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News of the Week; May 18, 2016

GAMES

  1. ‘NBA 2K’ Videogame Maker Fights Lawsuit Over Copyrighted Tattoos
  2. ESL forms World Esports Association to professionalize and regulate eSports
  3. WESA grilled about potentially flawed eSports regulatory practices: “If we’re seen as legitimate as the NFL, we’re happy. We probably don’t have the same standards as you have.”
  4. Blizzard and Twitch pledge to fight racism with pilot program: An incident at a recent live-streamed Hearthstone tournament has highlighted the need for change in eSports
  5. Blizzard vows to make changes following racist abuse of Hearthstone pro: Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime will take steps to prevent the kind of appalling racism faced by TerrenceM at Dreamhack.
  6. eSports supremacy beckons as Overwatch beta pulls 9.7m players
  7. Investment in esports smart play for ESPN
  8. Move Over, Twitch: Activision Blizzard Takes eSports To Facebook Live
  9. Facebook To Broadcast Major League Gaming In Another Victory For eSports
  10. Activision expands MLG.tv eSports broadcast network, builds Facebook partnership
  11. Riot owner Tencent to launchLeague of Legends-ready console in China
  12. Top German soccer club buys pro League of Legends team, Elements
  13. FaZe Clan leaving WESA over reports of exclusivity demands
  14. eSports “more a promotional tool than anything else” – Zelnick
  15. 65% of Twitch viewing time split between four games
  16. Blizzard vows to crack down on bad Twitch chat behaviour: CEO respond to Twitch chat’s racist comments
  17. Blizzard takes zero-tolerance stance on Overwatch cheating: Publisher will issue permanent bans for first cheating offense, “full stop.”
  18. Blizzard promises to permanently ban Overwatch cheats
  19. Microsoft vetoed a black woman on cover for Fable II: Ex-Lionhead art director recalls marketing department “just didn’t get it,” insisted on a white male for Xbox 360 RPG
  20. Lionhead tells all: Molyneux’s overpromises, Fable Legends’ $75M budget, more – Eurogamer feature also uncovers Milo and Kate’s failings, battles with Xbox marketing.
  21. Apple classifies Palestinian-developed game as not a game, due to war theme
  22. China doesn’t want your games
  23. Money for nothing? Gamers and the buying of ‘virtual assets’
  24. Games have left the shadow of the movie business: Disney’s cancellation of Infinity and move to a licensing model is just the latest step in a long, slow and inevitable divorce between games and movies.
  25. Nintendo lays out movie aspirations
  26. Nintendo preps expansion into medical device business
  27. Microsoft discontinues game-creation tool Project Spark
  28. One million dormant Xbox Live gamertags can be yours starting Wednesday
  29. Virtual Reality Simulation Is Pushing The Design And Technological Boundaries Of Future Motorsport Cars
  30. Gear VRs for everyone! Google turns Android into a VR-ready OS: Daydream
  31. Kids getting smartphones at 10, as portable console popularity shrinks
  32. Crytek adds 6 new unis to VR First: Includes University College London and Manchester Metropolitan University
  33. AwesomenessTV announces The Kids’ Game Awards
  34. How They Made Warcraft Into A Movie
  35. Tetris movie still in the works, now planned as a trilogy
  36. Could ‘Video Game Rap’ Be YouTube’s Latest Breakout Content Category?
  37. Long-lost NES game hits emulators 25 years after it was made
  38. “We are providing self-actualization for a great many of our players”: Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson slots gaming just behind air, food, shelter, and water in the hierarchy of needs, says hardware refresh cadence has gone from six years to six months

DIGITAL

  1. Everything today is a lie: We’re officially in the era of the epic troll.
  2. The Information Age is over; welcome to the Experience Age
  3. YouTube Launches Dedicated App for Virtual Reality Videos
  4. Soon We Won’t Program Computers. We’ll Train Them Like Dogs
  5. Machine Unlearning: A possible crack in the brain-computer analogy.
  6. Google said to face “record $3 billion fine” in antitrust case: Search giant would have to change its business practices in Europe.
  7. A Bold New Scheme to Regulate Facebook
  8. Facebook And The First Amendment: Legal Challenges To Trending Controversy May Prove Difficult
  9. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter face hate speech complaints in France: Three French anti-racism bodies to file lawsuits against tech trio on Tuesday.
  10. Court Strikes Down Louisiana’s Attempt To Regulate Online Content ‘For The Children’
  11. Google’s 1st Amendment defense to search censorship fails in court: “Plaintiff has adequately alleged that it did not violate any of Google’s policies.”
  12. Judge Scolds Litigant For Making Facebook Account “Private” During Litigation–Thurmond v. Bowman
  13. What does the First Amendment look like in the digital age? Knight and Columbia are spending $60 million to find out
  14. What We Buy When We Buy Now (Aaron Perzanowski, Chris Jay Hoofnagle)
  15. FTC Wins Deception Case Over Faux User-Generated Content–Fanning v. FTC
  16. Amazon Liable For In-App Purchases by Kids
  17. Bing bans tech support ads—because they’re mostly scams: The ban is intended to improve user safety.
  18. $1B Bangladesh hackers implicated in attack on Vietnamese bank, Sony hack: The same code appears to have been used to attack Sony and banks in Vietnam, Bangladesh.
  19. How Trump’s troll army is cashing in on his campaign
  20. German Publishers Whine Because They Must Pay To Authors Misappropriated Copyright Levies
  21. Copyright trolls Rightscorp are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy
  22. Anti-piracy firm Rightscorp’s Q1 financials read like an obituary: Firm that bills online pirates $20 a pilfered song needs $1 million to stay afloat.
  23. ‘Working Here is Psychological Torture’: Law Firm Sues Over Anonymous Comments
  24. In Oracle v. Google, a Nerd Subculture Is on Trial
  25. How Java’s Inherent Verboseness May Mess Up Fair Use For APIs
  26. Google puts its expert on the stand to combat Oracle, wraps up its case
  27. Google just combined Chrome, YouTube, and Search into a single messaging app called Spaces
  28. Champions League and Europa League Finals Will Be Streamed Free On YouTube
  29. YouTube will offer classic NFL games as part of a new deal: The site’s NFL videos have almost 900 million views to date.
  30. NBA And BroadbandTV Launch Groundbreaking Multi-Platform Network: NBA Playmakers
  31. It’s 2016 and TV Execs Have Decided They Need a Digital Strategy
  32. The Music Industry Buried More Than 150 Startups. Now They Are Left To Dance With The Giants.
  33. Disappointing: Elsevier Buys Open Access Academic Pre-Publisher SSRN
  34. It’s the Data, Stupid: What Elsevier’s purchase of SSRN also means
  35. Warren Buffett Interested In Yahoo Because Why Not At This Point
  36. Man who claims to have invented e-mail sues Gawker for $35M in libel suit – Gizmodo: “Laying claim… for a universal technology gives you acres of weasel room.”
  37. New UK copyright enforcement strategy: “Track down” infringers, brainwash kids – Computing dominates the creative industries, so why aren’t its needs considered
  38. Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots—report
  39. Focus: Data doesn’t have borders
  40. Report: Apple is approving apps more quickly to increase Services revenue – Approval that took 8.8 days a year ago now takes around 1.95 days.
  41. How Instagram Is Changing the Art World
  42. Behind the Biggest Bitcoin Heist in History: Inside the Implosion of Mt. Gox
  43. A few controversial numbers may be illegal to share: Certain numbers could, in principle, get you into trouble – why?
  44. The History Of Social Networking

