News of the Week

GAMES

1. EFF Files Petitions for DMCA Exemptions on Jailbreaking, Car Software, and Video Game DRM Software Checks on Older Games

+ OTW Files Petitions on Behalf of Fan Video Makers

+ Latest EFF DMCA Exemption Requests Include The Right to Tinker With and Maintain Unsupported Video Games

+ EFF asks for the right to revive “abandoned” online games: DMCA exemption would allow “dead” games to live on through legal, third-party servers.

2. Hearthstone bot maker closes shop after Blizzard crackdown: “We all knew that the day when our products [don’t] work anymore would come.”

3. Lohan, Noriega video game lawsuits are a troubling sign for the arts (Ed Cavazos)

+ Activision v Noriega analysed: don’t make way for the bad guy (Jas Purewal)

4. Anita Sarkeesian goes on Colbert. You’ll totally believe what happens next: “Why not just have a separate game? Have separate but equal games?”

+ Harassed Game Dev Setting Up Legal Defense Fund For Harassed Women

+ Anti-Game Researchers Used to Vilify #GamerGate Supporters

+ Zoe Quinn calls for big companies to speak out on GamerGate

+ My 15 Minutes Of Fame As A B-List Gamergate Celebrity

+ Wu offers $11K for harassment conviction

+ “Actually, It’s About Ethics In Games Journalism” Meme Gives GamerGate The Respect It Deserves: Actually it’s about ethics

5. Platform, not gender, drives gamer differences – EEDAR

6. Kim Kardashian earned 54 per cent of Glu’s revenue in Q3

7. Why Licensed Games Are Finally Hot

8. Updated numbers show PS4 with at least 65 percent of two-console market: Sony’s system has dominated worldwide console sales in the last six months.

9. An Artist is Turning MC Escher’s ‘Relativity’ Into a Video Game

10. The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing: Networks Without Networks

11. The Greatest Video Game Basketball Players of All Time

DIGITAL

12. Quebec Court Awards Damages for Violation of Privacy on Google Streetview

13. Does your phone company track you?: Twitter’s mobile ad arm lets clients use a hidden tracking number created by Verizon.

+ A Dystopian Future Of Ads That Won’t Stop Until You Say ‘McDonald’s’ Could Be Avoided With More Transparency

14. Has the tide turned on Canada’s privacy embarrassment: Supreme Court of Canada’s Spencer decision has confirmed there is a reasonable expectation of privacy associated with telecom and Internet subscriber information. (Michael Geist)

15. Canadian telcos and banks subject to the Quebec privacy law

16. Why Facebook Just Launched Its Own ‘Dark Web’ Site

17. Microsoft’s top legal gun decries privacy ‘arms race’

18. Sir Tim Berners-Lee On The Future Of The World Wide Web

19. Starting today, UK has new licensing scheme for orphan works

20. China to establish first ever IP court

21. After Protests Continue, Hungary Dumps Stupid Internet Tax Idea

22. The Cliff and the Slope: The proof is in. Detailed report shows how U.S. Internet access monopolies punish rivals and catch innocent bystanders in the crossfire—legally.

23. A Horse of a Different Color: What robotics law can learn from cyberlaw. (Ryan Calo)

+ RoboLaw: Why and how to regulate robotics

24. Copyright’s over, it’s time to go proactionary

25. Joker Lets You Instantly Stream Perfectly Legal And Legitimate Torrent Files

26. The Birth of the Internet Troll

27. Internet of Things will transform life, but experts fear for privacy and personal data

28. Computational Media – What’s That? (Dr. Richard Smith) 

CONSTRAINTS

29. Why Are Rap Lyrics Being Used As Evidence In Court?

30. Misguided Pianist Asks Washington Post To Remove A Less-Than-Wonderful Review Under Right To Be Forgotten

+ Do negative reviews have a right to be forgotten by Google?: Classical pianist Dejan Lazic’s attempt to have a ‘mean-spirited’ review scrubbed from Google is misguided madness that could have dire consequences for us all

31. Why the Chess Computer Deep Blue Played Like a Human: Randomness may be key to both human and computer creativity.

32. Inside George R.R. Martin’s complicated relationship with the Internet

33. The Young Turks is running circles around news networks on YouTube

34. The Technical Constraints That Made Abbey Road So Good: What modern recording artists can learn from the studio’s early days

35. Ghomeshi claim faces significant challenges

36. Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Sherlock Holmes Case: Holmes Is Now (Mostly) Public Domain

37. Chris Hadfield’s Outer Space Version Of Space Oddity Is Back… But It Still Never Should Have Gone Away

jon

GAMES

1. Judge clears Activision for use of Noriega’s likeness in Black Ops II: Ruling notes dictator’s notorious reputation wasn’t actually harmed by the game.

