Posts

Legal Contradictions Manifest in Video Game Worlds: Copyright through the Post-Structuralist Looking Glass

In the spring I was invited by my colleague Gaetano Dimita (http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/staff/dimita.html) of The School of Law, Queen Mary University of London to participate in the second edition of an academic conference he organizes called “More Than Just A Game: Interactive Entertainment & Intellectual Property Law”. The conference, which took place on April 8, 2016 was a great success, and I presented on “Legal Contradictions in Video Game Worlds: Copyright through the Post-Structuralist Looking Glass.” My core message was that video game mods should be presumptively legal. I explored the reasons why and suggested some possible mechanisms to, in the words of Captain Picard, make it so.

In preparation for my London adventure I was privileged to present a draft iteration at a Faculty Seminar at the Allard School of Law, UBC on March 16, 2016. Thanks to Natasha Affolder and Janine Benedet for the invitation, and Joe Weiler for moderating. Thanks as well as to everyone who came, asked questions and helped me “sharpen the saw” through their questions.

There was no video of the QMUL conference while the Allard Faculty Seminar was recorded and edited thanks to Dan Silverman. As a result, below you will find the slides from the final presentation in London, video from Vancouver, and some bonus memorabilia from both.

screen-shot-2016-10-02-at-11-28-29-pm

screen-shot-2016-10-02-at-11-26-10-pm

 

screen-shot-2016-10-03-at-12-15-02-amcfiovzgwwaakikiimg_0033

jon

News of the Week; September 28, 2016

GAMES

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

DIGITAL

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

CREATIVITY

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

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

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

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

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

jon

News of the Week; September 21, 2016

GAMES

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

DIGITAL

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

CREATIVITY

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

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

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

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

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

jon

News of the Week; September 14, 2016

GAMES

  1. Plumb disappointing: 9th Circuit reinstates 2D-to-3D copyright claim: Direct Technologies, LLC v. Electronic Arts, Inc., Nos. 14-56266/14-56745 (9th Cir. Sept. 6, 2016) (Rebecca Tushnet)
  2. Sony nixes mod support on PS4: Bethesda says platform holder “will not approve user mods the way they should work” for Skyrim or Fallout 4
  3. Bethesda Blames Sony as PS4’s Fallout 4, Skyrim Mods Put on Hold: Bethesda points its finger at Sony.
  4. Fallout 4 mods won’t come to PS4, Bethesda blames Sony: Says same limitation will also come to upcoming Skyrim Special Edition release.
  5. Sega Takes Potshots At DMCA-Happy Nintendo While Being Cool About Fan Games
  6. PS4 Pro: “This could be the final nail in the coffin for Xbox One” – analyst
  7. Andrew House: PS4’s main competitor isn’t the Xbox, it’s the PC
  8. ‘Hide It Hillary’ mobile app game banned by Apple; titles like ‘Punch Trump’ approved
  9. Trump’s Campaign CEO’s Little Known World of Warcraft Career
  10. Nintendo DMCAs Fan-Game ‘No Mario’s Sky’, Devs Rename It ‘DMCA Sky’
  11. Modders updated Tecmo Super Bowl with current NFL rosters and it’s amazing
  12. Seven major NA esports orgs band together to create owner-operated CS:GO league
  13. PEA is a new team-owned eSports league with an emphasis on profit-sharing
  14. ESL draws Staples Center owner deeper into eSports with a new alliance
  15. F2P Economics: Inflation and the Perpetual Revenue Machine
  16. IGDA survey underscores industry’s racial, gender disparities: Only 3% of non-white developers hold senior management roles, and only 3% of women earn more than $150,000
  17. Pay gap looms large in IGDA diversity report
  18. Mobile Games Surge – Mobile Devices Now Most Popular Gaming Platform In Canada
  19. Report: Pokemon Go still #1 App Store earner despite 79% drop in paying players
  20. Pokémon Go update blocks jailbroken devices; workaround already found
  21. There is a formula to Pokemon Go’s Success, but it’s not AR
  22. Pokemon Go The Latest Tool For Russian Government To Silence Speakers It Doesn’t Like
  23. Battlefield 1 – When a game could change the perception of history
  24. Assassin’s Creed series has sold over 100M copies
  25. League of Legends pulling in over 100M monthly active users
  26. Mario’s team-up with Apple sends Nintendo stock soaring
  27. Bandai Namco targets Eastern growth with new Malaysia studio
  28. EA forms new division to house Bioware, Maxis, and more
  29. Lohan v. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and Gravano v. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.
  30. Steam alters review system, irritates indies: Storefront only allows copies it sold to be used in aggregate review score, hiding opinions of scammers, crowdfunding backers, bundle purchasers, and more
  31. Valve tackles dodgy devs cheating Steam review scores: Now only players who bought games directly through Steam will affect review scores.
  32. Devs caught in the crossfire as Valve clamps down on Steam key abuse
  33. Inside Eve: Online’s propaganda machine—from Photoshop to DDoS: As the virtual war intensifies, so too do attacks on players in the real world.
  34. Oculus just bagged an Emmy for its animated VR short Henry
  35. The Past, Present And Future Of League Of Legends Studio Riot Games: The story of Riot Games is a list of things that shouldn’t have been possible.

DIGITAL

  1. University of Manitoba students receive ‘extortion’ letters over illegal downloads: School is fighting back, advising students they have the option to not respond
  2. Facebook’s Arbitrary Censors Strike Again; Ban Norwegian Newspaper From Posting Iconic Vietnam War Photo
  3. Censorship row: Facebook reinstates iconic “napalm girl” photo: Zuckerberg bends to pressure after Norway PM’s Facebook post is removed.
  4. Another Day, Another Problem With Facebook’s Random Decisions To Block Content
  5. Google Highlights DMCA Abuse in New Copyright Transparency Report
  6. Playboy wins copyright battle over web links to its images
  7. Another Day, Another Anomaly: Paramount Issues DMCA Takedown On Ubuntu Linux Torrent
  8. EU’s digital market rules land vowing free Wi-Fi, 5G tech, and copyright overhaul: 100Mbps broadband, fully deployed 5G, no more bottlenecks—Juncker hits the sweet notes.
  9. New EU rules promise 100Mbps broadband and free Wi-Fi for all: Controversial copyright reform package also unveiled along with new “YouTube rule.”
  10. EU Announces Absolutely Ridiculous Copyright Proposal That Will Chill Innovation, Harm Creativity
  11. EU copyright plans a big win for old media, but public concerns ignored – Op-ed: Even more copyright for publishers, but no freedom of panorama exception for you.
  12. Terrible Ruling: EU Decides That Mere Links Can Be Direct Infringement
  13. European Court Declares That Linking Can Infringe Copyright
  14. European Copyright Ruling Ushers in New Dark Era for Hyperlinks (EFF)
  15. This law made the internet—and now people are fighting to tear it down
  16. Avvo Wins First Amendment Fight, As Judge Compares It To Sports Illustrated
  17. Should Ballot Selfies Be Legal During Election 2016?
  18. Ninth Circuit Criticizes Attempts To Plead Around Section 230–Kimzey v. Yelp (Eric Goldman)
  19. Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition
  20. Don’t use your Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on flights, US watchdog warns passengers: As Samsung issues an unprecedented recall of 2.5M phones, regulators take action.
  21. Construction worker sues Samsung after suffering burns from exploding phone: Man says he heard a “high-pitched whistling” before his Galaxy S7 Edge burned up.
  22. How to tell an explosive Galaxy Note 7 from a non-explosive one
  23. Won’t turn in your Note 7? Samsung will gimp your battery: Recall-averse Note 7 customers will have their batteries nuked via software update.
  24. Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM (EFF)
  25. Virtual Currencies: Court Rules that Selling Bitcoin Is Not Money Transmitting and Selling Bitcoin to Criminals Is Not a Crime
  26. New age advertorials: Best practices in native advertising
  27. Pewdiepie: “Youtube Doesn’t Care About Its Creators” – PewDiePie slams YouTube following the recent monetization controversy.
  28. On social anxiety in the age of social media
  29. Chess World Championships to Broadcast Live in 360 Video
  30. The Next Internet Is Gigabit Internet: While the speedy service has been around for a while, its high cost has placed it almost exclusively in the hands of big business and the wealthy technology elite. That’s about to change.
  31. Brain-sensing technology allows typing at 12 words per minute: Technology for reading signals directly from the brain developed by Stanford Bio-X scientists could provide a way for people with movement disorders to communicate.
  32. Ex-Apple engineer applies for Genius Bar job, never hears back, blames ageism: JK Scheinberg convinced Steve Jobs to switch to Intel, but Genius Bar didn’t want him.
  33. Snapchat Ad Revenue to Reach $1 Billion in 2017
  34. Gawker Media’s messy resurrection
  35. A Very Long Conversation With Univision’s Isaac Lee About Deleting Posts
  36. Deadspin Mocks New Owner Univision By Cleverly Reposting Deleted Mitch Williams Story As New Story About The Lawsuit
  37. Gab, the Alt-Right’s Very Own Twitter, Is The Ultimate Filter Bubble
  38. New York’s Wi-Fi hubs will shut down tablet web access after complaints of homeless users: ‘The kiosks were never intended for anyone’s extended, personal use’
  39. Oculus just bagged an Emmy for its animated VR short Henry
  40. Thoughts on the Third Circuit’s decryption and self-incrimination oral argument (Orin Kerr)
  41. The Evolution of Authorship: Work Made by Code (Annemarie Bridy)
  42. The Danger of Smart Communication Technology (Evan Selinger & Brett Frischmann)
  43. Artificial Intelligence and Life In 2030
  44. The Internet Should Be a Public Good: The Internet was built by public institutions — so why is it controlled by private corporations?

CREATIVITY

  1. “Kurt The Cyberguy Loses Publicity Rights Claims Against TV Station–Cyberguy v. KTLA
  2. Judge Rakoff, with Nod to Taylor Swift, Dismisses Copyright Claims Against Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”
  3. Court Says Too Bad to Bad Online Reviews 
  4. ‘No Artistic Merit’: Expert Witness Ends Belarus Photographer’s Copyright Battle
  5. The Copyright Office Acts As Hollywood’s Lobbying Arm… Because That’s Basically How It’s Been Designed
  6. Getty Images says photographer suing it for $1 billion gave up her right to complain
  7. Louis Vuitton — the big IP player that keeps on giving
  8. On Hip-Hop’s Intersection Of Colorism And Misogyny
  9. IPRexit. Intellectual Property after the EU Referendum (Guido Noto La Diega)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. No Netflix Tax & No New Money: Reading Between the Lines of the Digital CanCon Consultation (Michael Geist)
  2. Same As It Ever Was: The Gap Between Public and “Stakeholder” Views on Canadian Content (Michael Geist)
  3. CRTC tries to get TV providers to play nice over ‘skinny TV’ packages
  4. FCC changes cable box rules to please industry, gets blowback anyway: Cable companies must build apps so customers don’t have to rent set-top boxes.
  5. FCC Unveils New Apps-Based Approach in Set-Top Box Proceeding
  6. Comcast Already Whining About New FCC Cable Box Plan, Despite It Being The Cable Industry’s Idea
  7. After Massive Cable Industry Lobbying And Disinformation Effort, The FCC Is Forced To Weaken Its Cable Box Reform Plan
  8. MPAA Freaks Out In Response To FCC’s Revised Set Top Box Plan
  9. Comcast to FCC: Your set-top box plan is illegal: Comcast also claims requirement to build apps “would stop the apps revolution.”
  10. Netflix Urges FCC To Crack Down On Broadband Usage Caps
  11. Netflix asks FCC to declare data caps “unreasonable”: FCC should use broadband deployment power to discourage data caps, Netflix says.
  12. Verizon exempts its own NFL video app from mobile data caps
  13. The Supreme Court of Canada Renders a Long Awaited Ruling regarding the Power to Situate Radiocommunication Antenna Systems
  14. AT&T changes mind about denying discounted service to poor people: AT&T pressured into honoring discounted Internet requirement throughout network.
  15. Gretchen Carlson’s settlement with Fox News shows the ‘Mad Men’ days are waning
  16. Ohio University to remove name of ‘Roger E. Ailes Newsroom’ at WOUB
  17. Cuba’s Telecom Monopoly Banning Text Messages Containing Words Like ‘Democracy’