CREATIVITY

  1. Copyright in Film Parody: Brandishing Fair Use As A Sword, Second Circuit Finds Improv Version Of Point Break Copyrightable
  2. No copyright infringement in writing a book based on the facts in a film documentary
  3. Court Finds No False Endorsement over Use of Individual’s Name in Wendy’s Kid’s Meal
  4. Is Graffiti Ineligible for Copyright Protection Just Because the Act of Tagging is Illegal?
  5. Why Katy Perry’s dress could set a new legal precedent in the US 
  6. ASCAP Pays $1.75 Million to Settle Justice Department Probe
  7. Moving Toward A “Moral Right” Of Attribution In U.S. Copyright Law
  8. Name that tune: Musicians (and lawyers) are watching the copyright battle over Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ writes Josh O’Kane. A verdict against the group could have major consequences for the future of musical creativity
  9. Gene Kelly’s Widow Claims Copyright In Interviews Done By Gene Kelly, Sues Over Academic Book
  10. The End of Cadbury’s Purple Reign?
  11. Fawlty Towers and Faulty Towers. Is there an infringement of intellectual property rights?
  12. German Court Insults Free Speech, Bans Comedian From Mocking Turkish President
  13. Macedonia’s Government Is Subsidizing Bad Patriotic Rock Music and People Aren’t Happy
  14. Earnhardt Family Fighting Over Whether One Earnhardt Son Can Use His Own Last Name
  15. User Content Platforms Take the Heat for Artists’ Struggles at WIPO (EFF)
  16. Independent Publishing And Dmca Abuse, Or “How A Scammer Got My Book Blocked With Very Little Effort”
  17. Fossilized culture, not lack of funding, put news media on deathwatch
  18. Disney Defends Lawsuit Over Immigrants Replacing American Workers: A former Disney World worker aims to lead a class action claiming racketeering.
  19. Were Authorities Really Tricked Into Hosting a Cultural Revolution Throwback Concert? Chinese Are Skeptical.
  20. Why the ‘Black Panther’ movie shouldn’t give Marvel a free pass on diversity
  21. Ghost in the Shell and anime’s troubled history with representation: A controversial casting is exposing the many complications and contradictions of Japanese animation
  22. Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women
  23. Stats show that Eurovision song tempos may reflect economic inequality: Faster tempo may be an expression of stress felt in troubled countries.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. How do we apply Canadian content rules to a world in which we’re all creating all the time?
  2. BBC iPlayer viewers will need a TV licence to watch programmes online: “Access should be conditional upon verification of licence fee payment,” says UK gov’t.
  3. “Mega Cable” arrives as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC
  4. Charter blocked customer-owned modems for two years, must pay fine: Under settlement, Charter must notify FCC each time it blocks a 3rd-party modem.
  5. Comcast Now Trying To Claim That Delivering Just TV To Third-Party Set Top Boxes ‘Not Feasible’
  6. Cable Lobbying Group Claims More Competition Would Hurt Consumers
  7. Cable Company CEO Calls TV Business A ‘Tragedy Of The Commons’ That Ends Badly
  8. Bell/MTS presents complex options for regulators
  9. From Broadcasting to Telecommunications and Everything in Between: Reflections on the Recent New Developments in Communications Law and Policy Conference 
  10. Canada’s New Telecom Policy Begins to Take Shape With Rejection of Bell Appeal, Support for Net Neutrality (Michael Geist)
  11. Add Philadelphia To The Long List Of Cities That Think Verizon Ripped Them Off On Fiber Promises

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Then there were 117 million. LinkedIn password breach much bigger than thought
  2. CA Court Plays “Tag” – Judge Refuses to Drop Facebook Photo-Tagging Privacy Case 
  3. Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos: Debate between privacy and security is ‘issue of our age’
  4. Privacy, technology, and instant messaging – The British Columbia Court of Appeal sends a (instant) message
  5. Russia Provides Glimpse Of A Future Where Powerful Facial Recognition Technology Has Abolished Public Anonymity
  6. Mozilla Asks Court To Force FBI To Turn Over Information On Hacking Tool It Used In Child Porn Case
  7. Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US gov’t says
  8. Government Argues That Indefinite Solitary Confinement Perfectly Acceptable Punishment For Failing To Decrypt Devices
  9. FBI Doesn’t Want Privacy Laws To Apply To Its Biometric Database
  10. Here’s Why Lawyers Suggest You Stop Using Your Finger to Unlock Your Phone: You are protected against revealing passwords under the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination, but your biometrics are not.
  11. Lack of Trust in Internet Privacy and Security May Deter Economic and Other Online Activities
  12. Philly Cops Tried To Disguise An SUV With License Plate Readers As A Google Maps Vehicle
  13. District Attorney Arguing Against Encryption Handed Out Insecure Keylogging ‘Monitoring’ Software To Parents
  14. Philadelphia cops admit they put Google Maps sticker on surveillance vehicle: Who approved Google sticker on license plate reader-equipped car? Philly PD won’t say.
  15. The Intercept releasing docs leaked by NSA whistleblower Snowden: “Primary objective” of document dump is to allow public to scour them for stories.
  16. Who Will Own Your Data If the Tech Bubble Bursts?: Corporations, data brokers, and even criminals might buy failed companies just for their users’ personal information.
  17. Spanish Constitutional Court allows companies to monitor their employees with video surveillance cameras without being required to give explanation of their specific purpose
  18. WashU Expert: Spokeo decision has potential to expand privacy laws
  19. Supreme Court Says Plaintiff Must Show Actual Harm From Bogus Profile Created By Spokeo
  20. Supreme Court Issues Decision in Spokeo v. Robins; Must Allege Concrete Injury For Technical Statutory Violations 