2. Is GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows

+ 74,140 reasons that #GamerGate isn’t about the ethics of journalism

+ It’s Game Over for ‘Gamers’: Anita Sarkeesian on Video Games’ Great Future

+ Researchers find that female PC gamers outnumber males

+ Can Video Games Survive?: The Disheartening GamerGate Campaign

+ The Only Thing I Have To Say About Gamer Gate (Felicia Day)

+ Swedish Game Developers Sign Petition Supporting Diversity, Rejecting Harassment

+ Adobe Issues Statement About GamerGate

3. Are there lines games shouldn’t cross?

4. Blizzard Bans ‘Several Thousand’ Hearthstone Players

5. Japanese Game Teaches Citizens the Finer Points of Being a ‘Lay Judge’

6. Xbox head: Minecraft sequel may not “make the most sense”

7. Madden, mobile and digital drive EA to record Q2

8. Helgason: Negative view on Riccitiello is “incredibly unfair”

9. This video game might be the future of ADHD and Alzheimer’s treatment

10. PlayStation 4 Update Coming On 10/28 Lets You Play Games With Friends Who Don’t Own A Copy

11. Some quick thoughts on VR and game dev… (Kim Voll) 

DIGITAL

12. Snowden document isn’t proof of telco-spy deal, says UK agency as it squashes privacy complaint

13. Embedding Is Not Copyright Infringement, Eu Court Rules

+ EU Court Of Justice Says Embedding Is Not Infringing: Could Mean Streaming Sites Are Legal

14. Pew survey says online harassment rampant, impacts genders differently: Young women suffer severe types of harassment at “disproportionately high levels.”

15. What, exactly, is a browsewrap?

16. The paradoxes of open data and how to get rid of it? Analysing the interplay between open data and sui-generis rights on databases (Primavera De Filippi & Lionel Maurel)

17. Whisper, Secret, and Snapchat leaks show that fake privacy is almost worse than no privacy at all

18. Thousands of Hungarians march against Internet tax

19. FCC moves to treat online video like cable, a boon for Aereo

20. Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering Efforts: Big-data boondoggles and brain-inspired chips are just two of the things we’re really getting wrong

21. Parasitic Capitalism, Round 2: Ebola.com Sold for $200,000

22. The ugly afterlife of crowdfunding projects that never ship and never end: Even projects crowdfunded to excess enter tense, never-ending development hell.

23. Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com 

CONSTRAINTS

24. Copyright Law Stifling Free Speech And Artistic Criticism

+ Dangerous Undertakings: Sacred Texts and Copyright’s Myth of Aesthetic Neutrality (John Tehranian)

25. Aereo blocked from real-time TV rebroadcasts

26. Getty Images says it’s trying to ease up on enforcing copyright: Rights-holding company will still sue, but wants “to approach infringers as customers.”

27. Court Ruling: The NFL Isn’t Violating Player’s Publicity Rights By Selling Videos Of Historical Game Footage

28. These filmmakers want to put you inside a horror movie

jon

GAMES

1. Judge says EA executives committed “puffery,” not securities fraud: Statements about Battlefield 4 launch were “corporate optimism, or puffery.”

2. IT HAPPENED TO ME: I’ve Been Forced Out Of My Home And Am Living In Constant Fear Because Of Relentless Death Threats From Gamergate. This is what happens when you stand up to the misogyny of gaming culture.(Brianna Wu)

+ ESA: “There’s no place in the video game community for threats”

+ So Long #Gamergate. What Did You Teach Us?

+ On GamerGate: A letter from the editor

+ We cannot let this become gaming culture: Organised abuse and threats of mass murder: this is the legacy of GamerGate.

+ Rape and death threats are terrorizing female gamers. Why haven’t men in tech spoken out? (Brianna Wu)

+ More women play video games than boys, and other surprising facts lost in the mess of Gamergate

+ The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate

3. ‘Hatred’ Unapologetically Embraces The Violence of ‘Mass Killings’

+ ‘Hatred’ Developer Creative Destruction Denies Accusations That Some Studio Members Are ‘Neo Nazis’

4. Nintendo Bricks Wii U Consoles Unless Owners Agree To New EULA

+ Virtual worlds players – consumers or citizens?

5. Multiplayer Network Innovations Files 26 Patent Infringement Lawsuits Between August and October

6. Indie game pulled off Steam after dev threatens Gabe Newell on Twitter: Paranautical Activity dev was irate over mistaken listing, Steam’s monopoly.

+ Mike Maulbeck Resigns From Code Avarice

7. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team accused of match fixing

8. Digital Extremes sells 61 per cent of shares for $73 million

9. Sony launching eSports league

10. 40,000 fans pack stadium for League of Legends final

11. FGC Player Terrance ‘PushaTee88’ Moore Passes Away After Collapsing at Tournament

12. How Palmer Luckey Created Oculus Rift

13. Action Video Games Improve Sensorimotor Skills

14. One year after launch, The Stanley Parable surpasses 1M sold

15. Report: Mobile to become gaming’s biggest market by 2015

DIGITAL

16. BBC to publish ‘right to be forgotten’ removals list

17. Dish Wins Yet Again Over Networks Looking To Kill Off New Innovations With Questionable Copyright Claims

18. Parents May Be Liable for What Their Kids Post on Facebook, Court Rules

19. UK stiffens maximum sentence for online harassment to 2 years

20. Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.

+ Amazon Must Be Stopped: It’s too big. It’s cannibalizing the economy. It’s time for a radical plan.

+ Amazon’s Elite Reviewing Club Sabotaged My Book

21. Chinese government launches man-in-middle attack against iCloud: Targeting new iPhone users to capture user credentials, monitors find.

22. China Turns From ‘Pirate’ Nation To Giant Patent Troll

23. How Corporate Canada Rejected the Canadian Government’s Plan to Combat Patent Trolls (Michael Geist)

24. Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Insist ‘Criminal Elements’ Are Secretly Leading The Copyright Reform Effort

25. Google rolling out new anti-piracy search algorithm: “We’ve now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings.”

26. Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users

+ What Whisper Is All About

+ Whisper: the facts

27. Facebook wants the DEA to promise that it won’t create fake accounts

28. Explaing the rise and fall of the Warez MP3 scene: An empirical account from the inside

29. Illegal Copying Has Always Created Jobs, Growth, And Prosperity

30. Human society in a digital world – by Neelie Kroes and Carl-Christian Buhr

31. Virtual Economies – what can they teach us about the real world?

32. Lobster Is A Marketplace For Licensing Affordable User-Generated Content

CONSTRAINTS

33. Crooner in Rights Spat: Are copyright laws too strict?

34. What has happened to journalism?: Redeeming an institution that is essential to democracy

35. ‘Am I being catfished?’ An author confronts her number one online critic: When a bad review of her first novel appeared online, Kathleen Hale was warned not to respond. But she soon found herself wading in

36. HBO has embraced Netflix’s business model, but not its net neutrality politics

37. Comcast “extortion” shows the need to treat broadband as a utility, Reddit’s Ohanian said

38. Will Silicon Valley Buy Hollywood?

jon

GAMES

1. What Is Gamergate, and Why Is Intel So Afraid of It?

+ ‘Massacre’ threat forces Anita Sarkeesian to cancel university talk

+ Brianna Wu is latest dev threatened and driven out of home

+ Gamergate’s vicious right-wing swell means there can be no neutral stance

+ “There is a literal war in this industry on women” – Wu

+ Angry misogyny is now the primary face of #GamerGate

+ Editorial: The Truth About GamerGate and GameJournoPros

2. Gender segregation in e-sports is indefensible – and yet …

3. SHOCKER: An Anti-Video Game Psychologist Turns Out To Be A Lousy Scientist

4. Are Lindsay Lohan and Manuel Noriega right to sue over video game likenesses?: The Hollywood actor and the former Panamanian dictator are suing over the use of their likenesses in video games, yet the law is rather ambiguous on the issue

+ Linsday Lohan’s Lawyers Modify Focus of ‘GTA V’ Lawsuit Against Take-Two

+ Amended Complaint From Lindsay Lohan Against Take Two: Now With Five Times More Paper!

+ Call of Duty Lawsuit: Noriega Making Mockery of Legal System, Activision Says

5. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood Now Recognizes Same Sex Marriage

6. The esports revolution: The dark side of livestreaming entertainment

7. Video Game Thwarts Defendant in Boston Marathon Bombing ‘Obstruction of Justice’ Trial

8. Driveclub server issues continue

9. Requiring YouTubers To Give Positive Reviews For Access To Games Can’t Work As A Long Term Strategy

10. Video Games, Henry Ford, And The Problems Of Modern Education

+ Ian Livingstone Hopes to Launch School That Utilizes Video Game-Based Curriculum in 2016

+ How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read

11. How Online Multiplayer Ate The Videogame Industry And Turned The Internet Into A Battlefield

12. The Return Of The Video Game Auteur

13. You Can Create A Hit Video Game About Anything. Even Making Toast

14. The Death of Reviews

15. Texters and Gamers: Video games are a brilliant art form or the end of the world. But what about the other game — the one we all play, all day every day?

DIGITAL

16. EFF to Court: A Trademark Is Not A Censorship Tool

17. Our Digital Future: New report and agenda for copyright reform

18. Draft Declaration Of Internet Rights: (Text drafted by the Study Committee on Internet Rights and Duties of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies)

19. Hipster net neutrality group’s mysterious backer gets outed: It’s the cable companies

20. The Danger of Letting Monsters Pass As Internet Trolls

+ Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Bullying and Online Trolling in 1847

21. The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women

22. Microsoft CEO Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot On Gender Pay Gap

23. Silicon Valley’s Empathy Problem

24. Facebook is unleashing its ads—and surveillance—onto the internet at large

25. Mass surveillance killing Internet privacy, UN report says: UN counter-terrorism envoy Ben Emmerson says widespread use of mass electronic surveillance by intelligence agencies signals the death knell of privacy on the Internet.

26. Google has removed 170,000-plus URLs under “right to be forgotten” edict: Google weighs public interest, accuracy and relevance

27. America Must End Its Paranoid War on Hackers

28. CETA – what does it mean for IP in Canada?

29. SoundCloud Posted A $29M Loss In 2013 On Revenues Of $14M

30. How to become internet famous for $68: The secret of online celebrity Santiago Swallow.

31. The Internet Is Not Harming You. Here’s What’s Harmful: Fearmongering About The Internet  

CONSTRAINTS

32. How to Pirate a Book on Copyright Law: What I learned remixing a 250 page copyright treatise into a website about fair use.

33. Hong Kong’s Wild Protest Art: It’s spontaneous and participatory — and the state can’t control it.

34. Cloud this: Adobe has been screwing art students out of the CS6 licenses they paid for

35. Comedy club charges per laugh with facial recognition

36. Graffiti, vandalism, and public expression: public art and its uneasy relationship with the law

37. Why is a US radio station getting a notice about webcasting royalties in Canada? – why webcasters geo-block their streams to avoid international music royalties

38. What the pre-1972 Decision Really Means for the Future of Radio…

39. Why Isn’t Fair Dealing Enough?: Government Considering Copyright Exception to Cover Political Advertising

+ Broadcaster Copyright Misuse and Collusion?: Why Criticism Over the Government’s Political Ad Copyright Exception May Be Pointed in the Wrong Direction

+ Attack Ads, Copyright, and Collusion: Have Canada’s Major Broadcasters Violated the Competition Act?