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Worldwide privacy class action against Facebook heads to EU’s highest court: After nuking Safe Harbour, Schrems may send yet more shock waves through online world.
  2. The “plain hearing” doctrine now dictates when cops must hang up on wiretaps: US appeals court decides “novel question” of electronic surveillance law.
  3. When an app tells companies you’re pregnant but not that you miscarried
  4. EU-Canada passenger data deal infringes privacy: EU adviser
  5. EU-Canada passenger data sharing deal could be illegal under European law: If CJEU agrees with advocate general’s opinion, impact will be huge for other PNR deals.
  6. Google Maps will finally show how much you’re speeding: Users report a speed limit sign is showing up in the bottom corner of Google Maps.
  7. Broadcasters warned against using children’s photographs from social media sites: Australian media regulator updates privacy guidelines and tells networks to tread cautiously even if parents have posted the images
  8. Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed
  9. Government use of surveillance devices must be restricted: privacy experts
  10. 6.6 million plaintext passwords exposed as site gets hacked to the bone: Next time a site wants your personal info, remember the ClixSense debacle.
  11. US athletes’ doping tests published by Russian hackers, agency says: Leak shows athletes tested positive for controlled drugs, but had exemptions.
  12. Cyber criminals recognize security weakness at LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter 
  13. Chrome is stepping up its war on the unencrypted web
  14. Colin Powell’s Email To Clinton About Personal Devices Shows Routing Around FOIA Is Business As Usual
  15. ACLU Launching Campaign To Have President Obama Pardon Snowden
  16. Snowden to President Obama: I deserve a pardon: “Things that may seem unlawful on a page… these were vital things.”
  17. Carl Malamud has Standards: For 25 years this man has been fighting to make public information public. Now he’s being sued for it.

jon

News of the Week; September 7, 2016

GAMES

  1. Lindsay Lohan Loses ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Lawsuit
  2. Lindsay Lohan sets lawyers on Grand Theft Auto 5 – Update: Judge dismisses Lohan’s case
  3. Sorry Lindsay Lohan, Grand Theft Auto Vis satirizing you, court rules: Satirical representation is protected under the Constitution, court says.
  4. Lindsay Lohan’s Grand Theft Auto lawsuit rules in Rockstar’s favour: Court considers GTA5 “a work of fiction and satire”.
  5. 500+ fan games on Game Jolt targeted by Nintendo DMCA takedown
  6. Nintendo cracks down on fan-made games: DMCA takedown notice prompts closure of more than 500 projects on GameJolt
  7. Nintendo’s DMCA-backed quest against online fan games: Takedown requests for 500 titles part of a new crackdown on IP infringement.
  8. Miyamoto: Mario is coming to mobile because that’s where people play games
  9. Sony nixes mod support on PS4: Bethesda says platform holder “will not approve user mods the way they should work” for Skyrim or Fallout 4
  10. Sony’s more powerful PS4 ‘Neo’ to debut in November as $400 PS4 Pro
  11. PS4 Pro: “This could be the final nail in the coffin for Xbox One” – analyst
  12. British Telecom is taking Valve to court over patent infringement
  13. How Licensing Laws are Threatening Your Video Games
  14. Steam Spy and the specter of game sales transparency
  15. Take-Two getting into VR: Despite previous skepticism of new tech, publisher plans to launch Carnival Games VR this year
  16. Survey: Over 20% of VR/AR devs are working on platform exclusives
  17. VR: Not all legal plain sailing ahead – Harbottle & Lewis explores the potential product liability and data protection issues that might emerge with the rise of virtual reality
  18. Oculus Warns Users Not to Use Note 7 in Gear VR Headset Amid Exploding Phone Recall
  19. Pokemon Go surpasses 500M downloads as it heads to Apple Watch
  20. Pokémon Go church stunt could mean hefty jail term for Russian blogger: 22-year-old accused of “insulting religious sensitivities,” faces five years behind bars.
  21. Second Pokémon Go Alliance Announced: SoftBank 
  22. Pokémon Go “a real game changer” for Sony’s mobile ambitions: CEO Kaz Hirai believes AR could “lift all boats” in the market for mobile games
  23. Pokémon, No! Practical Tips For Handling Latest Mobile Device Craze
  24. Perspective on knowledge: Pokémon GO is our future (David Weinberger)
  25. Eve Online Going Free-To-Play After 13 Years
  26. Video Games Allow Characters More Varied Sexual Identities
  27. Publisher BulkyPix is being liquidated, allegedly stiffing devs in the process
  28. Guillemot family to buy another 3.5% of Ubisoft: Purchase of a further 4 million shares will add protection against a possible Vivendi takeover
  29. Google Play opens up Early Access: Developers can now nominate their games to be included in early funding program
  30. Publishers for indies – are they useful anymore?
  31. Hey, Here’s an Idea: Maybe Stop Preordering Videogames
  32. What Is The Best Video Game Sport?
  33. Activision Blizzard hires Fox Sports exec as MLG CEO
  34. Counter-Strike’s second Eleague esports season kicks off on TBS and Twitch
  35. The once and future king of esports: He was one of the greatest esports stars of all time. And if you’re a a pro gamer, you’re living his legacy.
  36. Meet Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong, the Original Pro Gamer: World’s first ‘Quake’ champ was recently inducted into the esports Hall of Fame
  37. Ed Smith And The Imagination Machine: The Untold Story Of A Black Video Game Pioneer – At APF in the 1970s, as the second-known African-American video game engineer, he helped create an industry.
  38. Report: China will have 465 million mobile players by the end of 2016
  39. Free-to-Play Isn’t a Special Case in Ethics

DIGITAL

  1. Warner Brothers reports own site as illegal: Film studio Warner Brothers has asked Google to remove its own website from search results, saying it violates copyright laws.
  2. Warner Bros. flags own site for piracy, orders Google to censor pages: Studio also wanted Amazon, Sky, and IMDb links nixed for allegedly breaking copyright law.
  3. Warner Bros. Issuing Takedowns For Its Own Site Is No Laughing Matter
  4. U Of M Forwards 8,000 Emails Regarding Illegal Downloads: Copyright office likens threatening notices to extortion
  5. Pirates Plunder 4K Hateful Eight, But Did They Crack DCP?
  6. Tim Cook, Apple Chief, Defends Tax Practices and Says Cash Will Return to U.S.
  7. Cook slams EU Apple tax case as “total political crap”—antitrust boss hits back: Commissioner Vestager says disputed figures in Apple ruling came from Apple.
  8. Rather Than Coming Up With Brand New Taxes For Tech Companies, The EU Just Issues A Massive Fine On Apple
  9. How Apple Helped Create Ireland’s Economies, Real And Fantastical
  10. Ireland to Appeal Tax Ruling in Apple Case
  11. Standing up to Apple
  12. Apple could bring home billions in taxes if US passes a tax holiday – Law prof: “For the most part, companies like Apple don’t need to repatriate money.”
  13. Unfortunate Expansion Of ‘Failure To Warn’ Exception To Section 230–Beckman v. Match (Eric Goldman)
  14. Austrian Courts Uphold Creative Commons License Terms — For Now
  15. Condé Nast Has Started Using IBM’s Watson to Find Influencers for Brands: Tapping into AI for recruitment 
  16. SpaceX Rocket Explosion Sets Back Facebook’s Internet Expansion in Africa
  17. Who controls the internet? Ted Cruz’s fantasy vs. the reality
  18. Trump Finally Says Something Coherent About ‘the Cyber’
  19. Google’s Clever Plan to Stop Aspiring ISIS Recruits
  20. Do memes violate copyright law?
  21. YouTubers are in uproar as they might lose money for swearing online
  22. YouTube ‘demonetization,’ explained for normal: The Great YouTube Ad Freakout Of Late August 2016, explained.
  23. Influencers weigh in on YouTube’s ‘censorship’ controversy
  24. Pewdiepie: “Youtube Doesn’t Care About Its Creators” – PewDiePie slams YouTube following the recent monetization controversy.
  25. ICG raises concerns over “de-monetisation” of YouTube content: YouTube guidelines, “could have the unintended consequence of discouraging creators from making edgy, interesting content”
  26. Defending Noncommercial Uses: Great Minds v Fedex Office
  27. Facebook Just Proved It Isn’t Hooli From Silicon Valley
  28. Judge tosses lawsuit over 1-star Yelp review for overfeeding pet fish: Fish owner – We have a right to express “opinions without the fear of a lawsuit.”
  29. Court Tosses Prestigious Pets’ $1 Million Defamation Suit Against Unhappy Customers
  30. Samsung will recall Galaxy Note 7 because of exploding batteries: Recall affects all 2.5 million units that have shipped so far.
  31. DRM: Still Hurting Paying Customers The Most
  32. Professor Eric Goldman Stops Writing At Forbes, In Part Because Of Its Stance On Ad Blocking
  33. This software will give movies and TV shows a diversity score
  34. The Untold Story Of Blackberry Hype: Five years after young people organized riots that shook the UK, a look at the Blackberry’s pivotal role in youth culture.
  35. Stupid Patent of the Month: Elsevier Patents Online Peer Review
  36. How Tech Giants Are Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence
  37. How algorithms rule our working lives: Employers are turning to mathematically modelled ways of sifting through job applications. Even when wrong, their verdicts seem beyond dispute – and they tend to punish the poor
  38. Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari review – how data will destroy human freedom: It’s a chilling prospect, but the AI we’ve created could transform human nature, argues this spellbinding new book by the author of Sapiens
  39. Bhutan’s Gross National Unhappiness: In The Wake Of The Country’s First Facebook Defamation Lawsuit, Fears Of Censorship Rise
  40. A livestream of a small town in Wyoming is bringing the internet together
  41. Engineering Humans with Contracts (Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger)

CREATIVITY

  1. Dance Dance Revolution: Efforts to suppress political expression in Japan are meeting an unlikely foe: the flash mob.
  2. How White Kids Stole House Music from Black Aunties: It’s time for sonic reparations
  3. Melania Trump Sues Daily Mail & A Blogger Over Stories, Using Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan’s Lawyer
  4. Melania Trump Lawsuit Is Not The ‘Next Gawker,’ It’s The Open Beta Of A Trump Presidency
  5. Man sues Detroit Tigers for using trademarked phrase ‘Welcome to the D’
  6. Motorcycle clubs fight to keep their trademark ‘colors’
  7. Creative Commons Wants To Step Into Lawsuit Over Definition Of ‘Noncommercial’ In A CC License
  8. Another 19th Century Moral Panic: Theater
  9. Mobile vs. Computer: Implications for News Audiences and Outlets
  10. Disney Debuts New ‘Star Wars’ Toys With Fan-Created Online Films
  11. U.S. Department of Justice Rejects Modification of Music Licensing Consent Decrees
  12. Friedman v. Live Nation Merchandise, Inc.
  13. Further Update on the Blacklock’s “Litany of Litigation” – First Trial Set For September 19, 2016 (Howard Knopf)
  14. How ‘Making A Murderer’ Fans Have Influenced The Search For Truth In The Teresa Halbach Murder
  15. The New Rules Of The Creative Economy
  16. Louis Vuitton can’t take a joke
  17. Louis Vuitton’s Inability To Take A Joke Opens Up A Chance To Fix Our Broken Trademark Laws
  18. Alabama Library Threatens Jail Time for Overdue Books
  19. Be a Winner: Complying with Canadian Contest Laws
  20. Why calling screentime ‘digital heroin’ is digital garbage: Inciting fear about the dangers of digital media is counter productive
  21. 40 Years Ago: George Harrison Found Guilty of ‘My Sweet Lord’ Plagiarism
  22. Hollywood Freaking Out That Europe Might Make It Marginally Easier For People To Legally Access Content
  23. Has Banksy’s true identity been discovered?
  24. The MacTaggart Lecture 2016: Shane Smith, Founder & CEO of Vice (Edinburgh International Television Festival)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Harassment finding against ex-CRTC commissioner nixed due to ‘witch hunt’: Federal Court ruling reproaches both investigator and chair of federal agency
  2. Federal court finds CRTC harassment investigation unfair
  3. Federal court rules former CRTC commissioner denied procedural fairness in harassment investigation
  4. The CRTC Wades into Quebec’s Internet Blocking Legislation – Does A Constitutional Collision Loom?
  5. CRTC defends the Internet, and the right to choose. Hurrah! (Timothy Denton)
  6. Anti-Robocall Statute Violates First Amendment–Gresham v. Rutledge
  7. Gretchen Carlson Settles With Fox — And We Are All Denied The Discovery We So Richly Deserve
  8. The Revenge of Roger’s Angels: How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media.
  9. Fox News and Megyn Kelly find themselves in a book bind
  10. Media Matters declares another kind of war against Fox News
  11. Future of TV sports: Pay up or be blacked out
  12. iPlayer viewers must have TV licence but BBC can’t track online cheats: Web-based verification system to police licence fee dodgers won’t be used by BBC.
  13. CBS Announces New Ad-Free More-Expensive Streaming Service…That Includes Ads
  14. Tales from Comcast’s data cap nation: Can the meter be trusted? – “Our meter is perfect,” Comcast rep claims. It isn’t—and mistakes could cost you.
  15. Users Say Comcast Broadband Usage Meters Don’t Work, May Result in Hundreds Of Dollars Of Errant Charges
  16. What Net Neutrality? While The FCC Naps, AT&T Now Exempting DirecTV Content From Wireless Usage Caps
  17. Three’s ad-blocker plans challenged over net neutrality: A European Union agency has said that mobile network’s Three’s plans to offer ad-blockers would violate net neutrality.
  18. FCC Gives Up On Municipal Broadband Fight
  19. AT&T’s throttling victory may hinder FTC’s power to protect consumers: Ruling raises questions about FTC ability to regulate Google, Verizon.
  20. Contested FCC Media Ownership Order Leaves Rules Largely Unchanged
  21. Surprise! European Union Adopts Net Neutrality Guidelines That Don’t Suck
  22. AT&T, Poster Child For Government Favoritism, Mocks Google Fiber For Government Favoritism
  23. Blame Your Lousy Internet on Poles: The war over high-speed access is fought on 40-foot-high wooden sticks. (Susan Crawford)
  24. The Do-Not-Call List Has a Gaping Hole: Illegal robocalls that try to scam you out of money are flourishing. Can the phone companies figure out how to stop them?
  25. FCC Needs to Impose Strong Protections Around Stingray Use
  26. CRTC Settles Alleged CASL Violation — Messages Sent Without Consent