jon

News of the Week; May 11, 2016

GAMES

  1. Copyright Law Does Not Protect Structure and Game Play of Card Game 
  2. DaVinci Editrice S.r.l. v. Ziko Games, LLC et al, No. 4:2013cv03415 – Document 44 (S.D. Tex. 2014)
  3. Nintendo staves off latest in conga line of patent lawsuits
  4. Game Developer Forced To Change Game’s Name Because ‘Wasteland’ Is A Trademark, Apparently
  5. Disney Infinity shuts down as Disney drops out of game publishing: Company will take $147 million write down for shuttered toys-to-life line.
  6.  Disney Infinity is dead as Disney exits game publishing
  7. The Death of Toys-to-Life?: Was Disney Infinity’s demise on the cards, and will others follow?
  8. Why You Should Always Register the Trademark on your Kickstarter Game
  9. Advice To Immediately Trademark Kickstarter Projects Rests On Crowdfunding Not Being Commerce
  10. eSports awareness to surge past 1 billion consumers in 2016 – Newzoo
  11. Over a billion people will know about eSports in 2016, as audiences balloon
  12. Gambling On Strategy eSports Becoming A Big Business
  13. Activision is going all-in on eSports, and CEO Bobby Kotick sees the money
  14. West Ham becomes first English Premiership football club to sign an e-sports player
  15. League of Legends bans three teams from competition: Team Impulse, Renegades, and Team Dragon Knights banned for variety of offenses, have until May 18 to find new owners
  16. Riot hands down team bans in League of Legends, and one lifetime ban
  17. The man who tried to reform League of Legends player behavior leaves Riot
  18. Over half of Madden NFL’s dollar-sales were from digital downloads
  19. Cliff Bleszinski’s LawBreakers: A shooter inspired by sports, not video games – “Boston sports fans are very passionate, to the point of being insufferable.”
  20. GameStop CEO: Wii U ‘disappointing to everybody,’ including Nintendo
  21. Nintendo licenses out newCruis’n arcade game: Cruis’n Adventure
  22. Consoles Will Die Soon According To Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) Exec
  23. PS4 and Xbox One have a new competitor in the Chinese console market: Fuze’s new Tomahawk F1 console is smaller and digital only, but the similarities are plain to see
  24. Tim Sweeney is still mad at Microsoft
  25. Video game sales on the up at Bandai Namco as profits falter
  26. New Call of Duty trailer racks up record ‘dislikes,’ but Activision’s unfazed
  27. Steam’s turned toxic, and Valve doesn’t care
  28. How big a deal is it to get featured by Apple? This big
  29. Does App Store placement still matter?: A new App Annie report shows daily download gains of between 100 and 500 per cent depending on territory
  30. Star Wars Battlefront ships 14m copies, EA enjoys “phenomenal” FY2016: “We grew non-GAAP net revenue, profitability and cash flow to record highs,” said CFO Blake Jorgensen
  31. Microsoft refused to sell Fable IP – Report: Suitors expressed interest in acquiring Lionhead, but refusal to include franchise in the deal cut talks short
  32. Metal Gear and mobile games give Konami a boost: Digital Entertainment division doubled its operating profit in the last fiscal year, but Konami sees decline in its future
  33. King pushes Activision Blizzard to record Q: Candy Crush acquisition and Activision performance more than offset a down quarter for Blizzard
  34. GAME acquires AR ads company
  35. Vive maker HTC hits rocky waters in latest results
  36. Microsoft’s new haptic VR tech blurs the lines between realities
  37. International eGames Committee names advisory board
  38. The Nürburgring may be the most-simulated location on the planet: Millions know it intimately more from video games than visiting the real thing.
  39. The 13 Biggest Video Games That Never Came Out: The saddest game cancellations from the NES era to present day.
  40. Biofeedback and Gaming: The Future Is Upon Us (Seriously)

DIGITAL

  1. Stakes Are High in Oracle v. Google, But the Public Has Already Lost Big (EFF)
  2. Google to jury: Android was built with our engineers’ hard work – “Android is precisely the kind of thing that fair use was intended to encourage.”
  3. Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz at trial: Java was free, Android had no licensing problem – Schwartz parries attacks by Oracle’s lawyer suggesting he was a terrible CEO.
  4. Facebook Wins Trademark Case In China Over Chinese Beverage Company
  5. HBO Censors Game of Thrones Spoilers With Dubious Copyright Claims
  6. Can you get kicked off YouTube for spoiling Game of Thrones?
  7. “Venting” on Facebook Leads to $65,000 Defamation Judgment and Liability for 3rd Party Comments
  8. Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
  9. Facebook Rebuts Criticisms About a Bias Against Conservatives
  10. Facebook now directly denies report of biased trends, says there’s no evidence
  11. Maybe the real Facebook suppression is of shoddy news, not conservative news
  12. The Real Problem With Facebook And The News
  13. Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here’s What Happened When It Hired Some.
  14. Publishers Strike Back at a Browser That Replaces Their Ads
  15. Should it be against the law to share tragic images on social media?
  16. Episode 173: Ashley Madison Class Action – No Anonymity for Class Representatives
  17. Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Sues Gawker For Pointing Out He Didn’t Invent Email
  18. Hail and Farewell to The Google Books Case: Google’s scanning project and the subsequent lawsuits once commanded the attention of the publishing, tech, and library worlds. (James Grimmelmann)
  19. At Brandcast, YouTube Touts Audience Scale vs. Primetime TV
  20. “Amazon Video Direct” takes aim at the professional side of YouTube: Machinima, TYT Network, Jash, and other pro YouTubers sign up for distribution.
  21. Could children one day sue parents for posting baby pics on Facebook?: Pictures once kept hidden in family photo albums are now being shared with the world, and children may not appreciate it in the future
  22. Russian Court Sentences Internet User to Two Years Behind Bars for VKontakte Reposts
  23. Craigslist seller sentenced to 12 years for armed robbery of a buyer: Records search of phone number used on Craigslist posting led police to suspect.
  24. Canada Removes Ban on Exports and Technology Transfers to Belarus
  25. Will Yahoo Become A Patent Troll?
  26. Who Is Ready for Baseball’s Robot Umpires?: With the proliferation of technology in modern lives, Jason Gay asks where professional sports should draw the line
  27. NBC Is Going To Use Snapchat To Expand The Reach Of Its Rio 2016 Olympic Content
  28. YouTube Star Hank Green Rebukes ‘Value Gap’ Arguments
  29. Emojis: Copyright Law Can Turn Fun Little Symbols Into Big Headaches 
  30. Do You Own What You Own? Not So Much Anymore, Thanks To Copyright
  31. Regulators In Canada and the U.S. Signal Increasing Interest in the Internet of Things 
  32. Millennials prefer Netflix to live TV
  33. Streaming music has become Warner Music’s biggest business
  34. Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership Turn Silicon Valley Into Detroit?
  35. Marquette University’s Troubling Report on Faculty Blogger
  36. ‘The Revolution Will Be Digitized’: Panama Papers Leaker Speaks Out

