamers

21. When Art Targets Marginalized People

22. Games poised to outstrip broadcast TV revenues, SuperData finds

23. Global games market at $74.2 billion annually – Superdata

24. Nevada approves Call of Duty-for-cash concept

25. Analysis: GTA V Live Viewership on Twitch

26. E-Sports, Real Sports?

27. Here’s the insane training schedule of a 20-something professional gamer

28. eSports an advertising goldmine

29. eSports is now a $612 million business – Superdata

30. Why Blizzard is committed to Heroes of the Storm’s esports future

31. Toy Story: Another Fad or Future of Videogames?: ‘Skylanders’ and ‘Infinity’ transport figurines into virtual worlds; now Lego wants to cash in

+ Toys-to-life category primed for more growth – NPD

32. Analysts turn against Candy Crush maker King Digital: ‘3 out of 5 launches will be a commercial failure’

+ Candy Crush Saga maker King reports strong Q1 with $569M in adjusted revenue and 61 cents-a-share profit

33. Unity chief John Riccitiello on clash of big ideas: ‘Sony nailed it, and they deserve the victory’

34. Zynga cuts 18% of staff

35. Xbox One gets a price cut in China and Japan

36. Tencent clears $1.1bn profit for Q1

37. CD Projekt accused of freezing out rival retailers on The Witcher 3

38. GTA V ships 52m as Take-Two’s annual revenue dips to $1.1 billion

39. Where in the world did blockbuster educational games go?

40. Xbox One Over-The-Air TV Tuner Now Available

41. The Hopes And Fears Of Using A Videogame As An Online Confession Booth

42. “The old publishing model has died”

43. The Horrible World Of Video Game Crunch

44. ‘GameSpot Game Guide’ and ‘Delta Force Extreme 2 Videogame Guide’ found in Osama bin Laden’s Compound

45. A Red Flag for Greenlight: Valve was laudably quick to deal with homophobia, but Greenlight is still failing devs and consumers alike

46. Microsoft celebrates 25 years of wasting time at work with Solitaire tournament

47. Reality Check: The real origin of GamerGate — a different GamerGate

48. Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back – The video game Eve Online is one of Iceland’s biggest exports and has become the world’s largest living work of science fiction. While rival games have come and gone, it has survived – thanks to a unique experiment in democracy

49. Behind the indie video game sensation that caught NASA’s attention

50. World Without End: Creating a full-scale digital cosmos.

51. Deconstructing Videogames For The Purpose Of Art

DIGITAL

52. The info moralist: Persecuted little guy, or powerful revolutionary – what sort of wunderkind was Aaron Swartz?

53. Did judge who ruled NSA phone dragnet illegal call Snowden a whistleblower?: “Secretive bureaucratic agencies… benefit from a breath of fresh air,” judge says.

54. The Anxiety of Being Watched by Machines: There’s an App for That

55. Why Google and other tech giants are creating tools for political dissidents: After taking fire for caving to repressive regimes on data privacy, can the tech industry rehabilitate its reputation?

56. Who The Smartphone Revolution Left Behind

57. Verizon-AOL, Facebook Instant Articles, And The Future Of Digital Advertising

58. Counterpoint: Bring telecom into the Internet age (Timothy Denton)

59. Order restored—copyright claim to individual performance in “Innocence of Muslims” fails 

+ Appeals Court Gets It Right The Second Time: Actress Had No Copyright Interest In ‘Innocence Of Muslims’

+ I didn’t say that – the ability of actors to control their performances under Canadian copyright law (Bob Tarantino)

+ 9th Circuit Judge Slams His Colleagues For First Amendment Failings In Waiting So Long To Fix Cindy Garcia Ruling

+ Actor did not have copyright interest in Mohammed film, Ninth Circuit rules 

+ Full 9th Circuit nixes controversial copyright decision 

+ Google v Garcia 9th Circuit en banc decision

60. Another copyright absurdity: using film screenshots

61. CMRRA Confirms Denial of Licences for Public Domain Recordings (Michael Geist)

62. Appeals Court chops Apple’s 2012 $930 million patent case award nearly in half

63. Rightscorp loses more cash than ever, tells investors all is well: Sending thousands of alleged pirates a bill for $20 per song isn’t working out.

64. Canadian Piracy Rates Plummet as Industry Points to Effectiveness of Copyright Notice-and-Notice System (Michael Geist)

65. While Other Countries Debate Copyright Terms, Canada Just Takes Record Labels’ Word That It Needs To Increase

66. Open Letter to Google From 80 Internet Scholars: Release RTBF Compliance Data

+ Call For Google To Show Its Right To Be Forgotten Workings

67. The philosophy of privacy: why surveillance reduces us to objects

68. South Korea’s New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware On Teens’ Smartphones

69. Keurig didn’t learn a damned thing about DRM: You just don’t know what’s best for you

70. Why Patents And Innovation No Longer Mix

71. ISPs really don’t want to follow new customer data privacy rules: Lawsuit to overturn net neutrality also complains about privacy requirements.

72. Secret Information Undermines the Legitimacy of CRTC Decisions

73. RIP AOL: Where the Net Was Born for Many

74. To Take On HBO And Netflix, YouTube Had To Rewire Itself

75. Periscope ushers in wild-west era for sports broadcasting

76. Why publishers had to partner with Facebook

77. More media companies need to think of themselves the way Quartz does

78. The New York Times And Its Faustian Facebook Pact

79. Inside ViralNova, the Most Cynical, Amazing, Horrific, and Ingenious Media Company in New York

80. Facebook and the Illusion of Safety: After the massive earthquake in Nepal, the social network implemented a post-disaster check-in button. It may be reassuring, but it isn’t necessarily accurate.

81. Spotify Inks Deal With Starbucks Tasking Customers With Picking In-Store Music

82. After years of false starts, Apple is finally poised to kill Spotify and take over streaming music. There’s just one catch…

83. Snapchat is going to be huge in 2016 — and regulators have no idea how to handle it

84. Read the NDA a Comcast customer was told to sign to get a $600 refund: Comcast: Here’s your money—please don’t tell anyone.

85. How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy

86. The Ultimate Interface: Your Brain

87. How Old Do I Look Microsoft website raises privacy concerns: Microsoft says it won’t keep your photos, even though users agree to allow that

88. How Blockchain Tech is Inspiring the Art World

89. Truth in Digital Advertising: As we consume more and more of our media on mobile devices, advertisers are finding sneakier ways to deliver their messages

90. “Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds: Consumers lost money to credit card debt reduction scam

91. Did this cybersecurity firm use a data breach for extortion?: A whistleblower claims his company fabricated evidence in retaliation for a lost contract

92. The Computers Are Listening: How The NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

93. Listicles, aggregation, and content gone viral: How 1800s newspapers prefigured today’s Internet – “Many 19th-century newspapers are comprised primarily of content from other newspapers.”

94. Clinkle Implodes As Employees Quit In Protest Of CEO

95. Inside Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s radical management experiment that prompted 14% of employees to quit

96. Sorry Milan, only one fashion week boasts drone models and fiber optic dresses

97. Copyright for Literate Robots (James Grimmelmann)

98. When Bots Collude

99. Why you should confront bigots and racists on Facebook

100. Bob Bowman, CEO Of MLB Advanced Media, On Deciding To Build A Streaming Video Service In 2002

101. The Debacle of Google Glass

CREATIVITY

102. Appeals Court Rightly Overturns NAACP’s Successful Attempt To Censor Speech Via Trademark Law

103. “Copyright trolling” movie studio gets hit with Godzilla-sized lawsuit: Voltage Pictures sued thousands for torrenting. Now, it’s the alleged infringer.

104. Is the Long War Between American Radio and the Record Business About to End?

105. When metrics drive newsroom culture

106. How Hollywood stays white and male

107. How the cable industry became a monopoly

108. The TV Industry’s Lack of Imagination

109. How the biggest hit in TV history predicted the death of TV

110. Why the Comic Book Store Just Won’t Die

111. Blood, sweat and DVDs: owning a video store in the age of Netflix

112. The First Kiss in Cinema: How Thomas Edison Scandalized the World in 1896

113. The State of Music Distribution in China

114. J.J. Abrams on the Secret Movie References He Snuck into Star Wars: The Force Awakens

jon

Games

1. ‘Killzone: Shadow Fall’ lawsuit dismissed

+ Killzone:Shadow Fall’s 1080p class action lawsuit dismissed

2. Rockstar addresses GTA5’s mod policy: “No one has been banned for using single-player modifications.”

+ Rockstar to GTA V PC players: We don’t issue bans for single-player mods – Official response doesn’t address how online mode’s current P2P mesh enables cheats.

3. ArenaNet publicly shames ‘Guild Wars 2’ cheater

4. ‘Reclaim Your Game’ shutting down, going offline

5. ASA spanks Sony and GAME over 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 competition

6. Konami Gets YouTube To Take Down Video It Doesn’t Like; Streisand Effect Ensures Neverending Discussion Of Video

7. Missoula, Montana ‘Minecraft’ player swatted

8. Warning: PS4s with PT demo could lock down your entire library

9. Head Transplant Doctor Ponders Likeness Lawsuit Over Supposed Appearance In Metal Gear Solid 5

10. New book claims video games and porn are causing a ‘crisis of masculinity’ among young men

11. The great GamerGate debate: Mercedes Carrera v. Chris Kluwe

12. Rhode Island Secretary of State drops 38 Studios-related lobbying cases

13. The Charlie Hebdo Debate Arrives In The Videogame World

14. Game explores impact of dementia

15. How two games helped resurrect Wii U sales

16. Nintendo to launch five smartphone games by March 2017

17. Your ‘Candy Crush’ Obsession Is Worth Billions: Game makers mint a fortune off of a tiny sliver of gamers who spend upwards of $100 a month on in-app purchases

18. A Red Flag for Greenlight: Valve was laudably quick to deal with homophobia, but Greenlight is still failing devs and consumers alike

19. What’s So Great About Esports?

20. Zynga beats estimates with $183M in revenues — but it’s cutting 364 jobs

21. Video Game Trend: The Decline Of The ‘Game’ And The Emergence Of The ‘Living Game World’

22. Eve Online exhibit to become a permanent fixture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

23. With Existenz, Cronenberg Created The Only Videogame Movie We’ll Ever Need

24. Your cyberpunk games are dangerous: How roleplaying games and fantasy fiction confounded the FBI, confronted the law, and led to a more open web

25. Who Invented Let’s Play Videos?

Digital

26. Court of Appeals rules that NSA data collection was not authorized by Congress

+ NSA phone dragnet is illegal, appeals court rules: The snooping program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized.”

27. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook (Eytan Bakshy, Solomon Messing, Lada Adamic)

+ The Facebook “It’s Not Our Fault” Study (Christian Sandvig)

+ How Facebook’s Algorithm Suppresses Content Diversity (Modestly) and How the Newsfeed Rules Your Clicks (Zeynep Tufekci)

+ Why doesn’t Science publish important methods info prominently? (Eszter Hargittai)

+ Opinion: Facebook’s Internet.org Isn’t the Internet, It’s Facebooknet

28. Youtuber Sues Google, Viacom Over Content Id Takedowns

29. Sound of Silence: Why the Government’s Copyright Extension for Sound Recordings Will Reduce Access to Canada’s Musical Heritage (Michael Geist)

30. Prison ‘Enforces’ Messaging Company’s ‘IP’ Rights By Sending Prisoner To Solitary

31. And Then… Court Rejects Rightscorp’s Bogus DMCA Subpoena Argument

+ Small ISP stands up to Rightscorp’s “piracy fishing expedition” and wins: A Rightscorp DMCA subpoena, asking for 71 subscriber identities, is thrown out.

32. TTIP explained: The secretive US-EU treaty that undermines democracy – A boost for national economies, or a Trojan Horse for corporations?

33. Rightscorp loses more cash than ever, tells investors all is well: Sending thousands of alleged pirates a bill for $20 per song isn’t working out.

34. Appeals court upholds Pandora’s victory over songwriters: ASCAP says 1.85% royalty isn’t enough; 2nd Circuit feels otherwise.

+ Appeals Court Rejects Labels’ Collusion Scheme To Try To Force Pandora To Pay Higher Rates

35. Will the tort of misuse of private information disappear if the Human Rights Act is repealed? 

36. How marketers are plotting to use neuroscience to control what you buy

37. Warrantless airport seizure of laptop “cannot be justified,” judge rules

38. The philosophy of privacy: why surveillance reduces us to objects

39. Philippines Deports Thai Worker for Insulting Filipinos on Facebook

40. How secure will our data be in the post-quantum era?

41. UN Experts Say TPP and Fast Track Threaten Human Rights

42. Super-scholars: MPAA offers $20,000 for academic research in copyright battle – Leaked email describes programme ‘to solicit pro-copyright academic research papers’, but group says it won’t influence experts’ findings

43. The First Amendment, The Second Amendment And The 3D-Printed Gun

44. Why I’m Excited for Medium’s Partnership With Creative Commons (Lawrence Lessig)

45. PGA Joins NHL In Yanking Reporter Credentials Over Use Of Periscope On Golfers Practicing

46. The CRTC Knows Best: Why the Wireless Decision Doesn’t Go Far Enough (Michael Geist)

47. Verizon Buys AOL, Because Two Lumbering Dinosaurs Who Can’t Figure Out The Modern Internet Must Be Better Together

48. AT&T finally ramps down throttling of unlimited LTE customers: Facing lawsuit, AT&T now throttles 4G customers only when network is congested.

49. FCC: stop complaining about net neutrality and start competing

50. EU court rules “Skype” is too similar to “Sky,” blocks trademark application: Apparently Skype’s logo resembles “that of a cloud,” which can be “in the sky.”

51. Keurig CEO Sort Of (But Not Really) Apologizes For Company’s Ridiculous Foray Into Obnoxious Coffee DRM

52. Hostage saves herself via Pizza Hut app: “Please help. Get 911 to me.”

53. The Short Life and Speedy Death of Russia’s Silicon Valley

54. Engineers of Addiction: Slot machines perfected addictive gaming. Now, tech wants their tricks 

Creativity

55. Indie cinemas fight back against bullying by corporate movie chains: 3 chains own half of American theaters. Is the DoJ finally waking up from its long Reagan-induced slumber?

56. Retired Music Promoter Claims Trademark Infringement On Trademark He Admits To Abandoning

57. Cable Industry Tries To Distance Itself From Decades Of Poor Service By Eliminating The Word ‘Cable’

58. Hall and Oates Suing Granola Company Over ‘Haulin’ Oats’

59. FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ The Lyrics To ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing The Copyright Office Must Have Them

jon

GAMES

1. Valve gives developers power to ban players

2. Sooner or later, paid-for mods are coming

3. id Software planned to pay mod makers in 1995

4. Internet Archive’s MS-DOS Twitter games suspended

5. Glu Mobile gains $126 million Tencent investment and signs up Britney Spears

6. ‘Dota 2’ The International 2015 Compendium generates $2 million for prize pool at launch

7. Revenues up 33% YoY for PlayStation

8. EA grows sales to $4.5 billion in Fiscal 2015

9. Lawyer: 38 Studios documents shouldn’t be released piecemeal

10. What is happening at Konami?

11. A Saudi Prince Is Using Video Games To Fuel An Intellectual Renaissance In The Middle East

12. Homophobic game gets pulled from Steam Greenlight, developer issues statement

13. Valve: “Getting people sick isn’t a choice”

14. Game of Fear: What if a stalker had an army? Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with destroying her reputation—and thousands of online strangers were eager to help.

15. GamerGate D.C. gathering targeted by bomb threat

16. Interzone CEO faces 120 years in prison for wire fraud and money laundering

17. Myst TV show reportedly heading to Hulu

18. Headline: The Era of Japan’s All-Powerful Videogame Designers Is Over

19. These are the first finalists for the new World Video Game Hall of Fame

20. Madden 16 simulation predicts which players will be arrested this season

21. Ten Old Car Video Games That Are Still Great Today

22. A reenactment of Floyd Mayweather v. Manny Pacquiao in ‘Mike Tyson’s Punchout’

23. This Video Game Has Solved The Problem of Learning Guitar: I tried taking lessons. I tried reading guitar tabs online. The only thing that worked was Rocksmith.

24. A Rediscovered Mainframe Game From 1974 Might Be The First Text Adventure

DIGITAL

25. “Homophobe” brings Ireland’s first “right to be forgotten” court case

26. Revenge porn – the need to legislate between privacy and copyright?

27. Protecting Users’ Location Data From An Unconstitutional Search

28. Privacy trade-offs in retail tracking

29. Apple Has Plans for Your DNA: The iPhone could become a new tool in genetic studies.

30. How YouTube and Build-A-Bear Engage Kids Without Collecting Data

31. Secret Shuts Down

32. Norms of Computer Trespass (Orin Kerr)

33. The Great Database of China: Rating Moral Behavior, Blacklisting Citizens

34. And Another One Bites The Dust: Mass Surveillance Ruled Unconstitutional In Slovak Republic

35. New EFF ‘404’ Report Shows How Draconian Copyright Policies Stifle Online Speech Worldwide

+ Executive Summary: Missing Stories From the 301 Blacklist

+ USTR Releases Its Annual Special 301 ‘Naughty’ List Of Countries; EFF Responds With ‘Special 404’ List

36. Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch: Aggressive tactics from the music giant have garnered scrutiny from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission

37. Fair Use At Risk When Private Companies Get To Make The Decision For Us

38. Grooveshark Shuts Down to Settle Copyright Infringement Suit

39. The Great Unbundling

40. Why Film Bizzers Are Still Outraged Over Europe’s Digital Single Market Plan

41. Rogers agrees to $5 million refund for charges resulting from misleading ads

42. Forget, Mayweather v. Pacquaio: The Big Fight Was Apparently Hollywood v. Periscope Streaming

43. Pro-Russian Videos Get Fake Views With Help From Malware

44. 3D printing and intellectual property rights in Canada

45. Facebook legacy contact initiative expands to Canada

46. Facebook Opens Internet.Org To All Developers In Response To Net Neutrality Concerns

47. Dear Tom Wheeler: I’m Sorry I Thought You Were A Mindless Cable Shill

48. Someone Has A Domain For Carly Fiorina’s Name And Is Pretty Upset With Her Layoffs While At HP

49. Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook are at war over the future of news — and one of them tried to buy a media company

50. The (Very) Big Fight For The Small Screen: A rising class of Internet video companies is challenging the supremacy of broadcast TV—and they’ve come with a list of 10 Totally Awesome Reasons Why They’re Doing It Wrong.

51. Coding has become the fourth literacy 

CREATIVITY

52. ‘Blurred Lines’ Judge Asked to Grant New Trial

53. FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ The Lyrics To ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing The Copyright Office Must Have Them

54. Judge Upholds State’s Alamo Trademark

55. John Green’s Brandcast Speech

56. Is the news behaving more like advertising?

57. Katy Perry’s left shark – take 2 

58. How Hollywood Keeps Out Women

59. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel: ‘Always aim for a monopoly. From society’s perspective, it’s complicated. But from the inside, I always want to have a monopoly.’