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Amazon, Google, Apple… Fox News join Microsoft in US gag orders fight: Eclectic bunch support MS battle against US government’s secret requests for user data.
  2. The Man Who Lit The Dark Web: Data-mining tools are helping cops bust open online human trafficking
  3. ACLU Challenges Gag Orders Issued To Tech Companies By The DOJ
  4. Dropbox hackers stole e-mail addresses, hashed passwords from 68M accounts
  5. Hacker Guccifer, who exposed Clinton’s use of private e-mail, gets 52 months: Feds wanted harsh term to underscore that hacking is not “a crime to be celebrated.”
  6. Google can now peer inside your apps to get search results
  7. Golden State Warriors Android app constantly listens to nearby audio, fan says: Official app of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors is the subject of a federal lawsuit.
  8. New cloud attack takes full control of virtual machines with little effort: Existing crypto software “wholly unequipped” to counter Rowhammer attacks.
  9. Forget Software—Now Hackers Are Exploiting Physics
  10. Building a new Tor that can resist next-generation state surveillance
  11. Australian Government Using Data Retention Law To Seek Out Journalists’ Sources, Hunt Down Whistleblowers
  12. James Comey Claims He Wants An ‘Adult Conversation’ About Encryption; Apparently ‘Adults’ Ignore Experts
  13. New leaks prove it: the NSA is putting us all at risk to be hacked (Bruce Schneier)
  14. Spying Inc. (Danielle Keats Citron)

jon

News of the Week; August 31, 2016

GAMES

  1. New lawsuit targets Steam, alleges patent infringement
  2. Steam Targeted in Lawsuit for Alleged Patent Infringement
  3. Japanese truck driver playing Pokemon Go kills pedestrian: Popular game now detects speed increase, asks if player is driving, company says
  4. Pokemon Go Takes Distracted Driving to a Lethal Level
  5. French Education minister: Get rare Pokémon out of our schools – The minister is worried that “legendary” Pokemon could draw strangers.
  6. Belgians are hunting books, instead of Pokemon
  7. How long can we expect the Pokémon Go craze to last?: Data suggests game could retain tens of millions of players for a long while.
  8. Someone is porting Pokémon Go to the Dreamcast VMU: Also, did you know there’s a Dreamcast VMU homebrew scene?
  9. Use Agreements to Capture and Control IP like it’s a Pokémon
  10. Mobile has become an indie-hostile market: Sky-high barriers to entry have made mobile into a space no indie creator or small studio should even consider
  11. Japan twice as good as U.S. at monetizing mobile players
  12. Steam Spy opts to publicize game data despite dev takedown requests
  13. Steam Spy will now refuse all requests for removal of data: Techland prompted a change in policy – and a reversal of prior decisions – at Steam Spy
  14. Ubisoft is canning its F2PGhost Recon and Epic Lootgames
  15. “Where are all the women at?”: Farmville Tropic Escape lead Nicole Opas offers advice on recruiting women devs and appealing to an audience without insulting them
  16. Twitter Sued For Right of Publicity Violations Over Profile-Trading Game 
  17. Microsoft cancels free-to-play Halo Online
  18. Oculus Explains Why They Didn’t Launch Touch with the Rift 
  19. PlayStation VR Pre-Orders Had “Quickest Sellout in GameStop’s History”
  20. Blizzard Launches Facebook Streaming for Battle.net Games
  21. Overwatch and other Blizzard games can now stream natively to Facebook: Blizzard Streaming is part of a new client update
  22. Facebook has finally made its move against one of Amazon’s biggest properties
  23. GameStop hardware sales tumble after Neo, Scorpio announcements
  24. UKIE’s big UK game biz concern post-Brexit: Access to game dev talent
  25. Another Denuvo-protected game cracked just weeks after release: Quick Inside crack shows that industry’s best DRM is no longer safe.
  26. Remember When Cracking Groups Said Denuvo Would End Game Piracy? Yeah, Didn’t Happen
  27. Snapchat meets gaming: Gatorade launches in-app 8-bit Serena Williams tennis game
  28. Parents Didn’t Just Dislike Super Nintendo 25 Years Ago—They Thought It Was a Scam
  29. Esports Corruption: Gambling, Doping, and Global Governance (John Holden, Ryan Rodenberg & Anastasios Kaburakis)

DIGITAL

  1. Kim Dotcom wins right to live stream extradition court hearing: US authorities opposed the move, but New Zealand judge rules live broadcast can start on Wednesday, as internet entrepreneur battles online piracy charges
  2. On appeal in LA Times defacement case, lawyers say there was no “damage”: “For there to be CFAA Damage, there must be actual harm to a computer system.”
  3. Twitter, Google, Facebook “consciously failing” to police extremism, MPs claim: Committee alarmingly demands “terrestrial star wars”—says cops need “high-tech” hub.
  4. War of the World Wide Webs: D.C. Circuit Refuses Terror Victims’ Attempt to Seize Internet Domain Names 
  5. “We’re a tech company, we’re not a media company,” says Facebook founder: Social network giant under EU pressure for not editing hateful and illegal posts.
  6. Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans
  7. Facebook fires human editors, algorithm immediately posts fake news: Facebook makes its Trending feature fully automated, with mixed results.
  8. Did Facebook Defame Megyn Kelly?: Which is a different way of asking: Can a bot commit libel?
  9. Canada’s ad industry cracking down on paid endorsements on social media: Influencers who mention companies or products in posts must reveal if they’ve been paid starting in 2017
  10. Study shows YouTube and linear TV can find common ground
  11. WhatsApp does about face, will serve ads in Facebook-owned app: Nominal subscription fee was dropped in January of this year.
  12. Inside the bizarre French conspiracy theory that the viral ‘burkini’ photos were staged
  13. How Nextdoor reduced racist posts by 75%
  14. “Silicon Valley is hostile to diversity,” says Slack Director of Engineering Leslie Miley
  15. Peter Thiel Violates Core Principles of Silicon Valley
  16. It’s ‘digital heroin’: How screens turn kids into psychotic junkies
  17. Apple must pay Ireland $14.5 billion in taxes, rules European Commission: Lengthy probe concludes that Apple’s tax benefits are illegal.
  18. How Apple—and the Rest of Silicon Valley—Avoids the Tax Man
  19. EU Copyright Law Undermines Innovation and Creativity on the Internet. Mozilla is Fighting for Reform
  20. France Passes Copyright Law Demanding Royalties For Every Image Search Engines Index Online
  21. An Unfortunately Typical French Initiative (Plus Ca Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose)
  22. Is hosting providers’ safe harbour the real problem of copyright owners? A new article
  23. EU may require YouTube, DailyMotion to seek deals with music industry
  24. If You’re Angry About Twitter Banning Someone ‘Permanently’ For Sharing Olympics GIFs, Blame Copyright Law
  25. Handicapping The Olympic Committee’s Quest To Control Tweeting
  26. Appeals Court Tosses Search Warrant Used By Louisiana Sheriff In Attempt To Silence Critical Blogger
  27. Twitter Sued For Right of Publicity Violations Over Profile-Trading Game
  28. Selfies in voting booths: Depending on where you live, they may be illegal – A New Hampshire law says selfie ban is needed to curtail vote buying and coercion.
  29. Snapchat Announces Partnership With the NFL: Snapchat has announced a partnership with the National Football League to create sponsored Lenses that allow users to superimpose a helmet onto their heads while using the app.
  30. US unveils charges against KickassTorrents, names two more defendants: Admins gave users who uploaded up to 1,000 torrent files “Achievement” awards.
  31. Harvard Is Digitizing Nearly 40 Million Pages Of Case Law So You Can Access It Online And For Free
  32. People Were Stealing Music Long Before Millennials Ruined Everything With Internet Pirating
  33. Newspaper Archive Disappears From Google, Because Company Wants To Cash In
  34. Apple’s In-App Purchase Policy Should Put Customers First
  35. Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood: California bill targets publicizing actors’ birth dates
  36. What ALEXA & AI Means For The Future Of Commerce
  37. The Man Who Created LeapPad Wants To Turn Your Eyes into a Mouse
  38. Trading in stock of medical device paused after hackers team with short seller: St. Jude Medical declares claim of vulnerability “false and misleading.”
  39. Attack of the Killer Robots: Forget about drones, forget about dystopian sci-fi — a terrifying new generation of autonomous weapons is already here. Meet the small band of dedicated optimists battling nefarious governments and bureaucratic tedium to stop the proliferation of killer robots and, just maybe, save humanity from itself.
  40. The Hype—And Hope—Of Artificial Intelligence
  41. The world wide cage: Technology promised to set us free. Instead it has trained us to withdraw from the world into distraction and dependency
  42. Anarchy Has Ensued In Courts’ Handling Of Online Contract Formation (Round Up Post)
  43. Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society – Cases & Materials: An Open Casebook: 3rd Edition 2016 (James Boyle & Jennifer Jenkins)
  44. Theoretical Inquiries in Law – Vol 17, No 2 (2016): The Constitution of Information: From Gutenberg to Snowden (The CEGLA Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law)

CREATIVITY

  1. China Advances Film Industry Law, Cracks Down on “Western Values”: Topics addressed in the draft of China’s film industry rulebook include market access for foreign movies, censorship and how to handle artists “tainted” by drug and prostitution scandals.
  2. Instagram model and makeup artist sues Richard Prince over copyright infringement: Part of the New Portraits series, the work at the centre of the case was shown—and sold—at Frieze New York last year
  3. Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and TI launch appeal against Blurred Lines verdict: Lawyers for the trio argue the judge was wrong to allow comparison of the recordings of the hit and Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up
  4. “Blurred Lines” Appeal Gets Support From More Than 200 Musicians: An eclectic group of artists from R. Kelly to Hans Zimmer tell the 9th Circuit that the verdict, if allowed to stand, “is very dangerous to the music community.”
  5. Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley Win Copyright Infringement Case: Songwriter accusing the country superstars of stealing “Remind Me” is defeated in court
  6. This Is What Happens When Courts Decide What Is and Isn’t Art: Cook County says rock, country, rap, and DJing aren’t “fine arts,” and they could collect some hefty taxes for it. But it’ll be an uphill battle against history, taste, and case law.
  7. Two Copyright Cases to Watch Raise Novel Legal Issues In Canada
  8. Beneath Louis Vuitton’s inability to take a joke, a serious First Amendment question
  9. Getty sued for US$1 billion after US$120 demand to photographer
  10. Honduran reporter convicted of criminal defamation
  11. Trader Joe’s vs. Pirate Joe’s: Appeals Court Revives Cross-Border Trademark Fight
  12. Letting It Go: The End Of Windowing (And What Comes Next) – There are few concepts more fundamental to the video media business than that of content “windowing” – yet even this strategy is crumbling under the pressures of digital distribution. How will rights owners maximize the value of their content in the post-window era? The answer depends on how badly you want it.
  13. Could This Be the Year Movies Stopped Mattering?
  14. The Alt-Right Has Its Own Comedy TV Show On A Time Warner Network: Adult Swim’s Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace is identity content for trolls.
  15. ‘Captain America’ Writer Nick Spencer: Why I Turned Steve Rogers into a Supervillain
  16. Let’s Teach Textbooks A Lesson: The prices of college textbooks are absurd—to the point where authors have to defend their $300 books. But we could, thankfully, be turning a corner.
  17. Head Of Anti-Counterfeiting Lobbying Group Says He’s Going To Make Counterfeit Techdirt T-Shirts
  18. Were the First Artists Mostly Women?: Three-quarters of handprints in ancient cave art were left by women, study finds.
  19. European Copyright Leak Exposes Plans to Force the Internet to Subsidize Publishers (EFF)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Fox News petitions for darkness, secrecy in sexual-harassment case
  2. The Twilight of Fox News: As pay TV slowly declines, cable news faces a demographic cliff. And nobody has further to fall than the merchant of right-wing outrage.
  3. Net neutrality guidelines land in Europe, provide fuzzy rules on fast lanes: Open Internet activists hail the rest of the text a victory over telcos.
  4. Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not ‘Millennials’ To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop
  5. No, Bloomberg, the Olympics didn’t stumble because of Millennials. It stumbled because of NBC.
  6. AT&T explains why it sometimes delays Google Fiber access to poles: Google Fiber can’t always access AT&T utility poles despite US-wide agreement.
  7. AT&T doesn’t want to repay money it got from alleged overcharges
  8. AT&T’s common carrier status helps it defeat data throttling lawsuit: But AT&T could still face $100 million fine from FCC.
  9. AT&T Dodges FTC Throttling Lawsuit Using Title II Classification It Vehemently Opposed
  10. How Is This Not A Net Neutrality Violation, Sprint?
  11. FCC admits defeat in municipal broadband, won’t appeal court loss: Cities seeking to expand broadband could still appeal judges’ decision, though.
  12. Congressman to FCC: Fix phone network flaw that allows eavesdropping – SS7 weakness, leak of phone numbers could let hackers spy on “half of Congress.”
  13. The Future Of Media And Some Implications For Regulation