CREATIVITY

  1. The Rolling Stones demand Trump stop using its music at rallies, but can the band actually stop him?
  2. Turkish President Erdogan Now Demands Injunction Against German Media Boss For Saying He Laughed At Anti-Erdogan Poem
  3. Evidence of gang ties does not include music on cell phones, court says: Use caution “when drawing conclusions from a defendant’s musical preferences.”
  4. There’s no cushioning this blow: Comparative advertising is copyright fair use (Rebecca Tushnet)
  5. Judge Refuses to Dismiss Lawsuit Over Crowdfunded ‘Star Trek’ Film: The use of Klingon — a language allegedly not copyrightable — in a not-yet-produced feature film can’t doom this lawsuit.
  6. Judge Says Copyright Case Against Star Trek Fan Film Can ‘Live Long’ And Possibly ‘Prosper’
  7. Minnesota Legislators Go Crazy, Pushing Dangerous PRINCE Act (EFF)
  8. Minnesota’s Broad Publicity Rights Law, The PRINCE Act, So Broad That It May Violate Itself
  9. Hasty action on a PRINCE Act would be pure folly: Take time to weigh the complex issues surrounding publicity rights, free speech, taxes and copyrights.  (William McGeveran)
  10. Public Enemy #1: The Trans-Pacific Partnership vs. Free Expression
  11. Trainor pulls video after she says her waist was altered
  12. Snowden interview: Why the media isn’t doing its job
  13. Meet the Woman Who Invented Cosplay: Myrtle R. Douglas, otherwise known as Morojo, rarely gets the credit she deserves for the worldwide phenomenon
  14. Exposing the David Miscavige of Furries: Dominic Rodriguez, director of the doc Fursonas, on the furry community—adults interested in dressing like anthropomorphic animals—and its charismatic, abusive de facto leader.
  15. Hollywood’s special effects industry is cratering, and an art form is disappearing along with it
  16. Signs with registered English only trademarks in Québec? Not a problem if you have sufficient and visible French somewhere close by
  17. The digital age of data art
  18. Baidu Pushes Back On Chinese Gov’t Investigation By Freeing Up Images Related To Tiananmen Square

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Forget a Netflix Tax: How The Digital CanCon Review Can Shake Up the Status Quo (Michael Geist)
  2. BCE Strikes $2.5 Billion Deal for Manitoba Telecom
  3. Why Bell’s Bid to Buy MTS is Bad News
  4. Europe’s antitrust chief rejects Three-O2 merger in UK: Commissioner Vestager kills takeover plan, citing significant UK competition concerns.
  5. Europe’s Flimsy Net Neutrality Rules Go Live, Are Actually Worse Than No Rules At All
  6. The Disturbing Decline Of Sumner Redstone
  7. Cable lobby group: Broadband competition is bad for customers – FCC requires Charter to overbuild competitors, angering small cable providers.
  8. Feds probe mobile phone industry over the sad state of security updates: FCC and FTC coordinate probe of OS developers, hardware makers, and carriers.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Commissioner seeks public input on consent (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
  2. Facebook Loses Bid to Dismiss Privacy Lawsuit Over its Facial Recognition Feature
  3. Facebook Gets Bad Ruling In Face-Scanning Privacy Case–In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation
  4. Lauri Love case: NCA’s legal backdoor for crypto keys bid rejected by judge – National Crime Agency must use existing RIPA powers, judge rules.
  5. When A Fingerprint IS The Password, Where Does The Fifth Amendment Come Into Play?
  6. Is It Really That Big A Deal That Twitter Blocked US Intelligence Agencies From Mining Public Tweets?
  7. FBI Harassing Core Tor Developer, Demanding She Meet With Them, But Refusing To Explain Why
  8. Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment
  9. Oregon DOJ Encourages Surveillance Of First Amendment Activities; Acts Surprised When Agents Do Exactly That
  10. The Panama Papers — it’s still not over, source says
  11. Chinese ARM vendor left developer backdoor in kernel for Android, other devices
  12. UK Sports Star Threatens American Newspaper For Posting Public Information About His New Home
  13. Facing Privacy Tradeoffs to Restore Trust and the Rule of Law
  14. Is Blackberry’s Enhanced Security a Myth?
  15. Do Babies Have the Right to Privacy?
  16. The New Age of Surveillance

jon

News of the Week; May 4, 2016

GAMES

  1. inXile legal challenge forces indie dev to rebrand game: The Alien Wasteland now called Action Alien following cease and desist letter over “Wasteland” trademark
  2. Steam’s Sega Genesis mods: Tweaks, translations, and copyright infringement – New Steam Workshop support allows for uploading of arbitrary ROMs.
  3. Blizzard agrees to meet with team behind shut-down “pirate server”: “We are the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire WoW community”
  4. PS4 boosts Sony to first full-year profit in three years
  5. Sony’s games business bolstered by rising PS4 sales
  6. Sony shipped 17.7 million PS4s in the last fiscal year: Operating profit for games up 84 per cent, while Network revenue doubled year-on-year
  7. How consoles survived the rise of the smartphone
  8. Nintendo stops selling indie game in an attempt to cut off 3DS hackers
  9. Smart device pivot could cost Nintendo at home
  10. Nintendo’s president gets grilled on its mobile business, NX plans
  11. “The roadmap for a successful Nintendo console is unclear”
  12. Nintendo to sell majority stake in Seattle Mariners
  13. Chinese mobile games market is now the most valuable in the world: Newzoo and TalkingData report pegs annual revenue for 2015 at $7.1 billion, rising to $10 billion this year
  14. Zynga’s latest results: Steady as she goes, under new CEO Gibeau
  15. Vivendi increases its stake in Ubisoft to almost 18%
  16. Gears of War 4 would have cost Epic $100m – Sweeney: Epic CEO also laments how “toxic and destructive” some publishing arrangements can be
  17. Survey: Less than half of U.S. households own dedicated game consoles
  18. Game over: Windows 10 update crashes pro gamer’s broadcast session on Twitch
  19. 7 million unsalted MD5 passwords leaked by Minecraft community Lifeboat: Worse still, service recommended “short, but difficult to guess passwords.”
  20. ZOMG! ACCC beats US gamers Valve and proves ACL applies to foreign companies
  21. How Games Are Helping Veterans Recover From Injury: Amputees and PTSD patients turn to virtual worlds
  22. Australian Parliament report calls for renewed game industry funding
  23. ESA loses three members
  24. Riot’s path to building a collegiate eSports program
  25. Social media is most common way to follow eSports – Survey
  26. Almost twice as many UK games now supported by Games Tax Relief
  27. Greenlighting a Niche Game: The Long Journey Ahead
  28. Guinness Record Set With 25 Continuous Hours in Virtual Reality
  29. Researcher Espen Aarseth wins $2.3M grant to create a theory of games 