60. Technology is disrupting Hollywood and its gonna hit hard

jon

GAMES

1. Valve letting users sell Steam Workshop content

+ Steam allowing paid mods is awesome. Here’s why

+ Steam’s Most Popular Skyrim Mod Is A Protest Against Paid Mods

+ Skyrim paid mod pulled from Steam

+ Valve kills paid Skyrim mods feature: “It’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing”

+ Gabe Newell to the internet: “You need a more robust Valve-is-evil hypothesis”

2. Valve Announces It’s Handing Its Banning-Keys Over To Game Developers

3. World of Warcraft and the battle against black market gold

4. EA submits to the authority of the Australian Consumer Law

5. Will Hillary Clinton’s historically anti-game attitude harm her 2016 presidential run?

6. Latest Pointless Moral Panic: Minecraft Is Ruining Our Children

7. Indie iOS developer accuses Ketchapp of outright theft

8. British judge rules the brain is a muscle, paving way for esports as sport

9. MMA fighter: game developer used my likeness without permission

10. Call of Duty Gets First Playable Female Lead With Black Ops 3: Black Ops 3 will offer a “gender neutral” story, according to Treyarch.

11. Minecraft adds free female avatar to console versions

12. “For kids’ games, I think it’s out of the question”: Joyful Works’ Basar Simitci draws a line under free-to-play apps for children

13. Rahul Sood’s Unikrn is an eSports betting platform

14. ESPN’s Colin Cowherd really, REALLY doesn’t want to cover video games

15. Killing Floor 2 EULA threatens to revoke licenses for trolls: Online cheaters and “cyber bullies” could lose access to the single-player game, too.`

16. IGDA: Gender, GamerGate and the need for action

17. PlayStation Network grabbing bulk of publishers’ ad dollars – EEDAR

18. Konami delists itself from the New York Stock Exchange

+ What’s Going on With Konami, Kojima, and Metal Gear Solid? Here’s a Timeline

19. Sony on road to recovery thanks to strong PS4 and camera sensor sales

20. Xbox revenues dip 24% thanks to price reduction

21. Halo: The Master Chief Collection problems force official tournament cancellation

22. Microsoft Advertises The Witcher 3 On Xbox With Footage From The PC Version; Fans Not Fooled

23. China expected to soon pass Japan in digital gaming – Superdata

24. ‘Video game developer’ the top career choice for children in Hasbro survey for ‘Game of Life’

25. WoW Patch Adds Katy Perry’s Super Bowl Left Shark

26. These are the games you can play on your new Apple Watch

27. Growing up gaming: The five space sims that defined my youth 

DIGITAL

28. Farmers Unable To Repair Tractors Because Copyright: Never A Side Effect, But Core Intention Of Law

+ Carmakers Want To Use Copyright Law To Make Working On Your Car Illegal

29. Music Licensing Groups Argue That An Homeowners Association Playing Music At The Pool Is A Public Performance

30. MPAA Gets Court To Block Popcorn Time Websites In UK, Despite Judge Admitting The Sites Don’t Actually Infringe

31. Comic Artists Claim Copyright On Metallic Suits And The Three Point Landing

32. DVD Makers Say That You Don’t Really Own The DVDs You Bought… Thanks To Copyright

33. Can You Sue For Copyright Infringement Before It’s Actually Happened?

34. Canadian Government on Copyright Notice Flood: “It’s Not a Notice-and-Settlement Regime” (Michael Geist)

35. A Moral Defense for Copyright Breach?

36. If You’re Promoting Copyright Without Fair Use, You’re Promoting Out And Out Censorship

37. Competition Killer: Why the Copyright Term Extension For Sound Recordings Will Limit Consumer Choice and Increase Costs (Michael Geist)

+ Sound Recording Copyright Extension to 70 Years is a MONEY GRAB! (Cameron Hutchison)

+ Dice Loaded Against Public in Canada’s Copyright Term Extension

+ The Power of Backroom Lobbying: How the Recording Industry Got Their Copyright Term Extension (Michael Geist)

38. Federal Budget proposes statutory privilege for Canadian intellectual property agents

39. German Federal Court says that libraries have a right to digitise their collections

40. 6 Current Copyright Cases More Important Than Blurred Lines

41. Why Balanced Copyright Is Essential For Creativity

42. Aaron’s Law Reintroduced To Try To Reform Dangerous, Broken Anti-Hacking Law

43. UK Tribunal Rules GCHQ Conducted Illegal Surveillance And Must Destroy Legally Privileged Documents

44. Egypt’s Draft Cybercrime Law Undermines Freedom of Expression

45. Woman behind Pakistan’s first hackathon, Sabeen Mahmud, shot dead by unknown gunmen

46. One year on, jailed Ethiopian bloggers are still awaiting trial

47. Iranian Cleric Suggests The West Ban And Criminalize Negative Portrayals Of Muslims To Prevent Radicalization

48. Facebook Is Shutting Down Its API For Giving Your Friends’ Data To Apps

49. Study Reports Big Drop in Spam Following Canadian Anti-Spam Law Implementation (Michael Geist)

50. ISPs really, really want to be able to share your data

51. Sen. Al Franken offers five take-aways from failed Comcast-TWC merger

52. Web encryption technology is 20 years old. So why isn’t every site using it?

53. Comcast brings fiber to city that it sued 7 years ago to stop fiber rollout

54. Why Bitcoin’s male domination will be its downfall

+ Bitcoin’s Q1: Record VC Investment, Falling Prices, And Slow Consumer Adoption

55. Why Does The US Patent Office Keep Approving Clearly Ridiculous Patents?

56. Google to disarm trolls by buying patents before they become weapons

57. Streaming Overtakes Live TV Among Consumer Viewing Preferences: Study

58. Periscope Saw Over 1 Million Sign-Ins During Its First 10 Days

59. State of the News Media 2015: Call it a mobile majority. At the start of 2015, 39 of the top 50 digital news websites have more traffic to their sites and associated applications coming from mobile devices than from desktop computers, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of comScore data.

60. A Decade of YouTube Has Changed the Future of Television

61. Why is Snapchat getting into the news business?

62. The Basics Of Open Patent Licensing

63. Futuristic Simulation Finds Self-Driving “Taxibots” Will Eliminate 90% Of Cars, Open Acres Of Public Space

64. Does the digital era herald the end of history?

65. In Memoriam: Greg Lastowka

+ In Memoriam Greg Lastowka (James Grimmelmann)

CREATIVITY

66. Comcast officially abandons Time Warner Cable merger plans

67. Court case reveals feud among CRTC’s upper ranks

68. Competition Bureau supports CRTC’s proposal on video‑on‑demand

69. Trademark Examiner Not Swayed By Katy Perry’s Attempt To Trademark The Left Shark

70. Does a cover band’s use of a singer’s first name infringe trade mark rights in a celebrity’s name?

71. Winter is coming – Print revenue could be headed for another cliff: Media watcher Clay Shirky argues that instead of a gradual decline, print readership — and as a result, print advertising — could be headed for a cliff

72. Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working

73. Is Garry Trudeau Right About Charlie Hebdo?: Punching Idols (Quinn Norton)

74. Is Investigative Journalism a Joke?

75. Playmakers, The Show The NFL Killed For Being Too Real

76. Who created Caitlin Snow on #TheFlash? According to @DCComics, nobody

77. How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Color

jon

GAMES

1. US government takes on legal fight over console jailbreaking once more: US Copyright Office considers arguments as part of DMCA rulemaking.

2. How The DMCA And Anti-Piracy Measures Conspire To Keep Video Games In Their Cultural Place

3. How It’s Done: Rockstar Releases Video Production Editor For GTA So Fans Can Make Films

4. Is the US gov’t finally over video game violence?

5. University of Missouri researchers find that violent video games do not cause aggression in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

6. Sore loser swats Long Island home after losing a round of ‘Call of Duty’

7. Killing Floor 2’s EULA reserves the right to ban you for being a jerk

8. Turkish scholars launch petition against possible Minecraft ban

9. Pastor Dollar says ‘Pokémon’ makes you gay

10. Human rights advocates, military see violent video games as teaching tool

11. Mortal Kombat X: The Most Violent Video Game Ever?

12. MMA Fighter Upset Over Possible Homage In Mortal Kombat

13. Anita Sarkeesian named to Time 100

14. GamerGate and the Balkanization of Videogames

15. Net Neutrality-themed game ‘404Sight’ released

16. Pirate Bay co-founder denied bid to play original Nintendo in prison

17. Woman sues Google claiming she lost “thousands” through Google Play Store hack: Google never reimbursed her after agreeing that the purchases weren’t hers, she says.

18. Valve puts limits on customers who haven’t spent $5 on Steam to fight spamming and phishing schemes

19. Gaming will hit $91.5 billion this year – Newzoo

20. Strong year sees Sony climb above Microsoft in revenue rankings

+ PlayStation pushes Sony’s sales forecast up

21. Why The Next Sports Empire Will Be Built On Esports

22. Codemasters to renew F1 license

23. Guitar Hero is Back And I Really Like What I’ve Seen

24. BBC’s Grand Theft Auto TV show to star Bill Paxton and Daniel Radcliffe: Drama to detail cultural impact of GTA, with Radcliffe as Sam Houser and Paxton as Jack Thompson.

25. Simulection – What happens when you run the 2015 Conservative manifesto through a video game?: We are running the parties’ manifestos through Democracy 3, an election simulation video game. Here’s what happens if the Tories win…

26. A Game About Cancer, One Year Later

27. Video games can power up from merely fun to meaningful experiences

DIGITAL

28. A Robot That Bought Drugs Online Is Now Free From Police Custody

29. Do Killer Robots Violate Human Rights?: When machines are anthropomorphized, we risk applying a human standard that should not apply to mere tools.

30. Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer: The computer scientist Stuart Russell wants to ensure that our increasingly intelligent machines remain aligned with human values.

31. Netizen Report: The Spring of Cybercrime Laws

32. Complaints To FTC About Rightscorp Detail Robocalls, Harassment And Baseless Threats To Sever Internet Connections

33. MPAA Pirated Clips From Google Commercials To Make Its Own MPAA Propaganda Videos

34. NHL bans media from using Periscope, Meerkat to subvert rights-holders

35. Bell faces $750M lawsuit over advertising program: Bell Canada is facing a $750 million class action lawsuit over a program that tracked its users’ internet usage to sell advertising

36. Meet the lawyer taking on Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy

37. Internet.org is a failed exercise in misdirection (Doc Searls)

38. Why India’s Net Neutrality Activists Hate Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org philanthropy finds itself cast as the villain in India’s fight over Internet rules

+ Facebook’s Internet.org sees defections over alleged harm to net neutrality: App to get impoverished online gives free access, but only to select websites.