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Facebook recommended that this psychiatrist’s patients friend each other
  2. WhatsApp’s Privacy Cred Just Took a Big Hit
  3. Privacy Groups File FTC Complaint Over Whatsapp Facebook Privacy ‘Bait And Switch’
  4. Why an NFL Superstar’s Lawsuit Against ESPN Represents a Threat for Media
  5. Court: Okay For Trial To Move Forward Against ESPN For Tweeting JPP’s Medical Chart
  6. Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
  7. Canadian Law Enforcement Want Government To Force People To Turn Over Their Passwords
  8. Actively exploited iOS flaws that hijack iPhones patched by Apple: Jailbreak vulnerabilities allowed attackers to tap encrypted chat messages.
  9. The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender
  10. Hackers attack site of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, post racist abuse
  11. Blame Donald Trump and the internet for all those racist attacks on Leslie Jones
  12. Homeland Security investigating Leslie Jones website hack: The attack that saw the “Ghostbusters” star’s personal information leaked to the web is now under investigation by US authorities.
  13. Officials blame “sophisticated” Russian hackers for voter system attacks: FBI reportedly informed Arizona of possible Russian hack in June.
  14. Ashley Madison Investigation Findings Released by OPC
  15. The most absurd Internet privacy class-action settlement ever: Lawyers get millions. Consumers get nothing. E-mail snooping continues unabated.
  16. Is your employer watching you? Online profiling blurs the boundary of our public and private lives
  17. How Airbnb Kills Our Ideas of Privacy: To make its home-away-from-home vibe work, the online housing broker insists on a level of transparency from hosts and guests that creates a level of intimacy bordering on the unseemly.
  18. Hacker who stole 2.9 million credit card numbers is Russian lawmaker’s son: Roman Seleznev, aka “Track2,” was found guilty of 38 counts relating to fraud and theft.
  19. Differential Privacy is Vulnerable to Correlated Data — Introducing Dependent Differential Privacy
  20. DOJ lawyer who leaked Bush spy program is censured for ethics failure: Whistleblower thought program was “probably illegal as it was not court-supervised.”

jon

News of the Week; August 24, 2016

GAMES

  1. ‘NBA 2K’ Videogame Publisher Wants Judgment Allowing Use of Player Tattoos
  2. 6th Circuit rejects college players’ Lanham Act, ROP claims: Marshall v. ESPN, No. 15-5753 (6th Cir. August 17, 2016) (Rebecca Tushnet)
  3. Nintendo Shuts Down Fan Remake Of 25 Year Old Metroid 2 Game Because It Can’t Help Itself
  4. Nintendo nets $661 million from Seattle Mariners sale
  5. Stop Gaming the System, Gamers: Twitch Sues Over Fake Viewer Bots
  6. eSports and the UK Gambling Commission – First Impressions
  7. World’s first eSports gambling regulation proposed in UK (Jas Purewal)
  8. The International 2016: the greatest event not just in Dota 2 but in all of e-sports
  9. Friction between Riot and League of Legends team owners: Teams upset with big pre-tourney patches and limitations on revenue streams; Riot irked by teams investing in other eSports
  10. Property owners sue over Pokemon Go: Detroit-area couple says they don’t feel safe as players loiter, trespass, harass home owners near in-game hotspots
  11. Pokémon Go changes everything (and nothing) for AR/VR
  12. Vietnam bans Pokemon Go from government, defense sites
  13. Pokémon GO: An Indicator of Product Liability in the App Economy 
  14. 3DS Pokemon sales surge thanks to success of Pokemon Go
  15. Pokemon Go is losing millions of users, still has millions more
  16. Zenimax amends Oculus lawsuit to accuse John Carmack of theft
  17. ZeniMax raises the stakes in Oculus VR lawsuit: Amended complaint makes direct accusations against John Carmack, questions Luckey’s role in Rift’s creation
  18. ZeniMax claims the Oculus Rift was built on stolen technology: The messy legal battle over consumer VR
  19. Facing Down the Online Mob: As hype and expectations for major games spiral out of control, hate campaigns and death threats have become an occupational hazard for game creators
  20. Blizzard tests new means of encouraging sportsmanship in Overwatch players
  21. University funds efforts to build an archive of LGBTQ content in games
  22. Without Kojima, Metal Gear becomes a multiplayer zombie action game: Konami pivots with “an alternate timeline caused by unexplained wormholes.”
  23. Why I Watch People Play Videogames on the Internet
  24. Twitch acquiring Curse: Streaming site picks up multimedia and in-game chat and media company
  25. Twitch moves to purchase video game community Curse
  26. As ‘influencers’ rise, Peter Moore foresees a game industry without press conferences: “The medium is changing. Influencers, celebrities who aren’t the classic journalists are finding their own way. Our job is to put the games in their hands like we did last night.”
  27. Rocket League surpasses 20 million players
  28. Kabam: Look beyond whales, focus on your “regulars”
  29. Sony raising PS Plus price: Annual memberships for online play and free games program going up $10 in US, $20 in Canada next month
  30. Sony is bringing its PlayStation Now game streaming service to PC
  31. PS Now expands to PC: Sony streaming service adds a platform as company announces USB adaptor to connect DualShock 4 with PCs
  32. This is the last console generation – Greenberg
  33. Disney’s Many, Many Attempts At Figuring Out The Game Industry
  34. VR/AR to reach $162 billion in worldwide revenues by 2020 – IDC: Importantly, hardware accounts for half of the forecast and it includes applications for all industries, not just games
  35. HTC Vive drawing more interest than Oculus from devs – VRDC survey
  36. RPG, strategy are most lucrative mobile genres – SurveyMonkey: Other genres see more downloads, but downloads have become almost meaningless
  37. Digital sales up 10% year-over-year in July – Superdata
  38. Mario closes out Rio Olympics: Japanese prime minister dresses as Nintendo mascot for hand-off to promote 2020 Tokyo Olympics
  39. Satoru Iwata’s first Nintendo project found, preserved by historian
  40. A menace to society: the war on pinball in America

DIGITAL

  1. The Internet Rallies Against A Terrible Section 230 Ruling–Hassell v. Bird (Eric Goldman)
  2. Anti-Piracy Operations Are Fabricating Links To Non-Existent Torrents In DMCA Notices
  3. The Internet’s Safe Harbor Just Got a Little Less Safe
  4. Keeping the Internet Open (Vinton Cerf)
  5. You’ll Never Guess This One Crazy Thing Governs Online Speech – Hint: It’s not the First Amendment!
  6. Nice Officials Say They’ll Sue Internet Users Who Share Photos Of French Fashion Police Fining Women In Burkinis
  7. Of Copyright, Copyleft and the Unique Creative Commons Needs of PLEI
  8. This lawsuit could be the beginning of the end for DRM
  9. Dancing Baby May Be Headed To Supreme Court
  10. How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better
  11. Anti-Google research group in Washington is funded by Oracle: At least 17 news articles have cited research by the “nonprofit watchdog group.”
  12. Oracle Says Google Didn’t Play Fair, Wants Third Trial (Oh Gd)
  13. Did The NY Times Give Up Its Journalism Standards The Second Facebook Threw A Few Million Its Way?
  14. WikiLeaks Has Morphed from Journalism Hotshot to Malware Hub: It’s alarmingly easy to visit WikiLeaks’ email database from Turkish political party AKP and come away infected with malicious code.
  15. Report: WikiLeaks published rape victims’ names, credit cards, medical data: “If the family of my wife saw this… that could destroy people.”
  16. Dear Internet: It’s Time to Fix This Mess You Made
  17. How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet: They’re turning the web into a cesspool of aggression and violence. What watching them is doing to the rest of us may be even worse
  18. Some questions for those who are cheering Gawker’s demise
  19. Peter Thiel Just Got His Wish: Gawker Is Shutting Down
  20. Did I Kill Gawker?: Or was it Nick Denton? Hulk Hogan? Peter Thiel? Or the internet?
  21. Would The English Rule Have Saved Gawker From Peter Thiel?
  22. Peter Thiel just backed a startup that helps you sue companies algorithmically
  23. Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Now Sending Questionable Defamation Threat Letters To Media On Behalf Of Melania Trump
  24. Lawyer Who Brought Down Gawker Threatens Media Outlets With Defamation Suits On Melania Trump’s Behalf
  25. How a GIF of Aly Raisman’s Floor Routine Got Me Permanently Banned From Twitter
  26. Donald Trump Says He’ll Turn Off The Internet For Terrorists
  27. Twitter says it shuttered 235k accounts linked to terrorism in 6 months: There is no “magic algorithm” for identifying extremist content, company says.
  28. Google loses appeal against Russia’s Android antitrust ruling
  29. Stealing bitcoins with badges: How Silk Road’s dirty cops got caught: Ross Ulbricht’s screwup led to DEA agent’s arrest, who revealed another rogue agent.
  30. India Criminalizes Merely Visiting A Copyright Infringing ‘Blocked’ Site
  31. Pakistan’s new cyber law hit by legal challenge just 1 day after it’s approved: Draconian rules will criminalise 1000s of innocent folk, warn digital rights’ groups.
  32. SightSound Versus Apple, and the Death Squad for Patents: We’re the guys who invented the download music store, showed it all to Steve, and got rolled by Apple
  33. Music Is Just 4.3% of YouTube Traffic, Research Shows
  34. One in Four Influencers Asked Not to Disclose Paid Promotion: SheSpeaks Survey Offers Inside Look at Brand Partnerships
  35. Kardashians accused of failing to disclose paid relationships in Instagram posts
  36. Twitter reportedly in talks with Apple to bring its app and NFL games to Apple TV
  37. Twitter Flirts With Possible Live Streaming Agreement With Apple TV After Landing Numerous Sports Streaming Rights
  38. Sling TV Launches New NFL Network And Red Zone Programming For Cord-Cutting Consumers
  39. Why Disney Is Buying Into Major League Baseball’s Digital Division
  40. The Next Big Thing in Video Streaming Is: NOT STREAMING – Downloading poised to become a staple of nearly all video services
  41. Mexican Government Officials Have Press Creds Withdrawn From Olympics Over Uploaded Cell Phone Footage
  42. The Creative Olympics: 8 Ways The Online Community Adapted To The Ban On GIFs
  43. The US will soon no longer control the internet’s domain name system
  44. Google is killing Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux: Chrome OS will remain supported “for the foreseeable future.”
  45. Google to punish sites that use intrusive pop-over ads: If ads interfere with the mobile experience, it’ll spell bad news for the site.
  46. How ticket-scalping bots steal all those ‘Hamilton’ seats you desperately wanted
  47. What’s to Prevent Someone From Ripping Off Your Crowdfunding Campaign? Not Much.
  48. News Sites Realizing That Relying On Facebook For Traffic Might Not Have Been Wise
  49. This temporary tattoo can control your smartphone
  50. How Digital Copyright Law Is Being Used to Run Roughshod Over Repairs
  51. A Survival Plan for the Wild Cyborg
  52. Your ‘Smart’ Power Outlets Are Now Botnets Thanks To The Internet Of Broken Things
  53. AI Is Here to Help You Write Emails People Will Actually Read
  54. Putting a computer in your brain is no longer science fiction
  55. Engineers Say If Automated Cars Experience ‘The Trolley Problem,’ They’ve Already Screwed Up
  56. Why Snapchat is hell for the brokenhearted
  57. McDonald’s recalls Happy Meal fitness trackers after they injure kids: Fast food company recalls millions of wristband toys amid reports of blistering.
  58. The new Streisand Effect: Barbra calls Tim Cook to change Siri’s pronunciation – The world works differently for the singer/songwriter than it does for you and me.
  59. Language necessarily contains human biases, and so will machines trained on language corpora (Arvind Narayanan)
  60. Computers and Robots Don’t Count: In copyright law, it’s all about people. (James Grimmelmann)

