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Crafting Effective EULA’s & ToS’

By Jon Festinger on September 10, 2017

On Friday June 9, 2017 in Toronto I gave a talk on the strategic essentials of drafting End User License Agreements and Terms of Service to a program on Video Game Law put on by the Ontario Bar Association’s Entertainment, Media & Communications Law, and Information Technology & Intellectual Property Law sections. My original slides are above, as my final set of slides are too large to post even when compressing the graphics as much as PowerPoint allows.

Jon

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“Old Media v. Social Media: Some Observations”

By Jon Festinger on September 10, 2017

In Toronto on April 26, 2017 I participated in The Law Society of Upper Canada’s 2017 Entertainment & Media Law Symposium. The panel I was part of was entitled “#BraveNewWorld: How to Practice Social Media Law.” Being far and away the oldest of the panellists, I proved my age by through my topic “Old Media v. Social Media: Some Observations”. If you reflect on video games deeply enough you can see that they represented a form of social media long before that term became fashionable. In that context most of what I had to say could be applied equally to game forums and in-game communications.Slides above.

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“Trusting Ourselves: Freedom of Thought in Virtual Realities” @ More Than Just A Game lll, April 6, 2017, London U.K.

By Jon Festinger on September 10, 2017

Again this past April I was honoured to participate in my wonderful colleague, Professor Gaetano Dimita’s outstanding annual international “More Than Just a Game” conference, in London, U.K. The conference was fittingly put on at historic Stationers’ Hall by the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, aided and abetted by a group of excellent and generous sponsors. My talk focussed on when and how the law could intervene when virtual reality becomes so convincing that our freedom of thought becomes compromised.

Above is a video of my talk, then the slides related to it and finally a link to video of all of the panels at the conference.

Here’s to the 2018 edition of “More Than Just a Game”, and to many more thereafter….

Jon

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Welcome Cohort 10 of Video Game Law @ Allard

By Jon Festinger on September 9, 2017

Welcome.

Am very excited to be starting the 10th edition of Video Game Law at the Allard School of Law. It a bit mind boggling to reflect back on nine other classes and all the special moments, and most significantly all the truly amazing students I am so lucky have had an interest in the subject. Nostalgia and warm feelings aside, what all that history really does is make me look forward to this iteration and this group.

The first version of Video Game law as a full course (as opposed to a unit or two in the Media, Entertainment and Communications Law course I gave) was in the Fall semester of 2006. To add some perspective, the first iPhone was introduced almost ten months later on June 29, 2007. The iPhone and the smartphone revolution it spearheaded transformed video-gaming, eventually changing it’s demographics, business models and even how we think of controllers. Probably more than anything else the smartphone ushered in a world in which video-games have become a true mass medium with gross financial numbers exceeding other forms of entertainment. Yet, it’s worth remembering that playing games on a handheld device was not something Steve Jobs invented. That distinction goes to Atari’s Lynx in 1989…..yes, 1989. And the Nokia N-Gage, a device that seamlessly combined cellular telephony and mobile gaming was released over four and a half years before the iPhone was even introduced. A picture of my second generation N-Gage is at the top of this post.

So what might our take-aways be? Let me suggest a few. Feel free to add others or push back.

  1. Things change fast in video-games, when they change. And the revolutionary changes seem to always be about how we interact, with the device, the game or other gamers.
  2. Game devices are often ahead of the curve, but don’t always capture the market they envision. The N-Gage is one example. The X-Box One which tried to be a gaming device that became your central entertainment hub through which you would connect even to your television… for all intents and purposes just stayed a video game device.
  3. Innovations come and go, but the essentials of playing games remain. The saying goes “don’t put the cart before the horse”. Games are the horse. Whatever we dress the experience up with, if the game is not fun and engaging that’s precisely where it runs out of steam. Augmented Reality has had it’s breakthrough (Pokemon Go) while Virtual Reality is still searching for its killer game that everyone has to play, even though the technology itself delivers an amazing “experience”.

So what does all that have to do with law? One word: Interactivity. The legal issues that make Video Game Law not “Law of the Horse” are to be found in the transformative nature of interactivity and the blurring of lines between creators and players, between device and tool.

Welcome to the next chapter in the journey Cohort 10. I am very happy that you are here.

Jon

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News of the Week; September 6, 2017

By Jon Festinger on September 6, 2017

GAMES

  1. Nintendo ordered to pay $10M following Wii patent infringement suit
  2. Jury finds Nintendo Wii infringes Dallas inventor’s patent
  3. Nintendo “disagrees” with $10m lawsuit verdict: Texas jury rules that platform holder’s best-selling Wii console infringes on iLife’s patents
  4. Killing Nazis, fighting religious fanaticism the focus of upcoming video games: Games take on new relevance in the current political climate
  5. No Violent Video Games In The Olympics, Says IOC President
  6. IOC President Tosses Shade At Including eSports In Olympics Over Concerns About Violence And Doping
  7. “The fact is that most League of Legends teams lose money”: H2K says Riot is “subsidized” by European LoL teams’ losses in a financial system that is “neither rational nor fair”
  8. Drone Racing League Expands Coverage To Asia For 2017 Season
  9. Nominees revealed for the inaugural Women In Games Mobile Awards
  10. Nominees revealed for first ever Women In Games Mobile Awards: South Park Phone Destroyer, A Normal Lost Phone and more in the running for September 6th event
  11. Gamegate Target Zoe Quinn Can Teach Us How to Fight Online Hate
  12. PUBG: “When you ask about growth on PC, I just look at League of Legends” – Brendan Green on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ growth, raising price-points, and the fringe benefits of working with Microsoft
  13. Battlegrounds breaks 10M sales less than 6 months into Early Access
  14. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tops 10 million sold: Bluehole hit shooter racks up another milestone after less than six months in Early Access
  15. Mixed Reality is Microsoft’s biggest 2017 launch: With strong partnerships and control of the Windows ecosystem, is Microsoft positioned to win the VR/AR race in the long run?
  16. PuttView Shows Pros What Augmented Reality Golf Outdoors Looks Like
  17. Minecraft Marketplace creators have earned $1M by selling user-made content
  18. As far as console launches go, the Switch has out-paced the PS4 in Japan
  19. Nintendo: Switch games may require external storage
  20. Nintendo meets need for external Switch storage with official cards: “A microSD card will be needed for certain Nintendo Switch games that contain an especially large amount of content”
  21. The Pokemon Company CEO Thought Switch Would Fail, Hints At Pokemon Switch Ideas
  22. Pokemon Company CEO sees a bright, rumbly future for AR games post-Pokemon Go
  23. Pokémon Go will get monster trading, one-on-one battles: Long-promised features are still coming to fix the “local spawn issue”
  24. GameStop: Forced bundles are for customer convenience – Retailer defends practice of requiring online purchasers of high-demand items to pay for additional merchandise
  25. Making Games in Tehran: A massive market, disconnected: The first Tehran Game Convention gave Brie Code insight into an emerging industry hobbled by sanctions and restrictions
  26. Amazon Associates lets Twitch viewers buy while streaming: Meanwhile Twitch Extensions enables developers to build interactive overlays for streamers
  27. Channel 4’s games publishing arm breaks out, goes independent: All 4 Games will be spun out as an independent publisher, although still retain ties with UK broadcaster
  28. Minecraft Marketplace creators have earned over $1m: Community-driven marketplace has been a success for the Minecraft ecosystem
  29. Ubisoft opens new studio to kick-start Quebec expansion
  30. Ubisoft creating 1,000 new jobs with two new Quebec studios: Publishing will invest $780m in growing its presence within the region by 2027, Saguenay studio opens early 2018
  31. Angry Birds maker Rovio confirms it’s planning an IPO
  32. Rovio details plans for $36m IPO: CEO says share sale will be “an important milestone” for Angry Birds developer
  33. Rovio launches ‘MumJam’ to help mothers get into the games industry
  34. Twitch introduces ‘Extensions’ suite to help foster engagement
  35. Super Mario Kart at 25: Dissecting a revolutionary game design
  36. Retro revival: Capcom re-releasing Street Fighter II on the SNES
  37. Masterpiece: Street Fighter II – Street Fighter II is an arcade monster that has stood the test of time.
  38. PAX West: At least eight of UFO 50’s games are instant retro classics – Preview – NES-styled game anthology is off to an amazing start.
  39. How Can Gameplay Allow Players to Get Creative?
  40. Choices in games should be deeper than good vs. evil, argues Obsidian co-founder: “It can’t just be do you shoot grandma or do you help her across the street.”
  41. Game Developers Explain Some Of Their Favorite Ways To Trick The Player 
  42. How Neversoft twisted Tony Hawk to let players step off the board
  43. How Japanese and Western game dev differ, from a dev that has experienced both
  44. Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities
  45. The PC issues that need fixing before Final Fantasy XV launches on Windows: PAX West demo may not be indicative of final PC product. We sure hope not.
  46. Could A Videogame Strengthen Your Aging Brain?
  47. 5 key lessons from the candid game dev book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels
  48. Warner Bros donating Shadow of War DLC revenue to family of late producer: Mike ‘Forthog’ Fogey passed away during development of original, will be honoured as orc
  49. All proceeds from Shadow of War DLC will go to Michael Forgey’s family: Warner Bros. has clarified that it will make no profit from the DLC, regardless of where it is sold
  50. Earnings report roundup: Game industry winners and losers in Q2 2017

DIGITAL

  1. Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt
  2. Judge dismisses Shiva “I Invented EMAIL” Ayyadurai’s libel lawsuit against Techdirt
  3. Court Dumps Lawsuit Against Zillow Over Its Inaccurate ‘Zestimates’
  4. Blogger Isn’t Liable for Anonymous Comments–Griffith v. Wall (Eric Goldman)
  5. Lawsuit: Amazon sold eclipse glasses that cause “permanent blindness”: “Eye injury ranging from temporary discomfort to permanent blindness.”
  6. Spotify: Don’t Compare Us to Napster – The company has responded to a copyright lawsuit by challenging what rights are truly implicated by streaming.
  7. Spotify Finally Realizes That Streaming Isn’t Reproduction Or Distribution
  8. Steve Jobs gave us President Trump
  9. The ‘internet of things’ is sending us back to the Middle Ages (Joshua Fairfield)
  10. CBS Welcomes Amazon’s NFL Streaming But Sees ‘Competitors’ In Future
  11. Apple, Amazon bid for James Bond film rights- Hollywood Reporter 
  12. Kaspersky Gets Awful Patent Troll To Pay Up To Drop Its Own Case
  13. Reports of Russia’s Election Hack Keep Getting Scarier
  14. Thousands Of Facebook Ads Tied To Bogus Russian Accounts
  15. Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election
  16. Facebook sold 2016 election-related ads to “shadowy Russian company”: 470 “suspicious and likely fraudulent” FB accounts all tied to same Russian firm.
  17. The Devil’s Pact: Putin, the “Alt-Right” and the Long Shadow of History – The Russian president’s claims of “historical victimhood” in World War II try to justify his country’s present-day destructive behavior.
  18. Twitter Suspends Reporter’s Account… After He Gets Targeted By Russian Twitter Bots
  19. How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley: #Antifa and #Berkeley were hot topics last weekend in America — and in Russia
  20. Fear And Loathing On Social Media
  21. Digital property rights debate heats up in NAFTA renegotiation
  22. Leaked Plans Shows Top EU Body Backing: Copyright Industry Against The Public, The Internet, And Innovation
  23. Tech companies declare war on hate speech—and conservatives are worried: In light of Charlottesville, Silicon Valley revisits its absolute approach to free speech.
  24. AI is Developing Faster than Experts Imagined. Do We Need a Speed Limit?
  25. Google And Microsoft Can Use AI To Extract Many More Ad Dollars From Our Clicks
  26. How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence
  27. A Serf on Google’s Farm
  28. Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story – Google allegedly told Forbes “the article was problematic and had to come down.”
  29. Google is losing allies across the political spectrum: Antitrust sentiment grows, so does skepticism about Google on both the left and the right.
  30. Google promised not to scan Gmail for targeted ads—but for how long?: Google tells judge it might resume targeted advertising “to meet changing demands.”
  31. Third-party Google Assistant speakers put “OK Google” in tons of form factors: The Google Assistant comes to speakers from Sony, JBL, Onkyo, Panasonic, and others.
  32. Say Goodbye To The Blob. Google’s New Emoji Have Arrived
  33. The YouTube Generation And 6-Second TV Ads
  34. Facebook’s YouTube Competitor, ‘Watch’, Rolls Out Nationwide
  35. Facebook launches Watch video service in U.S. to take on YouTube for ad dollars: The move comes as advertisers are shifting budgets from television to online as more viewers prefer to watch their favourite shows on smartphones and tablets
  36. Facebook is offering the music industry millions to let its users upload songs in videos
  37. Inside the black market where people pay thousands of dollars for Instagram verification
  38. Internet’s Most Popular “Stream Ripping Site” Shuts Down As Result Of Legal Settlement
  39. A Popular Third-Party YouTube Video Player Has Been Removed From The App Store
  40. Music Industry Halts Popular YouTube Piracy Service
  41. YouTube Live Now Supports Ultra-Low Latency, More: YouTube launched a series of updates for its livestreaming service
  42. The ‘demonetized’: YouTube’s brand-safety crackdown has collateral damage
  43. Why Alphabet’s Shares Are Soaring in 2017
  44. Bitcoin falls as China bans initial coin offerings
  45. How Netflix’s Content Strategy Is Reshaping Movie Culture
  46. Time Inc shifts toward video as eyeballs move online
  47. Time Inc, publisher of magazines including People and Sports Illustrated, is turning to the internet to distribute its growing cache of video material and television shows, part of a plan to counter fast-declining print advertising revenue.
  48. The Agony and Ecstasy of Building an Online Music Business 
  49. In a blast from the past, Logitech releases a new trackball: It’s the company’s first new trackball in nearly a decade.
  50. As Uber struggles, Lyft expands into 32 more states: 94 percent of the US population will now be able to access Uber’s top competitor.
  51. Squeezed for profits, maker of $400 connected juice press closes up shop
  52. The Risks Of Demonizing Silicon Valley
  53. From Apple to Y Combinator—tech sector denounces new “Dreamers” plan: “It’s against our values to turn our backs on #DREAMers,” Uber’s new CEO tweeted
  54. Boston Red Sox caught red-handed using Apple Watch to steal signs: Boston was apparently stealing signs from opposing teams’ catchers and pitchers.
  55. Apple bids farewell to Apple Music Festival after 10 years: As Apple’s focus shifts to original video content for its services business.
  56. Samsung is Developing VR Tools to Help Diagnose Mental Health
  57. One of the biggest challenges of self-driving cars: The humans inside them.
  58. Stupid Patent Of The Month: JP Morgan Patents Interapp Permissions
  59. Surviving This Summer On The Internet
  60. Catching Up on Ninth Circuit CFAA Jurisprudence: Internet Law Casebook Excerpt (Eric Goldman)
  61. Global Content Removals Based on Local Legal Violations: Internet Law Casebook Excerpt (Eric Goldman) 