40. Bono Apologizes For Putting Free Music On Y our iPhone

41. U2: ‘It’s the job of art to be divisive’

42. Dorian Nakamoto, fingered as Bitcoin creator, wants to sue Newsweek

jon

GAMES

1. U.S. Supreme Court Denies EA’s Motion to Appeal Ruling in ‘Keller v. EA’

2. German Court: Key Selling infringes Copyright

3. Square Enix Sues SNK Playmore

4. Report: YouTubers Making ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor’ Videos Strong-Armed by PR Firm Representing WBI

5. Australia, Steam and consumer legal rights in video games (Jas Purewal)

6. List of ethical concerns in video games (partial)

7. ‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.

8. CD Projekt Reiterates its Hate for DRM

9. Are Addictive Free-To-Play Games Ethical? Let’s Fight!

10. Can you use other companies’ trademarks in your video game?

11. US military can learn from game marketing, says ex-Call Of Duty director: Dave Anthony believes unpopular national security solutions can be pushed just like new game features

12. Intel: “We are deeply sorry if we offended anyone”

13. How EA’s jet-setting founder avoided $26 million in taxes: “I bought a private jet because I thought it would make me more efficient in my work.”

14. Chinese Mobile Game Uploads Almost 36K Private Videos Online Without Permission or Warning

15. Report: South African PlayStation Plus Subscribers See Substantial Rate Increase

16. The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

17. Twitch, Steam now require disclosure of sponsored content from users: New policies require paid support to be explicitly stated in text and graphics.

18. Study by Villanova, Rutgers professors shows video games may actually reduce violence

+ Brad Bushman Study Concludes That Most See a Correlation Between Video Games and Aggressive Behavior in Children

+ America’s Army and the Military recruitment and management of ‘Talent’: An interview with Colonel Casey Wardynski

+ Computer games: fun or wrong?

+ CBS Commentator Urges Gamers To Go Play The Real World

19. Gaming to Pay the Rent: Millions in prize money and ESPN-sized audiences at stake

20. How Videogame Currencies Could Effect Real-World Economies

21. Tiny Death Star pulled from app store, devs “had no prior knowledge”

+ Avoiding the Tiny Death Star: reducing risks of a published game being canned (Jas Purewal)

22. Report: Bomb Threat Was Not Directed Specifically At Gearbox Software

23. Massive acquisitions put M&A value up to Q3 2014 over that of 2013 entire

24. Japan is just a symptom of Xbox’ problems

25. The Three Lives Of Blizzard Entertainment

26. You Can Now Drive Rainbow Road in Gaming’s Most Realistic Racer

27. Microsoft Research demos our potential, holodeck-style gaming future: Kinect and projectors combine for room-filling games on the walls and floors.

28. Candy Crush Saga, not PS4 or Xbox One, dominates ads on the airwaves

29. The Birth of Pong: How Nolan Bushnell jump-started the video game industry from an abandoned roller rink. 

DIGITAL

30. Twitter says gag on surveillance scope is illegal “prior restraint”: Gag blocks speech “about information of national and global public concern.”

+ Twitter Sues The US Government For The Right To Disclose Surveillance Requests

31. The Revolution Will Not Be Instagrammed: Mainland Chinese felt no effects from the protests roiling Hong Kong — until Beijing pulled the plug on another social network.

+ Turkey’s Erdoğan Says He Is ‘Increasingly Against the Internet Every Day’

32.  Why the fight for data encryption is the second amendment battle for the digital age

33. Adobe’s e-book reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe—in plain text: Digital Editions even tracks which pages you’ve read. It might break a New Jersey Law.

34. Not on a Social Network? You’ve Still Got a Privacy Problem

35. The psychological addiction behind Facebook’s success

36. 5 Things You Need to Know About Anti-Facebook Social Network Ello: New social network explodes almost overnight – what is Ello and what do you need to know about it?

37. California bans paparazzi drones

38. Privacy class action against Apple denied by B.C. court (Ladas v. Apple Inc., 2014 BCSC 1821)

39. Apple’s Responds To Tech Mag Showing The Amazing Bending Phone By Freezing Them Out Of Bendy Apple Products

40. Intellectual property issues stacking up for 3-D printing

41. Copyright and the Architecture of Digital Delivery (Dan L. Burk)

42. Website terms and conditions: what constitutes acceptance? – a recent U.S. case casts doubt.

43. Fewer Patent Litigation Filings So Far in 2014

44. Venture capital and the great big Silicon Valley a—-le game

+ Etsy’s Trying to Fix Tech’s Women Problem. Why Aren’t You?: The first step is, throw out the hoodie-wearing boy-genius and build a new archetype.

45. Maybe the Internet Isn’t Killing Newspapers After All: Newspaper readership has been falling for decades—long before today’s online journalists were born, and even before some of their parents were born.

46. The cloud DVR is going mainstream before anyone knows if it’s legal

47. How The Sirius XM Ruling Upsets Decades Of Copyright Law Consensus

48. NetApp sticks biggest “patent troll” with $1.4M fee sanction: Second big setback for Acacia Research, a heavy filer of patent suits

49. Report: Industry Privately Angry With Verizon Over Its Net Neutrality Win Against The FCC

50. Why Phone, Cable Companies Want to Kill the Internet’s First Amendment

51. Verizon’s Netflix competitor dies from lack of customers, criminal activity

52. Video Of The Weekend: Brad Burnham’s Testimony On Net Neutrality

53. Former Vice Media editor says company killed stories over ‘brand partner’ concerns

54. The newsonomics of new cutbacks at The New York Times: The Times found success with its first round of paywalls, disappointment with its second. Is it hitting a paid-content ceiling?