CREATIVITY

  1. College Athletes Lose Appeal Over Use of Their Images in Game Broadcasts
  2. Student Athletes Lose Sixth Circuit Appeal in Marshall v. ESPN
  3. Appeals Court Tosses Lawsuit Against Broadcasters For Violating Publicity Rights During Football Game Broadcasts
  4. Ha Ji Won Sues Cosmetics Company For Misappropriation Of Her Likeness
  5. Cookie crumbles: court refuses to dismiss (c) claim based on facts of plaintiff’s life –
  6. Eggleston v. Daniels, No. 15-11893, 2016 WL 4363013 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 16, 2016)(Rebecca Tushnet)
  7. Judge Rejects Fox’s Bid to Toss Ex-Felon’s ‘Empire’ Copyright Lawsuit: Sophia Eggleton will move forward in a claim that the character of “Cookie” Lyon is copied from her 2009 memoir ‘The Hidden Hand.’
  8. The “Ballers” In Your Court: Defending Copyrightable Expression 
  9. Demi Lovato Faces Copyright Lawsuit From Indie Stars Sleigh Bells
  10. Sleigh Bells Suing Demi Lovato for Copyright Infringement
  11. Appeals Court Reverses Live Nation Win in Run-D.M.C. Merchandise Suit
  12. ‘Blurred Lines’ Verdict Will Chill Music Creativity, 9th Circ. Told
  13. Everything Old Is New Again? Court Rules Remastering Resets Copyright
  14. Update to music remixing vs. remastering
  15. Recording Industry Whines That It’s Too Costly To Keep Copyright Terms At Life Plus 50, Instead Of Life Plus 70
  16. Woman Fills in Crossword Puzzle Artwork and Claims Copyright
  17. Banksy artwork removed from Cheltenham house
  18. Citigroup Gets First Loss In Trademark Suit Against AT&T For Saying ‘Thanks’
  19. “THANKYOU”—possibly the dumbest trademark dispute ever—has been dropped: Flap between Citigroup, AT&T was about how the companies said thanks to customers.
  20. MPAA loves fair use so much they don’t want to share it with the rest of the world
  21. Team GB warns Leave.EU over image use
  22. Motion to Stay Denied -Defamation Action and Trade-marks Act Claim Proceed in Parallel 
  23. Judge grants Happy Birthday lawyers $4.6M, citing “unusually positive results”
  24. This male comedian who’s harassed women online for years is finally suffering the consequences
  25. Cox Denies Liability for Pirating Subscribers, Appeals $25 Million Verdict
  26. Why Do Many Politicians Use Music Without Artist Consent
  27. A New Approach to Copyright Exceptions and Limitations
  28. The Surprising Partnerships that Rule Pop Culture
  29. Why Japan has more old-fashioned music stores than anywhere else in the world
  30. The London Omnibus And its Impact on U.S. Trademark Law
  31. The TPP’s Trademark Provisions: Expanding Power at the Potential Cost of Balance in the Marketplace
  32. Turkish Journalist Jailed for Terrorism Was Framed, Forensics Report Shows
  33. How Sam Phillips Invented the Sound of Rock and Roll: The unusual engineering behind a legendary sound.
  34. Academic clickbait: articles with positively-framed titles, interesting phrasing, and no wordplay get more attention online.
  35. Who Decides What Must Be on a Syllabus?: College of Charleston professor says he’s been forced out of a job for refusing to list learning outcomes to please an accreditor. He’s suing and says academic freedom is being violated.
  36. Amicus in LV v. My Other Bag (Rebecca Tushnet)
  37. Fashion’s Function in Intellectual Property Law (Christopher Buccafusco & Jeanne Fromer)
  38. The Moral Psychology of Copyright Infringement (Christopher Buccafusco & David Fagundes)
  39. Adler on Fair Use and the Future of Art
  40. Fair Use and the Future of Art (Amy Adler)
  41. Common Knowledge: Epistemology and the Beginnings of Copyright Law (Jonathan Enderle)
  42. Canada’s unofficial poet laureate is dying, but he gave one last concert before he goes

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. EFF accuses T-Mobile of violating net neutrality with throttled video
  2. T-Mobile, Sprint Tap Dance Over, Under, And Around Net Neutrality
  3. One More Time With Feeling: Net Neutrality Didn’t Hurt Broadband Investment In The Slightest
  4. Comcast’s $70 gigabit deal is shockingly difficult to sign up for: The Keyser Söze of Internet offers: Even some Comcast reps don’t know it exists.
  5. Andrea Tantaros of Fox News Claims Retaliation for Sex Harassment Complaints
  6. Another Lawsuit Against Fox News With Shocking Allegations
  7. Common Sense: Secrecy of Settlements at Fox News Hid Bad Behavior
  8. Report: Roger Ailes is advising Trump. Of course he is!
  9. What Are Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Steve Bannon Really Up To?
  10. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly tweets Olympic-caliber idiocy
  11. Fox News breached UK’s broadcasting rules on day of Brexit vote
  12. The Redstones’ war with Viacom ends: Philippe Dauman resigns, Tom Dooley elected new CEO
  13. Copyright Group, In Arguing Against FCC’s Set Top Box Proposal, Appears To Argue That VCRs & DVRs Are Also Illegal
  14. DirecTV Faces RICO Class Action For Bungling Business Installs, Then Demanding $15,000 For Theft Of Service
  15. AT&T eliminates $20 wireless plan, cuts data in half on $30 plan
  16. T-Mobile ends cheaper plans and imposes new limits on unlimited data: High-speed hotspot costs $15 more, HD video costs another $25.
  17. Verizon has a plan to make the Android bloatware problem worse
  18. Remember Claims That Cord Cutting Was On The Ropes? It’s Actually Worse Than Ever
  19. NBC’s $12 Billion Olympics Bet Stumbles, Thanks to Millennials
  20. Update: Pirate Radio 
  21. Pirated Satellite TV not “Data” Within Meaning of Policy ExclusionFCC Fines Non-Telecom Companies for Lapse in Compliance with Wireless Rules
  22. The Next Generation of Wireless — “5G” — Is All Hype.: 5G is just a marketing term. The connectivity we crave — cheap, fast, ubiquitous — won’t happen without more fiber in the ground. (Susan Crawford)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Canadian Court Says No Expectation Of Privacy In SMS Messages Residing On Someone Else’s Phone
  2. Court Says Man Can Sue Maker Of Web-Monitoring Software For Wiretap Act Violations
  3. Virgin releases CCTV images of Corbyn in spat over “ram-packed” trains claim: UK’s data watchdog is “making enquiries” about Virgin’s use of its CCTV footage.
  4. Virgin Berth
  5. Report: WikiLeaks published rape victims’ names, credit cards, medical data: “If the family of my wife saw this… that could destroy people.”
  6. Russia’s Hackathon Continues, Targeting The New York Times And Other News Agencies
  7. Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above: Since January, police have been testing an aerial surveillance system adapted from the surge in Iraq. And they neglected to tell the public.
  8. Persistent Surveillance Systems has been watching Baltimore for months: Police charity that normally funds sports team trophies instead helped airborne snooping.
  9. You’re Being Tracked (and Tracked and Tracked) on the Web
  10. The New Age of Surveillance
  11. The Detectives Who Never Forget A Face: London’s new squad of “super-recognizers” could inspire a revolution in policing.
  12. 98 personal data points that Facebook uses to target ads to you
  13. Judge: Texted ‘death scene’ pics of man shot by NM cop didn’t violate privacy rights
  14. A Playboy Playmate found this normal woman’s naked body gross. So she posted it online.
  15. Intimate Technology: the Battle for Our Body and Behaviour
  16. Think Tank Argues That Giving Up Privacy Is Good For The Poor
  17. Did The NSA Continue To Stay Silent On Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Even After Discovering It Had Been Hacked?
  18. What Exactly Are the NSA Hackers Trying to Accomplish?: This breach is very different from what we usually see.
  19. How the NSA snooped on encrypted Internet traffic for a decade: Exploit against Cisco’s PIX line of firewalls remotely extracted crypto keys.
  20. Pentagon Issues First Update To Domestic Surveillance Guidelines In 35 Years, Not All Of It Good
  21. Canadian cops want to know your passwords: Association of Chiefs of Police calls for legal measure to unlock digital evidence, citing encryption as a way to hide illicit activities
  22. Canadian Law Enforcement Admit — And Then Deny — They Own A Stingray Device
  23. Enigma Software Countersued For Waging A ‘Smear Campaign’ Against Site It Claimed Defamed It
  24. With Windows 10, Microsoft Blatantly Disregards User Choice and Privacy: A Deep Dive
  25. Can big data and AI fix our criminal-justice crisis?: Body cameras and complex algorithms have a lot of potential — and political baggage.
  26. Future of Privacy Forum Releases Best Practices for Consumer Wearables and Wellness Apps and Devices
  27. Shield laws and journalist’s privilege: The basics every reporter should know
  28. Friending the Privacy Regulators (William McGeveran)

jon

News of the Week; August 17, 2016

GAMES

  1. League of Legends maker goes to court to stop cheat programs: Riot says LeagueSharp “ruins the game… for players that take [it] seriously.”
  2. Riot takes aim at League of Legends cheating software in new lawsuit
  3. Riot sues League of Legends cheat-makers: Developer goes after hackers behind LeagueSharp subscription service “dedicated to destroying the LoL player experience”
  4. Riot Games Joins Blizzard In Misusing Copyright To Go After Video Game Cheaters
  5. Solid Oak Sketches LLC v. 2K Games Inc.
  6. ‘We don’t feel safe’: Metro Detroit couple sues Pokémon Go
  7. Pokémon Go players are wreaking havoc on a Toronto ferry terminal
  8. US police are using Pokémon Go to lure criminals to their stations: Virginia’s Smithfield Police Department invited eight ‘random citizens’ to catch super-rare Ditto in their processing room, after New Hampshire police employed same tactic
  9. Pokémon Go sponsorships will ease “that pressure” to dial up IAP: “It’s tough to be disciplined and understand where you want to draw the line between monetisation and fun gameplay” – Niantic CEO John Hanke
  10. Arrêté Pokemon: Monsieur le Maire a pris un arrêté interdisant l’implantation virtuelle de personnages Pokemon sur la commune de Bressolles.
  11. Catch ‘Em All Without Breaking the Law – A Pokémon Go Player’s Guide to Access Rights
  12. Pokémon’s Evolving Legal Landscape
  13. Gotta catch…a lawsuit? A legal insight into the battlefield Pokémon Go has downloaded onto smartphones and properties around the world
  14. Pokémon GO’s Impact on Smaller Developers
  15. No Man’s Stream: Leaks Mar an Indie Milestone – Ignorance or cynical self-interest; there’s no other explanation for broadcasting hours of footage of a leaked, unfinished game
  16. No Man’s Sky Windows port launched today, is kind of a mess: Button remapping woes, framerate hitches; first patch already online.
  17. Hack the galaxy: The nascent No Man’s Sky PC modding scene
  18. “Premium is dead. That’s a fact, so let’s deal with it”: With Lost in Harmony, Digixart’s Yoan Fanise confronted the death of premium on mobile, but that shouldn’t mean the death of variety
  19. Fernanfloo scores big with new free game: The El Salvador-based gamer’s new venture is part of BroadbandTV’s broader strategy to diversify creator revenue streams beyond ad sales.
  20. Marvel Contest of Champions bringing in over $25M a month
  21. Are paid apps dead? There’s only 1 among the US 50 top-grossing, and it’s Minecraft
  22. Why Video Game Scores are Useless
  23. Firefly Games targets Hollywood following $10M investment
  24. Robin Hunicke hopes her games ‘encourage people to help one another’
  25. Gambling on eSports under new scrutiny by UK Gambling Commission
  26. Virtual currencies, eSports and social gaming – discussion paper (U.K. Gambling Commission)
  27. Year of solid growth for UK industry sees employment and revenues rise: TIGA study says games contribute £1.25bn to UK GDP
  28. Tencent leads the US$226M financing of Twitch-like streaming site, Douyu TV: The company isn’t even the top dog in China, Huya TV can claim the title of most popular videogame streaming service.
  29. Bethesda: Long marketing campaigns are a distraction from game dev
  30. Turkish Reporter: These Grand Theft Auto Cheat Codes Are The Secret Messages Of The Failed Coup Attempt
  31. An Olympic Athlete Wore Witcher Gear During Competition: Vitalina Batsarashkina won silver in a shooting event.
  32. How video games suck you in: “Our sense of time becomes yoked, not to the ticking of the clock, but to the pattern of our interactions”
  33. 15 years later, dev releases source code of cancelled Game Boy Color RPG
  34. Why Super Metroid’s Hacking Community is Still Going Strong 