39. How Blogging is Held Hostage by Ethiopian Politics

40. Details Leak From Inside Putin’s ‘Humourless And Draconian’ Internet Troll Army

41. FBI can’t cut Internet and pose as cable guy to search property, judge says: “This is a monumental ruling protecting Americans’ privacy in the modern age.”

42. Robert Campbell sentenced to 6 years for cyberbullying campaign: Ottawa man pleaded guilty to 63 charges of identity fraud, defamation and criminal harassment

43. Apple refuses to answer questions over ‘homophobic’ Russian Siri: Russian voice-assistant for iPhones and iPad accused of answering questions with homophobic responses, while company dismisses issue as ‘a bug’

44. On The War On General Purpose Computing

45. Hollywood Collectively Loses Its Mind About Latest Set Of Livestreaming Apps

46. It wasn’t easy, but Netflix will soon use HTTPS to secure video streams

47. “It’s not that we control NewsFeed, you control NewsFeed…” Facebook: please stop with this.

48. An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, from 1980 to the present

49. Age Of Technology: Generational Video Viewing Preferences Vary By Device And Activity

50. Who Says the Internet is Bad for Morality?

51. Should Reddit’s powerful mods be reined in?

52. Is Netflix Friend or Foe to the TV Industry? It’s More Confusing Than Ever.

53. Nobody’s Perfect: Leaked Contract Reveals Sony Requires Netflix To Geo-Block But Acknowledges Technology Is Imperfect

54. How the Computer Got Its Revenge on the Soviet Union: Condemned as a capitalist tool, the computer would help expose the USSR’s weakness.

CREATIVITY

55. Kate Taylor: We should judge pricey tax credits as job creators, not culture builders

+ Race to the Bottom: Why Government Tax Credits For Film and TV Production Don’t Pay (Michael Geist)

+ Ontario Tax Expenditure Review: Screen Based Sector

56. Op-ed: What if MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” had been on Facebook?: Under current Alabama law, it would have been a crime. Other states feel similar.

57. Copyright claims asserted in viral video of cop shooting fleeing suspect

+ The News Media’s Use of the Walter Scott Video Is – Surprise! – A Newsworthy Use

58. Copyright For Sale: How the Sony Documents Illustrate the Link Between the MPAA and Political Donations (Michael Geist)

+ Sony Once Again Ridiculously Warns The Media Not To Report On Leaked Emails

+ As Sony Continues Threatening Reporters, NY Times Reporter Wins Pulitzer For Reporting On Sony’s Emails

+ Our Response To Sony Sending Us A Threat Letter For Reporting On The Company’s Leaked Emails

59. Student Sues College After Campus Cops Demand He Get A Free Speech ‘Permit’ Before Handing Out Fliers

60. In Big Ruling, Sony Beats ‘Iron Man’ Composer’s Lawsuit

61. ‘Traditional TV viewing for teens and tweens is dead. Not dying. Dead.’

62. Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Hits Setback After FCC Staff Recommend Hearing (Report)

63. The great unbundling: cable TV as we know it is dying

64. The Great Canadian Copyright Giveaway: Why Copyright Term Extension for Sound Recordings Could Cost Consumers Millions (Michael Geist)

jon

GAMES

1. Baker v. Microsoft Corporation: game companies beware, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision may make it more difficult to defeat class actions 

2. Publishers fight to block third-party revival of “abandoned” game servers: ESA sees proposed DMCA exemption as encouraging piracy, limiting copyright.

+ The legal battle for gaming’s past

3. Grand Theft Auto V for PC ships with built-in mods and machinima tools

4. The first gay character in ‘Mortal Kombat’ revealed

5. Koei Tecmo Goes DMCA On DOA Modders For Undressing Its Already Scantily Clad Characters

6. Theorizing gender and digital gameplay: Oversights, accidents and surprises (Jennifer Jenson & Suzanne De Castell)

7. Thoughts from a woman who posts on the Internet: On being scared

+ Ms. Quinn goes to Washington

8. Google Rejects Postal For Google Play Store Due To Violence; GTA Games Still Available For Purchase

9. Modders Un-Region-Restricting Halo Online Undeterred By Microsoft DMCA

10. Cops nab murder suspect who played with victim’s stolen PlayStation: Online gaming activity traced to defendant’s mother’s house, where he was living.

11. Man ruptures tendon in hand playing ‘Candy Crush Saga’

12. Microsoft Facing New Criticisms Over Xbox One Energy Consumption

13. Phantom Dust dev collapsed under Microsoft’s demands – report

14. EA Shutting down ‘Battlefield Heroes’ and three other free-to-play games

15. Don Mattrick leaves Zynga, stock tanking

16. Sandra Day O’Connor’s post-court legacy: Civics games

17. Bill Paxton to play Jack Thompson in BBC’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ film

18. NCSoft invests $5m in mobile start-up: This Game Studio focused on mobile, based in Vancouver

19. How Tax Is Giving Video Games A British Accent

20. New research using video games explores how people justify violent acts

21. Modern Games Are Easily Patched. So How Can We Review Them?

22. Square Enix Launches A Cloud-Powered Final Fantasy XIII For iOS And Android In Japan

23. Good Game: Why Esports Is The Next Major League Sport

24. Fantasy eSports—Think Fantasy Football for Video Games—Is Officially a Thing

25. Devastatingly Challenging Modern Games

26. Video Games’ Place in American Culture 

DIGITAL

27. Russia’s Internet censor reminds citizens that some memes are illegal

+ Russian censor warns against meme ‘misuse’

+ Latest Russian Censorship Move: Banning Internet Memes Using Photos Of Celebrities

28. NSA dreams of smartphones with “split” crypto keys protecting user data: Proposal is part of a tense stand-off between US government and tech industry.

29. Apple and the Self-Surveillance State (Paul Krugman)

30. The most concerning element of Facebook’s potential new power (Trevor Timm)

31. Canada’s Non-Commercial Copyright Fail: Why Did YouTube Mute a Holocaust Memorial Video? (Michael Geist)

32. The Copyright Notice Flood: What to Consider If You Receive a Copyright Infringement Notification (Michael Geist)

33. A Japanese court has ordered Google to take down negative business reviews

34. Internal Google Memo Responds To EU Antitrust Objections

35. Judge: Browsing Data Shared With Facebook Doesn’t Violate Privacy Law

36. Our Transparent Future: No secret is safe in the digital age. The implications for our institutions are downright Darwinian. (Daniel Dennett & Deb Roy)

37. Meet “Great Cannon,” the man-in-the-middle weapon China used on GitHub: Powerful weapon could easily be used to inject malware attacks into traffic.

38. Netizen Report: Turkey’s Erdogan Fights to Control the Conversation, Online and in Print

+ Everyone Is Getting Turkey’s Twitter Block Wrong: Turkey isn’t trying to be North Korea, China or Iran; it’s trying to be Azerbaijan

39. Rights groups take UK surveillance fight to Europe’s highest court

40. NJ lawmaker seeking tougher penalties for swatting gets targeted over the weekend

41. Big Names in Canadian Tech Sign ‘Stop Bill C-51’ Letter

+ The Real Agenda behind Bill C-51 (Craig Forcese & Kent Roach)

42. Lawyer representing whistle blowers finds malware on drive supplied by cops: Says police department brass tried to infect him, seeks criminal sanctions.

43. Police asked telcos for client data in over 80% of criminal probes

44. Kim Dotcom Megaupload case falters over sharing Canadian data

45. Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview: Post-it note on wall revealed network’s passwords for YouTube, Instagram.

46. Wireless, Cable Industries Show Their Love Of An ‘Open Internet’ By Suing To Overturn Net Neutrality Rules

+ Telco Lobby Sues FCC Over Net Neutrality Rules Yet Again… Just In Case The First Time Didn’t Work

47. The Mere Threat Of Google Fiber Has Time Warner Cable Offering Speeds Six Times Faster At The Same Price

48. Report: popular online gambling sites taken out by DDoS attacks

49. Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Critical Reviews From Google Maps

50. Maximum sentence for internet trolls raised to 2 years in the UK

51. This Year’s Fight for the Tech Industry: Patent Trolls

52. Court Adds Much-Needed Element Of Malice To Nova Scotia’s Terrible Cyberbullying Law

53. The Mobile Video Moment Has Finally Arrived

54. Twitter shakes up the big data supply chain: What are the privacy law implications?

55. Facebook is facing 25,000 users in Vienna court over EU privacy violations

56. Drug Information Startup Diagnosia Sued By Big Pharma

57. Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit Fails–Infogroup v. DatabaseLLC (Eric Goldman)

58. Mapping Out the Copyright Semicommons (Bruce Boyden)

59. Copyrights & Patents Have Become A Religion; All Data Will Be Ignored

60. EFF Successfully Challenges Key Claims in “Podcasting Patent”

+ Infamous “podcasting patent” knocked out

61. Should you pay if you get an illegal download notice?

62. Eighth-grader charged with felony for shoulder-surfing teacher’s password: The larger crime may be school administrators’ poor op sec.

63. Large-scale Game of Thrones leak has HBO targeting Periscope streams: Piracy in various forms didn’t hurt too much, as 8 million watched GoT premiere.

64. Amazon drops the hammer on website that sells 5-star reviews: SoCal Web designer’s reviews-for-sale biz is illegal, Amazon lawyers say.