55. The Bitcoin Selloff Continues

56. Instagram Cuts Off Kevin Rose’s Photo App Tiiny From Its Social Graph

57. Microsoft reveals the diversity of its workforce: Like its closest competitors, Microsoft is 70 per cent male and 60 per cent white

CONSTRAINTS

58. It’s Time to Be Honest: Netflix Will Not Mean the End of Canadian Television (Michael Geist)

59. Balancing Privacy and the Freedom of Expression: Quebec Court of Appeal OKs Pornographic Caricature (Teresa Scassa)

60. French Moral Rights May Prevent Copy of Rodin’s Public Domain Sculptures

61. The Myth of the Lone Genius: How collaboration led to the digital revolution — and helped me write my book

62. The Internet’s Influence on the Production and Consumption of Culture: Creative Destruction and New Opportunities

63. How Netflix ‘Crouching Tiger’ deal sets theater chains against studios

64. Norwegian High Chair Loses Trademark Battle

65. Exclusive: The Harvard Business School Report on Beyonce

66. If you want find out if a media company is doomed, look at its ambitions: Taking bold strategic risks and making acquisitions may indicate a management who see the writing on the wall

67. Moral Panics Of 1878: NY Times Warns People About The Evils Of Thomas Edison’s Aerophone

68. Why Marvel Works: A Scholarly Investigation: Studying The Impact Of The Marvel Cinematic University On Pop Culture, Warts And All.

69. First DVD rentals, then TV production, and now film—Netflix is upending the entertainment business as we speak

jon

This week, streaming consoles, mobile gamers, troubled trolls and a troubling politician.

jon

GAMES

1. California Court Dismisses McRO Patent Claims Against Activision, Others

2. Another Open-Source Developer Claims Hyperkin is Illegally Using Code for Retro Console System

3. Report: Game consoles most widely used video streaming devices in US: Consoles enjoy strong lead over smart TVs, media boxes

4. ESA: One-Third of Americans Play Mobile Games

5. Louisiana Tea Party Candidate Blames Atheism and Video Games for Sandy Hook Shooting

6. In Plain Sight: Rocket Internet Subsidiary Sells Pirated Games to Pakistan

7. Report: ISIS Recruiters Use Social Media and Video Games To Connect With Young People

8. Xbox Underground hackers plead guilty

9. Game Industry Myths: Women and the Game Industry

10. Why video games are so expensive to develop

11. The iPhone 6 Plus Is Great For Gamers

12. Not a joke: A Tetris movie is being made

DIGITAL

13. Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists: A new study shows that internet trolls really are just terrible human beings.

+ When Your Job Is to Moderate the Internet’s Nastiest Trolls

14. CRTC vs. Netflix: Has Canada’s Broadcast Regulator Started a Fight It Can’t Win?

+ CRTC is doomed to lose the fight it’s picked with Netflix

15. EFF Intervenes in Canadian Court Case to Protect Free Speech Online: No Single Country Should Have Veto Power Over Global Search Results

16. US top cop decries encryption, demands backdoors

17. Literary Lions Unite in Protest Over Amazon’s E-Book Tactics

18. Grooveshark, where employees uploaded thousands of songs, loses badly in court

19. Google and Apple Won’t Unlock Your Phone, But a Court Can Make You Do It

20. A Glum Sign for Apple in China, as Smuggled iPhones Go Begging

21. Apple knew of iCloud API weakness months before celeb photo leak broke: Security researcher reported brute force attacks were possible in March.

22. Tim Berners-Lee calls for internet bill of rights to ensure greater privacy: Web inventor says world needs an online ‘Magna Carta’ to combat growing government and corporate control

23. Copy-Remix-Profit: How YouTube & Shapeways Are Inventing the Future of Copyright

24. It’s now legal to make backups of movies, music, and e-books in the UK: As of today parodies of copyright will also be granted more permissive status.

25. In a selfie situation, who owns the shot?

26. A Wearable Drone That Launches Off Your Wrist To Take Your Selfie

CONSTRAINTS 

27. How Copyright Law Protects Art From Criticism

28. Creativity vs. Big Data? An Interview with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

29. An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything: Ilham Tohti’s unjust fate says much about the Chinese Communist Party’s dark vision for the web’s future

+ Putin’s Cyberphobia: Afraid for his hold on power, Putin is cracking down on Internet freedom with a flurry of new laws

30. The Psychology of Cryptomnesia: How We Unconsciously Plagiarize Existing Ideas

31. Who Owns Scrabble’s Word List?: Hasbro says the list of playable words belongs to the company. Players beg to differ.

32. Mark Robertson interviews F. Jay Dougherty: Authors Guild vs. Google: Fair Use or Foul Play?

33. Marvel And The Jack Kirby Estate Have Reached A Settlement

34. The Medium Is the Message, 50 Years Later

jon

GAMES

1. Activision moves to dismiss Manuel Noriega’s “absurd lawsuit”

+ Why Rudy Giuliani wants Noriega to get his bloody hands off Activision’s Call of Duty profits

2. FTC Begins Cracking Down on COPPA Violators

3. Developers Spar Over ‘Grimoire’ Name

4. Reclaiming ‘Gamer’ and Defending Our Tribe

+ Sexism, Lies and Video Games: The Culture War Nobody Is Winning

+ Addressing allegations of “collusion” among gaming journalists: An apology and an apologia for private discussions among peers.