DIGITAL

  1. On Trolling ([Aristotle] translated by Rachel Barney)
  2. How IBM’s new five-qubit universal quantum computer works
  3. Strange Smoke Signals From the NFL: The drama surrounding Laremy Tunsil underlined the ludicrousness of NFL Draft weekend, and the surreal environment of modern digital life
  4. Could YouTube Replace Your Cable TV?
  5. FTC strikes a blow against Amazon in IAP lawsuit: US judge calls out, “millions of dollars billed to Amazon customers without a mechanism for consent”
  6. Redaction Failure In FTC/Amazon Decision Inadvertently Allows Public To See Stuff It Should Have Been Able To See Anyway
  7. FTC rules don’t explain excessive redactions in FTC v. Amazon
  8. Voltage Pictures Launches Canadian File Sharing Lawsuit With Reverse Class Action Strategy (Michael Geist)
  9. Done properly, can a Creative Commons license make for an easy defense?
  10. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Withdraws Google Subpoena As Google Appeals Court Ruling
  11. EU Regulators Can Barely Contain Their Desire To Attack Google And Facebook, Believing It Will Help Local Competitors
  12. Google Isn’t Required To De-Index Negative Ripoff Report (Eric Goldman)
  13. YouTube amends Content ID dispute process: Videos can now earn revenue while a Content ID claim is being disputed
  14. French National Assembly Votes (Sorta) To Finally Kill Its Three Strikes Hadopi Program
  15. Lessons From Prince’s Legacy And Struggle With Digital Music Markets
  16. Public Opinion toward Internet Freedom in Asia: A Survey of Internet Users from 11 Jurisdictions
  17. Nvidia and Samsung settle all existing patent litigation
  18. Death by GPS: Why do we follow digital maps into dodgy places?
  19. Bad drivers don’t think they’re bad: What Twitter tells us about road rage – Road deaths may be down, but accidents are on the rise.
  20. 10-year-old gets $10,000 bounty for finding Instagram vulnerability: Facebook pays out as part of its bug bounty program.
  21. Yahoo Just Lost a Deal Worth $100 Million a Year: More bad news for Marissa Mayer.
  22. The White House Considers Artificial Intelligence an Important Policy Issue
  23. Digital Gerrymandering and the Dangerous Influence of the Internet on Politics
  24. Rethinking Knowledge in the Internet Age (David Weinberger)
  25. Yes, All DRM (EFF)

CREATIVITY

  1. Looking for art in artificial intelligence
  2. Supervising Automated Journalists in the Newsroom: Liability for Algorithmically Produced News Stories
  3. Supreme Court to hear copyright fight over cheerleader uniforms: 3D printing companies are cheering for a cheerleading industry underdog.
  4. Did litigation kill the Beatles?
  5. ‘Zappa Plays Zappa’ Pits Zappa vs. Zappa
  6. Zappa Threatens Zappa Over Zappa Plays Zappa
  7. Copyright Holders Try To Stop Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ From Entering Public Domain Using Co-Author Trick
  8. Summary Judgment Upheld In Avatar Creators’ Favor After California Appellate Court Determines That Film Is Not Substantially Similar To Plaintiff’s Sci-Fi Work 
  9. The potential impact of Brown v. Canada on ownership of intellectual property by employers
  10. The New ‘Defend Trade Secrets Act’ Is The Biggest IP Development In Years (Eric Goldman)
  11. Productivity Commission calls for free import of books, copyright shake-up
  12. Australian Gov’t Commission: Copyright Is Copywrong; Hurting The Public And Needs To Be Fixed
  13. Productivity Commission’s recommendations on IP reform likely to be lost in election haze
  14. Illegality doesn’t negate copyright protection
  15. This Amicus brief written partially in Klingon is the nerdiest legal document you’ll read today
  16. Paramount Copyright Claim on Klingon Language Challenged in Klingon Language
  17. Salvatore Ferragamo Brings Trademark Claims Against Former NFL Quarterback’s Ferragamo Winery 
  18. Vice Media Sends Cease And Desist To ViceVersa Over Trademark Infringement
  19. What Happens in the U.S. Stays in the U.S.: IP Dispute Against Canadian Company Will Not be Moved to Canadian Forum 
  20. High Court finds that there was no goodwill in colours
  21. Why Do So Many Asian Brands Hire White Models?
  22. How Superman Defeated the KKK

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. The Digital CanCon Review: Be Wary of Old Whine in New Bottles (Michael Geist)
  2. The challenge of reshaping Canada’s cultural landscape
  3. New tariffs on the horizon after CRTC revamps rate-setting process for wholesale broadband Internet services 
  4. FCC proposes new price regulations for cable—but not for home Internet: New “special access” rules would put cable and phone companies on equal ground.
  5. Tom Wheeler: Comcast’s TV app proves the FCC is right about set-top boxes – Rules are needed, because “that which Comcast giveth, Comcast can taketh away.”
  6. ‘Broadcast’ rights do not cover internet streaming rights, says Australian Court
  7. EU slashes mobile roaming charges again, debuts net neutrality rules
  8. Brazil Has To Pause Adoption Of Broadband Usage Caps After Consumers Revolt