65. Why Google’s Robot Personality Patent Is Not Good for Robotics (Kate Darling)

66. Can we stop killer robots? UN meets to debate possible treaty

67. The Path of Robotics Law (Jack Balkin)

68. The Case For An Internet Ratings System

69. Will autocomplete make you too predictable? 

CREATIVITY

70. Photos secretly taken of family through window are art, not invasion of privacy: court

71. Hecklers Try To Veto University Screening Of ‘American Sniper;’ May Find Themselves Watching ‘Paddington Bear’ Instead

72. The Abuse of Satire: Garry Trudeau on Charlie Hebdo, free-speech fanaticism, and the problem with “punching downward”

73. Joss Whedon On #GamerGate, JURASSIC WORLD, Adam Baldwin And Speaking Out

74. Kristen Stewart and the Movie Actor’s Dilemma

75. Who Owns the Copyright to “Happy Birthday”?

76. The Full History Of Board Games

77. The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins

78. Rachmaninov on the future of broadcasting: A revealing interview with Sergey Rachmaninov from April 1931

79. Time Warner, Viacom Back Away From Nielsen Guarantees For Ads

80. “Quite Unintelligible,” Derrida’s Scathing Criticism From A Teacher

jon

GAMES

1. YouTube gaming stars blindsided by Nintendo’s ad revenue grab: Game companies may not have legal right to claim a cut, lawyer says

+ YouTuber Angry Joe Swears Off Nintendo Videos After The Company Claimed His Mario Party 10 Take

2. Report: Gamers in Crimea lose access to Blizzard games due to U.S. sanctions

3. Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games, Even for Museums and Archives, Because All “Hacking” is Illegal

4. Report: Firmware update sets Chinese Xbox Ones region free

5. Microsoft Hits Halo Online Modders With Copyright Complaint

+ Github complies with Microsoft DMCA takedown of Halo Online mod repo: Gameplay footage of new game has also been removed from YouTube.

+ Modders want to remove Halo Online’s microtransactions, georestrictions: Leakers say they have multiple backups to avoid Microsoft’s DMCA requests.

6. Project Cars Hit With Its Third Delay

7. Publishers must stop marketing adult games to kids

8. ‘GGautoblocker’ creator and ‘Online Abuse Prevention Initiative’ founder targeted by swatting attempt

9. Copyrighting player-generated content in video games

10. Rovio awarded $2.7 million in copyright case

11. Does Paula Deen’s new mobile game infringe on an artist’s copyright?

12. Iranian cleric urges Western countries to ban ‘Islamophobic’ games and movies

13. Dollar’s buying power plummets in first day of “official” WoW gold trading: $20 game time “tokens” have already lost 27 percent of initial gold value.

14. Sony announces shutdown of ‘Destiny of Spirits’

15. FTC approves Sony PS Vita settlement

16. GameStop halts online pre-orders for newest Nintendo amiibo figures

17. Amazon licensing deal may have saved Crytek – report

18. Nexon acquiring Boolean Games

19. AR/VR to hit $150 billion by 2020 – Report

20. Minneapolis man steals 8-year-old’s video games, gets caught on camera

21. What Really Happened To Arcades

22. Nobuo Uematsu: the video game composer shaking up classical music

23. An all-too-accurate parody of YouTube gamers 

DIGITAL

24. DDoS attacks that crippled GitHub linked to Great Firewall of China: Whitehat hacker’s traceroute wizzardry pinpoints origin of denial-of-service code.

25. The Kremlin’s comment trolls are real — as is the media’s amnesia about them

26. The Surveillance Engine: How The NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

27. Facebook faces lawsuit over facial recognition software

28. How Facebook knows who all your friends are, even better than you do

29. Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer: New language in W3C standard twisted its arm

30. Hulu beats lawsuit claiming it illegally shared user data with Facebook: The “Like” button collects data, but there’s no master list of videos watched.

31. The Battle Is For The Customer Interface: Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

32. Chrome extension collects browsing data, uses it for marketing: Downloaded 1.2M times, “Webpage Screenshot” no longer available in Chrome Store

33. Privacy Commissioner of Canada Rules Bell’s Targeted Ad Program Violates Canadian Law (Michael Geist)

+ Privacy watchdog not yet satisfied with Bell’s about-face on ad tracking

34. AT&T enters into largest data breach settlement with FCC to date

35. Commissioner cautions children’s websites to tread carefully when it comes to privacy: Privacy Commissioner launches tips on protecting children’s privacy after website investigation highlights lessons such as the need for better, age-appropriate information and involvement of adults in privacy decisions

36. Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards

37. The Internet of Kafkaesque Things (Jay Stanley)

38. How the DMCA’s Online Copyright Safe Harbor Failed (Eric Goldman)

39. Court Declines To Dismiss Hashtag Infringement Claim

40. Two Court Rulings Completely Disagree With Each Other Over Whether Websites Need To Comply With Americans With Disabilities Act

41. FCC Moves To Give Internet Video Startups The Same Protections As Cable Companies

42. Dallas Buyers Club ruling: iiNet must hand over names of downloaders

43. A New Kind of Internet Pirate: What’s stopping people from using apps like Periscope and Meerkat to livestream video they don’t own? Not much.

+ Periscope, Meerkat, and sports: Can fans, media live stream from the game?

44. Microsoft, Getty Images settle dispute over online photo tool

45. Microsoft halts Kinect for Windows production

46. Teen rakes in $6,000 on “Uploader for Instagram” app, told to shut down:  The 17-year-old has removed his app after receiving demand letters from Instagram.

47. Barrett Brown suddenly stripped of prison e-mail after talking to press: Activist writes arbitrary punishment is part of “pattern of state retaliation.”

48. USPTO Demands EFF Censor Its Comments On Patentable Subject Matter

49. Net neutrality rules differ widely across developed nations

50. Police granted extra 12 months to try to crack suspect’s computer encryption

51. Taking Down Bigots With Their Own Weapons Is Sweet, Satisfying — And Very, Very Wrong: Actually, it’s about ethics in doxxing.

52. If you’re worried about Facebook hosting news content…you’re already dead.

53. The Rise of ‘Studyblrs’: Teens take to social media to show off their…study habits?

54. Would telepathy help?: Will the next generation of telepathy machines make us closer, or are there unforeseen dangers in the melding of minds?

55. The Internet Ruined April Fool’s Day: The holiday’s jokes are unfunny and misleading. They’re also, often, redundant.

56. The Meme as Meme: Why do things go viral, and should we care?

57. The Definitive Oral History Of 1980s Digital Icon Max Headroom

CREATIVITY

58. The cost of silence: mass surveillance & self-censorship

59. Warner Bros. And Rightscorp Argue That Copyright Trolling Is Protected By The First Amendment

60. Prince Gives Away Someone Else’s Artistic Efforts, Gets Sued

61. Consent to the use of copyrighted material not required to be in writing

62. Three’s fair use too: play is transformative work (Rebecca Tushnet)

63. Let’s talk TV – CRTC roadmap to “maximize viewer choice”

64. Comparison of Canadian content, production services, co-ventures and treaty co-productions

65. Rolling Stone’s investigation: ‘A failure that was avoidable’

+ Rolling Stone’s ‘A Rape on Campus.’ Notes and comment on Columbia J-school’s investigation.

+ Rolling Stone and the Temptations of Narrative Journalism

jon

GAMES

1. Zynga investors can sue FarmVille creator for alleged IPO fraud, judge says: Lawsuit back on the table for Zynga, where fortunes have plunged since 2011 IPO.

2. This Guy Remade Super Mario 64’s Most Iconic Level In HD And Playable In Your Browser

+ Nintendo Takedown Notice for Super Mario 64 HD

+ Fan-made Super Mario 64 game pulled after Nintendo cries foul

+ Fan-made Mario 64 remake disappears following Nintendo copyright complaint

+ Poll: Should Nintendo have DMCA’d a fan’s free Super Mario HD remake?

+ Why Does Nintendo Want This Superfan’s YouTube Money?

+ Nintendo’s physical DLC: Supply-limited toy needed for new gameplay puzzles

3. Lone modder’s Half-Life 2: Update brings modern graphics to a classic: Source engine overhaul four years in the making sees free Steam release tomorrow.

4. Andrew Eisen Video: ‘My Favorite Thing About Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women Videos’

5. Julia Hardy’s Misogyny Monday

6. Community questions Obsidian over ‘Pillars of Eternity’ in-game trans joke

7. Mortal Kombat producer “quits” Twitter over violent threats to family

8. Game store swatted, nearly became complicit in inciting police response: Received phony call encouraging employees to shut blinds, shout about weapons.

9. Oracle settles with Rhode Island in 38 Studios bankruptcy case

+ 38 Studios auction brings in $90K for Rhode Island

10. UK school district will report parents to authorities for letting their children play R18 rated games

11. Secondary schools in NI to receive free copies of Minecraft

12. Brave Frontier publisher Gumi cuts 11% of staff following IPO

13. GameStop annual sales up slightly to $9.3 billion

14. The Unbalanced Design Of Super Smash Brothers

15. Meet America’s First Video Game Varsity Athletes

16. Epic Awards One Of Three Unreal Dev Grants To Makers Of Net Neutrality Game

17. Bioware makes Orbit framework open source

18. Japanese devs will soon be able to pitch games using Bandai Namco IP

19. MOBAs will overtake MMORPGs in F2P revenue this year – EEDAR

20. What does Google Play’s increase in game sessions mean for iOS?

21. Video Gaming Made Me a History Major: Empire of Earth and Medieval 2 Total War made me actually care about school.

DIGITAL

22. In Final Verdict, Jury Rules Against Pao On All Four Claims In Ellen Pao Vs. Kleiner Perkins

+ Two Jurors On Opposite Sides Share Their Pao Vs. Kleiner Perspectives

+ Ellen Pao and the Myth of Meritocracy

+ Ellen Pao’s Statement On Losing The Kleiner Perkins Case: “The Battle Was Worth It”

23. China Uses Unencrypted Websites to Hijack Browsers in GitHub Attack

+ China’s Great Firewall Turned Around: Why China Wants To Censor Global Internet

+ Google Chrome will banish Chinese certificate authority for breach of trust:  Draconian move follows the issuance of certificates masquerading as Google domains.