+ Truth In Gaming: An Interview With The Fine Young Capitalists

+ EA Teams With White House for Sexual Assault Prevention Campaign

+ The reactionaries are just plain wrong about gaming’s future

5. Objective: Impossible?: An objective approach to games journalism is a noble goal, but black-and-white reporting still has a lot of gray area

6. Report: Terror Group Reportedly Releases Promotional Video for Upcoming Game

7. PlayStation TV launches with 700 games in US on October 14

8. Destiny sales top $325 million in five days

9. Titan cancellation cost Blizzard $50m or more, say analysts

10. Kickstarter-Funded Sword Fighting Game ‘Clang’ is Officially Cancelled

11. Beyond the microtransaction: how players spend

12. The Minecraft Parent

13. The Assassin’s Creed curriculum: can video games teach us history?: Reprogramming the past from the Oregon Trail to Columbine

14. The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics: Form without Function

15. Goat Simulator Selling Absurdly Well On iOS, Android

16. There And Back Again: A History Of The Lord Of The Rings In Video Games

17. The Fight Rages On In 38 Studios Lobbying Case

DIGITAL

18. “The Letter” Is Still The Best Story To Explain Why Copyright Monopoly Must Be Reduced

19. Could Taking A Selfie In A Museum Violate Copyright Law?

20. The Internet of Things and Canadian Copyright Law

21. MIT Students Battle State’s Demand for Their Bitcoin Miner’s Source Code

22. Illegal, Immoral, and Mood-Altering: How Facebook and OkCupid Broke the Law When They Experimented on Users (James Grimmelman)

23. A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy.

+ iOS 8’s One More Thing: It Prevents Apple from Complying With Search Warrants

24. The Solace of Oblivion: In Europe, the right to be forgotten trumps the Internet.

25. Litigation Alert: California Bans Non-Disparagement Clauses in Consumer Contracts

26. Kickstarter Updates Terms Of Use Section Related To Failed Projects

27.Trademark use: an important shift in Canada

28. ‘Digital Amnesia’, A Documentary About the Limited Shelf Life of Digital Data 

CONSTRAINTS

29.  Anti-Piracy is Class Privilege

30. Can Graffiti Be Copyrighted?: Some of the most public artists want to keep their work a bit more private.

31. Does the CRTC Have the Power Regulate Online Video?: Internet Companies Set to Challenge Its Authority (Michael Geist)

32. News for the Minecraft generation: Gannett experiments with virtual reality

jon

GAMES

1. Bomb Threat Targeted Anita Sarkeesian, Gaming Awards Last March

+ FBI investigating death threats against Feminist Frequency creator Sarkeesian

2. Georgia Man Murdered for PS4

3. King Settles Lawsuit with 6Waves Over Game Clones

4. Davis v. EA Argued Before Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

+ Legal Scholar: ‘Davis v. Electronic Arts’ Perfect for Supreme Court Review

5. Xbox Live Privacy Case Dismissed by U.S. District Court in Seattle

6. Video Games: Computer Programs or Creative Works?

7. The Gray Market of Game Emulators

8. SimBin declares bankruptcy and reforms as Sector 3 Studios

9. Real Jail For Wow-Crimes?

10. Microsoft Buys ‘Minecraft’ Maker for $2.5 Billion

+ Microsoft to break even on Mojang this fiscal year

+ Hey Microsoft, Acquiring A Hit Game Is Stupid

+ Microsoft-Mojang is about the future not the money

11. ‘Minecraft’ CraftBukkit Mod Developer Becomes Victim of Swatting

12. Nintendo of Japan Apologizes for Banning ‘Super Smash Bros.’ 3DS Players

13. EA kept quiet on Real Racing dev’s forum hack

14. EA Prototyping Game Concepts for Apple Watch: Exec explains how iPhone games can expand onto Apple’s new smartwatch; Talks up potential of wearables.

15. How ‘Planetary Annihilation’ Made Money for Some Backers

16. Seizing Destiny: A great launch for Bungie’s latest will please Activision investors – but Sony is the real winner, with PS4 positioned to reap the rewards.

+ Destiny Review Scores May Cost Bungie A $2.5 Million Bonus

+ Eight days later, Bungie leaving disconnected Destiny players stranded: Customer service is currently limited to a forum with few official responses.

17. Licensed to thrill?: Roadhouse Interactive COO Ian Verchere explains what brands can–and can’t–do to ensure success in the mobile market

18. Garry’s Mod has sold 6 million copies

19. Steam adds 11 new currencies

20. Video game degrees in the US increase by 50% in five years

21. How Pong changed the world

22. Racking Focus: The Collision Of Cinema, Video Games And Virtual Reality

23. Fact or Fiction?: Video Games Are the Future of Education

24. If The NFL Has Become So Inhuman, Then Let’s Get Rid Of The Humans: Could the future of the NFL be as a video game league?