CREATIVITY

  1. “Monkey Business” settled
  2. Awful Court Decision Says Dr. Phil Producer’s Video Not ‘Fair Use’
  3. Mickey singer Toni Basil sues Disney and South Park
  4. Why Notoriously Litigious Disney Is Letting Fan Stores Thrive: The Mouse isn’t bringing cease-and-desists down on Instagram darlings like Cakeworthy or The Lost Bros.
  5. Insurer Attempts To Fight Back Against Kanye West’s Touring Company’s Lawsuit 
  6. New York Times 1; Sarah Palin 0 
  7. Court battle over one driver’s pay could have big impact on “gig economy”: Was Raef Lawson an employee or a business owner when he drove for GrubHub?
  8. High-profile “gig economy” trial turns on a part-time actor’s job woes: A surprising plaintiff is challenging worker classifications in the gig economy.
  9. Judge Sweet: Lynyrd Skynyrd Movie Cannot Proceed 
  10. Coachella Sues “Filmchella” for Trademark Infringement 
  11. Terry Pratchett and protecting artistic legacy
  12. Can Rotten Tomatoes Crush a Movie at the Box Office?: Moviegoers, critics, and filmmakers weigh in on the website that is torturing major studios and redefining how we decide whether to go to the theater
  13. Theater of War: He traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places to disarm militias, negotiate with gangs, and defy terrorists. But Bill Brookman was just a clown.
  14. Activists want to fight sex trafficking by changing a key Internet law: The 1996 law Section 230 is widely seen as a foundation of the Internet economy.
  15. Al Jazeera Gives A ‘Voice To The Voiceless’ By Killing News Comments
  16. What Makes Information Valuable? Information Quality, Revisited (Urs Gasser) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Senate Democrats fight FCC plan to lower America’s broadband standards: You can’t fix the US broadband problem by redefining it, senators tell FCC.
  2. FCC’s Broken Comments System Could Help Doom Net Neutrality
  3. FCC “apology” shows anything can be posted to agency site using insecure API: FCC API could be misused to host malware on FCC’s domain.
  4. FCC makes net neutrality complaints public, but too late to stop repeal: 13,000 pages of net neutrality complaints released, but comment deadline passed.
  5. Apple Throws Its Support Behind Net Neutrality. Sort Of.
  6. Apple’s Real Reason For Finally Joining The Net Neutrality Fight
  7. AT&T Blatantly Lies, Claims Most Consumers Want Net Neutrality Killed
  8. Large ISP & Silicon Valley CEOs Were Too Afraid To Publicly Testify On Net Neutrality
  9. Comcast sues Vermont to avoid building 550 miles of new cable lines: Vermont is trying to make Comcast bring TV and Internet to unserved areas.
  10. FTC slaps Lenovo on the wrist for selling computers with secret adware: Companies need user “affirmative consent” to preinstall MITM adware, FTC says.
  11. Video Chat Price-Gouging Costs Inmates More Than Money
  12. More and More Actions on Pirate Radio – What is Next? 
  13. Bouyant RTL fully acquires SpotX
  14. BMG Continues Growth Spurt as Revenues Top $276 Million
  15. Antitrust Is Back — But The Media Industry Doesn’t Need It 
  16. How I Became Fake News: I witnessed a terrorist attack in Charlottesville. Then the conspiracy theories began.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Instagram Done Got Hacked
  2. Site sells Instagram users’ phone and e-mail details, $10 a search: Leak suggests this week’s Instagram breach was bigger than first thought.
  3. Celebs’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses exposed in active Instagram hack: Hackers exploited app bug, then advertised data in underground forums, researchers say.
  4. FDA, Homeland Security Issue First Ever Recall, Warnings About Flimsy Pacemaker Security
  5. Military Appeals Court Says Demands To Unlock Phones May Violate The Fifth Amendment
  6. The Epic Crime Spree Unleashed By Onity’s Ambivalence To Its Easily Hacked Hotel Locks
  7. Court Finds FBI’s ‘Malware’ Deployment To Be Perfectly Constitutional
  8. UK’s Terrorism Law Reviewer Says Tech Companies Shouldn’t Offer Encryption To Anonymous Users
  9. Officers With Personal Body Cams Taking The ‘Public’ Out Of ‘Public Accountability’
  10. As a general rule, body cam footage across US is not a public record: “The patchwork releases of body camera footage only sow further public distrust.”
  11. UK Police Test Facial Recognition Tech At Carnival, Rack Up 35 Bogus ‘Hits’ And One Wrongful Arrest
  12. Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Job Seekers Citing Top Secret Government Work
  13. Exploit goes public for severe bug affecting high-impact sites: Apache Struts bug opens banks, insurance cos., and Fortune 500s to code-execution hacks.
  14. Taking Stock Of Trump’s Cybersecurity Executive Order So Far
  15. Companies should treat cybersecurity as a matter of ethics
  16. The Feds Promised To Protect Dreamer Data. Now What?
  17. Canadian Cops Belatedly Asking For Authorization To Deploy Stingray Devices They’ve Been Using For Years
  18. The Privacy Battle Over the World’s Largest Biometric Database: A new ruling could jeopardize India’s controversial collection of citizens’ fingerprints, photographs, and iris scans.
  19. Hacker Lexicon: What Is DNS Hijacking?
  20. Above Devastated Houston, Armies Of Drones Prove Their Worth

Jon

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News of the Week; August 30, 2017

By Jon Festinger on August 31, 2017

GAMES

  1. Atari Sues Nestle Over A KitKat Commercial With An Homage To ‘Breakout’
  2. Judge tosses case brought by Magic: the Gathering judge who wants to be paid – “The complaint makes clear that Defendant’s program is purely voluntary.”
  3. Mass Effect takes a dirt nap: Mismanaged since poor decisions on Mass Effect 3, one of EA’s big franchises has bowed out for now. How did such a well-loved series decline so fast?
  4. “You need a publisher to survive on Steam”: Bulkhead Interactive’s Joe Brammer says games need to be “something really special” to succeed organically
  5. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is Steam’s most-played game: Concurrent player count for survival shooter hits 877k, tops Valve’s own Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
  6. Battlegrounds eclipsed DOTA 2 to become the most played game on Steam
  7. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds: Failure as Fun – Why I Love – Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor shares what he sees in Bluehole’s smash hit survival shooter
  8. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is taking “baby steps” into esports: Creative director Brendan Greene on the unique challenge of turning the Battle Royale genre into a spectator sport
  9. Formula 1 Enters Esports Arena With Launch Of Annual Competition
  10. All 32 NFL Teams To Be Represented In Madden NFL Esports Event
  11. Nielsen Launches Esports Vertical To Track Gaming Valuations
  12. Why NHL, NBA Owners Keep Investing In Esports
  13. ‘Violent’ games won’t be included in Olympic eSports consideration
  14. Violent content could hurt esports’ bid for the Olympics: Current Olympic Committee will not welcome games about “violence, explosions, and killing”
  15. Blizzard will toughen up to tackle toxic behavior in Overwatch community
  16. Blizzard vows tougher policies to punish Overwatch trolls: Temporary “silences” to become suspensions, permanent bans will come more quickly.
  17. Blizzard will permanently ban repeat offenders in Overwatch: Game director Jeff Kaplan details plans for tougher punishments against abusive players in popular online FPS
  18. Are app stores taking advantage of developers?: Following his comments at Devcom, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and leading mobile developers discuss Apple and Google’s 30% cut
  19. Gamescom: The industry’s discoverability crisis in a convention – The show is rammed full of games you’ve never heard of
  20. Xbox says it’s willing to work with devs to make cross-platform play happen
  21. Microsoft Confirms It’s Talking To Sony About Cross-Play: “We would like to enable them to be part of that; one community, to unite gamers.
  22. Prioritizing accessibility made Way of the Passive Fist much better
  23. Super Mario Odyssey wins big at the Gamescom Awards 2017
  24. If ‘Everyone Just Wants Free Stuff’ Is Responsible For Piracy, Why Can’t Nintendo Keep Its Classic Consoles In Stock?
  25. Confessions from a crunch addict: BioShock and Borderlands vet Walt Williams talks about the devastating impact of crunch culture in the games business
  26. To thwart key resellers, Darkwood dev releases its game on torrenting sites
  27. Developer Puts Game On The Pirate Bay Because Steam Key Resellers Are The Bigger Evil
  28. Darkwood dev pirates own game a week after launch: Acid Wizard says it would rather give game to those who can’t afford it than see them turn to key re-sellers, “the cancer that is leeching off this industry”
  29. For most women and girls, female protagonists matter, says survey
  30. Vive may be sold or spun-off from HTC – Report: Smartphone maker considering a variety of options from full sale of the company to separation from VR division
  31. Zero Latency’s ‘Warehouse Scale’ VR Arena Comes to MGM Grand in Vegas
  32. MLB Exploring Virtual Reality For Umpire Training
  33. Asus’ Windows Mixed Reality headset is priced on the steep side: Sure the “3D Polygon” shell looks nice, but is it worth a premium?
  34. Microsoft’s mixed reality headsets will work with Steam
  35. SteamVR games coming to Microsoft’s $299 VR platform: $399 bundles will also include motion controllers.
  36. Microsoft was leading the world in AR; now it’s at risk of being left behind: HoloLens was inspirational, but it’s ARKit and ARCore that are going to win developers.
  37. Google gets into augmented reality with ARCore: App-building platform supports Android Studio, Unity, Unreal out of the gate, works with millions of existing phones
  38. Google launches ARCore augmented reality SDK
  39. Google’s ARCore brings augmented reality to millions of Android devices: Forget Project Tango, ARCore covers most AR use cases with no special hardware required.
  40. Google Joins The Augmented Reality Party With ARCore
  41. 5 Google ARCore Experiments That Inject Magic into Everyday Life
  42. Sony drops PlayStation VR bundle price
  43. Sony now bundles camera with PSVR for $399: Plus, the PSVR Worlds bundle with Move controllers has been lowered to $449
  44. Codemasters is “holding back” from F1 VR: But racing studio celebrates arrival of high-end hardware like Xbox One X – and it’s keeping an eye on Switch
  45. Athletes Help Company Using Video Games For Concussion Management
  46. Digital market jumps 16% in July – Superdata: Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty ride high as worldwide digital game revenues grow to $7.8 billion
  47. Gamescom: The industry’s discoverability crisis in a convention – The show is rammed full of games you’ve never heard of
  48. GameStop Q2 profits fall despite Switch strength
  49. GameStop-owned EB Games rolls out used game rental service in Australia
  50. EB Games transforms its used game stocks into a massive lending library: Australian test program lets you borrow any used game for about $16 a month.
  51. GameStop blames “lagging Xbox One sales” for poor software performance: But “continued demand for Nintendo Switch” drives total revenue upward.
  52. Why Splatoon 2 Is The Perfect Online Shooter For Gamers That Don’t Play Online Shooters: Frenetic, strategic and delightfully lacking in toxicity.
  53. Nintendo is wiping out the Miiverse in November
  54. Nintendo introduces 20 more Switch-bound ‘Nindie’ indie games
  55. Nintendo is closing Miiverse: The online service will end in November, when a key features in several games will also cease to function
  56. 8 Questions About Dynamic Pricing
  57. How To Build Your Own SNES Classic Emulator
  58. How did the Game Genie work anyway?
  59. Retailer CEX suffers data hack with 2m accounts affected: Second-hand retailer says only expired credit cards were obtained
  60. Denuvo DRM prompts outcry from Sonic Mania players: Divisive anti-piracy software reportedly prevents offline play
  61. Sonic Mania PC version launches with Denuvo, online requirement: Sega says online authentication issue is “being corrected by the dev team.”
  62. Remembering That Xbox Wanted Always Online DRM For Its Console In The Wake Of Major Xbox Live Outtage
  63. Microsoft has discontinued the original Xbox One
  64. Xbox One’s second bid for the core gamer: Microsoft on the strategy behind Xbox One X, the lack of exclusives and why cross-platform play is so important
  65. Ark: Survival Evolved cross-play would take “a few days” to enable – Studio Wildcard says there’s “nothing preventing” players from coming together – apart from “policy issues” at Sony
  66. Just Tell Me What It Costs – in Dollars! Rejecting Obfuscated Monetization
  67. Masterpiece: Street Fighter II – Street Fighter II is an arcade monster that has stood the test of time.
  68. We say happy birthday to Goldeneye 007by looking at my 20-year-old review: My decades-old text didn’t age quite as well as the Rare FPS classic.
  69. ‘Half-Life 2: Episode 3’ Plot: A Possible Summary From the Former Writer
  70. Half-Life Writer Shares Episode 3 Details: Is this what Episode 3 could have been?
  71. Gearbox CEO: ‘I Don’t Know That We Could Or Should’ Make Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – “I feel like we got done with what we wanted to do.”
  72. Steam reviewers bomb Dota 2 over lack of Half-Life 3 – One reviewer: “Dota killed Half-Life 3. Nuff said.”
  73. Why don’t you make your own Half-Life 3if you’re so smart?: “Epistle 3 Jam” asks you to create the sequel Valve won’t.
  74. Why Call of Duty (probably) won’t convert to the games-as-service model
  75. No Man’s Sky Is Good Now
  76. The Future of EA Sports Is Storytelling
  77. Agential Structure Model, Classifying Fun Exhaustively
  78. How the Data Implosion will trigger the Great Game Dev Correction
  79. How funding sources dictate design
  80. Game design and Gestalt laws
  81. Some of the Hidden Realities of Game Development (for non-devs)

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Against VidAngel’s Streaming Service: “Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia’s bikini scene,” states the opinion.
  2. Selling alterable versions of Star Wars is still infringement, court says: “Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia’s bikini scene.”
  3. Suit blaming iPhone for student’s death by texting driver is defeated by Apple: Judge agrees with Apple that it has no legal duty to combat distracted driving.
  4. Horrible or non-existent Mayweather-McGregor fight streams prompt lawsuit: Showtime “knowingly failed to disclose that its system was defective,” suit says.
  5. Mayweather V. McGregor: Showtime Got Injunctions On Pirate Stream Sites Which Didn’t Work & Neither Did Their Own Stream
  6. Reaction video deemed fair use in YouTuber court battle: The pair behind the YouTube channel H3H3 Productions wins copyright lawsuit.
  7. Why the H3H3 YouTube victory could mark a major turning point for the site: The husband-and-wife team triumphed in a copyright and defamation lawsuit, with huge implications for “fair use” on YouTube
  8. ‘Reaction’ Video Protected By Fair Use–Hosseinzadeh v. Klein
  9. YouTube Personality Upset About Criticism Of His Video Loses Infringement/Defamation Lawsuit
  10. Suing critics using copyright doesn’t workHosseinzadeh v. Klein, No. 16-cv-03081 S.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  11. Copyright Suit Requires Fair Use Analysis: A fair use analysis is required before a copyright suit against “appropriation artist” Richard Prince can be dismissed, a New York federal court judge decided this week, declining to grant a quick win.
  12. Ingrid Goes West revels in everything wrong with Instagram celebrities: Aubrey Plaza is terrific as a social media addict in search of viral fame.
  13. Insights: Who’s An Influencer When You Can Buy Fake Online Love?
  14. Snapchat Looks To Win Over Influencers As Many Of Them Head To Instagram
  15. YouTube’s Redesign Makes It Easier To Watch All The Videos
  16. How Youtube Perfected The Feed: Google Brain gave YouTube new life
  17. Amazon lures YouTube influencers
  18. Google And Walmart’s Big Bet Against Amazon Might Just Pay Off
  19. Amazon Prime members will get even deeper discounts at Whole Foods: Beef, salmon, avocados, and more will be cheaper for everyone starting next week.
  20. The Real Price of Those Cheaper Avocados: In the Amazon era, Whole Foods is already getting cheaper. But there’s a potential price for those discounted groceries.
  21. Cortana and Alexa are coming together in surprising Microsoft-Amazon partnership: You’ll be able to tell Cortana to talk to Alexa and vice versa.
  22. German Court Says Ad-Blocking is Liberation, Not Extortion
  23. After Previously Claiming the Economics Would Never Work, HBO Streaming Now A Major Windfall
  24. Dark web finds bitcoin increasingly more of a problem than a help, tries other digital currencies
  25. Magic Leap settles bitter legal battle with executives who started its Silicon Valley office
  26. NFL Deal In China Means Big Things For Social Media Streaming
  27. NFL Sets Kickoff of Twitter Live Show for 2017-18 Season
  28. Homeowners Can’t Sue Over Low Zestimates–Patel v. Zillow (Eric Goldman)
  29. Section 512(f) Complaint Survives Motion to Dismiss–Johnson v. New Destiny Church (Eric Goldman)
  30. Backpage Executives Must Face Money Laundering Charges Despite Section 230–People v. Ferrer (Eric Goldman)
  31. California Case Against Backpage Moves Forward Over Money Laundering Claims
  32. The Ten Most Important Section 230 Rulings (Eric Goldman)
  33. Violent Alt-Right Chats Could Be Key To Charlottesville Lawsuits
  34. DreamHost takes a beating after hosting racist Daily Stormer: The neo-Nazi site has struggled to find a domain registrar.
  35. The far right is losing its ability to speak freely online. Should the left defend it?: Free speech was the left’s rally cry. But the fate of the Daily Stormer, a hate site ‘kicked off the internet’, signals the increasing irrelevance of the first amendment
  36. A Hunt for Ways to Combat Online Radicalization
  37. Nazis, The Internet, Policing Content And Free Speech
  38. Trump’s Latest Nonsensical Announcement About Censoring The Internet
  39. Convicted felon Martin Shkreli finds novel way to be a jerk online: He has offered to sell a New York Post reporter’s domain name for $12,000.
  40. James Damore Case Could Spawn More Legal Headaches For Google
  41. Google-funded think tank fires prominent Google critic: Think tank boss allegedly accused scholar of “imperiling funding for others.”
  42. Would You Doxx a Nazi?: The dangers of revealing the names and identities of white supremacists
  43. Facebook has hired former NYT public editor Liz Spayd as a consultant in a ‘transparency’ effort: She has also worked at the Washington Post and Columbia Journalism Review as a top editor.
  44. The Scale Of Moderating Facebook: It Turns Off 1 Million Accounts Every Single Day
  45. Supreme Court of Canada challenges the idea of state sovereignty
  46. Snapchat Is Adding Manual Controls for Advertisers Concerned About Brand Safety: Buyers can limit which content categories ads appear in
  47. Uber board has a surprise new CEO pick: Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi: Board reportedly took a last-minute turn away from HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman.
  48. Uber drivers have made more than $50M in the first month of tipping: Company tries to keep drivers happy while it awaits a new CEO.
  49. Major Uber investor tells Benchmark: Drop your lawsuit against ex-CEO Kalanick – VC: Benchmark Capital “is trying to use the courts… to take over this company.”
  50. Engineer whose blog post caused a storm at Uber has filed a Supreme Court brief: Fowler files a determined defense of employee-driven class-action lawsuits.
  51. Uber to stop tracking customers after ride is over: Uber app was programmed to monitor riders for five minutes after trip was done.
  52. Win for ex-Grubhub driver in pending trial may profoundly impact “gig economy”: “This trial is a milestone because similar cases have settled or been dismissed.”
  53. Copyright Troll Insists Septuagenarian Is An Enormous Copyright Infringer, Then Runs Away After Backlash
  54. Supreme Court Has Another Chance To Help Take Down The Patent Trolls
  55. Kaspersky Lab turns the tables, forces “patent troll” to pay cash to end case: “Why don’t you pay us $10,000?”
  56. Samsung’s boss is sentenced to prison: Unlike other jailed chaebol bosses, he may not be pardoned
  57. Samsung heir convicted, sentenced to 5 years on corruption charges: Scandal was connected to a move to strengthen control of Samsung Electronics.
  58. Apple will build new data center in Iowa, get $200M in tax breaks: Cheap energy, open land, and tax breaks are making Iowa a go-to for data centers.
  59. More Than 180,000 iPhone Apps Won’t Be Compatible With iOS 11
  60. Merlin Has Paid Out $1 Billion To Indie Labels: Merlin, the global digital music rights agency for 20,000 indie labels and distributors from 53 countries, has announced its billionth dollar in distributions, since launching in May of 2008. With all of its payments coming from music streaming, this milestone points to a promising future for independent music companies.
  61. Dystopian What Happened To Monday?may hint at Netflix’s film priorities: One actor in many roles, a population-controlled future—so Hunger Games plus Orphan Black?
  62. For Netflix, ‘The Defenders’ Is A Market Research Goldmine
  63. Can ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Help CBS Boldly Go Into a Streaming Future?
  64. Why HBO was right to stand its ground against Game of Thrones hackers: As the network appears to emerge unscathed from a major cyber attack, experts say that hackers misjudged their leverage 
  65. With the USS McCain collision, even Navy tech can’t overcome human shortcomings: One mistake can cascade into a disaster in heavy marine traffic, regardless of tech.
  66. Feds: Son teaches dad how to sell drugs on AlphaBay, they both get busted – From his iPad, son allegedly searched “safest wallet to transfer tumble.”
  67. New Mini-Antennae Could Pave the Way for Brain-Computer Interfaces
  68. Who Owns the Internet?: What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture.
  69. The ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ Meme’s Photographer Explains All
  70. All The Gear You Need To Record A Hit Song On Your iPhone
  71. Turnaround artists: How companies can catch up to the digital revolution – Latecomers can succeed at digitization if they take these five steps.
  72. What We Get Wrong About Technology
  73. #BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot: Some tricks to identify fake Twitter accounts
  74. The age of AI surveillance is here
  75. Do We Need A Speedometer For Artificial Intelligence?
  76. In the AI Age, “Being Smart” Will Mean Something Completely Different
  77. Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Roadmap (Ryan Calo)
  78. How Copyright Law Can Fix Artificial Intelligence’s Implicit Bias Problem (Amanda Levendowski)
  79. The New Governors: The People, Rules, And Processes Governing Online Speech (Kate Klonick) 