24. Obama signs executive order imposing sanctions on overseas hackers: President: “From now on, we have the power to freeze their assets.”

25. Feds subpoena reddit in effort to learn about users behind Dark Web chatter: ICE agent demands e-mail, IP logs, “means and source of payment,” and more

26. Judge: Mississippi investigation of Google likely violates 1st Amendment

27. Who Knows What Evils Lurk in the Shadows?: The story of the powerful spy agency most Canadians still don’t know, and the security bill that would expand its resources and reach (Ron Deibert)

+ An amended Bill C-51 is still a problem: insights from the U.S. (Jon Penney)

+ The government has not made its case for C-51 (Kent Roach & Craig Forcese)

+ From Obama Birthers to Anti-Immigration Activists: Who the Government Turned to for Bill C-51 Support During Committee Hearings (Michael Geist)

+ How C-51 undermines privacy (Lisa M. Austin, Benjamin J. Goold, Avner Levin and Andrea Slane)

28. Quebec Takes on the Internet: Government Announces Plans to Require Website Blocking & Studies New Internet Access Tax (Michael Geist)

29. Corporate Sovereignty Provisions Of TPP Agreement Leaked Via Wikileaks: Would Massively Undermine Government Sovereignty

30. Report: Facebook tracks all visitors, even if you’re not a user and opted out: In the EU, where free and informed prior consent is required, there could be an issue.

+ Facebook tracks logged-out users in ‘violation’ of EU law, study says

31. Tech companies are sending your secrets to crowdsourced armies of low-paid workers

32. 5 other insane things a corrupt DEA agent did while allegedly stealing Bitcoin from Silk Road

33. A Precautionary Approach to Big Data Privacy (Arvind Narayanan, Joanna Huey & Edward W. Felten)

34. Court Rejects Bizarre Attempt To Scrub Consumer Review–Goren v. Ripoff Report

35. Meerkat, YouNow, Periscope and the future of live-streaming

+ Meerkat is dying – and it’s taking U.S. tech journalism with it

+ Tech reporters blew the Meerkat story but, no, I can’t name a single one because fear!: My strange exchange last night with the author of that post: ‘Meerkat is dying – and it’s taking U.S. tech journalism with it.’

36. The Most Important Social Media Company You’ve Never Heard Of: Damien Patton has created a way to find out what is happening anywhere in the world–instantly. The inside story behind Banjo–and the gold rush sure to follow.

37. Gen Con issues letter to the community on SB 101, event stuck in Indianapolis until after 2020

38. Really, Rupert?

39. Fox News, Jeanie Pirro Facebook Lawsuit Could Change Copyright Landscape On Social Media

40. CRTC finds something fishy about dating site’s unsubscribe mechanism, operator nets $48,000 fine under anti-spam law 

41. Massive Anti-Net Neutrality E-mail Campaign Shows Signs Of Faking Many Signatures

42. Judge awards damages in false DMCA takedown case

43. Another invalidated clickwrap agreement

44. Those NDAs may not be worth the paper they are written on 

45. It’s Not Easy Being Scientology: Since its founding in the 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard’s organization has put a premium on controlling the flow of information—an increasingly impossible enterprise in the Internet age.

46. Facebook’s Message to Content Makers: We Own the Audience

47. How The US Government Legally Stole Millions From Kim Dotcom

48. The NFL Will Stream a Game on the Web Next Year. Don’t Get Used to It.

49. Two Years Later, Snowden’s Mangled Laptop Is More Than an Empty Symbol

50. One Artist’s Take on the Future of Personal Data

51. ‘Avengers’ 3D Firm Brings Patent Lawsuit Against ‘Divergent’ 3D Firm

CREATIVITY

52. CRTC dramatically shifts Canadian television regulation

+ Canada Forces A La Carte Rules On Cable Industry, Bell Pouts By Refusing To Show Regulator On Television

+ At Bell Media, editorial meddling by execs appears to be a recurring problem

+ Bell censorship: the status quo can’t endure

+ Don’t bundle me, bro: Life under the shadow of Big Telecom

+ Can CTV News and BNN be trusted to report on themselves? Depends on Kevin Crull’s mood

53. Judge Rules ‘Three’s Company’ Parody Play to Be Fair Use

54. In defense of Trevor Noah’s stupid, tasteless tweets

55. Rap lyrics are fiction — but prosecutors are treating them like admissions of guilt

56. Why Traditional TV Is The Real Walking Dead

57. Why curation could be at the core of future reporting

jon

GAMES

1. Lilith Games sues uCool for copyright infringement in federal court over ‘Heroes Charge’

+ Report: hidden code in uCool’s ‘Heroes Charge’ shows Lilith Games copyright

2. Sony’s US Bloodborne trademark expired on launch day

3. Indie Developer Retaliates To Negative Video With YouTube Takedown

4. New Chicago summit aims to raise awareness about video game law

5. Haunted House of Trademark Horrors: Meet the man who has been fighting an Atari trademark challenge for over three years.

+ TxK dev on Atari legal threats: “Attack me? They should have hired me”: Jeff Minter says his game is legally distinct from its Tempest inspiration.

6. PewDiePie, Anita Sarkeesian make Time’s ’30 Most Influential People on the Internet’ list

7. “That life is over”: Zoe Quinn looks beyond GamerGate

8. New ‘Offworld’ Gaming Site Seeks To Redefine Gamer Stereotypes

9.How League Of Legends Enables Toxicity

10. Report: YouTube Live will launch in 2015 with focus on game streaming

11. Square Enix shutting down ‘Final Fantasy XI’ for PS2 and Xbox 360 in 2016

12. Annual Rovio EBIT down 73% as merchandising falters

13. Iwata claims Nintendo’s deal with DeNA was not born out of shareholder pressure

14. This Is The Demo That Magic Leap Was Going To Show At Ted Before It Backed Out

+ 48 Crazy Ideas Coming From The $2 Billion Stealth Startup Magic Leap: Want A Peek At What Magic Leap Is Working On? We Pulled The Best Shots From Their Latest Patent Application.

15. Valve: “If there’s something useful, we’ll give it away”

16. Touchtone Holds A Mirror To Our Post-Snowden Surveillance State

17. Battlefield Hardline Review: Cop Out

18. Why Everyone Should Want Politics in Their Video Games

19. How Disney’s games are getting nearly 1M downloads a day and 70M unique users a month

20. World War II Snipers – Videogames vs History

21. The Changing Looks Of Final Fantasy’s Cid: Fashion Experts Weigh In

DIGITAL

22. This infographic shows the scope of internet censorship around the globe

23. The new authoritarianism (Sergi Guriev & Daniel Treisman)

24. Russia Will Deploy “Digital Fingerprinting” to Enforce Copyright Online

25. Tim Berners-Lee: We must take to the streets to protect the open web

26. Canadian Bar Association condemns Harper’s anti-terror bill: The group representing law professionals argues the bill’s “vague and overly broad language” could chill expressions of dissent.

+ How dangerous is C-51? You might be surprised (Michael Geist)

+ A Conversation About Bill C-51: How the Anti-Terrorism Bill Undermines Canadian Privacy (Michael Geist)

27. Digital Tailspin: Ten Rules for the Internet After Snowden, Michael Seemann

28. How social media makes us feel less upset about surveillance

29. Cisco Shipping Equipment to Fake Addresses to Foil NSA Interception

30. Pearson admits to monitoring students’ social media use during its online tests

31. FTC report reveals how Google manipulated its search results

32. Whether You’re Red or Blue, You Should Love the FCC’s Internet Plan (Susan Crawford)

33. Indian Law Used to Arrest People for Innocuous Facebook Posts Ruled Unconstitutional

34. AT&T is using the Title II rules it hates to get millions in refunds: FCC grants AT&T complaint on overcharges because of common carrier rules.

35. Ellen Pao “drove the returns” at VC firm while the men were promoted, lawyers say 

36. Twitter rolls out new filter for “threats, abusive language”

37. How Bloggers Made The Fashion Industry Pay More Attention To Minorities: The medium has forced the industry to recognize — and cater to — groups of women that it has completely ignored in the past.

38. Technology and Persuasion: Persuasive technologies surround us, and they’re growing smarter. How do these technologies work? And why?

39. How Life360 won its patent war

40. Rightscorp Discovering That Harassing Broadband Users Isn’t The Cash Cow It Thought It Would Be

41. Voltage Pictures Has To Pay $22k To Canadian ISP If It Wants Names For Its Shakedown Scheme

42. The Church Of Scientology is bad at Twitter

43. Beyond Freedom Of Information Requests: Freedom Of Code Requests

44. Internet TV’s Big Chance To Oust Cable Is Almost Here

45. For a brighter robotics future, it’s time to offload their brains: The power of cloud software could make robots smarter and less expensive.

46. Where next for robot journalists in the newsroom?: With Associated Press announcing that algorithmic programs will soon be used on the sports desk, should journalists be worried they’ll soon be replaced?

47. Yep, That Anti-Robot Protest At SXSW Was A Marketing Stunt [UPDATED]

48. Co-founder feuds at L.A. tech start-ups show how handshake deals can blow up

49. MRIs show our brains shutting down when we see security prompts

50. Humans: The Next Platform

51. Yik Yak And Online Anonymity Are Good For College Students

52. Balthus’ Soft-Core Polaroids Splash Down in Paris: An exhibit that is a violation of a young girl’s and a dead artist’s privacy. Or not.