25. City of Alamogordo votes to auction off 800 Atari cartridges

26. Marin County, Calif. DA’s Office Co-Sponsors Toy Gun and Video Game Trade-In Program in Oct.

27. The ESRB: Twenty Years of Sex and Violence

+ 20 years, 20 questionable game ratings: A timeline of ESRB oddities

28. Watch The Director Of Id@Xbox Deliver An Exuberant Love-Letter To Modern Videogames 

DIGITAL

29. Yahoo Threatened With A Secret $250,000 Per Day Fine If It Didn’t Comply With NSA PRISM Demands

+ More Yahoo vs. The NSA: Government Tried To Deny Standing, Filed Supporting Documents Yahoo Never Got To See

30. Google Report Shows Governments’ Increasing Demands for Users’ Data

31. Twitter, Reddit, Netflix join in net neutrality protest

32. These companies spend the most money to kill net neutrality

33. Software patents are crumbling, thanks to the Supreme Court

+ SCOTUS Decision in ‘Alice v. CLS Bank’ Having Profound Effect on Computer-Related Patents

+ Patent trolls reel as court smackdowns lead to collapse in share price

34. Jury finds CBS infringes podcasting patent, awards $1.3 million

35. The regulation of virtual currencies in Canada

36. Innovations in payment technologies and the emergence of digital currencies

37. Amazon, Publishers, and Readers (Clay Shirky)

38. MCNs—why they matter (and what they represent … the fundamental digital media transformation)

39. The rise of the anti-facial recognition movement

40. Privacy in Public (by Joel Reidenberg)

41. google it: verb status doesn’t mean Google is generic (Rebecca Tushnet)

42. In a Study, Text Messages Add Up to a Balance Sheet of Everyday Morality

43. Meet the McGill professor who got inside Anonymous

44. Glossary of Canadian provincial and federal Canadian statutes and codes may apply to social media issues   

CONSTRAINTS

45. TV monitoring service is fair use, judge rules: Fox News sued TVEyes, which records television 24/7/365—but it’s fair use.

46. Conan Doyle Estate Asks Supreme Court To Put Sherlock Holmes Back Under Copyright

47. In Latest Volley Against Amazon, Hachette’s Writers Target Its Board

48. Just Kidding? Celebrity Hacked Photograph Exhibition Scuttled

49. The Music Piracy Complex – Part 1

+ The Music Piracy Complex – Part 2

50. Since Copyright Is So Handy For Censorship, It’s Tempting To Use It To Censor Lots Of Content

+ IP’s “Immigration” Policy

51. The Law Society of Upper Canada expresses grave concerns about the ongoing detention of Tang Jingling and his colleagues in China

52. California Tells Businesses: Stop Trying To Ban Consumer Reviews

53. Jay Z Steps Up To The Plate To Argue That Tiny Music Samples Are Unprotected By Copyright

54. Public Enemy’s Former Lawyer Talks Cultural Appropriation And Copyrights In Hip-Hop

jon

GAMES

1. As The Mod Turns: The Latest In The Ongoing Minecraft ‘Bukkit’ Saga

2. Report: Microsoft in Talks to Buy Mojang for $2 Billion

3. Destiny day-one shipments top $500 million

4. Sega Takes Aim at Gearbox in Latest ‘Aliens: Colonial Marines’ Court Filing

+ Sega Also Has Copyright Complaints Against Hi Score Girl Manga

5. Pro Music Artists/Reps Force Shutdown Of Awesome Fan-Music Contest For Video Game

6. IGDA Working With FBI to Combat Developer Harassment

7. The #Gamergate Question

+ Death to the Gamer

+ Not All Gamers

+ To fair-minded proponents of #GamerGate:

+ The steel man of #GamerGate

+ Losing our voices

+ #GamerGate: Here’s why everybody in the video game world is fighting

+ Chat logs show how 4chan users created #GamerGate controversy: “I think all the sleeper cells are hard at work.”

8. Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest (The New Yorker)

9. EA working to fix block on gay name sharing in The Sims 4: Overzealous filter blocks players from sharing names with LGBT terms online

10. EA Sports to Remove Ray Rice from ‘Madden NFL 15’ Roster in Future Update

11. Microsoft to replace noisy Xbox One units

12. Rovio: Leading the way on gender balance

13. How ‘Minecraft’ is Encouraging Children to Read More

14. What Does a Hermit Do While Living in the Woods for 27 Years? Steal Pokemon Games: Christopher Knight lived without human contact in the woods of Maine for almost three decades

15. Study: Swedish Children Learn English Better Through Playing Games

16. Engines of Horror: How Video Games Are Confronting Our Darkest Subconscious

17. First-Person Temple Run Makes Samsung’s VR Headset Terrifying

18. The US Army Has a New Laser Cannon, And It Works With an Xbox Controller

19. ESPN boss declares eSports is “Not A Sport”

+ eSports will be bigger than hockey – ESL CEO

20. Research: Winning Isn’t Everything

21. Downloading Games Might Not Be Better for the Environment After All, Study Finds: New study looks at the carbon emissions generated from downloading a game versus buying a physical copy at a store.

22. New research suggests deep learning could improve AI in video games

23. EA: We Never Want to Be Named Worst U.S. Company Again

24. Several Robin Williams NPCs Spotted in ‘Warlords of Draenor’ Beta

25. Epic on Unreal Engine 4: “It’s the right time to be democratic”

26. Unreal Engine 4 free for schools, students

27. The evolution of the role-playing game: from table top to video games, and back again

28. Games Law History: the first ever games patent

29. Exploring The Psychology Of Civil Forfeiture Through Video Games

DIGITAL

30. Parents to get full refund for kids’ app purchases under $19M Google Play settlement

31. App Store revenue up 70 YoY

32. Verizon pays record fine for violating phone customers’ privacy rights: For seven years, Verizon marketed to customers without seeking their permission.