CREATIVITY

  1.  Palin v. NYT dismissed
  2. Judge Tosses Sarah Palin’s Defamation Suit Against The New York Times, Says No Actual Malice
  3. A chicken sandwich cannot be copyrighted, court rules: Man who put chicken inside a bun sought $10 million for theft of creative work.
  4. Village Roadshow Promises To Mete Out Its Brand Of Justice As Inequitably As Possible
  5. General Mills loses bid to trademark yellow color on Cheerios box: Cereal maker claimed consumers identified “yellow” with “the Cheerios brand.”
  6. Cheerios’ Failed Case for Yellow Shows Why It’s So Hard for Brands to Trademark Colors: General Mills’ defeat illustrates one of branding’s trickiest tasks
  7. Comparison to former licensor’s products isn’t trademark infringement: Alpha Pro Tech, Inc. v. VWR Int’l, LLC, No. 12-1615, 2017 WL 3671264 E.D. Pa. Aug. 23, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  8. Is a ban on the words “climate change” in grants consistent with Tam? (Rebecca Tushnet)
  9. 4th Cir. holds certification nonprofit’s self-promotion to retailers is commercial speech: Handsome Brook Farm, LLC v. Humane Farm Animal Care, Inc., No. 16-1813, 2017 WL 3601506, — F. Appx. – 4th Cir. Aug. 22, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  10. State Courts Do Nominative Fair Use Tooz: Instant Infosystems, Inc. v. Open Text, Inc., 2017 WL 3634547, No. B276691 Cal. Ct. App. Aug. 24, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  11. On Remand, Ninth Circuit Says Robins Satisfied Article III Standing
  12. Copyright Consternation & Confusion on Canadian Campuses as York Cogitates its Appeal
  13. A Tee, A Tweet And Frank Ocean: Some Copyright Lessons
  14. What Business Insider’s rambling hatchet job gets wrong about my work on copyright: A recent piece in Business Insider insults Rebecca Giblin’s academic integrity. Here is where it goes so horribly wrong.
  15. President Trump Banned From Reading InfoWars, Including These Vital Stories of the Week
  16. How Conservatives Manipulated the Mainstream Media to Give Us President Trump: A new report shows how conservatives are winning a war that the rest of us don’t even know we’re fighting.
  17. How Trump Is Creating a Propaganda State: The president is taking conservative media to its evolutionary endpoint. Is there any way to stop him?
  18. Chelsea Clinton defends Barron Trump after conservative site criticizes his clothes
  19. Daily Caller slams Barron Trump for dressing like a normal kid sometimes: The right-wing rag the Daily Caller goes after the president’s 11-year-old son for dressing down — like a kid
  20. Fake News: It’s Mostly a Right-Wing Phenomenon
  21. Alec Baldwin’s Trump Impression Is A Technical Marvel
  22. IP lawyer who represented TiVo is Trump’s pick as USPTO chief: Andrei Iancu has enforced patents for TiVo and Immersion Corp.
  23. TV Station Falls For Pranksters; Sues Them For Fraud
  24. The Seattle Times Bans Sportswriters from Local Radio, TV
  25. How to Get Ripped Off While Trying to Book Your Favorite Rapper: Over a few months, one tiny Atlanta-based company made $67,000 booking Migos and Rae Sremmurd concerts across the country that never actually happened. Their business model is surprisingly common in the live rap music industry.
  26. Dinwoodie & Dreyfuss on Brexit & IP
  27. Wonder Woman Is “A Step Backwards,” James Cameron Says; Director Responds
  28. Patty Jenkins hits back at James Cameron: ‘He doesn’t understand Wonder Woman’ 
  29. Twitter Did Not Hold Back in Responding to James Cameron’s Wonder Woman Criticism
  30. Erasing Herself From The Narrative: Taylor Swift and the absence of intimacy in the launch of Reputation
  31. Blame Taylor Swift’s New Song On The Internet
  32. A Day After Being Uploaded To YouTube, Taylor Swift’s New Music Video Sets Record With 35 Million Views
  33. Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Smashes YouTube’s 24-Hour Record, Crushing Psy
  34. Former Band Member Sues The Roots
  35. Marijuana-Themed Media Company Merry Jane Gets A Spark From Seth Rogen, Wiz Khalifa
  36. Deputy Attorney General Trots Out All Sorts Of Silly Analogies About ‘Intellectual Property’
  37. The Hitman’s Bodyguard Tops Worst Weekend Box Office In 16 Years: Lowest-grossing weekend since September 2001.
  38. Free speech in the fog of scientific uncertainty (Jane Bambauer)
  39. Primary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of “Bob the Broker”? (Aditya Bhave & Eric Budish)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1.  AT&T’s slow 1.5Mbps Internet in poor neighborhoods sparks complaint to FCC: AT&T refusal to boost Internet speed violates discrimination ban, complaint says.
  2. EFF, Others Think It Would Be Cool If The FCC Stopped Hiding 47,000 Net Neutrality Complaints
  3. Why Net Neutrality Matters Even In The Age Of Oligopoly
  4. Net neutrality comment deadline is tomorrow; 21.9 million comments in so far
  5. Even Many ISP-Backed Allies Think Ajit Pai’s Attack On Net Neutrality Is Too Extreme
  6. A Title II opponent explains why Ajit Pai’s plan won’t protect net neutrality: Pai says antitrust will protect net neutrality—here’s why it probably won’t.
  7. 98.5% of unique net neutrality comments oppose Ajit Pai’s anti-Title II plan: Besides form letters, ISP-funded study finds almost no support for repealing rules.
  8. AT&T absurdly claims that most “legitimate” net neutrality comments favor repeal: AT&T ignores finding that 98.5% of unique comments favor net neutrality rules.
  9. Junk call nightmare flooded woman with hundreds of bizarre phone calls a day: Kim France gets a lot of calls – but nothing prepared her for receiving 700 a day.
  10.  ‘It was premeditated’: ‘FOX LIES’ guy speaks!
  11. Fox News lies about Bolling: ‘None of these women’ have come forward — except one of them has
  12. NPR Gives Up On News Comments; After All, Who Cares What Your Customers Have To Say?
  13. British Regulator Submits New Report to Government on Fox-Sky Takeover
  14. Paradigm Shift: Why Radio Must Adapt To The Rise Of Digital

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. cy pres-only settlement ok’d in Google privacy case In re Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigation, — F.3d —-, 2017 WL 3601250, No. 15–15858 9th Cir. Aug. 22, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  2. Court Calls Out Government For The ‘General Warrant’ It Served To Facebook
  3. Man in jail 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives. Will he ever get out?: Defendant to ask Supreme Court if compelled decryption is a 5th Amendment breach.
  4. Feds: Man jailed for not decrypting drives has “chutzpah” to ask to get out – Prosecutors use Yiddish to describe man imprisoned 2 years for contempt of court.
  5. No Immunity For Cops Who Arrested Man Recording Them For Obstruction
  6. Some In Congress Don’t Get The “Gravity” Of Russian Election Meddling, Former CIA Director Said: John Brennan, CIA director under President Barack Obama, also bemoaned a “barrage” of “inaccurate and misleading” news reports. He made these statements in an internal memo to CIA employees obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
  7. All The Ways Us Government Cybersecurity Falls Flat
  8. Public should know how police are using high-tech spying tools
  9. Once Again, New Zealand’s Spying On Megaupload Execs Found To Be Illegal
  10. Megaupload execs’ extradition may be at risk after new spying revelations: GCSB couldn’t say more without jeopardizing the national security of New Zealand.
  11. Canadian Courts Edging Towards A Warrant Requirement For Device Searches At Borders
  12. Aetna Mailer Accidentally Reveals HIV Status Of Up To 12,000 Customers
  13. New app scans your face and tells companies whether you’re worth hiring
  14. CCTV + Lip-Reading Software = Even Less Privacy, Even More Surveillance
  15. 465k patients told to visit doctor to patch critical pacemaker vulnerability: A year after calling advisory “false and misleading,” maker warns patients to patch.
  16. IOT Devices Provide Comcast A Wonderful New Opportunity To Spy On You
  17. Leak of >1,700 valid passwords could make the IoT mess much worse: List of unsecured devices lived in obscurity since June. Now, it’s going mainstream.
  18. 711 million email addresses ensnared in ‘largest’ spambot: The spambot has collected millions of email credentials and server login information in order to send spam through “legitimate” servers, defeating many spam filters.
  19. India’s Supreme Court Rules Privacy Is A Fundamental Right; Big Ramifications For The Aadhaar Biometric System And Beyond
  20. MalwareTech’s legal defense fund bombarded with fraudulent donations: At least $150,000 in donations were from stolen or fake credit card numbers.
  21. One of 1st-known Android DDoS malware infects phones in 100 countries: Move over, IoT. Attackers are abusing a new widely used platform to knock out sites.
  22. Microsoft’s Bid To Save Powershell From Hackers Starts To Pay Off
  23. Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won’t Tell Me How

Jon

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News of the Week; August 23, 2017

By Jon Festinger on August 24, 2017

GAMES

  1. Give me a break: Atari suing Nestle over alleged Breakout-themed Kit Kat ads
  2. Atari sues Nestle, says Kit Kat video game ad violates Breakout copyright: Candy ad plays off Breakout, “an icon of early Silicon Valley ingenuity.”
  3. Atari in transition: From Speakerhats and gambling to LGBT dating apps and movies, CEO Fred Chesnais has aspirations for the legacy brand far beyond games and T-shirts
  4. Republicans try comparing tax code to Legend of Zelda, mix up their facts: Factual error has since been fixed on GOP site, but perhaps not the flawed logic.
  5. How Tencent’s latest hit Honour of Kings has divided generations
  6. Blizzard Apologizes To Entire Country Of Australia About Overwatch, Here’s Why: It’s called “take-away,” not “take-out.”
  7. No more Mass Effect Andromeda single-player updates: EA says there will be no more patches for in-game story content, but multiplayer will see continued content updates
  8. Mass Effect: Andromeda officially shuts down its single-player updates – Unless you play ME:A for multiplayer, your quest is effectively done.
  9. Mass Effect: Andromeda single-player development comes to an end
  10. Final Fantasy XV director plans official mod support for PC version
  11. Sweeney: App stores are “pocketing a huge amount of profit” at devs’ expense – “We should be angry about this, and we should constantly be on the lookout for other solutions, and new ways to reach gamers.”
  12. Falling indie prices undercut the market – Hideki Kamiya says Platinum has been “rescued” by NieR: Automata; but games like Platinum’s remain at risk from collapsing prices outside AAA
  13. Indie game pricing is “more art than science”: Should indies really be charging more for their games? Indie publishers and developers share their perspectives
  14. Indie Game Designer Estimates One PewDiePie Video Boosted Sales By More Than $100,000
  15. Game Digital shares recover after financials beat expectations
  16. Reworking Piczle Lines DX from mobile platforms to Nintendo Switch
  17. Nintendo Switch and Splatoon 2 lifts US games market in July: Sales for July up 19% as Splatoon 2 outsells Crash Bandicoot
  18. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds surpasses 8M sales
  19. 6 years and a Chinese chicken company buyout later, Splash Damage’s Brink goes F2P
  20. Valve clarifies Steam key ‘crackdown’: Firm reiterates that unreasonable key requests will be declined
  21. Valve says it’s cracking down on big key requests to combat Steam skulduggery
  22. Early Access has changed We Happy Few — and helped the dev quadruple in size: “Early access didn’t just help shape the overall direction and focus of the game, it shaped the very fabric and makeup of our team.”
  23. Why Square Enix Collective is resurrecting Fear Effect: There are now two Fear Effect games coming to market 17 years after they were last seen
  24. Crackdown 3 delay damages Xbox One X line-up: Action game pushed back to spring 2018, leaving Forza 7 as Microsoft’s lead for new console
  25. Over 100 ‘enhanced’ titles are heading to the Xbox One X
  26. Zlatan Ibrahimović: “I want to make a difference in the video game world” – World renowned footballer on why his new mobile title, Zlatan Legends, stands apart from the flood of celebrity games
  27. Opinion: Exploring feminist game design in role-playing book #Feminism
  28. New Nielsen division to offer insight into esports market: Team will provide sponsorship valuation, custom research and more for competitive gaming
  29. NFL, EA team for esports: ‘Madden’ tourney first step for league
  30. Esports Continues Rise In Australia As A-League Team Signs Gamer
  31. Why Rocket League Might Be The Perfect Mainstream Esport: It’s simple to follow, easy to learn and difficult to master.
  32. HTC Vive receives $200/£150 price cut: Move follows Oculus price drop last month
  33. Sony “won’t allow” cross-platform play for Ark: Survival Evolved – Platform holder still reluctant to allow PS4 players to engage online with Xbox One owners
  34. Sony put the kibosh on cross-console play, says Ark: Survival Evolved dev
  35. Sony blocks yet another game from cross-console play with Xbox One: Continuing trend suggests Sony simply doesn’t want to link up with Microsoft.
  36. “With $6m, you can compete with Call of Duty”: Devcom panel discusses the opportunities for smaller studios in the AAA market
  37. Making a game to make a game; It’s like Kickstarter, but with more explosions.
  38. Chinese publishers ramping up global business – Report: App Annie says Chinese mobile game publisher revenues from overseas markets have doubled year-over-year
  39. Applying Data Science to Understand Your Players
  40. “Don’t treat your players like they’re stupid”: Bluehole’s Brendan Greene on maintaining honesty and transparency with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ Early Access community
  41. Surpassing $800M in revenue, one of Germany’s biggest earners still runs on Flash
  42. China’s top flight soccer league signs six-year game deal worth $15M
  43. What happens when you turn a game into a concert?: Jessica Curry discusses the difference of interactivity in Dear Esther Live and assesses how the industry treats women two years after she stepped back
  44. Why I Love: GamesIndustry.biz is readying a series of columns to add much needed positivity to the gaming media landscape, and we could use some help
  45. How to protect your video game trademark
  46. Putting a Face to the Game: The Intellectual Property Implications of Using Celebrity Likenesses in Videogames (Yin Harn Lee)