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Challenges with the implementation of a right to be forgotten in Canada
  2. Canada’s spies in spat over privacy breach reporting: Communications Security Establishment says reporting details of privacy breaches would jeopardize secret spying operations.
  3. Secret US spy court approved everysurveillance request in 2015: Perfect batting average continues with the FISA Court two years in a row now.
  4. FBI Spent $1.3 Million To Not Even Learn The Details Of The iPhone Hack… So Now It Says It Can’t Tell Apple
  5. US woman forced to provide her fingerprint to unlock seized iPhone
  6. The government wants your fingerprint to unlock your phone. Should that be allowed?
  7. National Intelligence Office’s Top Lawyer Fires Off Spirited Defense Of Bulk Surveillance, Third Party Doctrine
  8. Legal quirk enabling surveillance state expansion absent Congressional vote
  9. Toymaker’s website pushes ransomware that holds visitors’ files hostage: Out-of-date Web app on Maisto.com causes site to attack its visitors.
  10. Privacy Commissioner of Canada cracks down on Mobile Health Devices
  11. You Can’t Escape Data Surveillance In America: The Fair Credit Reporting Act was intended to protect privacy, but its provisions have not kept pace with the radical changes wrought by the information age.
  12. The Chilling Effect Of Mass Surveillance Quantified
  13. Can Americans Resist Surveillance? (Ryan Calo)
  14. Norms of Computer Trespass (Orin Kerr)
  15. Incoded counter-conduct: What the incarcerated can teach us about resisting mass surveillance (Jessa Lingel, Aram Sinnreich)
  16. Berkeley Technology Law Journal Volume 30, Issue 3 (Open Data, Privacy Issue)
  17. If the Empire in Star Wars Had Big Data . .  (Daniel Soleve)

jon

News of the Week; April 27, 2016

GAMES

  1. Korean authorities arrest 8 forStarCraft II match-fixing
  2. 1666: Amsterdam legal battle ends – Patrice Désilets to obtain rights to 1666 Amsterdam from Ubisoft
  3. Blizzard finally breaks silence over Nostalrius’ closure
  4. Blizzard: Allowing pirate WoW servers would “damage [our] rights” – “Tremendous operational challenges” to setting up official “classic” servers.
  5. Ex-Game Maker Atari To Argue To The US PTO That Only It Can Make ‘Haunted House’ Games
  6. Sega enables legal modding of console games with Mega Drive emulation hub: Steam Workshop support will allow players to modify retro games such as Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage
  7. Alex St. John: Shut up and be grateful for your 80 hour weeks – “Wage slaves” should “shake off mental shackles” says multi-millionaire. [UPDATE: St. John’s daughter blasts his “toddler meltdown”]
  8. I am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He is Wrong About Women in Tech
  9. UK games industry behind in female employment
  10. Hack affects 7 million Minecraft players: Lifeboat Network compromised in January, but company never informed player community
  11. PewDiePie asks fans to confront his “immature” past: YouTube has “grown past” insensitive use of language, but his community still pines for the good old days
  12. Entering the matrix: CJ Wilson Racing launches a virtual racing series – The team has recreated its car in Forza and is holding an e-racing championship.
  13. ESL launching 24/7 eSports channel
  14. Toca Boca acquired by Canadian toy firm Spin Master
  15. When mobile game investments dry up, that’s when Disney swoops in
  16. Titan MMO’s “horrific” collapse led to the creation of Blizzard’s Overwatch: Game director Jeff Kaplan describes his team’s, “ravenous hunger to show the world that we’re not failures”
  17. Microsoft financials: Minecraft’s doing better as Xbox revenues falter
  18. Mobile to overtake PC in $99.6bn global games market – Newzoo
  19. Nintendo’s tumbling profits underline need for new hardware
  20. See just how revenues split across PC, mobile, console, and handheld
  21. Hearthstone hits 50m players
  22. How Infocom fell to ruin under Activision’s watch
  23. How could an AI take down the world’s best StarCraftplayers?
  24. The Top 10 Weird Children Of Video Games and Neuroscience

DIGITAL

  1. Dissidents Worry #TwitterisDead After Company Hires Former Chinese Military Officer
  2. NYT: China bans Apple’s iBooks and iTunes Movies stores – Ban comes about six months after the services were introduced in the country
  3. In a first, US military plans to drop “cyberbombs” on ISIS, NYT says: Cyber Command plans to mount hacking attacks that disrupt ISIS operations.
  4. Tech titans are busy privatising our data: When Facebook and Google finally destroy the competition, a new age of feudalism will arrive (Evgeny Morozov)
  5. Just After EU Goes After Google For Antitrust, Microsoft Agrees To Drop All Antitrust Complaints About Google
  6. News Corp. Claims Google News Is An Antitrust Violation In Europe
  7. Why the EU is going after Google and not Apple
  8. Facebook defamation case awards significant damages
  9. Facebook Isn’t the Social Network Anymore
  10. The Shame and Glory of Yahoo’s China Adventure: In 2005, Yahoo got lucky when it made a deal with Jack Ma for a huge chunk of Alibaba stock. It also got humiliated when it revealed a dissident to the authorities
  11. Evidentiary Failings Undermine Arbitration Clauses in Online Terms
  12. Google is turning its search engine into a live TV guide
  13. Twitter CEO says ‘almost every sports league in the world contacted us’ after inking NFL deal
  14. Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants
  15. Steam expands its streaming movie biz with Lionsgate partnership
  16. Social Media and Jury Selection
  17. New Jersey Supreme Court Questions Ethics of “Friending” a Litigation Foe 
  18. How the DMCA silences cybersecurity experts, and makes all of us more vulnerable
  19. Court Dismisses Trademark Suit Brought By Racetracks Against Gaming Company Referencing Historical Races
  20. When a Robot Kills, Is It Murder or Product Liability?: An expert on robotics law responds to Paolo Bacigalupi’s short story “Mika Model.”
  21. Robots That Act Differently When You’re Around: The machines of the future will tailor their behavior to humans—and even individual personalities.
  22. How to Be Good: Why you can’t teach human values to artificial intelligence.