33. Judge mulls contempt charges in Microsoft’s e-mail privacy fight with US: US claims it has rightful access to data stored on servers anywhere in the world

+ Microsoft agrees to contempt order so e-mail privacy case can be appealed: The contempt order doesn’t include any sanctions, but those could be sought later.

34. Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA

35. Does obtaining leaked data from a misconfigured website violate the CFAA?

36. How to make sure your app complies with the Safe Harbor rules

37. Horizon: The defenders of anonymity on the internet

38. Google plans debates on ‘right to be forgotten’

39. Infamous “podcast patent” heads to trial: Personal Audio LLC has sued Apple, SiriusXM, and podcasters. CBS is up next.

40. Leak Of Complete CETA Text Shows Canada Fought Off EU Demands For More Extreme Copyright Rules

41. NLRB protects Facebook “Like” and signals standard for analyzing social media posts

42. NVIDIA Sues Samsung and Qualcomm, Tries To Get Samsung Galaxy Devices Blocked From The U.S.

43. The Ramifications of Alice: A Conversation with Mark Lemley

44. When does an employer own copyright in a photograph made by an employee?

45. Apple Denies Any Breach Of Its Systems In Celebrity Photo Leak

+ Inside AnonIB, Where Hacking Is a Sport and Women’s Bodies Are the Prize

+ A Letter To Jennifer Lawrence

+ reddit shuts down subreddit that showcased celebrities’ stolen nude photos: System admin says taking down the images became “a game of whack-a-mole.”

+ Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul (Reddit CEO)

+ Why We’re Winning: Social Justice Warriors And The New Culture War

46. Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Will Too

47. How Should We Program Computers to Deceive?

48. Our Cyborg Future: Law and Policy Implications (The Brookings Institution)

49. There’s Something Rotten In The State Of Social Media

50. Error Correction in the Digital Age

51. When A Machine Learning Algorithm Studied Fine Art Paintings, It Saw Things Art Historians Had Never Noticed: Artificial intelligence reveals previously unrecognised influences between great artists

52. Brain-to-brain ‘telepathic’ communication achieved for first time: Team of US-led researchers successfully achieves brain-to-brain communication between humans from India to France

+ Brain-to-brain communication is finally possible. It’s just very clunky.

53. When We Play Video Games, Who Are We?

CONSTRAINTS

54. Disney Officially Seeks To Block Deadmau5’s Trademark Claim

55. Court says Facebook “likes” not a form of IP right

56. Hacked naked celebrity photos to be exhibited by artist in Florida

57. Reddit at a crossroads: The inevitable clash between free speech and a desire for funding

58. Zappos is going holacratic: no job titles, no managers, no hierarchy

59. The New Luddites: Why Former Digital Prophets Are Turning Against Tech

60. How YouTube inspired a new generation of DIY makers

61. Software is Eating the Camera: How software is changing the form and substance of cameras and photos

62. Canadian Internet TV Is Starting To Beat the CBC

jon

GAMES

1. Game developer group condemns ‘morally reprehensible’ harassment

+ The End of Gamers

+ It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry?: The subset of entitled, belligerent gamers convinced that being ‘objectively’ right entitles them to defend their rightness by any means necessary is overwhelmingly male.

+ Saints Row developer: ‘Sarkeesian is right’

2. Australian Consumer Watch Dog Group Sues Valve Over Steam Refund Policy

3. Ban hammer: Korea’s game rating committee shuts down Facebook gaming

4. ‘Left 4 Dead 2’ Finally Gets R18+ Rating in Australia

5. Media Bias in Michael Brown Shooting Coverage Inspires Video Game

6. SWAT Team Detains Popular Gamer Who Was Live-Streaming ‘Counter-Strike’

7. Rhode Island Receives First Settlement Payment in 38 Studios Lawsuit

8. A New Madden Ignores and Confronts All the NFL’s Problems

9. Racism, Video Games, And The Ukraine: Teaching Children How Think About The World

10. Can buying video games make you happier? Science says yes

11. NYT Report: Twitch Has More Primetime Viewers Than E!, MSNBC, and Other Cable Networks

12. Why I Wrote a Book About an Obscure ’90s Computer Game: Many forces combine to shepherd a video game from conception to completion, but rarely are they acknowledged.

13. Destiny: behind the scenes of the world’s most expensive video game

14. 1^st Video Game Patent (found by @gamerlaw)

DIGITAL

15. Microsoft Continues Its Campaign Against A US Warrant Demanding Overseas Data

+  No, Microsoft Is Not Suddenly ‘Defying’ A Court Order To Turn Over Emails

16. The violent truth behind Reddit’s trolling problem

17. Investor Pavel Curda Dumped By Euro Accelerators After Sleazy Emails

18. Here’s What We Know So Far About The Celebrity Photo Hack

19. The Next-Generation Copyright Monopoly Wars Will Be Much Worse

20. How the Internet Saved Handmade Goods

21. Aaron Swartz’s Work, Computer Crime Law, and “The Internet’s Own Boy”

CONSTRAINTS

22. The Star Wars George Lucas Doesn’t Want You To See

+ Fans Reconstruct Authentic Version of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in Theaters in 1977

23. Why we’re living in the golden age of investigative journalism: Newspapers might be a dying breed. But investigative reporting on injustices around the world is prospering 

24. The Conservatism of Emoji (Luke Stark & Kate Crawford)

25. The Economics of Netflix: How to Make a $100 Million Show

26. Journalism and the internet: Is it the best of times? No — but it’s not the worst of times either

27. Can Outdoor Art Revitalize Outdoor Advertising?

jon