DIGITAL

  1. Judge sides with YouTubers Ethan and Hila Klein in copyright lawsuit
  2. YouTubers Ethan And Hila Klein Win Copyright Case, Court Says h3h3Productions’ Use Of Video Is Fair Use
  3. Appeals Court Grapples With Digital Files, and the Business of Selling “Used” Songs
  4. Uber’s Contract Upheld in Second Circuit–Meyer v. Uber
  5. Legal ruling in: Facebook ‘friends’ aren’t necessarily real friends
  6. Browsewrap/Clickwrap Distinction Vexes Another Court–Nevarez v. Ticketmaster
  7. Aspiring Actor Forges Court Order To Delist Content, Gets Busted By Judge, Forges Court Order To Delist Article About Contempt Charges
  8. Supreme Court asked to nullify the Google trademark: The case comes two months after court’s “offensive” trademarks ruling.
  9. Failed Cybersquatter Asks Supreme Court To Declare ‘Google’ A Generic Term
  10. Federal Judge Upholds Magistrate’s Ruling, Says Google Must Hand Over Data From Overseas Servers
  11. How the tech sector can legally justify breaking ties to extremists: Generally speaking, private enterprise may refuse service on ideological grounds.
  12. Code for tolerance: How tech companies can respond to hate but respect human rights
  13. The Tor Project Defends the Human Rights Racists Oppose
  14. Tor “can’t build free and open source tools” and stop racists from using them: “We are everything they claim to despise,” but Tor won’t prevent vile usage of its tools.
  15. Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer loses its Russian domain, too: Russian official cites “strict regime” for combatting extremism online.
  16. After bouncing around the Web, Daily Stormer lands a new CDN provider – BitMitigate founder: “I thought it would really get my service out there.”
  17. Spurned by Major Companies, The Daily Stormer Returns to the Web With Help From a Startup: The 20-year-old founder of BitMitigate said he had taken on the neo-Nazi website because he believes in free speech and because, “I thought it would really get my service out there.”
  18. Unable to get a domain, racist Daily Stormer retreats to the Dark Web: “We can’t keep trying random registrars,” site’s admin writes.
  19. After years of investigation, feds bust one of AlphaBay’s largest drug rings
  20. So, just how guaranteed is your freedom of speech online?
  21. Google explains why it banned the app for Gab, a right-wing Twitter rival: Gab’s free-speech stance makes it popular with right-wing trolls and racists
  22. Here’s a way to silence Trump on Twitter: Buy the microblogging service – White House says it’s a “ridiculous attempt” to silence Trump’s 1st Amendment rights.
  23. YouTube Briefly Nukes Video Of Nazi Symbol Destruction For Violating Hate Speech Rules
  24. Defining ‘Hate Speech’ Online Is An Imperfect Art
  25. OkCupid bans white supremacist “for life,” asks daters to report others: A white supremacist featured in a Charlottesville documentary can’t use OKC any
  26. One-Time Allies Sour On Joining Trump’s Tech Team
  27. Mnuchin’s Wife Mocks Oregon Woman Over Lifestyle and Wealth
  28. Mnuchin’s Wife Goes Full Marie Antoinette In Instagram Meltdown: The millionaire wife of the millionaire Treasury secretary bragged about how much they pay in taxes and accused a critic of being “adorably out of touch.”
  29. Before she was poor-shaming on Instagram, Louise Linton wrote a “white savior” Africa memoir
  30. Killer robots are coming, and Elon Musk is worried: Technology leaders warn autonomous drones could become “weapons of terror.”
  31. Sorry Elon Musk, the machines will not win – Weblog: Cyber expert Ryan Calo writes paper to demolish belief in looming AI apocalypse
  32. Killer robots: Experts warn of ‘third revolution in warfare’
  33. We can’t ban killer robots – it’s already too late
  34. Sorry, Banning ‘Killer Robots’ Just Isn’t Practical
  35. Taryn Southern Shares First YouTube Music Video For Album Composed Entirely By AI
  36. Dunce’s App: How Silicon Valley’s brand of behaviorism has entered the classroom
  37. Reddit Launches An In-House Video Player In Beta
  38. Now you can post videos directly to Reddit, no third-party service required: Upload .mp4 and .mov files directly from your phone or computer.
  39. Whatever Your Side, Doxing Is A Perilous Form Of Justice
  40. Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression (EFF)
  41. The Great Free Speech Online Debate (Andres Guadamuz)
  42. Moving On From Obviously Fake News To Plausibly Fake News Sites
  43. Mapping The Most And Least Troll-Ridden Places In The U.S.
  44. We Live in Fear of the Online Mobs: Internet shaming spreads everywhere and lives forever. We need a way to fight it.
  45. Woman: My Uber driver went wrong way, I said something, he pushed me out – According to Courthouse News Service, Uber has been sued at least 433 times in 2017.
  46. SEC Report Asserts Cryptocurrency Tokens Are Securities Under US Law
  47. A Very Dumb Mistake Costs Cryptocurrency Investors Big Time
  48. Not a Token Gesture: Compensating Service Providers with Virtual Property
  49. A Google Tax Isn’t Going To Give Publishers The Payout They Think It Will
  50. Sharp sues Hisense over a foreign “gag order”: Sharp files a lawsuit in order to talk about the TVs being made in its name.
  51. Lawsuit revived over Apple retail workers’ pay during security checks: Dispute has widespread ramifications about pay for time spent in security checks.
  52. Proposed California Law Targets Sexual Harassment In Venture Capital
  53. Machines Taught By Photos Learn A Sexist View Of Women
  54. Quebecker files class action against Netflix over fee hike
  55. Insights: Breaking Up is Easy To Do—Netflix Rolls On After Disney Announcement
  56. Netflix Is Using The Defenders To Understand Its Audience
  57. This is how Netflix’s top-secret recommendation system works: Netflix splits viewers up into more than two thousands taste groups. Which one you’re in dictates the recommendations you get
  58. Why You Can’t Download All The Streaming Media You Want
  59. Roku Increases market share ahead of Amazon, Google, Apple
  60. Amazon’s Turker Crowd Has Had Enough
  61. Wisconsin lawmakers vote to pay Foxconn $3 billion to get new factory: State taxpayers could end up paying Foxconn $500,000 per job, or more.
  62. YouTube Music Chief Lyor Cohen: Promoting And Breaking New Artists Is A Top Priority
  63. YouTube, Facebook and Moral Rights
  64. ‘They could destroy the album’: how Spotify’s playlists have changed music for ever – Custom playlists on the streaming site can bring unknown artists to millions. But are they altering how songs get written?
  65. CNN launches daily news show on Snapchat
  66. Facebook really is losing teen users to Instagram and Snapchat
  67. Snapchat to Move Into Scripted Content by Year’s End
  68. Facebook, NASA To Host 4K, 360-Degree Live Stream Of Total Solar Eclipse
  69. Solar Eclipse Brings 3.1 Million Views To NASA’s Facebook Live Stream, Takes 10% Of Netflix Audience
  70. Facebook Takes New Steps To Crack Down On Video Clickbait
  71. Facebook’s evolutionary search for crashing software bugs: Ars gets the first look at Facebook’s fancy new dynamic analysis tool.
  72. Twitter To Stream From Inside Race Cars During NASCAR Playoffs
  73. Disney Tops BuzzFeed In Monthly Social Video Views For First Time In A Year (Study)
  74. Turner To Launch OTT Sports Platform, Live Games On Bleacher Report
  75. YouTube TV Adds 14 New Markets To Reach 50% Of US Households
  76. Angela Merkel Discusses Gender, Emojis During Studio71-Produced YouTube Stream
  77. YouTube Rolls Out ‘Breaking News’ Feed On Desktop Site And Mobile Apps
  78. Studio71 Sues Bethany Mota And Her Dad/Manager Over Brand Deal Gone Awry
  79. Moviepass Wants To Save Moviegoing – If Theaters Will Let It
  80. Australia blocks another 59 popular pirate sites
  81. Cambridge University Press backs down over China censorship: Publisher will reinstate articles to which it blocked online access in China in the face of international protests by academics
  82. ‘Smart’ Lock Vendor Locks Hundreds Out Of Their Home With Bungled Firmware Update
  83. “Bing is bigger than you think,” Microsoft boasts, at 33% of US searches: It turns out that “But nobody uses Bing!” isn’t actually true.
  84. Microsoft’s Speech Recognition is Now as Good as a Human Transcriber
  85. Intel first 8th generation processors are just updated 7th generation chips: No Coffee Lake or Cannonlake here; these are doubled up Kaby Lake parts.
  86. NAFTA Negotiations: Authors Alliance Joins Public Interest Groups In Support Of Transparency And Balanced Copyright Policy
  87. Civil society urges trade decision-makers to consider the impacts of NAFTA on digital rights
  88. Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Analytic Thinking, Motivated Reasoning, Political Ideology, and Bullshit Receptivity (Gordon Pennycook & David  Rand)
  89. The NAFTA E-commerce Chapter: Ensuring the New Chapter Reflects Canadian Priorities (Michael Geist) 

CREATIVITY

  1. The Tragedy Of Charlottesville In Two Powerful Photos
  2. Op-Ed: Speech in America is fast, cheap and out of control
  3. NFL Tells ICE That Parody Shirts Are Counterfeits
  4. Freedom of panorama in Portugal: content and scope of the exception
  5. Why the CJEU cheese copyright case is anything but cheesy
  6. Is 2 seconds of television time too much to be a fair use? 
  7. Toblerone shape not distinctive enough for trademark, Poundland claims: Defending its right to launch Twin Peaks bar, budget chain cites Toblerone version with fewer chunks brought out last year
  8. Chateau Marmont, Hotel For Celebrity Humans, Sends Trademark C&D To Cateau Marmont, Hotel For Cats
  9. Comparative advertising using P’s logo is nominative fair use (Rebecca Tushnet)
  10. Forgetting Functionality (Christopher Buccafusco & Jeanne Fromer)
  11. Court Rules Ford Trucks’ Claim Is Puffery: A false advertising suit against Ford Motor Co. was limited after a federal court judge found the company’s “Built Ford Tough” claim is non-actionable puffery.
  12. Directing a Spotlight on the Feud over Ownership of Château Miraval’s Lights
  13. Because Of Course There Are Copyright Implications With Confederacy Monuments
  14. Louisiana’s Criminal Defamation Law Abused Again, But This Time The Gov’t Gets Away With It
  15. What Europe Can Teach America About Free Speech: In an unregulated marketplace of ideas, private citizens need to take up the burden of holding the line against racist extremism.
  16. The Right to Attention in an Age of Distraction
  17. Canada’s Diva of Doodlers has Definitively Distilled in this Divine Depiction the Diverging Directions of Debate on Canadian Copyright

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Pick-and-pay TV system a hit with Canadians, nearly one third bought solo channels: report – Although the vast majority of subscribers continue to buy larger packages, MTM’s research suggests a massive jump in interest in the smaller packages
  2. Judge Kills AT&T’s Attempt To Thwart Google Fiber Competition In Louisville
  3. AT&T’s attempt to stall Google Fiber construction thrown out by judge: AT&T sued Louisville over pole attachment rule, but judge says rule is valid.
  4. Trump’s DOJ not trying to stop AT&T/Time Warner merger: AT&T and DOJ “discussing merger conditions” that would let deal go forward.
  5. Former FCC Commissioner Tries To Claim Net Neutrality Has Aided The Rise Of White Supremacy
  6. Stop hiding 47,000 net neutrality complaints, advocates tell FCC chair: FCC now says it will release net neutrality complaints “as soon as we can.”
  7. Crowdfunded Billboards Shame Politicians For Selling You Out On Net Neutrality
  8. FCC’s claim that it was hit by DDoS should be investigated, lawmakers say: FCC hasn’t shown proof that it was attacked, Democrats say in call for probe.
  9. Lawmakers Want The GAO To Investigate The FCC’s Flimsy DDoS Claim
  10. Cox starts charging $50 extra per month for unlimited data: Or you can get another 500GB for an extra $30 every month.
  11. Verizon Begins Throttling Wireless Users, Effectively Bans 4K Streaming
  12. Verizon to start throttling all smartphone videos to 480p or 720p: No 4K video allowed—new bandwidth limits apply to mobile hotspots, too.
  13. Patent-licensing company loses its $30M verdict against Sprint:Prism Technologies saw through three  jury trials against big cell carriers.
  14. This is Sinclair, ‘the most dangerous US company you’ve never heard of’: Sinclair is the largest broadcast company in America. But its partisan politics – and connections to the White House – are raising concerns
  15. James Murdoch donates $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League following events in Charlottesville
  16. James Murdoch Rips Trump: “Standing Up to Nazis Is Essential” – In a memo, he also pledged a donation of $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League.
  17. Looking at Music Royalty Issues for Radio and TV Broadcasters
  18. Tech Journalists Keep Completely Missing The Point Of Cord Cutting

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Feds drop demand for 1.3 million IP addresses that visited anti-Trump site: Despite warrant’s language, feds say they didn’t want disruptj20.org visitor logs.
  2. Another staged body cam leads to 43 more dropped Baltimore prosecutions: Latest video “was self-reported as a re-enactment of the seizure of evidence.”
  3. Australian Gov’t Accessed Domestic Metadata Thousands Of Times, Shared Some Of It With China
  4. Federal Judge Upholds Magistrate’s Ruling, Says Google Must Hand Over Data From Overseas Servers
  5. Wanted: Weaponized exploits that hack phones. Will pay top dollar – Exploit broker Zerodium ups the ante with $500,000 to target Signal and WhatsApp.
  6. Border Device Searches Continue To Increase, Threatening More Than Just The 4th Amendment
  7. Indians have right to privacy, Supreme Court rules
  8. Spyware backdoor prompts Google to pull 500 apps with >100m downloads: Google killed secret plugin download capability after being alerted by researchers.
  9. Court Says Gov’t Needs More Than The Assumption Someone Owns A Cellphone To Justify A Search
  10. FOIA Lawsuit Filed Over DOJ Data Complainant Is Pretty Sure Doesn’t Even Exist
  11. Sonos Users Forced To Choose Between Privacy And Working Hardware
  12. As HBO Screams About GoT Episodes Leaking From A Hack, HBO Leaks Next GoT Episode Early
  13. Breaking Down HBO’s Brutal Month Of Hacks
  14. North Carolina Election Agencies First Learned They’d Been Hacked From Leaked Documents Published By The Intercept
  15. ICE: We don’t use stingrays to locate undocumented immigrants – Letter adds that, even when you’re targeted via stingray, you can still call 911.
  16. GCHQ Knew FBI Wanted To Arrest MalwareTech, Let Him Fly To The US To Be Arrested There
  17. Palantir’s Law Enforcement Data Stranglehold Isn’t Good For Police Or The Policed
  18. Contractor Exposes Personal Information Of 1.8 Million Chicago Voters On AWS
  19. Code chunk in Kronos malware used long before MalwareTech published it: Marcus Hutchins, the researcher who stopped WCry, complained his code was lifted.
  20. Secret chips in replacement parts can completely hijack your phone’s security: Booby-trapped touchscreens can log passwords, install malicious apps, and more.
  21. Welcome To The Technological Incarceration Project, Where Prison Walls Are Replaced By Sensors, Algorithms, And AI
  22. Driver’s license facial recognition tech leads to 4,000 New York arrests: “We will continue to do everything we can to hold fraudsters accountable.”
  23. When Government Rules By Software, Citizens Are Left In The Dark

Jon

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News of the Week; August 16, 2017