CREATIVITY

  1. Opinion: Aqua-gag — How the Vancouver Aquarium abuses copyright law to silence criticism (Katie Sykes)
  2. Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Celebrate Vancouver Aquarium Censoring Critical Documentary With Copyright
  3. The Prince of Copyright Enforcement
  4. Prince And Negativland: Strange Bedfellows Tilting At A Similar Copyright Windmill
  5. Lego Admits It Was a ‘Mistake’ Refusing Ai Weiwei Bricks for Art Exhibition: ‘Danish toy maker says it has changed policies on bulk sales to avoid future disputes
  6. The Erdogan Insult Mess: Dutch Reporter, German Politician Arrested For Mocking Erdogan; Swiss Art Exhibit Targeted Too
  7. Iranian Cartoonist Atena Farghadani’s Prison Sentence Reduced From 12 Years to 18 Months
  8. Copyright chaos: Why isn’t Anne Frank’s diary free now?
  9. Our Dated Model of Theatrical Release Is Hurting Independent Cinema
  10. For enthusiast media, ethics can be costly
  11. About Violence Against Women: If your job requires writing about important issues, having some idea of what you’re talking about is kind of necessary.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Why Federal Leadership on Universal Broadband is a Need, Not a Want (Michael Geist)
  2. A Radical Broadband Internet & Cultural Policy for Canada
  3. Federal Government Launches Review of Law and Policy on Canadian Cultural Content in an Age of Digital Disruption
  4. Regulators OK Charter-Time Warner merger
  5. FCC To Ban Charter Communications From Imposing Usage Caps If It Wants Merger Approval
  6. Comcast Preventing Customers From Accessing Starz Streaming App, Can Only Offer Flimsy Reasons Why
  7. Cold call firms that hide numbers face £2M fine, warns UK government: Repeat offenders also face fines of up to £500,000 from the UK’s data watchdog.
  8. When Music Pirates Used Pirate Ships: Renegade radio stations in the ’60s challenged government control of the airwaves from international waters and helped launch the rock revolution. 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. BeautifulPeople.com Leaks Very Private Data of 1.1 Million ‘Elite’ Daters — And It’s All For Sale
  2. From Ashley Madison to the Panama Papers: Is Hacked Data Fair Game?
  3. FBI Allegedly Paid More Than $1 Million To Get Into Encrypted iPhone… And To Avoid Setting Legal Precedent It Didn’t Like
  4. FBI paid at least $1.3M for zero-day to get into San Bernardino iPhone: FBI Director James Comey: “But it was, in my view, worth it.”
  5. Feds: someone gave us the passcode in NY drug case, so we don’t need Apple – In February, judge warned of “virtually limitless expansion” of gov’t authority.
  6. UK intel agencies spy indiscriminately on millions of innocent folks: Docs revealed by court order show only flimsiest safeguards against abuse.
  7. Court Says National Security Letters Are Now Constitutional Under USA Freedom Act
  8. FISA Court Still Uncovering Surveillance Abuses By NSA, FBI
  9. House Reps To James Clapper: No, Really, Stop Ignoring The Question And Tell Us How Many Americans Are Spied On By NSA
  10. Indian Government Agencies Demand Access To WhatsApp Messaging Groups
  11. Court Tells Cops They Can’t Open A Flip Phone Without A Warrant
  12. The Fourth Amendment in the Information Age (Robert S. Litt)
  13. Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance And Wikipedia Use (Jonathon W. Penney)

jon

News of the Week; April 20, 2016

GAMES

  1. Ark dev settles lawsuit over game’s origins and staff
  2. Sega embraces legal console game modding with new Genesis PC emulation hub: Steamworks integration allows for legit distribution of modified console classics.
  3. The Mess That Came After Nintendo Fired An Employee
  4. This horrifying and newly trendy online-harassment tactic is ruining careers
  5. Sexual harassment in online videogames: What we found so far
  6. Rust hits 3.5m sales amidst concerns over gender, race assignment: Facepunch has found success in Early Access, but recent changes have ignited a debate within its audience
  7. The Great Grand Theft Auto Lawsuit Explained
  8. Fable Legends’ closure marks the end of Lionhead Studios: Microsoft is in the process of issuing refunds to those who purchased in-game currency after beta is taken offline
  9. Shining light on the unregulated gambling rings ofCounter-Strike: GO
  10. Division players could be “punished” for using in-game glitch: Ubisoft struggling with reportedly widespread use of hacking and exploits.
  11. The eGames Are Hoping To Be The Olympics Of eSports And They Are Coming To Rio 2016
  12. Survey: eSports fans are a small (but overwhelmingly male) demographic
  13. eSports involvement actually greater among women than men – PwC: “The eSports consumer is young, racially diverse, tech-savvy and often female”
  14. Survey: First-person shooters are the most popular eSport to watch
  15. Collegiate League of Legends clash to be televised in the U.S.
  16. GameStop unveils publishing label GameTrust
  17. Mobile games help China leapfrog Japan on iOS revenue charts
  18. Superdata downgrades VR forecast again
  19. Oculus “don’t condone” HTC Vive software hacks
  20. Inside ‘La Guilde,’ Quebec’s new independent development cooperative
  21. F1 and Dirt dev Codemasters posts first profit in five years
  22. How League of Legends dev Riot is using science to create safer online spaces
  23. The Minecraft Generation: How a clunky Swedish computer game is teaching millions of children to master the digital world.
  24. The player dynamics of a World War in EVE Online
  25. How video games helped the world cozy up to computers
  26. New study examines ‘violent-sexist’ video games’ affect on player empathy towards female victims of violence
  27. The Game Outcomes Project, Part 4: Crunch Makes Games Worse
  28. New Magic Leap Video Shows Your Home as a User Interface
  29. Hyper Vision: The world’s hottest startup isn’t located in Silicon Valley—it’s in suburban Florida. KEVIN KELLY explores what Magic Leap’s mind-bending technology tells us about the future of virtual reality.
  30. After nearly 20 years, game modding hub GameFront is shutting down
  31. Help save 17 years of PC game modding history: Download your backups before GameFront’s mod-hosting platform shuts down April 30.
  32. Achievement locked: Microsoft ceases Xbox 360 production

DIGITAL

  1. Supreme Court Says It Won’t Hear Authors Guild Appeal Over Google Books Ruling
  2. Be Glad the Supreme Court Ended the Google Books Case
  3. Important Fair Use Decision Stands, Helps Keep Authors’ Works Findable (Pamela Samuelson)
  4. Authors Guild Petulantly Whines About How Wrong It Is That The Public Will Benefit From Google Books
  5. The ghost of Aereo rises: Local TV streaming coming to Sling TV, sources say – With a box called “AirTV,” people could have local TV beamed to the Sling app.
  6. Kanye West promises Tidal exclusive, fan sues when new album surfaces elsewhere: Lawsuit says Tidal now has the ill-gotten personal information of millions of users.
  7. USTR Finally Recognizes That The Internet Matters… And That Censorship, Site Blocking & Link Taxes Are Barriers
  8. Anti-innovation: EU excludes open source from new tech standards
  9. EU Regulators Seem To Think They Can Tell YouTube That Its Business Model Should Be More Like Spotify
  10. EU Officially Goes After Google’s Android On Antitrust Grounds
  11. Antitrust chief: Google’s restrictions on Android device makers breach EU law – Google has three months to respond to charges imposed on it in prelim EU decision.
  12. Competition Bureau completes extensive investigation of Google: Bureau continues to monitor competition issues in the digital economy
  13. Optometrists Push For State Laws Blocking Online Eye Exams
  14. Analyst: Netflix largest US network by 2019
  15. Swedish Women’s Soccer League Chooses To Broadcast Via Digital Instead Of Televisio
  16. Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives
  17. The Secret Rules Of The Internet: The murky history of moderation, and how it’s shaping the future of free speech
  18. How Hacking Team got hacked
  19. Sevens Marry Sevens: Is Online Dating Making Mixed-Attractiveness Couples More Rare?
  20. What happens when robots are assigned ethnicities?