DIGITAL

  1. The copyright case that should worry all Internet providers
  2. This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical
  3. Daily Beast removes Olympics Grindr article after backlash
  4. International Olympic Committee Cracks Down on Periscope Pirates
  5. Olympian posts photo of the armed boys he says robbed him in Rio, photo itself stolen from LA Times
  6. Bahamian sprinter’s finish line dive blows up the internet with these gold medal memes
  7. Which Crazy Copyright Holder Took Down Katie Ledecky/Carlos Santana ‘Smooth’ Mashup First
  8. Racial segregation is alive and well on social media
  9. Blacks more likely than whites to see – and post – race-related content on social media (Pew Research Center)
  10. A Possible Solution To Twitter’s Difficult Problem Of Abusive Behavior: Let People Speak, Don’t Force Everyone To Listen
  11. Section 230 Immunizes Twitter From Liability For ISIS’s Terrorist Activities–Fields v. Twitter (Eric Goldman)
  12. Judge On Whether Twitter Is Legally Liable For ISIS Attacks: Hahahahahaha, Nope.
  13. Kansas couple who live in a ‘digital hell’ sue mapping company MaxMind
  14. Amazon Case Means EU B2C Website Terms May Need an Update
  15. Disconnected in Silicon Valley’s shadow: While Facebook looks to bring internet access to India, many in nearby Fresno struggle with digital literacy.
  16. I’m deleting Snapchat, and you should too
  17. Can Facebook really make ads unblockable?
  18. Another Unfortunate Example Of Facebook Silencing Important Videos
  19. Disappointing: LinkedIn Abusing CFAA & DMCA To Sue Scraping Bots
  20. Russia Plans Social Media Piracy Crackdown
  21. Russia fines Google $6.75 million for Android antitrust violations: Google ordered to loosen restrictions on Android device makers after Yandex complaint.
  22. Sling TV will stream football games via NFL Network and NFL RedZone
  23. Irish court orders alleged Silk Road admin to be extradited to US
  24. Court: US seizure of Kim Dotcom’s millions and 4 jet skis will stand – 4th Circuit – Megaupload founder never came to US to face charges, so he’s a “fugitive.”
  25. Appeals Court Says It’s Perfectly Fine For The DOJ To Steal Kim Dotcom’s Money Before Any Trial
  26. Bleeping Computer countersues maker of SpyHunter: Upset over domain name registrations that “libel” Bleeping Computer.
  27. Podcasting patent troll fights EFF on appeal, hoping to save itself: Personal Audio’s appeal comes down to tiny differences in Web presentation.
  28. Canada’s Innovation Strategy Must Stop Tech Trolls (Michael Geist)
  29. Donald Trump’s plush Scottish golf resort flouted UK data law: Clerical oversight to blame, quickly registers to swerve watchdog.
  30. Yelp Warns Consumers About Legal Threats From Companies
  31. A prescription for preventing 3D printing piracy
  32. Can A.I. write a Hollywood film?
  33. Three Ways The Musical.ly App is Changing How We Interact With Music
  34. GoPro And ESPN Bring Sponsorship Legitimacy To US Drone Racing Championship
  35. Clouds of Things. Data protection and consumer law at the intersection of cloud computing and the Internet of Things in the United Kingdom (Guido Noto La Diega)
  36. The Internet of Heirlooms and Disposable Things (Woodrow Hartzog & Evan Selinger)
  37. Apple’s Emoji Gun Control (Jonathan Zittrain)
  38. Apple May Ultimately Regret its Success in Apple v. Samsung
  39. I was the victim of a Wikipedia troll attack: Or, how I had to prove to the encyclopedia of everything that I’m a nobody.
  40. Sex, Privacy, and Videotape: Lessons of Gawker’s Downfall
  41. Univision buys Gawker Media for $135 million: Gawker still has an outstanding judgment of $140M from Hulk Hogan libel case.
  42. Lots Of Newspapers Discovering That Paywalls Don’t Work
  43. New Audi cars can tell you when traffic lights will turn green: But only in some cities that have centralized traffic management systems.

CREATIVITY

  1. Why Does The Copyright Office Keep Acting Like A Lobbying Arm For Hollywood?
  2. No Inspiration Without Payment: Ed Sheeran Sued For Two Songs Sounding Too Similar To Old Songs
  3. Ed Sheeran: A Tale of Two Song Theft Lawsuits (and a Thousand Journalists) – How should reporters treat legal claims like the one that alleges the pop superstar infringed Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On”?
  4. A compulsive audience and a complicit news media: When is a distribution method that harms users’ brains no longer an acceptable cost of doing business?
  5. Fandom Culture In 2016: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly – Do fans own artists? Is social media damaging the culture?
  6. How America’s Surveillance State Shaped The Sound Of Rap: The narrative of post-prison rap albums has long been determined by the threat of un-freedom.
  7. Pancake flap: ‘Aunt Jemima’ heirs seek dough
  8. Copyright Owner Denied Attorneys’ Fees In Suit Against Popcorn Time User–Cobbler v. Doe (Eric Goldman)
  9. AT&T beats Citi challenge over saying ‘thanks’ to customers
  10. Hassles mount for journalists in Turkey after failed coup 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Canada the most expensive G7 country for cellphone service: study
  2. Thoughts on why Canadian prices are high (Timothy Denton)
  3. CBC Olympics commentator apologizes for saying Chinese swimmer ‘went out like stink, died like a pig’
  4. Rage at CBC commentator a common reaction during ‘anti-China Games’
  5. D’oh Canada: CBC calls entire race mixing up Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte
  6. Oops? CBC announcer mixes up lanes, declares Ryan Lochte winner over Michael Phelps
  7. Shoalts: Sure, Elliotte Friedman goofed, but he also showed grace under fire
  8. After biggest blunder of his career, CBC’s Elliotte Friedman wants no sympathy
  9. The Rio Olympics are having a big problem getting people to watch
  10. TV Ratings For The Olympics In Rio Are WAY Down Compared To London In 2012
  11. Every major cable TV company lost subscribers last quarter: Top pay-TV operators lost 665,000 subscribers in Q2 2016.
  12. TV news channels have finally figured out how to call Donald Trump a liar, and it’s glorious
  13. Dick Morris: Fox News Grew More Biased Under Ailes in Recent Years
  14. Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization (Gregory J. Martin & Ali Yurukoglu)
  15. ISPs and FCC Republicans celebrate FCC’s court loss on muni broadband: FCC critics glad that commission can’t preempt state laws.
  16. Broadband Industry Think Tank Claims Comcast Plan To Charge More For Privacy ‘Pro Consumer’
  17. Google Fiber Hasn’t Hit A ‘Snag,’ It’s Just Evolving
  18. Web firms fear EU’s plans for new telco rules will destroy encryption: European Commission mulls inclusion of OTT players such as WhatsApp in ePrivacy law.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Facebook legal settlement risks teens’ privacy
  2. Reddit tells label it won’t cough up IP address of prerelease music pirate: Music label has embarked on “an impermissible fishing expedition,” Reddit says.
  3. Privacy lawsuit over Gmail will move forward: New plaintiffs hope to push ahead with a class of people who never used Gmail.
  4. Linux bug leaves 1.4 billion Android users vulnerable to hijacking attacks: Off-path attack means malicious hackers can be located anywhere on the Internet.
  5. Group claims to hack NSA-tied hackers, posts exploits as proof: Extraordinary claim gets attention of security experts everywhere.
  6. Confirmed: hacking tool leak came from “omnipotent” NSA-tied group – Rare crypto implementation in ShadowBrokers dump connects it to Equation Group.
  7. Snowden speculates leak of NSA spying tools is tied to Russian DNC hack: Former NSA security scientist concurs exposure by “Equation Group” connected to DNC leak.
  8. The World Series of Hacking—without humans
  9. Seeking a future where networks patch themselves, DARPA stages an AI vs. AI smackdown.
  10. Snowden Docs Show NSA, New Zealand Spied On Pro-Democracy Activists
  11. The Internet Doesn’t Route Around Surveillance
  12. New air-gap jumper covertly transmits data in hard-drive sounds: “DiskFiltration” siphons data even when computers are disconnected from the Internet.
  13. Volkswagen Created A ‘Backdoor’ To Basically All Its Cars… And Now Hackers Can Open All Of Them
  14. Nova Scotia ordered to pay in rural high-speed internet court case: The province ‘went through a backdoor’ for confidential research, Nova Scotia Supreme Court rules
  15. University Tracks Students’ Movements Using WiFi, But Says It’s OK Because It’s Not Tracking Students
  16. Copperhead OS: The startup that wants to solve Android’s woeful security – A multi-billion-dollar megacorp, Google, apparently needs help to secure its OS.
  17. EU-US Privacy Shield: How to Certify
  18. Opinion: Retailers like J.Crew are obsessed with data. (And it’s killing your shopping experience.)

jon

News of the Week; August 10, 2016

GAMES

  1. New York Makes Playing Pokemon Go, Other Online Games A Sex Offender Parole Violation
  2. Pokemon Go legislation puts ESA in a tight spot: Will the industry side with sex offenders or risk legislators hobbling a new market just as it gets going?
  3. Pokemon Company Threatens Pokemon Go API Creator With CFAA Lawsuit
  4. Pokémon Go blocks third-party services as global rollout continues: Niantic’s game earned a reported $200 million in its first month, giving rise to a cottage industry of external sites
  5. Privacy Scandal Haunts Pokemon Go’s Ceo
  6. Niantic CEO explains takedown of third-party Pokemon Go apps
  7. Pokemon Go now banned in Iran due to ‘security concerns’
  8. Pokémon Go and the Evolving Arena of Clickwrap Enforcement against Children
  9. How hackers broke Pokémon Go’s anti-cheat technology in four days: Decrypted authentication hash again opens up unauthorized apps.
  10. What Makes Pokémon Go So Popular?
  11. Beware the Pokemon Go Bandwagon
  12. Skin Betting Crackdown: A Dozen Sites Rebuff Second Valve Cease And Desist Letter
  13. Dota 2 eSports prize pool eclipses $20 million
  14. SA government puts block on esports gambling
  15. The Wild West of E-sports Stats: The all-digital world of multiplayer online battle arena gaming should be the perfect petri dish for data analysis. As the popularity and profitability of the genre continue to soar, however, the statistical revolution is surprisingly struggling to keep pace.
  16. Online Olympic video streaming is big, but not as big as eSports: The world’s best athletes are on display, but don’t tell the dudes watching League of Legends on Twitch.
  17. Fan-made Metroid 2 remake celebrates series’ 30th year before Nintendo does: Free on Windows with redrawn graphics, slight twists, mechanics from other entries.
  18. Valve now prevents game trading for players caught cheating on Steam
  19. Valve will grant royalty-free licenses to anyone making SteamVR peripherals: Will allow anyone to build trackable sensors into hardware meant for VR experiences.
  20. ‘Favorable’ overseas sales steer Bandai Namco to solid quarter
  21. Overwatch helps drive record-breaking revenues for Activision Blizzard
  22. How Warner Bros. is making its game business digitally powered
  23. Xbox One controllers and Windows 10 PCs: It’s all a mess right now
  24. Sony cancels PlayStation Plus TV series Powers
  25. Zynga posts another up-and-down quarter
  26. No Man’s Sky street date broken by retailers, gameplay streams now online: Sony issues response, says pre-patch version is not a “fair depiction” of game.
  27. No Man’s Sky could alter the relationship between indies and publishers: Hello Games’ Sean Murray believes success could have a “real impact” on how big publishers see indie games
  28. Humble experiments with giving streamers a cut of game bundles they promote
  29. Hackers finally breach Denuvo’s impenetrable defences: “Denuvo allowed 650,000 pirates to breach their servers for 3 days. And they call themselves the most secure company?”
  30. PC game pirates begin to find cracks in Denuvo anti-piracy tech
  31. Ska Studios laments “toxic” trend in community attitudes: Delay to Salt and Sanctuary’s Vita port prompted a backlash from the game’s audience
  32. I got a glimpse into the future of women in gaming—and it was magical
  33. Playing a Video Game Could Cut the Risk of Dementia by 48%, Suggests a New Study
  34. What I learned playing Metacritic’s all-time worst-scoring PC games