By Jon Festinger on August 20, 2017

GAMES

  1. Retired Dutch soccer player wins lawsuit against Riot Games
  2. Former footballer Edgar Davids wins lawsuit against Riot Games: Judge rules that League of Legends developer used Davids’ likeness for Striker Lucian skin
  3. Take-Two argues fair use in NBA 2K tattoo lawsuit: Eventual ruling may have an impact on ownership laws around the video game medium
  4. Video Game Maker Argues “Fair Use” of Images of NBA Player Tattoos 
  5. Accessory Company Sues Nintendo Over Switch Design: Gamevice demands a ban on all Switch sales.
  6. Nintendo hit with lawsuit over Switch console design
  7. Nintendo sued over alleged patent violation by Switch controllers: Wikipad creator Gamevice claims removable Joy-Cons violates its patents
  8. Disney, Unity face lawsuit over collection of personal info through kids games
  9. Disney and Unity accused of collecting children’s personal information: More alleged COPPA violations in the US as 42 Disney games included in lawsuit
  10. How A Board Game Aboutbitter Legal Struggles Became A Bitter Legal Struggle: After Andrew Yoon drowned, his mother and best friend fought for control of the board game he created.
  11. Blatant clone or marketing hoax? The curious case of Tokyo 41 and Tokyo 42: The “demake” trend gets twisted with a touch of ARG (alternate reality game) panache.
  12. How ‘World Of Warcraft’ Spawned Steve Bannon And The Alt-Right As We Know It
  13. Discord shuts down server and accounts linked to white supremacists
  14. Discord clamps down on hate groups: Gaming chat and text app blocks alt-right server and bans users
  15. Baseball club trips over logo: The US Major League Baseball MLB is considering filing an opposition to the registration of a new logo by the Overwatch League, an online video game competition. MLB claims the logo too closely resembles its own MLB trademark.
  16. Battle.net is called Battle.net again, just like it always was: The “Blizzard Launcher” gets un-rebranded; call it “Blizzard Battle.net” now
  17. Blizzard to keep Battle.net name after all: Company reverses previously announced plan to phase out moniker, will use combined Blizzard Battle.net branding going forward
  18. Blizzard is bringing the Battle.net name back from the dead
  19. Skins, Smurfs and Skyrim: A brief history of PC modding
  20. How one dev aims to thwart arranged marriages through game design
  21. Against Gravity: “Physical harassment in VR can be really intense” – CCO Cameron Brown on nurturing Rec Room’s thriving community, and the “very real” sense of physical threat in a virtual world
  22. ‘VRChat’ Anecdotes and Dealing with Harassment & Tolling in Social VR
  23. AltspaceVR u-turns on closure: Inspired by outpouring of support from its community, social VR space may live on
  24. Watch: Your Brain in Virtual Reality – Dive head first into the neuroscience and psychology of VR.
  25. Full-Body Virtual Sports Game Sparc Set For Release On PlayStation VR
  26. Com2uS: Successful esports “don’t just appear out of nowhere” – The developer of $1 billion hit Summoners War has slowly built up to its first major global tournament
  27. Esports event considered for Paris 2024 Olympics: Meanwhile, Finland is the latest nation to recognise professional players as athletes
  28. Paris Olympic Committee To Consider eSports For 2024
  29. Millennial Esports buys majority stake in Test Drive Unlimited dev
  30. Esports firm acquires majority stake in Eden Games: 82.5% stakes in Gear.Club and Test Drive Unlimited developer purchased for €9m
  31. The International 2017 reached 5m peak concurrent viewers: The Dota 2 tournament’s peak audience has more than doubled in three years
  32. Elon Musk’s Dota 2 AI beats the professionals at their own game: But humans did eventually prevail over the computers.
  33. Elon Musk’s OpenAI Created a Bot That Can Beat the World’s Best eSports Players
  34. Overwatch League adds first UK franchise: London team will be owned by Cloud9, second Los Angeles team will be owned by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment
  35. Overwatch, A Game About Teamwork, Is Getting A Free-For-All Deathmatch Mode
  36. Rocket League joins Tespa’s autumnal lineup of collegiate eSports events
  37. Echo: Ex-Hitman devs bring machine learning to stealth games – “How do you interact with your own play style? That’s the core of our gameplay.”
  38. Rovio nearly doubled its revenue during the second quarter
  39. Rovio sees revenue leap 94% in second quarter: Angry Birds Evolution and Battle Bay showed the “strongest launch ARPDAU and other KPIs ever seen in Rovio Games business unit”
  40. Rovio considers raising $400 million through local IPO – report: Public listing rumours persist, with the Finnish company valued at $2 billion
  41. Report: Tencent invests in Battlegrounds dev Bluehole
  42. Bluehole squashes Tencent investment rumour: Bluehole confirms no investment was made by Chinese company
  43. Tencent’s mobile game revenue tops PC for first time ever
  44. Tencent online game revenues hit $3.56 billion in Q2: Mobile revenue exceeded PC for the first time thanks to the success of games like Honor of Kings
  45. Hutch opening Nova Scotia studio: UK motorsports developer opens Canadian office to increase output, tap new talent pool
  46. Isolation, depression “running rampant” among indies – Devolver co-founder
  47. Indies need to start charging more for games – Steam Spy: “Stop undermining your game because somehow you think it’s not worth the asking price,” says Sergey Galyonkin
  48. Mayhem Above – The do’s and don’ts of a solo dev.
  49. Stop being a stupid indie-gamedeveloper
  50. Atari hands off Pridefest: Largely abandoned mobile game given to maker of LGBTQutie dating app alongside cash investment
  51. Funcom’s The Secret World picked up for a TV series: Johnny Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil will be involved in screen adaptation of relaunched MMO
  52. Twitch rolls out its desktop app, complete with video chat
  53. Meet The Streamers Using Twitch To Pay For College
  54. Threats, fake names and philanthropy: The untold story of Jane Whittaker – From Alien vs Predator to Goldeneye, the developer discusses his journey to Keystone Games, a publisher donating profits to charity
  55. Blizzard to launch “global diversity and inclusion initiative”: Mike Morhaime wants to raise number of women and “under-represented minority groups” working at the company
  56. Fixing our broken internet culture: If we’re serious about tackling harassment of developers, start with the culture of angry entitlement encouraged by many media figures
  57. A Brief History of Game Jams
  58. Exploring Motivation: Why People Play Games for Years

DIGITAL

  1. Tech Has The Tools To Fight Hate. It Just Needs To Use Them
  2. Racist Daily Stormer moves to Russian domain after losing .com address: The site was barely offline for 24 hours.
  3. GoDaddy Severs Ties With Daily Stormer After Charlottesville Article
  4. Google Domains, GoDaddy blacklist white supremacist site Daily Stormer: Two domain registrars say the Daily Stormer violated their terms of service.
  5. After Getting Its Website Banned, Neo-Nazi Site Daily Stormer Gets Kicked Off YouTube, Too
  6. Racist Daily Stormer goes down again as CloudFlare drops support: Tech companies face intense pressure not to work with the hate site.
  7. CloudFlare CEO says his Daily Stormer takedown was “arbitrary” and “dangerous”: “I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet.”
  8. Why We Terminated Daily Stormer
  9. The Daily Stormer’s Last Defender In Tech Just Dropped It
  10. After losing Patreon account, crowdfunded anti-refugee ship is adrift—literally: “Defend Europe” ship rescued by refugee relief agency’s ship after engine trouble.
  11. Charlottesville White Supremacists Begin to Lose Jobs, Web Hosting Platforms
  12. Web hosting, CDN companies torn as to how to respond to racist websites: Dreamhost, meanwhile, “will host any website as long as its content is legal.”
  13. Internet turns on white supremacists and neo-Nazis with doxing, phishing: Many fear being outed from photos, but now the real cyber game against “alt-right” begins.
  14. Trump’s Retweets Were Especially Batty This Morning
  15. Trump tweets cartoon of train hitting CNN reporter
  16. One Twitter Account’s Mission To Make White Supremacists Very, Very Famous
  17. The Online Radicalisation Of Young Men (Andres Guadamuz)
  18. Nazi Crybaby Films His Own Meltdown After Threatening to Kill Charlottesville Counter-Protesters
  19. Before Getting Banned From OkCupid, White Supremacist Chris Cantwell Wrote Tips for Dating Online
  20. After Charlottesville, Grief And Humor Go Hand In Hand On Twitter
  21. Did the Army Chief of Staff Just Subtweet President Trump?
  22. Trump can block people on Twitter if he wants, administration says: As president, Trump can use Twitter however he sees fit, Justice Department says.
  23. New Media And The Messy Nature Of Reporting On The Alt-Right
  24. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quits Trump manufacturing council: Intel boss says “divided political climate” is causing “serious harm.”
  25. Social Media Efforts to Identify Charlottesville Marchers
  26. Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (Rob Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckeman, Yochai Benkler)
  27. Defending Hateful Speech Is Unpleasant But Essential, Even When Violence Is The End Result
  28. Hacking Hate and Extremism
  29. Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online (Berkman Klein Center)
  30. Florida City Ignores All Legal Precedent As It Attempts To Silence & Identify Mild Critic
  31. Saudi Government Looking To Jail More Citizens For ‘Harming Public Order’ With Their Religious Tweets
  32. A Guide To Russia’s High Tech Tool Box For Subverting US Democracy
  33. Biohackers Encoded Malware In A Strand Of DNA
  34. Researchers encode malware in DNA, compromise DNA sequencing software: It’s a proof-of-principle, done after making DNA analysis software vulnerable.
  35. The Ultimate Virus: How Malware Encoded In Synthesized DNA Can Compromise A Computer System
  36. Google Abruptly Cancels Town Hall About That Memo
  37. Google cancels all-hands diversity meeting over safety concerns: Google feared questioners would face threats if their names leaked online.
  38. Fired Google Engineer James Damore Takes His Case to Reddit
  39. The Actual Science Of James Damore’s Google Memo
  40. Weekend ‘March on Google’ canceled, organizer says: Firing of engineer spurred calls for right-wing rally at Google offices; local counter-protest will go on as planned
  41. We Need to Talk About Online Harassment: The public forum is taking place on social media, a place where women are being systematically silenced.
  42. One Of Uber’s First Investors Sued Travis Kalanick For Fraud
  43. Investors hit Uber ex-CEO hard, sue over alleged “gross mismanagement”: Before ouster, Travis Kalanick pushed for 3 new board seats—and he still controls them.
  44. Before Getting Banned From OkCupid, White Supremacist Chris Cantwell Wrote Tips for Dating Online
  45. In wake of lawsuit, Uber investors are now publicly sniping at each other: Shervin Pishevar, other investors worry of “escalation of this fratricidal course.”
  46. The Uber Dilemma
  47. FTC says Uber took a wrong turn with misleading privacy, security promises
  48. Uber agrees to 20 years of privacy audits following FTC charges: News reports of Uber employees using “God View” got the feds’ attention.
  49. Lawyers clash over an imaged hard drive as Waymo v. Uber hurtles toward trial: “He was ordered to come clean and did not come clean.”
  50. The ‘corporate governance nightmare’ that is Snap: Social media company’s disregard of shareholder rights is wrong, says Peter Smith
  51. Snapchat’s New Feature Stitches Together Concert Videos From Multiple Stories
  52. 46% Of Influencers Say They Would Give Up Snapchat If They Were To Abandon One Platform
  53. Everything About Disney and ABC’s ‘Pink Slime’ Settlement Should Scare the Hell Out of You
  54. Social media use should comply with securities law
  55. How Section 230 Helps Sex Trafficking Victims (and SESTA Would Hurt Them)
  56. Appeals Court Mostly Fixes Bad CDA 230 Ruling Over Publicity Rights
  57. Lawyer: Yahoo Lost Sec. 230 Immunity Because It Didn’t Hand Over Personal Info; Court: GTFO
  58. What Does The New CDA – Buster Legislation Actually Say?
  59. The MPAA Narrative About Piracy Flips To Danger From Pirate Sites Now That It Has Lost The Moral Argument
  60. Judge Preska: Widespread Pirating Makes Music Price Fixing Case Unsuitable for Class Treatment
  61. Apple going all-in on original programming, to the tune of $1 billion a year: Apple could “procure and produce” as many as 10 new shows next year.
  62. Apple To Spend $1 Billion On Original Shows Over Next Year (Report)
  63. Apple Takes Bite From Data Security False Ad Suit
  64. London Mayor Fingers The Culprit In Increased Knife Crime: YouTube
  65. Warner/Chappell Issues Copyright Claim Over YouTube Video Deliberately Containing None Of Its Music
  66. How Cults Use YouTube for Recruitment
  67. Once Again, Rather Than Deleting Terrorist Propaganda, YouTube Deletes Evidence Of War Crimes
  68. Where is the YouTube left? There, elsewhere and unfocused: Not all mediums are created equal
  69. Verizon Returns Its Ads To YouTube After A Five-Month Freeze
  70. Elvis Presley Racks Up 2.8 Billion YouTube Hits To Eclipse Kanye West, Lana Del Rey
  71. Nielsen To Incorporate Views On YouTube, Facebook, And Hulu Into Digital Ratings
  72. The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter: Young-adult books are being targeted in intense social-media callouts, draggings, and pile-ons — sometimes before anybody’s even read them.
  73. Investors rescue embattled SoundCloud with $170 million lifeline: The company laid off 40 percent of its workforce in July.
  74. SoundCloud, now Vimeo of Sound, instead of YouTube of Sound?
  75. CBS, Citing The NFL, Says Broadcasters And Streamers Can Coexist
  76. As A Streaming Future Looms, ESPN Is Damned If It Does, Damned If It Doesn’t
  77. Can Oath, The Arranged Media Marriage Of Yahoo And Aol, Avoid A Rough Divorce?: Can two once-great Internet behemoths come together harmoniously in an age of mergers, roll-ups, and distribution plays? The early returns suggests that Oath has some work cut out for itself.
  78. Netflix lured TV superstar Shonda Rhimes away from ABC
  79. How A.I. Is Creating Building Blocks to Reshape Music and Art
  80. All This Bitcoin Stuff Is Fake
  81. Bitcoin cash plunges as investors look to dump their coins
  82. Should We Ban Bitcoin to Curb Illegal Activities?
  83. Howard Marks, who has called past market bubbles, says ‘I don’t understand what’s behind bitcoin’
  84. Bitcoin and the Uniform Commercial Code (Jeanne Schroeder)
  85. New Civil and Criminal Consequences for ‘Revenge Porn’
  86. Secret Service agent, corrupted by Silk Road case, cops to second heist: Shaun Bridges, who already was given 71 months in prison, awaits a new sentence.
  87. American accused of faking eBay sales to fund US terror pleads guilty: It’s “first known time ISIS had given money to someone in the US for an attack.”
  88. The quiet war against ownership: A major conflict is shaping up between the owners of smart devices and the companies that produced them.
  89. Digital provisions turn farmers into hackers: Canada’s strict digital lock provisions mean farmers and other businesses cannot fully benefit from the market access provided by trade agreements.
  90. How The DMCA’s Digital Locks Provision Allowed A Company To Delete A URL From Adblock Lists
  91. Should Social Media Sites Be Forced To Pull Pastor Calling For War With North Korea?
  92. Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It
  93. Disney wants to make a huge shift in its business model — but it’s not ready to do it yet: Streaming movies to consumers is one thing. Streaming sports is something else. Bob Iger will wait on that one.
  94. Disney’s Building Its Own Netflix. Everyone Else Might, Too
  95. Disney and CBS mark milestones in streaming’s march to conquer cable
  96. Netflix, Disney In “Active Discussions” About Streaming Rights To Future Marvel, ‘Star Wars’ Films
  97. Netflix should be afraid of Disney’s OTT play
  98. Star Wars and Iron Man may not disappear from Netflix in 2019 after all: Netflix and Disney are still having “active discussions.”
  99. Ted Sarandos: Netflix’s Content Budget Will Ascend To $7 Billion In 2018
  100. The Messy, Confusing Future of TV? It’s Here
  101. Facebook’s original video platform will launch with Mike Rowe, MLB, and more: The new Watch platform will nurture original series and themed shows.
  102. Facebook Defeats Lawsuit Over Failure to Remove User Pages–Cross v. Facebook (Eric Goldman)
  103. Facebook Defeats Another Case Over Not Removing User Comments–La’Tiejira v. Facebook (Eric Goldman)
  104. Facebook’s Hate Speech Policies Censor Marginalized Users
  105. How Your Phone Number Became The Only Username That Matters
  106. Patreon will help fans pay their favorite artists more than $140 million this year: CEO Jack Conte explains what’s next — and why he really, really hates the term “tip jar” 
  107. SpaceX is launching a supercomputer to the International Space Station: “If this experiment works, it opens up a universe of possibility.”
  108. AI and CGI will transform information warfare, boost hoaxes, and escalate revenge porn
  109. If an AI creates a work of art, who owns the rights to it?
  110. Nokia’s New Phone Ushers In The Unfortunate Era Of The ‘Bothie’
  111. Mr. Nice Guy: Instagram’s Kevin Systrom Wants To Clean Up The &#%$@! Internet.
  112. Your Instagram Posts May Hold Clues to Your Mental Health
  113. Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression (Andrew Reece & Christopher Danforth)
  114. Appeals court: Lawsuit over wrong info on Spokeo should move ahead – Search site must face allegations that it broke fair credit reporting laws.
  115. Giving Legal Effect to Emails – Can Emails Satisfy the Requirements to Extend Limitation Periods Under The Limitations Act?
  116. Great minds moji alike?
  117. We’re rewiring the Internet for freedom.
  118. Re-Shaming the Debate: Social Norms, Shame, and Regulation in an Internet Age (Kate Klonick)
  119. Golf App Uses AI To Account For Wind In Making Distance Calculations
  120. Robot Umpires Advocated By Chicago Cubs’ Ben Zobrist
  121. Update gone wrong leaves 500 smart locks inoperable: Fatal error leaves customers scrambling for fixes that can take a week or longer. 