53. Q&A: Cindy Cohn, EFF’s new executive director

54. Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe 

CREATIVITY

55. Bell head meddled in news coverage

+ Bell’s Crull Banned CRTC Chair Blais From CTV News Coverage Following TalkTV Decision

+ Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-96, Let’s Talk TV: A World of Choice – A roadmap to maximize choice for TV viewers and to foster a healthy, dynamic TV market

+ What on earth is happening at Bell?: Top 10 list of Bell legal/regulatory/privacy issues over just the past two years (Michael Geist)

+ Why the Vertically Integrated TV Giants Are the CRTC’s Hidden Target in Pick-and-Pay Decision

(Michael Geist)

56. The new Gamergate: Angry white men are trying to shut down diverse comics

57. Plagiarize This: A reasonable Solution to Musical Copyright After “Blurred Lines”

58. Remixing Culture And Why The Art Of The Mash-Up Matters

59. Elon Musk put SpaceX’s photos in the public domain: So why does Flickr say they’re licensed?

+ Elon Musk Says SpaceX Photos Are Now Fully Public Domain

60. Stop The Presses: Disney Tells Court About The Importance Of The Public Domain

61. From free to fee: How U.S. dailies decide to use paywalls

62. The long, twisted history of glitch art

jon

GAMES

1. Artist claims Kabam copied his IP to create its mobile game ‘Creature Academy’

2. Legendary developer Jeff Minter claims Atari is blocking future releases of ‘TxK’

3. Appeals court revives Microsoft Xbox 360 console defect litigation: Is there a console defect causing the Xbox to damage game discs?

4. NCAA seeks appeal in O’Bannon v. NCAA

5. It’s time for the FBI to prosecute Gamergate trolls (Brianna Wu)

+ Q&A With The Congresswoman Taking On Gamergate

+ Here Lies My Hatred

+ Gamergate Hasn’t Hurt Academic Interest in Gaming, Say Leading Scholars — If Anything, It’s Increased Interest

6. It costs more to play as a female in mobile games

7. Is ageism the only prejudice the industry isn’t discussing?

8. Why is the Grand Theft Auto CEO also chairman of the ESRB?: Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s role undermines the perceived independence crucial to the US ratings board’s legitimacy

9. ESRB expanding to mobile, digital platforms

10. Google Play apps and updates are now subject to a review process: Company has also started handing out kid- and parent-friendly age ratings for apps.

11. Steam Curators now required to disclose endorsements

12. Sorry, Europe, you still can’t get refunds on your Steam game purchases: Confusing legal language maintains the status quo for Valve’s digital store.

13. ‘Teslacrypt’ Ransomware Targets Gamers

14. Project Cars release delayed for a third time

15. Does Sony Leave Hacked PSN Account Owners Holding The Bag?

16. More regional restrictions on Steam gifts come to light

17. Tencent profits at $4bn for 2014, up 53% year-on-year

18. Taking the fear out of contracts: Adriaan de Jongh had to understand legalese before he could create a tool to help devs eliminate it; he just didn’t expect to enjoy it so much

19. Stock Ticker: Sony soars, Microsoft slumps and EA reclaims its crown

20. Nintendo Partners With DeNA To Bring Its Games And IP To Smartphones

21. Steam reaches 9m concurrent users despite service issues

22. Ex-pro video gamer explains why e-sports are becoming the number one hobby in the world

23. Someday, Doctors Could Prescribe You Video Games For Your Brain

24. Video Games Are Better Without Characters: The real legacy of SimCity is its attempt—and failure—to make complex systems the protagonists instead of people. (Ian Bogost)

25. Japan’s Strangest Videogames And The Person Who Finds Them

26. Fixing “Videogames”

27. Google’s AI Masters Space Invaders (But It Still Stinks at Pac-Man): Google’s artificial-intelligence researchers say software that learns to play video games could graduate to the real world before long.

DIGITAL

28. Twitter puts trillions of tweets up for sale to data miners: Company plans to make content generated by users available to commerce, academia and even police involved in crowd control

29. Internet carriers may be breaching Canadian privacy laws: In privacy and transparency report, Teksavvy scores highest, Videotron and Shaw score low

30. We can’t accept Internet surveillance as the new normal

31. Why The Anti-Terrorism Bill is Really an Anti-Privacy Bill: Bill C-51′s Evisceration of Privacy Protection (Michael Geist)

32. The Orwellian Re-Branding Of “Mass Surveillance” As Merely “Bulk Collection”

33. Americans’ Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden (Pew Research Center)

34. Privacy Might Be Getting an International Champion

35. What Spymaster Barbie Can Teach Us About Privacy

36. Sexism in cyberspace (Katherine Clark)

37. Divergent star Ashley Judd will press charges over Twitter harassment

38. Now, Twitter will package threat reports for local authorities’ sake: Coincides with actress Ashley Judd complaining about social media threats.

39. NYPD caught red-handed sanitizing police brutality Wikipedia entries

+ NYPD won’t punish cops for sanitizing Wikipedia police brutality entries

40. Coquitlam teen pleads guilty in Florida ‘swatting’ case

41. Marketers Tricked SXSW Tinder Users With A Chatbot

42. How ISIS Succeeds on Social Media Where #StopKony Fails: Even with fewer clicks

43. Microsoft will allow pirated copies of Windows 7 in China to upgrade to Windows 10

44. People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees: Yet another reason to shun Internet Explorer

45. FCC Releases 400-Page Net Neutrality Document

46. Internet providers ordered to stop hiding the true size of monthly bills: FCC tells ISPs and wireless providers to disclose all hidden fees.

47. Facebook to stand trial over virtual currency: October court date set by California judge over unauthorised payments made by children

48. Here’s everything that’s wrong with cable and satellite TV bills

49. Court Rejects Argument That The Music Industry Deserves ‘Pirate Tax’ On Every Internet Connection

50. What Will Meerkat Do Without Twitter?

51. Diary Of A Cord Cutter In 2015 (Part 4: Favorite Apps And Resources)

52. The Email Scam with Centuries of History

53. No copyright and trade-mark rights in most metatags

54. Anti-Robot Protest Held At SXSW

+ Responsible Artificial Intelligence

55. An “Apple Engineer” Explains The 2015 MacBook (Or Not) 

56. Facebook, Oculus And The Future Of Virtual Reality

57. A day in the life of Jessica, the content creator of the future

58. The History of Lorem Ipsum

CREATIVITY

59. ‘Blurred Lines’ Verdict: How It Started, Why It Backfired on Robin Thicke and Why Songwriters Should Be Nervous

+ Gaye family asks judge to ban all sales, performances of “Blurred Lines”: An injunction is only fair, they say, to give the family time to negotiate royalties.

+ Five Lessons from the “Blurred Lines” Case

+ Pharrell Williams’ Lawyer: “We’re Entering the Bottom of the Sixth Inning”

+ What’s Wrong With the ‘Blurred Lines’ Copyright Ruling?

+ Years Of Brainwashing The Public Into Thinking Everything Creative Must Be ‘Owned’ Has Led To This New Mess

+ 5 Hit Songwriters Talk “Blurred Lines,” Creativity And Copyright: In the wake of the $7.3 million “Blurred Lines” verdict, songwriters for Beyoncé, Sam Smith, Bruno Mars, and more talk candidly with BuzzFeed News about the trouble with copyright law and the inevitability of influence.

+ Blurred Laws: In Defense Of Pastiche And Robin Thicke

+ A Copyright Expert Explains the ‘Blurred Lines’ Ruling

+ Blurred Lines in the difference between copyright in a song and in a recording

60. When the Walls Come Crumbling Down: The CRTC’s Latest TalkTV Decision (Michael Geist)

+ Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-86: Let’s Talk TV; The way forward – Creating compelling and diverse Canadian programming

+ John Doyle: CRTC’s new plans: Quality over quantity? Good luck with that

61. Gigaom: The Life and Death of a Venture Funded Media Startup

+ Exit interview: Mathew Ingram

62. In media companies, the editorial staff shouldn’t be kept in the dark about finances

63. When is a Copy not a Copy?: Technological Neutrality at Stake at the Supreme Court of Canada (Michael Geist)

64. Some Observations On Political Gaming by Herbert Goldhamer and Hans Speir of The Rand Corporation, April 30, 1959 (historical document)

65. The decline of journalism and the rise of public relations

66. Journalism in the Age of the Accidental News Junkie: A study of Millennial media habits claims that young people crave hard news. Do they really?

67. You Belong to Me: The fanfiction boom is reshaping the power dynamic between creators and consumers.

68. Enough About Me: In an era of chronic self-exposure, authors are pushing back against naked revelation

69. I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year

+ I’m straight, white and male. Now what?

70. What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works

jon

GAMES

1. ‘Turkey Not Banning Minecraft,’ Says Diplomat

+ Mojang Responds To Turkish Government’s Plan To Ban ‘Minecraft’

+ Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Super-Violent Minecraft

2. Report: Mississippi deputy fired over threatening Xbox Live players: Offers racist slurs, home address, badge number during Call of Duty session.

3. GDC Awards Show Hosts Deliver Messages About Internet Hate

4. Massachusetts congresswoman urges FBI to take Gamergate seriously

5. Brianna Wu vs. the Troll Army: She set out to transform the video gaming industry by creating a hit game aimed at female players. Then came Gamergate. And the harassment. And the death threats.