DIGITAL

  1. Chung c. Brandy Melville Canada Ltd.: When Using Photographs Posted on Instagram Can Result in Copyright Infringement
  2. Case launches testing anti-SLAPP laws
  3. Repeat Plaintiff Can’t Sue Search Engines Because Employers Won’t Hire Him–Despot v. Baltimore Life Insurance (Eric Goldman)
  4. Kansas couple sues IP mapping firm for turning their life into a “digital hell”: Company fixed the error, but it may be years before the issue is resolved.
  5. Twitter is not legally responsible for the rise of ISIS, rules California district court
  6. EFF Asks FTC To Demand ‘Truth In Labeling’ For DRM
  7. FTC Alleges 1-800-Contacts Bullied Rivals Out of Competing in Search Ads: Comeptitors Agreed Not to Buy Ads Against Each Others’ Brand Names
  8. FTC Sues 1-800 Contacts For Restricting Competitive Keyword Advertising (Eric Goldman)
  9. Even The Usual Defenders Of The RIAA Are Pointing Out They’re Simply Lying About YouTube
  10. 98% of YouTube Music Videos Are Completely Authorized. Now What?
  11. YouTube is stepping up its investment in original content: Early success of Red subscription service means more funding and support for creators like PewDiePie
  12. Rio 2016: Want to make Olympic GIFs? Not so fast, says IOC – International Olympic Committee prohibits media from making GIFs, WebMs, and Vines.
  13. Minnesota Carpet Cleaning Business Sues US Olympic Committee Over Its Ridiculous Social Media Rules
  14. Rio Olympics Videos Already Have a Billion-Plus Views
  15. Time Warner as sous-chef may enhance Hulu broth
  16. Hulu to End Free TV Service
  17. Hulu Ditches ‘Free’ Model Without Giving It A Chance To Succeed
  18. With Hulu’s Valuation at $5.8B, Where Does It Stand Next To Netflix, Amazon?
  19. FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Clear Ads: The agency says brands and the social media stars who promote their products need to be more transparent about sponsored content
  20. Snapchat Influencers Start Labeling Social Endorsements as Paid Ads: FTC guidelines kick in with uptick in branded content
  21. The Coming Copyright Fight Over Viral News Videos, Such As Police Shootings
  22. Lifestyle Blogging, Supplement Dust, and Third Party Liability
  23. Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit Will Go To A Jury–Edible Arrangements v. Provide Commerce (Eric Goldman)
  24. New York Legalizes Daily Fantasy Sports 
  25. These May Be the Only People Who Want Yahoo to Thrive
  26. Why are sex workers getting kicked off Airbnb and other platforms without explanation?
  27. Police Get Facebook To Kill Livestream Of Standoff Which Ended With Suspect Being Shot To Death
  28. Your ‘Smart’ Thermostat Is Now Vulnerable To Ransomware
  29. State Supreme Court Rolls Back Decision That Would Have Made Violating Company Computer Policies A Crime
  30. UK copyright extension on designed objects is “direct assault” on 3D printing: Industrial designs, like chairs and tables, now come with a copyright of 70+ years.
  31. Facebook continues its war on clickbait: New system “identifies words and phrases that are commonly used in clickbait.”
  32. Tinder terms of use “violate European law,” says MEP: Norway tells Tinder “this ain’t Texas.” But Tinder sees name victory over threesome app 3nder.
  33. The Making Of A “Facebook Murder”: People are actually killing other people for changing their relationship status
  34. Haters Gonna Hate — but They Better Stop Doing It on Twitter, or They Will Kill It.: Three years after the company resolved to solve harassment, the trolls are still winning.
  35. Blackberry enters a new era, files 105-page patent lawsuit against Avaya: Armed with 38,000 patents, BlackBerry CEO says he’s in “licensing mode.”
  36. Government Accountability Office Study Confirms: Patent Office Encouraged Examiners To Approve Crappy Patents
  37. Oracle fights back against Google’s attempt to sanction a lawyer after trial
  38. Apple, Google, Amazon, And The Advantages Of Bigness
  39. When Every Company Is a Tech Company, Does the Label Matter?
  40. Revisiting the graveyard of an early content farm: There are lessons still be learned from the dusty webpages of Demand Studios.
  41. The strange case of Marina Joyce and internet hysteria: Witch hunts and panic among communities are nothing new, but what happens when cyberspace intensifies the frenzy?
  42. The 10 Commandments of Internet Ethics 
  43. The first website went up 25 years ago today
  44. The bandwidth bottleneck that is throttling the Internet: Researchers are scrambling to repair and expand data pipes worldwide — and to keep the information revolution from grinding to a halt.
  45. How AI Will Redefine Love

CREATIVITY

  1. Getty Sued Again Over Abusing Copyright Law, Licensing Images It Has No Rights To
  2. Government-Backed Study Finds Piracy Fight a Low Priority for Canadian Rights Holders (Michael Geist)
  3. Musician Ed Sheeran faces copyright lawsuit over ‘Thinking Out Loud’
  4. Marvin Gaye Co-Writer Getting it on Again 
  5. Ed Sheeran sued for allegedly copying Marvin Gaye classic Let’s Get It On: Sheeran’s Grammy-winning hit Thinking Out Loud copied the ‘heart’ of Gaye song, says its co-writer Ed Townsend as he sues British artist in New York
  6. Franz Kafka literary legal battle ends as Israel’s high court rules in favor of library: Country’s supreme court rules manuscripts are the national library’s property – Estate’s heirs must hand over documents, which include unpublished writings
  7. MPAA Anti-Piracy Cutbacks Lead to “Bullying” Lawsuit
  8. Second Circuit Revives Copyright Claims Against Sony and Ghostface Killah 
  9. Primatologist Tells Court That Macaque Monkeys Are, Like, Super Smart, So They Should Totally Get Copyrights
  10. DOJ Recommends No Changes in ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees, And Requires Full-Work Licensing – How It Affects Music Users
  11. DOJ Makes Smart Decision On Music Licensing… Music Publishers Completely Lose Their S–t
  12. The Growing List of How the Copyright Office Has Failed Us
  13. Photographers: Arkansas’ new image-rights law foggy
  14. Publishers Association Sends Whiny Complaint Letter To Dean After Academic Librarian Discusses Sci-Hub
  15. Want to Change Academic Publishing? Just Say No
  16. Viral Cow Video Copied In Ad Campaign, But Is It Copyright Infringement? (Andres Guadamuz)
  17. Here Is The End Result Of The USOC And NBC’s Over-Protectionist Olympic Nonsense
  18. Federal Court rules Olympic themed Telstra campaign is not misleading
  19. Australian Olympic Committee v Telstra: Federal Court draws a ‘fine line’ on ambush marketing
  20. ‘The Ring Games’: How ambush marketing can see brands benefit from multi-million dollar events for free
  21. Dirty Dancing with Trademark Rights: How Pop Culture References in Ads Can Raise Legal Issues 
  22. Josh Duggar Sued over Ashley Madison Profile: DJ Alleges Duggar’s Use of His Picture Cost Him Jobs
  23. The Plural Tort Structure Of Copyright Law
  24. A new milestone for black women in movies — and why it matters
  25. NFL Cuts Out Shout-Out To St. Louis In HoF Speech YouTube Upload, Streisand Effect Takes Over
  26. Journalism’s lack of diversity threatens its long-term future: The barriers faced by those from poorer backgrounds or minorities are getting higher – how can newspapers expect to stay relevant?
  27. Newspaper Association Of America Complains That Comedian John Oliver Failed To Solve Newspaper Biz Model Problem
  28. Picturing the Commons
  29. Functional Compilations (Pamela Samuelson) 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Roger Ailes Used Fox News Budget to Finance ‘Black-Room’ Campaigns Against His Enemies
  2. Roger Ailes’ Clothing Choices Perfectly Reflect His Personality: Gross on the outside. Gross on the inside.
  3. Will Megyn Kelly Dish About Roger Ailes In Her New Book?: Speculation is building around when and how the Fox News anchor will break her silence.
  4. The Donald Trump and Roger Ailes Mind-Meld: What Trump’s defense of Roger Ailes’ alleged sexual harassment reveals about the GOP nominee.
  5. How Unusual Is the Roger Ailes Sexual Harassment Case?
  6. CNN’s Brian Stelter: Fox News Sent A Staffer To Date Me And Spy On Me Ten Years Ago – Stelter – “I Was Going Out On What I Thought Were Dates … They Were Actually Spying On Me”
  7. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman Is Overpaid and Should Be Fired, Parent Company Says: He’s “the third highest paid CEO in the United States and among the worst as measured by pay for performance,” NAI writes
  8. States win the right to limit municipal broadband, beating FCC in court: Major loss for Tom Wheeler in attempt to boost broadband competition.
  9. Appeals Court Strikes Down FCC Attempt To Eliminate Protectionist State Broadband Laws
  10. Copyright Office Outlines Concerns With Set-Top Box NPRM in Letter to Congress
  11. US Copyright Office sides with cable companies against FCC’s set-top rules: Set-top box rules could enable piracy, copyright official warns.
  12. Why Is The Copyright Office Lying To Protect The Cable Industry’s Monopoly Stranglehold Over The Cable Box?
  13. Programmatic Advertising Buying and the FCC’s Political Broadcasting Rules 
  14. AT&T, Comcast Fight Utility Pole Reform To Slow Google Fiber’s Arrival In Nashville
  15. Verizon faces customers’ wrath over poor Internet and phone service: Verizon disputes complaints, says it isn’t abandoning copper network in Jersey.
  16. BBC to deploy detection vans to snoop on internet users
  17. BBC Now Training Its Secret, Likely Imaginary, Fleet Of Detector Vans On Your WiFi
  18. The real scandal is that you still believe TV licence detector vans are real – Op-ed: No, the BBC can’t snoop on your Wi-Fi and sense that you’re using iPlayer.
  19. Comcast/NBC Ignores Lessons From The Cord Cutting Age, Buries Olympics Under An Ocean Of Annoying Advertising
  20. Olympics fan claims Twitter killed his account after he posted Rio videos: Venezuelan tweeter says short clips were legal under local laws—Twitter disagrees.
  21. Google Fiber re-thinks plans as it considers wireless alternative: Wireless could help Google Fiber avoid fights with incumbents over pole access.
  22. Ad board to Comcast: Stop claiming you have the “fastest Internet”: Comcast should also stop making confusing claims about Verizon, group says.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Vulnerability Exposes 900M Android Devices—and Fixing Them Won’t Be Easy
  2. Sent text messages not private: ruling
  3. Good Ruling In California Protects Anonymity Of Online Critics — Even When The Information Was False
  4. Tenth Circuit: Accessing email is a ‘search’ under the Jones trespass test (Orin Kerr)
  5. FISA Court Says FBI Must Review Its NSL Gag Orders Every Three Years, Rather Than Almost Never
  6. GCHQ faces human rights challenge over bulk hacking abroad: Privacy International to battle UK spooks at European Court of Human Rights.
  7. FBI chief Comey: “We have never had absolute privacy”: 650 phones are “a brick to us… Those are cases unmade, evidence unfound.”
  8. Microsoft v. United States: Court’s “Privacy” Ruling Is Not Really About Privacy at All
  9. An Assessment of the Anthem Data Breach Litigation Rulings
  10. Consumers Say DraftKings and FanDuel Aren’t Keeping Their Data Secure
  11. Has your Company Suffered a Data Breach? Expect to Lose $6.03 Million on Average
  12. Embarrassing Photos of Me, Thanks to My Right-Wing Stalkers
  13. Can We Trust Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?

jon

News of the Week; August 3, 2016

GAMES

  1. 2K Sports scores partial victory in bizarre tattoo copyright lawsuit: Who owns the ink in another person’s skin?
  2. Failure to Register LeBron James’ Tattoo as Copyright Proves Costly
  3. Star Wars Battlefront fan game shut down by Lucasfilm
  4. Blizzard Allows Release Of Fan-Game It Initially Tried To Shut Down, Reaps Rewards It Should Have Had All Along
  5. Homeowner files lawsuit against Niantic over Pokemon Go trespassing
  6. Pokemon Go catches lawsuit for game’s creators: New Jersey man claims players attempting to trespass on his property in search of mythical monsters are creating a nuisance.
  7. Pokémon Go…es To Court! 
  8. Next Stop for Pokémon GO: Regulation & Litigation?
  9. The Case for Pokémon at Auschwitz: Playing the popular game in the death camp is a celebration, not a desecration
  10. Get Your Pokémon Off My Lawn!
  11. PETA’s L.A. Office Is Pokémon ‘Safe Zone’ Following Pokémon Go Release
  12. Most Pokémon Go tracking sites have now been shut down: Niantic is probably signalling the end of real-time Pokémon Go tracking sites.
  13. Pokemon Go Updates Will Be More Respectful to Real-World Places: Pokemon Company rep says it’s working on features that keep the game fun but also respect the world.
  14. New York governor calls onPokemon Go dev to block sex offenders
  15. New York State bans sex offenders from any form of online gaming: Governor ask Niantic for help in creating a “safer environment” for players
  16. New York bills target Pokemon Go, sex offenders: Legislation would ban registered sex offenders from playing AR games, require AR devs to create item-free zones around their homes
  17. 10 psychosocial reasons why ‘Pokémon Go’ is so appealing
  18. App Annie: Pokémon Go makes $10 million every day without cannibalizing other games
  19. 10 Unbelievable Pokémon Go-Inspired Products
  20. Counter-Strike eSports broadcast pulled following Munich shooting: ProSieben MAXX cancels ELeague coverage following German government linking the killer’s actions to his love of Counter-Strike
  21. Twitter Airs Eleague Final, Adds eSports to Live Streaming Lineup
  22. Several Skin Gambling Sites Still Operating After Valve’s Cease And Desist Window Expires
  23. CSGO Lounge move towards licenses in wake of Valve cease and desist
  24. Indie game key scammer says G2A is the best place to sell stolen keys
  25. YouTubers walk away from G2A sponsorship revenue: Accusations of fraudulent transactions on G2A’s marketplace has prompted some streamers to break their partnerships
  26. No criminal charges in 38 Studios collapse: Rhode Island says “no provable criminal violations” in Kingdoms of Amalur company’s downfall, but civil litigation still outstanding
  27. How localizers saved Final Fantasy X from its own voiceover
  28. Augs Lives Matter slogan an “unfortunate coincidence”: Deus Ex brand marketer defends use while Bioware’s Manveer Heir criticizes the developer’s controversial language choice
  29. Sony surges, Microsoft meanders and Nintendo nosedives
  30. PlayStation division more than doubles profits, sells another 3.5m PS4
  31. Digital sales prop EA up in quarterly earnings
  32. Google Play Family Library program will let up to six users share games
  33. Microsoft plans to sabotage Steam – Sweeney: Epic co-founder says Windows 10 updates will progressively break Valve’s storefront, Microsoft acknowledges that UWP is a work in progress
  34. Disney Infinity online services shutting down in 2017
  35. The Shutdown of Disney Infinity Is a Confusing Nightmare: Disney’s plans for the PC version are bizarre and unclear.
  36. Ghostbusters dev Fireforge files for Bankruptcy: Owes millions to part owner Tencent, according to filings
  37. Capcom’s fortunes falter due to a dearth of big releases
  38. Metal Gear series has sold 49m copies: Konami celebrates news in latest financial report
  39. Samsung Gear VR hits 1 million MAUs
  40. That time the industry almost killed E3 – 10 Years Ago This Summer: Publishers pursue an ill-advised adjustment to the Electronic Entertainment Expo and industry heavyweights make bold predictions of varying accuracy
  41. PC games revenue to hit $42 billion in 2020 – DFC
  42. The Relationship between Monetization and Gamer Behavior