CREATIVITY

  1. The Chilling Effects of Openly Displayed Firearms: Charlottesville marks a new era of even bolder assertion of the right to threaten violence for political purposes.
  2. Lions denounce use of their logo by racists at Charlottesville rally
  3. Taylor Swift Spoke Up. Sexual Assault Survivors Were Listening.
  4. Kesha and Taylor Swift Find New Voices
  5. Taylor Swift’s Best Comebacks During Her Cross-Examination at Her Sexual-Assault Trial
  6. Jury Sides With Taylor Swift Over DJ In Groping Case
  7. The Kardashian Decade: How a Sex Tape Led to a Billion-Dollar Brand
  8. Hollywood’s China Money Heartbreak: Is the Love Affair Really Over? – Billions have been thrown into turmoil as Chinese regulators crack down on investments, Paramount’s backer skips a payment, and both Trump and some Dems adopt a protectionist stance.
  9. DC’s transit agency rejected ads touting the First Amendment (really): The DC transit agency banned “issue ads.” It hasn’t gone well.
  10. Bob Murray To Court: The ACLU Is Too Biased To File Its Brief
  11. Court Sends John Oliver, HBO Back To State Court To Fight Bob Murray
  12. Trademark Injunction Issued Against Print-on-Demand Website–Harley Davidson v. SunFrog
  13. White-on-White Trademark Usage Might Constitute Initial Interest Confusion–Agdia v. Xia (Eric Goldman)
  14. Five Reasons NOT to Register Your Trademark
  15. Lawsuits against media outlets are piling up
  16. How Royalty Exchange Has Transformed the World of Music Publishing
  17. Songwriter Groups Hit Out At RIAA For ‘Betrayal’ Over Moral Rights Issue
  18. AMC Theaters Is Not Happy About the New Super Cheap MoviePass Service
  19. The protection of the ‘eco-friendly’ Falabella bag by Stella McCartney in a recent decision of the Court of First Instance of Milan
  20. HBO hackers release Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes: HBO reportedly offered hackers $250,000 as a “stall tactic.”
  21. HBO Owns Itself in Latest Game of Thrones Leak
  22. Public Consultation on Reform of the Copyright Board of Canada Launched 
  23. How Canada Can Use NAFTA’s IP Chapter to Level the Innovation Playing Field (Michael Geist)
  24. No Time for Tinkering: How a “more progressive” NAFTA could break the vicious circle of global inequities in the ownership of knowledge (Ariel Katz)
  25. Intellectual Property in a Renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement: A Canadian Perspective
  26. Danish University And Industry Work Together On Open Science Platform Whose Results Will All Be Patent-Free
  27. Tracking the spread of culture through folktales: Genomic, geographical, and cultural data join forces.
  28. How Jeff Koons, 8 Puppies, and a Lawsuit Changed Artists’ Right to Copy 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Good Politics, Bad Policy: Melanie Joly Sends TV Licensing Cancon Decision Back to the CRTC (Michael Geist)
  2. The Future of Canadian “TV”
  3. Trump Cribbed His Charlottesville Press Conference Straight From Fox News
  4. Fox News Host Files SLAPP Suit Against Reporter Who Exposed His Sexting
  5. Alex Jones’ Infowars supplements are overpriced, mundane vitamins – watered down: BuzzFeed reports results after sending supplements to an independent lab for testing.
  6. How a Conservative TV Giant Is Ridding Itself of Regulation
  7. Ajit Pai accused of conflict for helping former client, a prison phone company: Pai should recuse himself from inmate calling decisions, prisoners’ advocate says.
  8. FCC giving special help to right-wing TV news company, Democrats allege: Pai is helping Sinclair expand its reach into TV-owning homes, lawmakers say.
  9. FCC Begins Weakening The Definition Of Quality Broadband Deployment To Aid Lazy, Uncompetitive ISPs
  10. FCC faces backlash for saying Americans might not need fast home Internet: Everyone should have fast home Internet and mobile access, commenters tell FCC.
  11. New FCC Broadband ‘Advisory Panel’ Stocked With Telecom Consultants, Allies & Cronies
  12. GOP lawmakers shamed on billboards for trying to repeal net neutrality rules: Republicans want a “slower, censored, and more expensive Internet,” group says.
  13. FCC seemingly forgot about a net neutrality complaint filed against Verizon: There’s only been one formal net neutrality complaint, and FCC hasn’t ruled on it.
  14. One Man’s War Against Verizon’s Long History Of Lies, Anti-Competitive Behavior, And Nonsense
  15. Mozilla Study: Zero Rating Isn’t The Miracle Broadband Duopolies And Facebook Pretend It Is
  16. Broadband ISP Cox Will Now Charge You $50 More To Avoid Usage Caps, Overage Fees
  17. The Nation’s Telcos Are Hemorrhaging Customers Because They Refuse To Upgrade Their Networks
  18. Will radio kill the internet star?
  19. Newspapers Essential To Community

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. US government demands details on all visitors to anti-Trump protest website: Privacy advocates call warrant for IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited inauguration protest website an unconstitutional ‘fishing expedition’
  2. Feds Demand ‘1.3 Million IP Addresses’ Of Visitors To Trump Protest Website
  3. Feds demand 1.3 million IP addresses of those who visited Trump protest site: DreamHost said the warrant is “a clear abuse of government authority.”
  4. We Fight for the Users
  5. DOJ Goes Way Overboard: Demands All Info On Visitors Of Anti-Trump Site
  6. Building America’s Trust Act would amp up privacy concerns at the border: Civil libertarians tell Ars they’re worried about “mass surveillance expansion.”
  7. Court Says CFAA Isn’t Meant To Prevent Access To Public Data, Orders LinkedIn To Drop Anti-Scraper Efforts
  8. LinkedIn Enjoined From Blocking Scraper–hiQ v. LinkedIn
  9. LinkedIn Connection Request Doesn’t Violate Non-Solicitation Clause—Bankers Life v. American Senior Benefits
  10. Tech companies, law profs agree: The Fourth Amendment should protect data – Filings argue support for convicted robber’s position in Carpenter v. United States.
  11. Russia’s ‘Fancy Bear’ Hackers Used Leaked NSA Tool To Target Hotel Guests
  12. Russian group that hacked DNC used NSA attack code in attack on hotels: Fancy Bear used Eternal Blue 3 months after it was leaked by a mysterious group.
  13. In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking
  14. Ukraine malware author turns witness in Russian DNC hacking investigation: “Profexor” turns self in to Ukrainian authorities, assists FBI in DNC hack investigation.
  15. Stories Claiming DNC Hack Was ‘Inside Job’ Rely Heavily On A Stupid Conversion Error No ‘Forensic Expert’ Would Make
  16. Court Tells Government Sticking FOIA Waivers In Plea Agreements Is Probably A Bad Idea
  17. Salesforce “red team” members present tool at Defcon, get fired: “Red Team” members were fired as they stepped off stage after presenting internal attack tool.
  18. Researchers report >4,000 apps that secretly record audio and steal logs: SonicSpy family of apps pose as benign programs. Behind the scenes, they spy on users.
  19. 3 Big COPPA Class Action Suits Prove Privacy Tsunami is Coming
  20. VIZIO Can’t Switch Channel on Consumer Privacy Complaint
  21. NAFTA, Trump and the cloud: What the negotiations mean for your personal data
  22. How My Instagram Hacker Changed My Life
  23. Researcher who neutralized WCry pleads not guilty to writing banking malware: Marcus Hutchins is accused of creating software that became the malware Kronos.
  24. Verizon—Yes, Verizon—Just Stood Up For Your Privacy
  25. “Pretty egregious” security flaw raises questions about Pacer: Is the service used by a million journalists and lawyers doing enough for security?
  26. Mr. Know-It-All: When Someone Melts Down In Public, Can I Record It? (Please?)
  27. Mental health and the media: when privacy trumps getting the story: At what point, when the initial story is over, do news outlets and social media need to continue to stalk, hound and dig for every tiny detail?
  28. Those Free Stingray-Detector Apps? Yeah, Spies Could Outsmart Them
  29. Former NSA Official Argues The Real Problem With Undisclosed Exploits Is Careless End Users

Jon

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News of the Week; August 9, 2017

By Jon Festinger on August 11, 2017

GAMES

  1. Stephen K. Bannon once guided a global firm that made millions helping gamers cheat
  2. EA and Take-Two say Trump administration is harming the games industry: “There is a constant shortage of qualified, high-skilled labour within our industry”
  3. EA’s upcoming NBA Live will mark the video game debut of the WNBA
  4. Alleged misuse of children’s data lands Subway Surfers studio in court: New York and California lawsuits filed against Sybo and Kiloo
  5. Worldwide interactive media market tops $100 billion – Superdata: Research firm says global spend on games, eSports, game-related video content and VR/AR will be $104.6 billion this year, $168.8 billion by 2020
  6. eSports Could Be A Part Of The 2024 Olympics
  7. There’s a chance eSports could make an appearance at the 2024 Olympic Games
  8. Esports – one step closer to Olympic medal status? 
  9. Esports platform Smash.gg raises $11m: Spark Capital, Accel and Horizon Ventures backs pro gaming venture
  10. How Rocket League is looking to shape the future of esports: Psyonix details its ambitious efforts to turn its car football game into a mainstream sport
  11. New ban system implemented as Rocket League surpasses 34m players: Abusive language and racial slurs will result in automatic ban, Psyonix asks players to report, mute and leave the rest to them
  12. It’s Dota 2 time: Y‘all should watch The International: The greatest tournament of all time for the greatest game of all time.
  13. The International 2017 starts with $24 million prize pool: Dota 2 tournament prize money is 16% up over last year, fourth consecutive year of setting a new record for esports
  14. Valve announces Artifact, a Dota-themed digital card game: Lay cards in three lanes (or however exactly the game works) sometime in 2018.
  15. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds peak player count surpasses all non-Valve titles – Update: PUBG hits 500k concurrent users, behind only Dota 2 at the time the figure was recorded
  16. Titanfall 2 didn’t sell as well as it should have – Zampella: Despite that, Respawn CEO says studio is heavily invested in the franchise and has more on the way
  17. Rainbow Six Siege reaches 20m players, 2.3m DAUs: Ubisoft’s plan to “make a shooter that is here to stay” achieved through post-launch support
  18. With AI research in mind, Blizzard and DeepMind release StarCraft II API
  19. Digital sales dominate Activision Blizzard’s better-than-expected earnings
  20. Activision Blizzard posts gains for second quarter: Console sales dip despite strong launch for Crash Bandicoot collection; revenue from retail channels recedes
  21. Mobile revenue swing helps NCsoft offset tumbling profits
  22. Rising digital sales offsets physical decline at Square Enix
  23. Google’s AI Declares Galactic War On Starcraft
  24. Consumer scepticism drives Kickstarter decline: Videogames’ complex nature makes them perhaps the worst possible medium for crowdfunding – and consumers seem to be catching on
  25. Bandai Namco sees game revenue fall by 28%
  26. Over 200 games launched on Steam in the first week of August alone
  27. Steam attracts an average of 1.5M new customers a month
  28. Steam has attracted 27m new paying users in 18 months: Monthly active players now up to 67m, with daily average of 14m concurrent users
  29. The Nintendo Switch Is The Future Of Gadget Design
  30. Final Fantasy XV’s Multiplayer Has A Ridiculously Detailed Character Creator
  31. Final Fantasy XIV surpasses 10 million lifetime players
  32. Final Fantasy VII Retrospective: Great Because It’s Weird
  33. Jeff Minter and Atari reconcile for Tempest revival: Tempest 4000 in the works, just two years after designer and publisher were in dispute
  34. Bungie’s 13-year battle with crunch culture: At Casual Connect USA, Bungie’s Luke Timmins detailed how Halo 2’s “brutal” crunch led to a new way of thinking about people management
  35. Q&A: CEO Guillemot on Ubisoft’s origins, China expansion
  36. Devs reflect on 8 years spent making an episodic game meant to take 12 months
  37. The rise and fall of Flash games — A postmortem
  38. Video game remasters are a win-win for publishers: With low costs and strong interest from players, it’s easy to see why the remastering trend is catching on
  39. Hinterland: “There’s something a little bit broken about our internet culture” – Raphael van Lierop talks about a low point in dealing with The Long Dark’s Early Access community, and why he won’t go to Reddit any more
  40. New study sheds light on how playing games literally shapes the brain

DIGITAL

  1. Voltage Picture’s Lawyer Sues Copyright Trolling Participants, Calls Lawsuits Unethical
  2. “Podcasting patent” is totally dead, appeals court rules: Federal Circuit stands by 2015 ruling that knocked out Personal Audio’s patent.
  3. Five Ways NAFTA Talks Can Level the Innovation Playing Field: After years of ceding to US demands for tough anti-piracy rules, it’s time for Canada to fight for its interests (Michael Geist)
  4. Canada Can Stand Its Ground on Copyright in NAFTA Renegotiations: It’s all about knowing when to say no (Howard Knopf)
  5. Appeals Court Agrees: Awful Patent Used To Shake Down Podcasters Is Invalid
  6. Section 230 Helps Yahoo Defeat Lawsuit Over Online Harassment Campaign–Hall v. Yahoo (Eric Goldman)
  7. Section 230 Helps VRBO Defeat Claim Over Fraudulent Listing – Hiam v. Homeaway (Eric Goldman)
  8. Sen. Portman Says SESTA Doesn’t Affect the Good Samaritan Defense. He’s Wrong (Eric Goldman)
  9. Judge Rules Kickass Torrents Founder Properly Charged With Criminal Copyright Conspiracy
  10. Kickass Torrents Creator Can’t Get Criminal Case Tossed Out
  11. Douez v. Facebook: Are courts finally tuning into the reality of consumer contracts?
  12. ‘Blatant Sales Pitch’ on LinkedIn Likely Violates Non-solicitation Clause–Mobile Mini v. Vevea
  13. Why Apple and other tech companies are fighting to keep devices hard to repair: A new report says the tech industry is using its outsized influence to combat environmental product standards
  14. How Apple Is Putting Voices In Users’ Heads – Literally
  15. Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?: More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.
  16. Turkish regime jails IT trainers in encryption clampdown: We discuss alarming move to target techies who help activists stay safe online.
  17. Facebook’s top global hires remain overwhelmingly white and male
  18. Inside The Partisan Fight For Your News Feed: How ideologues, opportunists, growth hackers, and internet marketers built a massive new universe of partisan news on the web and on Facebook.
  19. Facebook’s Latest Move to Fight Fake News Might Finally Be the Right One
  20. How Instagram Stories Have Changed Dating Forever
  21. Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech
  22. Google fires engineer who “crossed the line” with diversity memo: Google says the post “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.”
  23. Internal Messages Show Some Googlers Supported Fired Engineer’s Manifesto
  24. A Meme Shared on an Internal Google Meme Network Depicted a Leaker Being Beaten
  25. So, about this Googler’s manifesto.
  26. Memo to the Google memo writer: Women were foundational to the field of computing
  27. Susan Wojcicki Calls Google Anti-Diversity Memo A “Tragic” Display Of “Unfounded Bias”
  28. Segregated Valley: the ugly truth about Google and diversity in tech – Silicon Valley says it is committed to racial diversity in its workforce. But the numbers tell a different story
  29. How to End Google’s Monopoly
  30. Women Engineers On The Rampant Sexism Of Silicon Valley
  31. Elon Musk Once Fired His Assistant Of 12 Years For Wanting A Raise
  32. Inside the world of Silicon Valley’s ‘coasters’ — the millionaire engineers who get paid gobs of money and barely work
  33. After phishing attacks, Chrome extensions push adware to millions: Compromised accounts push fraudulent extension updates to unsuspecting users.
  34. The Mystery Of Nicole Mincey
  35. Microsoft Chatbot Trolls Shoppers For Online Sex
  36. London Mayor Urges YouTube To Remove Videos Espousing Gang Violence
  37. Google Preferred Advertisers Return To YouTube Months After ‘Adpocalypse’ (Study)
  38. New icons are YouTube’s latest way to alert creators of video demonetization: Plus, there’s now a quicker way to ask for a review of demonetized videos.
  39. YouTube Expands Appeals To Cover Videos That Lost Revenue After The Adpocalypse
  40. Native Video-Sharing And Chat Feature Rolls Out To YouTube App Globally
  41. Twitter Suspends Popehat For Writing About Violent Threats He Received From Another Twitter User
  42. Facebook, Twitter Consistently Fail At Distinguishing Abuse From Calling Out Abuse
  43. In Protest, Artist in Germany Re-Purposes Hate Speech From Twitter
  44. Exploring the Role of Algorithms in Online Harmful Speech
  45. Defendant who texted teen to commit suicide sentenced to 15 months in jail: Punishment stayed to allow appeals in a novel prosecution testing 1st Amendment.
  46. Facing libel lawsuit, Techdirt takes large donations to broaden coverage: Charles Koch Foundation and a charity from the Craigslist founder are among the donors.
  47. Psychiatrist Files Lawsuit Over Wordless One-Star Review
  48. China to Start Using Blockchain to Collect Taxes and Send Invoices
  49. Media scholar on Trump TV: “This is Orwellian, and it’s happening right now, right here” – The president has launched an online TV network. He’s calling it “real news.”
  50. Australian Public Servants Warned Against Liking Social Media Posts That Are Critical Of Government Policies
  51. Russia Wants Innovation, but It’s Arresting Its Innovators
  52. Stumbling “Blocks”: When Is Social Media Moderation a First Amendment Violation? 
  53. The Long, Hot Summer Of Netflix’s Ever-Accelerating Expansion
  54. Netflix Buys Comics Publisher Behind Kingsman, Kick-Ass
  55. Disney Will Cease Distribution Deal With Netflix To Launch Its Own Streaming Service
  56. Disney Pulls Content From Netflix As Users Face An Annoying, Confusing Rise In Streaming Exclusivity Silos
  57. Inside Patreon, The Economic Engine Of Internet Culture
  58. Game of Thrones Star Says She Got Acting Role Because She Has Millions of Social Media Followers
  59. HBO Hackers Release Ransom Note And New Trove Of Stolen Data
  60. Game of Thrones script for “Spoils of War” leaks after HBO hack: No spoilers: Leak contains GoT info, unaired episodes of other shows, and internal docs.
  61. Augmented Reality Apps Could Pollute The Skies With Advertising
  62. Risks of Artificial Intelligence
  63. AI and music: will we be slaves to the algorithm? – Tech firms have developed AI that can learn how to write music. So will machines soon be composing symphonies, hit singles and bespoke soundtracks?
  64. New administrative notice-and-takedown procedure in Greece
  65. Inception Raises $15 Million Series A Funding Led By EU Media Conglomerate RTL Group
  66. VR-based Treatment for Vision Disorders Shows Positive Results in Peer-reviewed Study
  67. Researchers Induce Artificial Movement Sensation in VR Using Four-Pole Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation: Creators believe system could be “easily adapted to conventional VR systems”
  68. CBS is launching a streaming sports channel this year: It’s headed to internet-only TV providers.
  69. Radio navigation set to make global return as GPS backup, because cyber: GPS killed the radio nav in 2010, but a high-def version is set to return
  70. Mozilla’s new file-transfer service isn’t perfect, but it’s drop-dead easy: For less high-stakes uses, Send offers reasonable security and privacy assurances.
  71. Uber’s search for a female CEO has been narrowed down to 3 men
  72. Uber’s ex-CEO: Given reason for alleged Waymo data heist is “dumb”: Kalanick also said that Levandowski “should say what happened” rather than clam up.
  73. How one hot sauce seller hauled Uber into small-claims court and won $4,000: A driver took off with Dane Wilcox’s laptop, and Uber refused to pay him back.
  74. Amazon Halts Blu Phone Sales Amid Spyware Concerns 
  75. SEC Warns That Digital Tokens May Be Securities
  76. An Oral History Of The DARPA Grand Challenge, The Grueling Robot Race That Launched The Self-Driving Car
  77. You’d Have To Click A Mouse 10 Million Times To Burn One Calorie
  78. From blockchain to drones, we need to stop obsessing about tech megatrends: If more men did the laundry, washing machines would be as hyped and alluring as drones
  79. The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time
  80. 1H 2017 Quick Links, Part 9: Justice System, Social Media, Miscellaneous (Eric Goldman)