6. The games industry is wrong about kids, gaming and gender

7. The People Who Make Brutal Video Game Porn

8. Video game bans: the debate about guns, GTA, and real-life violence

9. Australian Classification Board Turns To IARC To Streamline Ratings Process

10. Finally, African Fantasy Is Getting Its Own Gorgeous RPG

11. Intel Promises To Help Foster More Diversity in The Video Games Industry

12. Riot Games rated one of America’s top 15 places to work

13. CFP: Games for the Elderly, and the Representation of Aging in Video Games

14. Petition Call on Activision and Infinity Ward To Revamp ‘Modern Warfare 2’ for PS4, Xbox One

15. How Switzerland could be the model for better game communities

16. What is a gamer?

17. Comcast Blocks HBO Go on PlayStation Devices

18. PlayStation Network attacked “every day” – Yoshida

19. Swatting: It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Gets Murdered

20. Majesco Hands Off Retail Publishing As Annual Shareholder Meeting Looms

21. Curt Schilling Speaks Out About the Failure of 38 Studios

22. A word on dealing with publishers: Don’t – Skulls of the Shogun dev Borut Pfeifer cautions indies against signing deals for marketing help, says many exist to leech value

23. The Rise Of Slow Gaming, Our Cultural Antidote To Angry Birds

24. Blizzard offers college tuition in new eSports tournament

25. Minecraft’s Markus Persson Tells All On His Sale To Microsoft, His $70 Million Home

26. VR sickness cannot be solved by hardware improvements alone: Walt Disney Imagineering’s Bei Yang points to game design as an ever present risk of sickness in virtual reality

27. Why video game engines may power the future of film and architecture: The original developer of Gears of War has an ambitious plan for the future of everything

28. History of Video Games (1950-1980)

29. The Merging of Artist and Audience: How Games will Redefine Fame

30. On killing virtual dogs

DIGITAL

31. Free to Be You and Me? Copyright and Constraint (Rebecca Tushnet)

32. 13-24 Year Olds Watching More YouTube Than TV – To The Surprise of No-one

33. U.S. NSA sued by Wikimedia, rights groups over mass surveillance

34. New smoking gun further ties NSA to omnipotent “Equation Group” hackers: What are the chances unrelated state-sponsored projects were both named “BACKSNARF”?

35. Je suis Charlie sentiment fades amid calls to tame free speech

36. Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not From Them (Bruce Schneier)

37. Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft: I’m putting more trust in communities than corporations (Dan Gillmor)

38. Two weeks on, Superfish debacle still causing pain for some Lenovo customers: Assurances on the demise of the dangerous adware are (somewhat) exaggerated.

39. Attack Attribution and Cyber Conflict

40. Misuse of Canada’s Copyright Notice System Continues: U.S. Firm Sending Thousands of Notices With Settlement Demands (Michael Geist)

+ More Copyright Trolls Rushing In To Take Advantage Of Canadian Copyright Notice System Loopholes

41. Here’s why patents are innovation’s worst enemyMPAA Abusing DMCA Takedowns To Attempt A Poor Man’s SOPA

42. Federal Court finds meta tags do not infringe trademarks or copyright

43. Trial Court Doesn’t Unmask Parodist Twitterers

44. CRTC Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer issues $1.1 million penalty to Compu-Finder for spamming Canadians

45. How Reddit Became a Worse Black Hole of Violent Racism than Stormfront

46. This Is What It’s Like To Go To Prison For Trolling: In January 2014, two people were found guilty of sending death and rape threats to the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez in the most high-profile online abuse case Britain has yet seen. 

47. WordPress Wins Case Against DMCA Abuser… Who Ignored The Proceedings

48. Will the FTC ever drop the hammer on paid Wikipedia edits?

49. Following the Digital Breadcrumbs: How to distinguish online nutcases from honest-to-God villains.

50. Spanish Court Limits Scope Of EU’s Right To Be Forgotten

51. Facebook post written in Florida lands US man in United Arab Emirates jail: Mechanic accused of slandering his employer, which is illegal in the Emirates.

52. Sofia Vergara Successfully Shuts Down “Fan Site” Via UDRP Proceeding

53. Europe reverses course on net neutrality legislation: EU member states have voted in favor of allowing the prioritization of “specialized” services.

54. MySpace – what went wrong: ‘The site was a massive spaghetti-ball mess’: Former VP of online marketing Sean Percival on corporate interference, Punch The Monkey, and a failed attempt to buy Spotify

55. Top 10 emerging technologies of 2015

56. Cognitive Technology: The rise of “bionic brains”

57. Licensing Your 3D Printed Stuff: Why 3D Printed Objects Challenge Our Copyright Beliefs

58. Why No One’s Talking About ‘Cord-Forevers’

59. Why It’s Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry

CREATIVITY

60. The End of Creativity: The word “creativity” was made up less than a hundred years ago. It is time to stop using it.

61. Raising the Broadcast White Flag: What Lies Behind Bell’s Radical Plan to Raise TV Fees, Block Content, Violate Net Neutrality & Fight Netflix

62. Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to pay $7.4m to Marvin Gaye’s family over Blurred Lines: Jury decides Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke copied 1977 hit Got to Give It Up in lawsuit filed by Gaye’s children

+ The Blurred Lines Decision

+ Jury Says Robin Thicke And Pharrell Infringed… Even If They Didn’t Mean To: Told To Pay $7.3 Million

+ How the ‘Blurred Lines’ case could have chilling effect on creativity

63. What The Law Really Says About Music Plagiarism: How you think about music ≠ how the courts think about music.

64. What We Talk About When We Talk About Crediting Photographers

65. Bryn Geffert On Securing Rights

66. India Threatens BBC Over Decision To Air Rape Documentary In U.K.

+ Indian Government Attempts To Censor BBC Gang Rape Documentary; Succeeds Only In Drawing More Attention To It

67. We can’t rely on corporations like Fox to care about ethics in journalism

68. Jury Decides Village People ‘Y.M.C.A.’ Songwriter Has 50 Percent Song Share

69. 2 Hockey Players And Elisha Cuthbert Want Cash From A TV Station For Airing A Joke Tweet

70. Liability may lurk in the vitriol of reader comments

71. Media mergers and the Competition Bureau: is the medium the market? 

72. Rise Of The Robot Sportswriter: Now that the AP has announced that it will outsource sports stories to artificial intelligence, we can expect lots of freezing #ColdTakes!

73. What It’s Like Publishing My Entire Book on Medium

jon

GAMES

1. ‘Final Fantasy Mystic Quest HD Remake’ is a Scam

2. Capcom Removes Advertised Offline Co-Op From Resident Evil Reboot, Updates Steam Page After Sales Begin

3. GamerGate’s Archvillain Is Really A Trolling Sketch Comedian: Jace Connors is infamous on the internet for threatening a female game developer. Now the man who created the Connors character says he himself is afraid for his safety.

+ GamerGate troll turns tail after receiving harassment of his own: Says he started harassing a game maker “as a joke, but it’s become far too real.”

4. Star Wars: The Old Republic dev calls for an end to “whales”

5. Survey asks devs what hurts industry perception: “Working conditions” the top answer among men, “sexism in games” most frequently cited by everyone else

6. GDC General Manager Kindly Warns: Be Good Or Be Gone

7. Violent media and real-world behavior: Historical data and recent trends

8. announcing contract( ), a free builder for plain English agreements

9. Tactical Simulations Interactive Reveals ‘Gateway’ Character Transfer Initiative

10.Net neutrality and games: Entertainment Software Association backs FCC ruling

11. Wells Fargo asks R.I. Superior Court judge to throw out part of 38 Studios lawsuit

12. Upcoming Open Gaming Alliance Report Predicts PC Gaming Sector Worth $35 Billion By 2018

13. One in five eSports fans would pay $200 for event tickets – Eventbrite survey

14. Leveling up the barcade: A visit to Chicago’sPac-Man themed Level 257: Ars beta tests Namco’s new restaurant/ arcade/bowling alley in suburban Chicago.

15. The unstoppable rise of mobile gaming

16. Canadians suffer video game RRP increase

17. Unreal Engine drops subscription fee, goes free for everyone: Epic still asking for 5% royalty on any shipped games which use it

18. Valve reveals Source 2, free to all developers

19. Nintendo’s Official Rules On What Color Mario Must Be

20. Everything I know about homelessness I learned from SimCity

21. Why Never Alone is so much more than a video game

22. When drones and virtual reality come together in an out-of-body experience

23. Battling depression through video games

24. Minecraft’s creator will always be a hero to me, he gave my autistic son a voice: A new interview with Markus ‘Notch’ Persson paints the multimillionaire creator of the Lego-like blockbuster as a playboy-slacker, but I don’t care

25. Computers Are Learning How To Play More Video Games, But They’ll Never Appreciate A Good Game? 

DIGITAL

26. F.C.C. Approves Net Neutrality Rules, Classifying Broadband Internet Service as a Utility

+ FCC votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II: Internet providers are now common carriers, and they’re ready to sue.

+ Bring on the lawsuits—FCC chairman says net neutrality will survive: Tom Wheeler confident his net neutrality order will withstand court challenge.

27. Rogers Executive Calls on Canadian Government to Shut Down VPNs

+ Social Justice: Bell Mobility deserves punitive damages for arrogance in 911 case

29. Don’t Go Changing: The Canadian Broadcaster Fight Against Legal and Regulatory Reform (Michael Geist)

30. Surveillance-based manipulation: How Facebook or Google could tilt elections

31. Translated: THE WORLD GOVERNMENT How Silicon Valley controls our future – Oh, My!

32. How to Mess With Surveillance: Why you should search for random people on Facebook, and other tips. (Bruce Schneier)

33. Why Watching the Watchers Isn’t Enough: My Talk on Privacy, Snowden & Bill C-51 (Michael Geist)

34. Japan is getting an anonymous whistleblowing platform, but will journalists use it?

35. Privacy advocate tells FTC that Samsung smart TVs are “deceptive”: In a complaint filed this week, nonprofit group challenges voice recognition and recording.

36. Uber Database Breach Exposed Information Of 50,000 Drivers, Company Confirms

37. Twitter Will Crack Down On Serial Trolls By Tracking Their Phone Number

38. Nova Scotia’s cyber bullying law is a disaster

39. Message board operators liable for defamatory posts says court: Baglow v. Smith

40. The case against killer robots, from a guy actually working on artificial intelligence

41. Lego Crosses The Digital Divide

42. ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ – the mantra of the Instagram era: How sharing our every moment on social media became the new living

43. We Need a Patent System That Works for All Innovators

44. The Real Question With VR: What Happens If We Can’t Get Out?

45. Why are we obsessed with what teens are doing on social media?

46. An ethical checklist for robot journalism

CREATIVITY

47. Our laptops are sleek and polished. Our operating systems are fluid and intuitive. Computing is easy and that’s a problem

48. Storytelling In The Digital Media Age

49. Why Hollywood Refuses to Embrace Diversity — Even Though It Makes More Money

jon