DIGITAL

  1. Judge wipes out patent troll’s $625M verdict against Apple – Judge: Repeated references to an earlier trial prejudiced jury against Apple.
  2. Irony: Sony Pictures Sued For Failing To Stop Piracy
  3. Europe Has The Highest Online Piracy Rates, By Far
  4. App Store devs have earned $50 billion: A quick bit of news from the Apple empire, CEO Tim Cook today revealed on social media that developers have earned $50 billion from the App Store.
  5. Kim Dotcom’s lawyer will also represent alleged KickassTorrents founder: Ira Rothken has kept Megaupload founder free for years. Can he do it again?
  6. Arbitration rejected in antitrust suit against Uber
  7. Judge Declines to Enforce Uber’s Terms of Service–Meyer v. Kalanick
  8. Enforce Existing Laws to Combat Online Threats (Danielle Citron)
  9. Are Employers Responsible for Protecting Their Employees on Social Media? “Yes” According to a Recent Decision 
  10. Faced With False Online Client Reviews? Recent CA Ruling May Make It Easier To Force Yelp to Help
  11. Nvidia offers $30 to GTX 970 customers in class action lawsuit over RAM: Graphics card spec discrepancy could lead to a small payout for customers.
  12. Costs of ISP blocking injunctions: is there really an EU rule?
  13. Stiglitz Calls Apple’s Profit Reporting in Ireland ‘a Fraud’
  14. Facebook: We will fight IRS over billions in possible owed back taxes – “Facebook Ireland Holdings Unlimited” helped company lower its US taxes.
  15. Report: Apple’s negotiating tactics sunk its long-rumored TV service – Apple asked for too much in exchange for too little, TV executives tell the WSJ.
  16. Apple replaces the pistol emoji with a water gun
  17. Newest iOS 10 beta includes 100 new emoji, replaces gun with waterpistol: iOS will have the most diverse cast of emoji—including single-parent families.
  18. Is anyone at Yahoo paying attention? Probably not
  19. The Rise and Fall (OK — Mostly Fall) of Yahoo
  20. Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo is a marriage of incompatible cultures. And it won’t end well.
  21. YouTube’s Dilemma: How Best To Monetizing Video Content
  22. YouTube’s Unplugged TV Dilemma, Part 2: Ad-Based Model’s Revenue Potential Quantified
  23. Streaming’s Ad Boom: Will the Millions Spent By Apple, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube Help Decide Who’s No. 1?
  24. Facebook’s Rich History Of Copying SnapchatHere’s Why Facebook Is So Desperate to Buy, Copy or Kill Snapchat
  25. You’re more valuable to Facebook than ever before
  26. Time Warner Buys 10% Stake in Hulu, Valuing It at $5.8 Billion: HBO owner joins Disney, Fox and Comcast in owning the streaming-TV service
  27. Bitcoin Drops Nearly 20% as Exchange Hack Amplifies Price Decline
  28. The IOC Announces The Olympic Channel: The New Year-Round Digital Home For Olympic Content
  29. BBC iPlayer users will have to pay TV licence fee from 1 September: Government pushed through plan to close ‘iPlayer loophole’, which costs the BBC about £150m a year
  30. County Employee Properly Terminated for Facebook Posts Criticizing Police–Palmer v. Anoka
  31. Nigerian authorities arrest alleged mastermind of $60M worth of online scams
  32. I’m With The Banned: What my evening with Milo told me about Twitter’s biggest troll, the death of reason, and the crucible of A-list con-men that is the Republican National Convention.
  33. After mass shooting, German police focus on “dark net” crime
  34. FTC Investigation Sparked Over Use of “Female Chat Bots” in Ashley Madison
  35. Houston Law Firm Sues Student With Severe Back Injuries For $200k After She Posts Negative Reviews To Yelp, Facebook
  36. Chung c. Brandy Melville Canada Ltd.: When Using Photographs Posted on Instagram Can Result in Copyright Infringement 
  37. Public Wi-Fi hotspots and you: Busting the many legal myths
  38. Are you a criminal because you share your Netflix password? 
  39. OECD broadband statistics update
  40. Internet Policy Review: Regulating the sharing economy [Volume 5, Issue 2]
  41. Let the geeks rule over the Internet
  42. Instagram will soon let you filter comments on your own account

CREATIVITY

  1. Getty Images sued again over alleged misuse of over 47,000 photos
  2. Getty Makes Nonsensical Statement On Photographer Carol Highsmith’s Lawsuit For Falsely Claiming Copyright
  3. Irony: Sony Pictures Sued For Failing To Stop Piracy
  4. PETA Takes Infamous “Monkey Selfie” Lawsuit to Appeals Court
  5. The Selfie-Taking Monkey Who Has No Idea He Has Lawyers Has Appealed His Copyright Lawsuit
  6. Faulkner v. Hasbro Inc.: District court denies toy company’s motion to dismiss right of publicity claim brought by Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, holding that fact that hamster doll in defendant’s Littlest Pet Shop toy line bore plaintiff’s “unusual celebrity name” name was sufficient to state claim.
  7. How the (Copyright Test) Was Won: Led Zeppelin Victorious in “Stairway to Heaven” Suit
  8. Lionsgate Gets Judge to Revive Trademark Claim Over ‘Dirty Dancing’ Ad Spoof
  9. Dirty Dancing remake: court grants reconsideration on dilution – Lions Gate Ent. Inc. v. TD Ameritrade Servs. Co., No. cv 15-05024  (C.D. Cal. Aug. 1, 2016) (Rebecca Tushnet)
  10. Why Stephen Colbert can’t be Stephen Colbert anymore (+video)
  11. Intellectual Property Fun: Is Comedy Central Claiming It Owns The Character Stephen Colbert
  12. Stephen Colbert Retires ‘Stephen Colbert.’ Please Welcome ‘Stephen Colbert.’
  13. Who Owns Stephen Colbert? 
  14. After Cracking Down On Tens Of Thousands Of Enemies, Erdogan Says He’s Dropping His 2000 Lawsuits Over Insults
  15. Canadian Comedian Plans To Appeal $42k For A Joke That Insulted Someone
  16. The Supreme Court Will Consider a Case About Cheerleading Uniforms
  17. Independent Artists Unite Online To Fight Zara: Claiming the popular brand stole their designs, more than 20 artists are working together to get compensation
  18. How California’s Identity Fraud Law Has Been Interpreted To Criminalize Defamation, Publicity Rights Violations And More
  19. Copyright Office Intent On Changing The Part Of Copyright That Protects Libraries & Archives, Even Though No One Wants It Changed
  20. No Alarms, No Surprises: Why Buying Concert Tickets Is a Rigged System
  21. The Trouble with the TPP’s Copyright Rules (Michael Geist)
  22. Court of appeals says FU to state university’s TM claim (Rebecca Tushnet)
  23. VCRs are cast into the dustbin of history
  24. What It Takes for an Independent Record Store to Survive Now: Even as legacy music shops continue to shutter across the country, Midwestern institution Used Kids has managed to stay afloat for the last 30 years and counting. How do they do it?
  25. IP and BREXIT: The facts
  26. Federal Court smiles at Telstra’s “I Go to Rio” advertising campaign
  27. Update: Australian Olympic Committee, Inc. v Telstra Corporation Limited [2016] FCA 857
  28. Kindling the Commons: History Reminds Us Why Sharing Our Creativity Matters

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Trial on Sumner Redstone’s Mental Competence Set for October
  2. Philippe Dauman Gets Judge’s Go-Ahead in Lawsuit Over Removal from Sumner Redstone Trust
  3. Fox and friends with benefits
  4. Former Fox News Booker Says She Was Sexually Harassed and ‘Psychologically Tortured’ by Roger Ailes for More Than 20 Years
  5. Sex on TV: Final FAQs for employers about the Roger Ailes case 
  6. Laurie Dhue’s Lawyer Slams Fox’s Probe Into Roger Ailes Harassment Claims
  7. Copyright Office Jumps Into Set-Top Box Debate, Says Hollywood Should Control Your TV
  8. The Limits of Net Neutrality: Open access to the internet needs stronger curbs on big network operators. In the US and Europe, there’s authority to impose these. That’s easier than it sounds. (Susan Crawford)
  9. Broadband Industry Formally Tries, Once Again, To Kill Net NeutralityBroadband industry tries again to kill net neutrality and Title II: ISP lobby groups petition for full court review of decision that upheld rules.
  10. Washington state sues Comcast, says it sold near-worthless service plans: Comcast defends $5-per-month service plans, will fight $100 million lawsuit.
  11. Washington State Sues Comcast For Routinely Ripping Off Its Customers
  12. How Comcast convinced customers to buy “near-worthless” service plans: Lawsuit details Comcast sales script for unnecessary service plans.
  13. Comcast supports higher prices for customers who want Web privacy – Comcast: FCC rules shouldn’t determine whether customers make “good choices.”
  14. Comcast: The Economics Of Offering Cheaper, Better Streaming TV Service ‘Unproven’
  15. AT&T violated rule requiring low prices for schools, FCC says: AT&T claims it didn’t have to follow rule designed to give schools lower prices.
  16. Google Fiber stalls in Nashville in fight over utility poles: AT&T, Comcast resist Nashville plan to speed Google Fiber construction.
  17. After Ripping Off Cities, States For Years, Verizon Makes Some Familiar Broadband Promises To Boston
  18. Let’s Talk TV: CRTC Revises Policy Framework for Local and Community Television (Stephen Zolf)
  19. CRTC Publishes Enforcement Advisory on CASL Consent Records
  20. FCC Demands TP-Link Support Open Source Third-Party Firmware On Its Routers
  21. World’s first 8K TV broadcasts begin for Rio 2016 Olympics: Unless you have an 8K TV you’ll have to attend a special viewing theatre.
  22. Use a VPN or proxy in the United Arab Emirates, risk a £400K fine or prison: Latest move seems to be about protecting profits at country’s top telecom companies.
  23. Virgin Media red-faced after workers dig trench, block house, and disappear: Situation rectified a day later following flurry of bad press. Funny, that. 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. How copyright is irreparably, fundamentally incompatible with privacy
  2. How a file-sharing lawsuit against Rogers threatens your Internet privacy: Geist – Voltage Pictures asked the court to order Rogers to disclose the identity of one of its subscribers in a reverse class-action lawsuit.
  3. Do You Consent? Four Ways to Strengthen Digital Privacy (Michael Geist)
  4. Oliver Stone asks moviegoers to power down phones—and leave them off: “This will be our undoing,” Snowden director says in stark pre-film warning.
  5. Comcast Tells The FCC It Should Be Able To Charge Broadband Users A Premium For Privacy
  6. State Supreme Court Says Secret Software Used In Sentencing Determinations Not A Violation Of Due Process Rights
  7. Trump’s wish for hacking powers sets up disaster scenario Snowden feared
  8. Documents Show FISA Court Refusing To Grant FBI’s Requests To Scoop Up Communications Along With Phone Metadata
  9. FBI Bugging On Courthouse Steps (Not Very Nice, But) Not an Illegal Search
  10. Court Says Bugs The FBI Planted Around California Courthouses Did Not Violate Anyone’s Expectation Of Privacy
  11. Federal Prosecutors Use All Writs Order To Compel Suspect To Unlock Phone With His Fingerprint
  12. Security Researchers Sued For Exposing Internet Filtering Company’s Sale Of Censorship Software To Blacklisted Country
  13. Federal court says state law can’t ban political robocalls: An Arkansas law can’t single out political robocalls exclusively in ban, judge says.
  14. Watchdog takes bizarre legal route in data privacy case – Analysis: Data commissioner takes needlessly costly route in Schrems case
  15. DNC staffers: FBI didn’t tell us for months about possible Russian hack
  16. By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines: If Russia really is responsible, there’s no reason political interference would end with the DNC emails.
  17. WikiLeaks Put Women in Turkey in Danger, for No Reason (Zeynep Tufekci)
  18. Mickey Mouse Club had Mickey Mouse security: Disney’s Playdom forum pours out passwords
  19. NSA Surveillance Compliance Reports Show Typos, Lack Of Communication Resulting In Erroneous Targeting And Collection
  20. Second Circuit’s Decision in Microsoft v. U.S. (Data Stored in Ireland): Good News for Internet Users?
  21. DOJ Responds to ‘Microsoft Ireland’ Decision With Proposed Legislation and Bilateral Agreements Allowing Cross-Border Data Searches
  22. US Internet Companies Are Not Government’s Eyes and Ears Worldwide (Anupam Chander)
  23. Director Of National Intelligence ‘Celebrates’ National Whistleblower Day… Without Mentioning Snowden Once

jon