CREATIVITY

  1. Canadian Government Puts Copyright Board Overhaul on Fast Track With Consultation Launching Tomorrow (Michael Geist)
  2. Why fears about ‘fair use’ copyright law are unfounded
  3. Canada’s intellectual property strategy must play to the country’s strengths
  4. Canadian Man Somehow Gets Trademark On His Own County’s Name, Govt. Says Legal Action Is The Only Remedy
  5. Post-Axanar, CBS unveils first official fan filmmaking initiative in Trek history: Star Trek Film Academy grants fan filmmakers access to training, New Voyages facilities.
  6. Judge Rules MGM Must Face Lawsuit Over James Bond Box Set Missing Two Bond Films
  7. Citing Free Speech, A.C.L.U. Sues Washington Metro Over Rejected Ads
  8. Monkey selfie animal rights brouhaha devolves into a settlement: Every conceivable joke has been made of this Planet of the Apes-styled litigation.
  9. Monkey Selfie Case May Settle: PETA Knows It’ll Lose, And The Photographer Is Broke
  10. “Thinking Out Loud” About Copyright Infringement (Again)
  11. Word on the street: McDonald’s has been accused of cultural appropriation, using without permission the work of street artists in an advertising campaign in Europe.
  12. Film Director’s Op-Ed Ignores Reality To Push Hollywood Lobbying Talking Points
  13. The Grinch that stole fair use? 
  14. Copyright Suit Requires Fair Use Analysis: A fair use analysis is required before a copyright suit against “appropriation artist” Richard Prince can be dismissed, a New York federal court judge decided this week, declining to grant a quick win.
  15. Commercial Photography in Public Parks–Is Police Presence Required?
  16. Commercial Brochure not Protected by Copyright in Spain
  17. Lookalike Case: Max Verstappen’s Management Unsuccessful for Now
  18. Peter and the Test Tube Babies singer refused entry to the USA for mocking Donald Tump
  19. How Hulk Hogan & Peter Thiel Almost Made Sure That The Story Of R. Kelly’s ‘Cult’ Stayed Unpublished
  20. How Peter Thiel’s Secretive Data Company Pushed Into Policing
  21. Jeff Sessions Suggests He’s Steering The DOJ Towards Prosecuting More Journalists
  22. Deputy Attorney General Walks Back Attorney General’s Threat To Journalists
  23. Professors as Targets of Internet Outrage: Death threats and protests as statements about race and politics go viral.
  24. North Carolina Passes An Entirely Misguided Restore Campus Free Speech Act
  25. Inside NFL Cheerleaders’ Legal Fight for Better Pay
  26. NY Mets Oppose Trademark For Medical Exam Tracking System (METS) Claiming Potential Customer Confusion
  27. Inside Trump’s Global Trademark Trove
  28. Former Professional Wrestler Sues Van Morrison for Using his Likeness without Authorization
  29. Billy Two Rivers, former pro wrestler, to settle lawsuit against Van Morrison: Settlement details are still being finalized, according to lawyer Michael Graif
  30. We’re in the early stages of a visual revolution in journalism: It’s more than a pivot to video — it’s an evolution of text.
  31. Peter Bart: Will Time Warner’s Creative Energy Survive AT&T Takeover?
  32. Is There A Right Way To Put Slavery Onscreen? 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Canadian Telcos Take Aim At Kodi Addon Site With Shocking Search: True Purpose to “Destroy Livelihood of the Defendant” (Michael Geist)
  2. Canadian Telcos Lose Their Minds Over TVAddons
  3. Canadian Telcos Want To Play Police In War On Piracy: They’ve already raided a Montreal man’s home.
  4. Secret court order that let telcos search a Montrealer’s home a growing trend
  5. The Diminishing Value of Simsub: CBS Streaming Service Coming to Canada Next Year (Michael Geist)
  6. CRTC and UK Agency to Fight Spam and Unwanted Telemarketing Calls
  7. Cable’s New Brilliant Idea: Charging You More Money To Skip Ads
  8. Charter has moved millions of customers to new – and often higher – pricing: Pricing changes accelerate as Charter tries to boost revenue per customer.
  9. Data cap analysis found almost 200 ISPs imposing data limits in the US: Examination of 2,500 home Internet providers finds sizable minority with caps.
  10. Journalist Sues FCC For Hiding Details About Its Alleged, Phantom DDOS Attack
  11. Ajit Pai’s anti-net neutrality plan gets the facts and law wrong, lawmakers say: FCC accused of prioritizing “raw dollars” over small businesses and consumers.
  12. Congress Gives The FCC An Earful On Its Despised Plan To Kill Net Neutrality
  13. As net neutrality dies, one man wants to make Verizon pay for its sins: Alex Nguyen filed the only formal net neutrality complaint, and he’s still waiting for an answer
  14. The Ghostly Radio Station That No One Claims To Run: “Mdzhb” Has Been Broadcasting Since 1982. No One Knows Why.
  15. These Lawmakers Are Speaking out Against the FCC’s Plan to Dismantle Net Neutrality
  16. The FCC is full again, with three Republicans and two Democrats: 3-2 Republican majority likely to overturn net neutrality rules.
  17. Maybe Americans don’t need fast home Internet service, FCC suggests: By saying mobile is good enough, FCC could find that deployment problem is solved.
  18. FCC Proposes $82 Million Fine for Illegally “Spoofed” Robocalls 
  19. FCC To Hold Hearing to Determine Whether to Deny License Renewal of Radio Station that was Silent for Most of its License Term 
  20. $17,500 Settlement by TV Broadcaster for Not Identifying Educational and Informational Children’s Programming – Reminder that the FCC is Still in the Enforcement Business 
  21. AT&T Lies Again, Insists Net Neutrality Rules Will Hurt First Responders
  22. Comcast Tries, Fails To Kill Lawsuit Over Its Hidden, Bogus Fees
  23. We analyzed 17 months of Fox & Friends transcripts. It’s far weirder than state-run media.: How the Fox morning show evolved into Donald Trump’s posse.
  24. Fox Exec Says She Won’t Make Excuses for Lack of Diversity, Proceeds to Make Tons of Excuses

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Salesforce fires red team staffers who gave Defcon talk: “As soon as they got off the stage, they were fired.”
  2. Body Cam Footage Of A Cop Planting Evidence Leads To Dozens Of Dismissed Cases
  3. House Oversight Head Still Concerned Surveillance He Approves Of Is Being Used Against His Party
  4. US Senators Unveil Their Attempt To Secure The Internet Of Very Broken Things
  5. Man used DDoS attacks on media to extort them to remove stories, FBI says: “If you do not remove it immediately, more severe attacks will hit your website.”
  6. Suspected sextortionist hiding behind Tor is outed by booby-trapped video: “Brian Kil” terrorized minors for years. Last month, a hack gave agents a big break.
  7. Convicted Fraudster Uses DDoS Attack To Clean Up Search Results, Fails Spectacularly
  8. Slayer of WCry worm charged with creating unrelated banking malware: Marcus Hutchins was hailed as a hero. Federal prosecutors say he was a criminal.
  9. Hacker Who Stopped Wannacry Charged With Writing Banking Malware
  10. The Indictment Against Malware Researcher Marcus Hutchines Is Really Weird
  11. Security researcher who neutralized WCry to be released on $30,000 bond: Prosecutors say Marcus Hutchins admitted he wrote alleged malware. Defense disagrees.
  12. WannaCry operator empties Bitcoin wallets connected to ransomware: Bot set up by Quartz reporter Keith Collins catches linked wallets being emptied.
  13. Researchers say WannaCry operator moved bitcoins to “untraceable” Monero: Wallets’ BTC exchanged for XMR, anonymous cryptocash favored by Shadowbrokers.
  14. Meet Alex, The Russian Casino Hacker Who Makes Millions Targeting Slot Machines
  15. Federal prosecutor struggles to describe stingray use in attempted murder case: Questions remain as to how Oakland cops, FBI used stingrays after a 2013 shooting.
  16. ACLU: Absent warrant standard, police could monitor anyone via location data – Opening brief filed in Carpenter, an important privacy case pending at Supreme Court.
  17. Protect The White Hat Hackers Who Are Just Doing Their Jobs
  18. Once Again With Feeling: ‘Anonymized’ Data Isn’t Really Anonymous
  19. The Attack On Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn
  20. FTC Asked to Investigate Google’s Matching of “Bricks to Clicks” 
  21. The FTC’s Latest Bid to Blacklist Telemarketers
  22. FTC must scrutinize Hotspot Shield over alleged traffic interception, group says: VPN service “can intercept and redirect HTTP requests to partner websites.”
  23. Complaint Filed Over Sketchy VPN Service
  24. FTC Schools “Smart” Toys with Updated COPPA Compliance Guidance 
  25. FTC Increases Focus on Smart Toys with COPPA Update
  26. FTC Regulation of Cybersecurity and Surveillance (Chris Jay Hoofnagle)

Jon

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News of the Week; August 2, 2017

By Jon Festinger on August 10, 2017

GAMES

  1. Rockstar sued by owners of Miss Cleo – Psychic Readers Network claims GTA: Vice City character voiced by Miss Cleo actress infringed on rights to TV psychic persona
  2. Pokemon Go Fest attendees sue Niantic: Class-action suit filed by fans seeking reimbursement of travel costs to disappointing Chicago event
  3. Pokemon Go Fest’s blunders result in class-action lawsuit: What could go wrong other than spotty Internet, huge lines, and a server meltdown?
  4. Pokemon Go Has Highest-Grossing Day Since Launch Thanks To Legendaries
  5. Court Blocks Wisconsin Augmented Reality Permit Law From Being Enforced
  6. Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You! Coming To Theaters In The West This November
  7. Valve Pulls Popular Sex Game From Steam; Developer Blames Complaints About ‘Pornography’
  8. House Party removed from Steam for “pornographic” content: One House Party storyline depicts a female character blackmailed using nude photos stolen from her camera
  9. Delisted from Steam, a dev asks: what counts as ‘pornographic’?: “They didn’t specify anything in particular or define what they consider pornographic. I explained to them that I don’t consider the game pornographic as it’s not intended to titillate, but rather is intended to be a humorous and quirky game..”
  10. Sexually explicit game returns to Steam after adding “censor” bars: House Party criticized for “literally training its users in predatory tactics.”
  11. Man Stabbed Seven Times Over Magic: The Gathering Argument
  12. Danganronpa V3 rejected by South Korean game rating board
  13. Psyonix looks to automate banning of foul-mouthed Rocket League players
  14. Women in Games launches new mobile awards show
  15. EA earnings on the rise as digital sales continue to eclipse physical
  16. Live services power EA to Q1 growth: Publisher beats expectations with $1.425 billion in revenue, namechecks Battlefield 1, EA Sports Ultimate Team, The Sims 4
  17. EA: Streaming plus subscription will be the great disruptor in gaming – “We do believe there’s going to be more change in the next five years than there has been in the last 45,” says Andrew Wilson
  18. EA confirms BioWare Montreal is merging with Motive
  19. EA merging BioWare Montreal with Motive: Combined team has over 100 new hires, will be working on Jade Raymond’s new IP
  20. EA CEO: We can and will do VR, but ‘AR is more interesting’: “People seem to have come to terms with the fact that VR….is going to take a couple of years, at least, to kind of get to a point where it is truly a mass-market consumer opportunity.”
  21. Take-Two’s CEO is more upbeat about AR than VR
  22. NBA 2K17, Mafia III and GTAdrive unexpectedly high earnings for Take-Two
  23. Grand Theft Auto Online continues to drive Take-Two: Online component of GTA V delivers best quarter yet as Zelnick says they never planned on it lasting this long; publisher posts solid results in first quarter of light release year
  24. HTC targets first standalone Vive headset at China: Qualcomm mobile tech will allow new VR device to be “accessible to the masses in China”
  25. Reddit users re-enable Alien: Isolation’s VR mode with unofficial patch: It’s a Rift-only alpha and lacks comfort features, but it works very, very well.
  26. Microsoft offers new ways to buy Surfaces, cheapo VR headsets, and more: There’s a new Xbox One controller USB wireless stick for PCs, too.
  27. Researchers Showcase Impressive New Bar for Real-time Digital Human Rendering in VR
  28. Is VR fulfilling its promise this time around?: On the fifth anniversary of the Rift Kickstarter campaign, early backers assess how it’s gone and where it’s going
  29. Kickstarter and Games – 2017 mid-year status update
  30. Western release considered for Assassin’s Creed: Blood Sail – China-targeted MMO may go international as it ramps up brand’s mobile assault
  31. After a lengthy losing streak, Zynga is profitable again
  32. Zynga’s turnaround in full effect with $5.1m profit in Q2: 90% of Zynga’s audience now comes from mobile, CEO Frank Gibeau stressed to us
  33. Injustice 2 top grossing console game of Q2: Time Warner touts NetherRealm Studios’ DC Comics-based fighter as the best performer from April to June, despite launching in mid-May
  34. Released after 6+ years, Epic’s Fortnite surpasses 500k sales in first day
  35. Friday the 13th “stumbles” to 1.8m sold: Despite massive technical hurdles and poor reviews, the game has been profitable, Gun Media’s Wes Keltner explains
  36. Rewarded video ads most effective monetisation for mobile firms: But in-app purchases still generate the most revenue, according to AdColony report
  37. Xbox One X Will Help Grow The Industry, Ubisoft CEO Says: And Assassin’s Creed: Origins is taking “really good advantage” of the console’s power.
  38. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds claims record for most peak players in a non-Valve game
  39. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds peak player count surpasses all non-Valve titles: Hugely popular Early Access title has outperformed all Steam titles except for Dota 2 and CS:GO
  40. Valve takes on the task of making Dota 2 a newcomer-friendly MOBA
  41. Take Two cancels plans to stop printing money via Grand Theft Auto Online: Take Two’s “better-than-expected” Q1 2018 driven primarily by paid GTA Online DLC.
  42. Grand Theft Auto V’s endless success is the story of an era: Still topping charts four years after launch, GTAV is unprecedented – perhaps the first game to ever enter the public consciousness in this way
  43. How Ubisoft convinced Nintendo to give Mario a gun
  44. Super Mario Odyssey Is The First Mainline Mario Game Rated Higher Than E
  45. Nintendo Switch annual forecast bumped up to 12m by Wedbush: Analyst Michael Pachter says Nintendo may be stockpiling “excess” units in preparation for the holiday season
  46. Capcom ramps up Nintendo Switch production following Street Fighter success
  47. Super NES Classic pre-orders start later this month: Nintendo promises “significant amount” of consoles through end of the year.
  48. Tencent acquires 9% stake in Elite Dangerous dev for $23.1M
  49. PlayStation Plus prices on the rise in Europe and Australia
  50. Was PS3 hard to develop for?: 10 Years Ago This Month: Sony’s sales pitch as the powerful system took a hit when EA had to explain why Madden 08 on PS3 was noticeably worse than the Xbox 360 version
  51. PlayStation income drops 60% in Q1 but sales rise
  52. PS4 shipments hit 63.3m
  53. Sales up by 5.4 percent in Sony’s games division
  54. Why The New York Mets Are All In On Esports
  55. Disney Eyes Entry Into Esports In Orlando
  56. Live eSports matches join BBC programming lineup
  57. BBC Three to show major e-sports tournament
  58. Philippines government pledges support for esports: “It cannot be denied that esports requires tremendous amounts of skill and training”
  59. Smash.gg raises $11M for eSports event platform
  60. Women make up over half of players for mobile MOBA Honour of Kings
  61. UK women to spend over £1bn on video games – Barclays
  62. 3+ years in, Final Fantasy Tactics designer’s crowdfunded RPG changes devs
  63. Playdek abandons troubled Kickstarter title Unsung Story: Rights passed to Little Orbit three years after studio raised $660,000 via crowdfunding
  64. Video games declining on Kickstarter – ICO: Number of projects down, but funding stable; meanwhile tabletop games are enjoying “crazy growth,” says ICO Partners
  65. Neil Degrasse Tyson Wants You To Explore Deep Space—In A Video Game
  66. I Tested Two Retro Consoles―One Good, One Hot Garbage
  67. Nvidia and Remedy use neural networks for eerily good facial animation: The neural network just needs a few minutes of video, or even just an audio clip.
  68. The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast: Beating the bootlegs – Harbottle & Lewis’ Kostya Lobov offers advice on how to protect your rights as a developer – and avoid infringing on the rights of others
  69. Game Development in Latin America – A Research
  70. Download me—Saying “yes” to the Web’s most dangerous search terms: Seeking “free games” and getting burned by illicit downloads is so 2008, right?

DIGITAL

  1. Online newspaper articles and libel do not toll notice and limitation periods
  2. Courts Keep Shredding Online Contract Formation Processes–McGhee v. NAB; Applebaum v. Lyft (Eric Goldman)
  3. Federal Court: Public Officials Cannot Block Social Media Users Because of Their Criticism
  4. Politicians’ social media pages can be 1st Amendment forums, judge says: Officials retain right to moderate comments to combat online trolls, judge says.
  5. Court Rules Temporary Ban Of Facebook Commenter By Gov’t Official Violates The First Amendment
  6. Politician Can’t Ban Constituent From Her Official Facebook Page–Davison v. Loudoun County Supervisors (Eric Goldman)
  7. Judge Tosses Vexatious Litigant Brett Kimberlin’s Lawsuit Against Conservative Blogger
  8. How an Ontario mom fended off a $120K libel lawsuit over her Facebook posts
  9. Stouffville woman awarded damages in SLAPP case
  10. Internet Censorship Bill Would Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation
  11. Going to California—Google Asks U.S. Court to Declare Supreme Court of Canada’s Global Injunction Unenforceable
  12. Google’s US Challenge To The Canadian Global Delisting Order
  13. Google Asks US Court To Block Terrible Canadian Supreme Court Ruling On Global Censorship
  14. What Google’s New Autoplay Experiment Means For The Future Of Search
  15. U.S. Court Declares GPL Is A Contract (Andres Guadamuz)
  16. France: 13 million in damages awarded for linking to downloadable copyright works
  17. LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission – A legal scholar calls LinkedIn’s position “hugely problematic.”
  18. New Web tool tracks Russian “influence ops” on Twitter: Hamilton 68 tracks Russian state news and Twitter trolls, shows propaganda trends.
  19. What They’ve Said About Russian Election Interference
  20. Russia Has Banned VPNs
  21. Putin bans VPNs to stop Russians accessing prohibited websites
  22. Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object: Iranian Resilience in a Censored Society
  23. How May 35th Freedoms Have Blossomed With China’s Martian Language
  24. Meet Mia Ash, The Fake Woman Iranian Hackers Used To Lure Victims
  25. Maybe the A.I. dystopia is already here
  26. Artificial Intelligence Develops Its Own Language
  27. The Internet Will Not Break: Denying Bad Samaritans Section 230 Immunity (Danielle Citron, Benjamin Wittes)
  28. Pointing at the Wrong Villain: Cass Sunstein and Echo Chambers
  29. Senate’s “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017”–and Section 230’s Imminent Evisceration (Eric Goldman)
  30. A ‘potentially deadly’ mushroom-identifying app highlights the dangers of bad AI: The app’s creator says it’s just a guide, but experts aren’t happy
  31. State attorneys general team up to scare you from “content theft sites”: PSA is titled “Be safe on the Internet to Protect Your Family.”
  32. Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
  33. Apple Removes All VPN Apps From Its Chinese App Store
  34. Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent
  35. Apple Caved To China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant
  36. Apple paid Nokia $2 billion to escape fight over old patents: It’s on the hook for more payments down the line, too
  37. Apple must pay $506M for infringing university’s patent: University of Wisconsin may collect $4.35 apiece for millions of iPads and iPhones.
  38. Apple can’t end lawsuit over “breaking” FaceTime on iPhone 4, judge rules: “FaceTime is a ‘feature’ of the iPhone and thus a component of the iPhone’s cost.”
  39. Company: Apple TV’s “what did she say” feature infringes our patent – Patent claims the concept of skipping back and enabling subtitles.
  40. Apple Sales Exceed Expectations as Buyers Wait for New iPhones
  41. A Super-Expensive iPhone Is Good News, Even If You Can’t Afford It
  42. After three years, iPad sales are up again for Apple
  43. Apple discontinues iPod Nano and Shuffle, updates iPod Touch models: Say goodbye to the tiny music makers of 2005.
  44. Goodbye iPod, And Thanks For All The Tunes
  45. Apple Glasses Are Inevitable
  46. Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors
  47. How An IOS Developer Just Uncovered The Next iPhone
  48. UK WiFi Company Uses Overlong TOS To Trick Hotspot Users Into Cleaning Toilets, Hugging Stray Cats
  49. Kim Dotcom set to receive seized funds, “4 containers full of seized property”: Megupload founder adds he plans to move his family to Queenstown, New Zealand.
  50. AG Wahl says that, at certain conditions, suppliers of luxury goods may prohibit retailers from selling on third-party online platforms
  51. How Threats Against Domain Names Are Used to Censor Content (EFF)
  52. Fact Checking Snopes On Its Own Claims Of Being ‘Held Hostage’ By ‘A Vendor’: Well, It’s Complicated
  53. Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says
  54. How Arby’s Dealt With Their Greatest Twitter Troll By Being Awesome; Also Sandwiches And Puppies
  55. Frank Ocean T-Shirt at Center of Debate Over Tweet Copyright: After singer’s Panorama Fest tee goes viral, creator of shirt and teen who first tweeted the quote wrestle over compensation and credit
  56. This U.S. Company Is Offering to Put Microchips in Their Employees
  57. A New Way for Therapists to Get Inside Heads: Virtual Reality
  58. Models of Consciousness Transformation & Unlocking Latent Human Potentials with VR
  59. No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program That Was Getting Dangerously Smart
  60. Science Says 13 Reasons Why may Be The Public Health Scare People Thought
  61. Sex History Educational Site Wants To Know If It’s Going To Be Bricked Up Behind UK’s Porn Wall
  62. We need to take a vacation from social media: Various platforms – and Facebook especially – are, weirdly, both a kind of diary and a public performance.
  63. Facebook’s Complicity in the Silencing of Black Women
  64. ‘It’s digital colonialism’: how Facebook’s free internet service has failed its users – Free Basics, built for developing markets, focuses on ‘western corporate content’ and violates net neutrality principles, researchers say
  65. Lionsgate Launches Spanish-Language Streaming Service ‘Pantaya’ For U.S. Viewers
  66. Reddit Has $1.8 Billion Valuation After Chat-Room Site Banks $200 Million in Funding
  67. Reddit Raised $200 Million And Is Redesigning to Look More Like Facebook
  68. Spotify Surpasses 60 Million Subscribers
  69. Twitter Finds Meaning (and Madness) Under Donald Trump: The social platform was in bad shape last year, but it found an unlikely support system in an antihero
  70. Trump’s Radical Immigration Crackdown Won’t Help Tech
  71. A Gop Staffer Crowdsourced A Resolution From A Conspiracy Subreddit
  72. Bitcoin Exchange and Operator Charged With Money Laundering
  73. Feds say they caught a key figure in the massive Mt. Gox Bitcoin hack: Feds say a Russian man laundered criminal proceeds through the BTC-e exchange.
  74. Why the Bitcoin network just split in half and why it matters
  75. Bitcoin Is Splitting In Two. Now What?
  76. Here’s What CEOs Around the World Are Saying About the Bitcoin Fork
  77. Is the Party Over? SEC Concludes Cryptocurrency Offering Required Registration
  78. PewDiePie, YouTube’s biggest star, is leaning into his new, far-right following
  79. Here’s Why It Looks Like PewDiePie Has Lost 90% Of His Income: An annual report from his company suggests Pewdiepie’s income has dropped dramatically.
  80. NCAA Rules Football-Playing YouTuber Ineligible Due To Ad Revenue
  81. NCAA Strips UCF Kicker Of Eligibility After He Refuses To Stop Being An Athlete That Posts YouTube Videos
  82. UCF kicker ruled ineligible, loses scholarship after monetizing YouTube videos: Athletes can make YouTube videos, but they can’t make money off sports videos.
  83. Singing With Saquon? Current Stars Should Take NCAA at Its Word and Cash in Now on YouTube
  84. Amazon To Self-Distribute First Film In Theaters, Woody Allen’s ‘Wonder Wheel’
  85. Move Over, Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos Gets a Turn as World’s Richest Person.
  86. Streisand Effect Helps Sci-Hub To Acquire Almost All Scholarly Literature, Dooms Traditional Academic Publishing
  87. Jewish woman sues Andrew Anglin over ‘troll storm’: Suit against Daily Stormer’s neo-Nazi blogger raises questions about free speech and online harassment.
  88. YouTube Will Place Flagged “Supremacist” Videos That Don’t Violate Its Guidelines In A “Limited State”
  89. Following 10-Market Expansion, YouTube TV App Clocks 2 Million Downloads
  90. ‘Offline-First’ YouTube Go App To Launch In Nigeria
  91. YouTube Kids Lands “Eight-Figure” Upfront Commitment From Toy Brand Mattel
  92. Ars picks the top YouTube video of all time: We top off our look at the 10th anniversary of YouTube with the best video ever.
  93. YouTube Unveils First Country-Specific ‘Spotlight’ Channel In Canada
  94. YouTube throws more support behind Canadian creators with spotlight channel
  95. ViaSport, Microsoft Canada Team Up On Tech For More Inclusive Sports
  96. Redfin set out to disrupt real estate—it was harder than it looked: CEO once called real estate “by far the most screwed up industry in America.”
  97. America’s Competitors Angle for Silicon Valley’s Business
  98. Deceptive Online Marketing Practices: Intermediaries, what is your legal exposure?
  99. The complete history of the IBM PC, part one: The deal of the century: Bill Gates, mysterious deaths, and the business machine that sparked a home revolution.
  100. The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes: The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS.

CREATIVITY

  1. York University to appeal recent copyright decision
  2. Why Fair Dealing is Not Destroying Canadian Publishing (Michael Geist)
  3. When life gives you Lemonade: court preserves copyright complaint against Beyoncé (Rebecca Tushnet)
  4. Photographer’s Copyright Suit Gets Mixed Results:  A New York federal court judge handed a photographer a mixed result when it dismissed her copyright infringement claim but allowed her Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allegations to move forward in a dispute that began on Instagram.
  5. Premier League scores second ‘live’ blocking injunction 
  6. Cabin Fever: Is Reconstructing a Work to Preserve It Copyright Infringement?
  7. When can publishing newspaper articles amount to harassment?: The High Court has struck out part of a harassment claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail Online. Unless the Judge’s order is successfully appealed, the remaining harassment claim will proceed to trial.
  8. Cigar City Brewing Sues Cigar City Salsa Over Trademark Despite Being In Different Marketplaces
  9. E And J Gallo Sends Cease And Desist Trademark Notice To E And B Beer
  10. Would You Confuse ‘Pierogi Fest’ With ‘Edwardsville Pierogi Festival’? Neither Would We
  11. Titleist Tees Up Lawsuit Against Parody Clothier Because Golf Doesn’t Have A Sense Of Humor
  12. Michelin Bursts Continental’s Trade Mark Application
  13. Seen around town(s), TM and right of publicity issues (Rebecca Tushnet)
  14. Copyright. Act of State Doctrine. Fifth Circuit holds that the act of state doctrine does not forbid U.S. courts from considering the applicability of copyright’s first sale doctrine to foreign-made copies when the foreign copier was a government agency
  15. EU’s draconian new copyright law puts an expiration date on startups
  16. NAFTA and a made-in-Canada IP framework
  17. Regulating the Internet of Toys 
  18. Copyright Licences for Television and Film Content in Hotels
  19. Sony Pictures TV Networks to Acquire Funimation, Valuing Anime Distributor at $150 Million
  20. The ACLU filed a comical brief in defense of free speech and John Oliver’s satire
  21. Marshall County Coal Company v. John Oliver (Amicus Curiae Brief of ACLU to U.S. Dist. Ct., Northern District of West Virginia)
  22. 1H 2017 Quick Links, Part 5 – Advertising, Contracts (Eric Goldman)
  23. 1H 2017 Quick Links, Part 6 – Defamation, Section 230, Consumer Reviews (Eric Goldman)
  24. 1H 2017 Quick Links Part 7 – Fake News, RTBF, Censorship, Extremist Content (Eric Goldman)
  25. Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development: A Better Set of Approaches For The 21st Century. (Dean Baker, Arjun Jayadev and Joseph Stiglitz)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Inconsistent Arguments and Questionable Claims: Bell Launches Yet Another Action Over CRTC’s Super Bowl Simsub Ruling (Michael Geist)
  2. TVAddons Returns, But in Ugly War With Canadian Telcos Over Kodi Addons
  3. Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna – Cord-cutters accustomed to watching shows online are often shocked that $20 ‘rabbit ears’ pluck signals from the air; is this legal?
  4. Republicans try to take cheap phones and broadband away from poor people: $9.25 monthly subsidy for mobile service would be eliminated by Republican bill.
  5. Sprint seeks merger with Charter to create wireless and cable giant: Comcast could have veto power over deal because of agreement with Charter.
  6. Sprint still seeks merger partner after being rejected by Charter: Sprint wanted to merge with Charter—or T-Mobile.
  7. Comcast fails to get hidden fee class-action suit thrown out of court: Comcast claims it can tack on Broadcast and Sports fees after order is submitted.
  8. FCC Extends TCPA Liability to Technology Platform Provider 
  9. FCC says its specific plan to stop DDoS attacks must remain secret: Revealing technical details would “undermine our system security,” FCC says.
  10. Over 190 Engineers & Tech Experts Tell The FCC It’s Dead Wrong On Net Neutrality
  11. The Worst Internet In America
  12. Fox v. Aereokiller: Another Nail in the Internet “Cable” Coffin
  13. West Virginia Tries To Improve Broadband Competition, Incumbent ISPs Immediately Sue
  14. Cable lobby claims US is totally overflowing in broadband competition: NCTA touts data based on outdated broadband speed benchmark of 3Mbps.
  15. What Does Net Neutrality Mean for the Future of Cryptocurrency?

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Privacy rights on the NAFTA agenda: Will the new NAFTA allow Canadian governments to ensure that private data collected from Canadians will not be stored outside this country?
  2. First Playpen FBI Spyware Warrant Hits The Appeals Court Level; Is Upheld On ‘Good Faith’
  3. Second body cam video of Baltimore cops manufacturing evidence discovered: Second video prompts another dropped case—bringing it to nearly three dozen so far.
  4. Police body cam footage of man tased in back prompts $110K settlement: However, police board said tasing was “reasonable, appropriate, and within policy.”
  5. Baltimore police commissioner orders cops not to stage body cam footage: Prosecutors dropping 41 cases, and more on the way, because of body cam scandal.
  6. Another Federal Court Says No Warrants Needed To Obtain Historic Cell Site Location Info
  7. Georgia To Roll Out Tens Of Thousands Of CCTV Cameras With Real-Time Facial Recognition Capabilities
  8. Viacom Faces Children’s Privacy Class Claims Over Gaming App
  9. Federal Court Holds Noodles & Co. Has No Independent Duty of Care to Card Issuers For Data Breach
  10. New Nevada Law Requires Notice for Online Collection and Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information
  11. Google’s new scheme to connect online to offline shopping scrutinized: “Consumers cannot easily avoid Google’s tracking of their in-store purchase behavior.”
  12. Australian Prosecutors Want To Make It Illegal To Refuse To Turn Over Passwords To Law Enforcement
  13. UK Home Secretary Doesn’t Want Backdoors; She Just Wants Companies To Stop Offering Encryption Because No One Wants It
  14. Privacy Isn’t Dead. It’s More Popular Than Ever
  15. How A Bug In An Obscure Chip Exposed A Billion Smartphones To Hackers
  16. Broadcom chip bug opened 1 billion phones to a Wi-Fi-hopping worm attack: Wi-Fi chips used in iPhones and Android may revive worm attacks of old.
  17. Your Own Pacemaker Can Now Testify Against You In Court
  18. Stealthy Google Play apps recorded calls and stole e-mails and texts: Company expels 20 advanced surveillance apps installed on ~100 devices.
  19. When sextortion suspect refused to unlock her iPhone, the FBI stepped in
  20. Released Documents Show More Section 702 Violations By The NSA
  21. Someone Hacked Into HBO and Is Now Releasing Game of Thrones Info
  22. Hackers Threaten ‘Game of Thrones,’ as HBO Confirms Cyberattack
  23. Hack Brief: HBO Shows And A Game Of Thrones Script Land Online
  24. HBO confirms hack that reportedly included script to upcoming GoT episode: Video for episodes of Ballers and Room 104 also reportedly stolen.
  25. How Netflix DDOS’d Itself To Help Protect The Entire Internet
  26. Hackers descend on Las Vegas to expose voting machine flaws
  27. Every Voting Machine at This Hacking Conference Got Totally Pwned
  28. “E-mail prankster” phishes White House officials; hilarity ensues: Tom Bossert gave up personal e-mail in response to fake Kushner dinner invite.
  29. Privacy warnings spell trouble for millions of low-cost Android phone owners: Blu says the data its phones collect is standard. Experts disagree.
  30. Using a fitness app taught me the scary truth about why privacy settings are a feminist issue
  31. How a hacked Amazon Echo could secretly capture your most intimate moments: Hack isn’t simple and doesn’t work on all devices, but it’s definitely doable.
  32. How a podcaster managed to confront his tech support scammer, in person: “Alex, we have seen that your IP address has been compromised.”

Jon

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