CREATIVITY

  1. Copyright Injunction Covers Vancouver Aquarium Video
  2. Klingon Language Creator Responds To Ownership Claims: Marc Okrand doesn’t own it, but not sure if Paramount or CBS does either
  3. Artist who painted nude Donald Trump portrait says his legal team has threatened lawsuit 
  4. Interlocutory injunction orders removal of 15 segments from published movie
  5. You Pay to Read Research You Fund. That’s Ludicrous
  6. Public Domain Citation Book, Baby Blue, Renamed To Indigo Book, Following Harvard Law Review Threats
  7. Can Lawyers ‘Overcome’ The Bogus Copyright On ‘We Shall Overcome’ And Free It To The Public Domain?
  8. Academics to PricewaterhouseCoopers: You Got It Wrong on the Benefits of Fair Use
  9. Reconceptualizing Copyright’s Merger Doctrine (Pamela Samuelson)
  10. I Photoshopped Kanye Kissing Himself And A Famous Artist Reportedly Made $100,000 Off It
  11. DreamWorks: Stop Whitewashing Asian Characters!
  12. Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Joins Too Many Other Presidential Campaigns In Abusing Trademark Law
  13. Yes, Led Zeppelin took from other people’s records – but then they transformed them: Life as a Zeppelin fan would be much easier if they had come up with every idea themselves. But they always turned their borrowings into something greater than the source
  14. Foundation for the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan v. Alcon Entertainment (N.D. Georgia, March 23, 2016) 
  15. Canadian Copyright Bill for the Blind in Need of Fine Tuning (Michael Geist) 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Guilty Pleasures and Proper Needs: Who Gets What Kind of Internet, and Who Decides? (Dwayne Winseck)
  2. Telus Trifles with Telephone History to Service its Constrained View of Universal, Affordable Broadband Internet Access Today
  3. House votes to undermine net neutrality rules, and ISPs cheer: Vote to ban “rate regulation” would limit FCC’s consumer protection powers.
  4. White House Threatens To Veto Bill Attempting To Gut Net Neutrality, Defang FCC
  5. Obama supports cable box competition and—surprise—cable lobby is angry
  6. From Russia with a licence? The Federal Court of Australia on retransmission of international TV broadcasts and proving licences

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Apparently Hacking Syed Farook’s iPhone Accomplished Nothing (Other Than Making Everyone Less Safe)
  2. Apple holds steadfast, refuses to help feds access seized iPhone in NY drug case – Apple: Feds have not shown they have “exhausted other potential repositories.”
  3. Canadian Law Enforcement Can Intercept, Decrypt Blackberry Messages
  4. UK secret police are indiscriminately spying on millions of innocent people: New docs revealed by court order show staggering surveillance by MI5, MI6, GCHQ.
  5. Microsoft Sues Government Over Its ECPA-Enabled Gag OrdersUS court agrees with feds: Warrants aren’t needed for cell-site location data – Data placed suspects near a string of Radio Shack and T-Mobile store robberies.
  6. EFF Sues DOJ Over Its Refusal To Release FISA Court Documents Pertaining To Compelled Technical Assistance
  7. Government Access to Private Data: Microsoft Opens a New Front in the Battle for Consumer Privacy 
  8. Want to sue Ashley Madison over data breach? You must use your real name: Judge weighing if data hacked from the cheating site may be used at trial.
  9. Rejection is coming: Obama’s Game of Thrones screener is likely FOIA-proof

jon

News of the Week; April 13, 2016

GAMES

  1. Leslie Benzies suing Rockstar over $150 million: Key GTA developer accuses publisher, Houser brothers of forcing him from company, withholding royalties
  2. Take-Two sued by former Rockstar North president for $150 million in unpaid royalties
  3. Rockstar: Benzies’ claims “downright bizarre”
  4. Grand Theft Auto devs planned to leave Take-Two: Leslie Benzies lawsuit says he and the Houser brothers set up an independent company that would still work on publisher’s IP
  5. 5 things to know about GTAproducer Leslie Benzies’ legal fight with Rockstar
  6. Blizzard shutters popular private WoW server with threat of legal action
  7. Blizzard shuts down popular fan-run “pirate” server for classic WoW: Nostralrius servers claimed 800K users are playing 2006-era World of Warcraft.
  8. The Ultimate In CwF: How Lovers Of Stardew Valley Fought Piracy By Buying The Game For Pirates
  9. Game Studio’s Plan To Deal With Critic Of Games: Sue Him To Hell
  10. UK Government-backed eSports competition to debut alongside Rio Olympics
  11. Wargaming wants an eSports players union
  12. Twitch and Faceit partner for new eSports initiative with $3.5m prize pool
  13. Activision Blizzard boasts new CS:GO eSports viewership record – A record-breaking 45 million hours of live broadcast were watched
  14. Sports satellite radio channel expands to cover eSports
  15. Bottom of Form: Rock Band 4 Fig campaign raises half its $1.5 million target
  16. Twitch users can now live stream Android games from their PC
  17. Codemasters pulls DriveClub developer Evolution back from the brink
  18. Oculus shipping dates pushed back again as pre-order woes continue
  19. Beamdog CEO stands up to bullies, says harassing tactics won’t work
  20. Jack Thompson and how I started with GamePolitics
  21. All Those Evil Violent Video Games Apparently Failed At Turning Kids Into Deviant Murder-Terrorists
  22. Fewer dumb things are said about video games these days
  23. Looking back: Brown v. EMA
  24. Looking back: GamerGate
  25. For Good Men To See Nothing
  26. Can a video game company tame toxic behaviour?: Scientists are helping to stop antisocial behaviour in the world’s most popular online game. The next stop could be a kinder Internet.
  27. Survey: Video ads are the #1 way players prefer to ‘pay’ for mobile games
  28. This Assetto Corsa Mixed Reality Video Shows VR Racing’s Potential
  29. Accessibility in VR game design: The Fantastic Contraption approach

DIGITAL

  1. European Court of Justice – Posting a hyperlink to a website which published photos without authorisation does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement
  2. Linking to pirated material doesn’t infringe copyright, says top EU court lawyer: Key question is whether the Court of Justice of the European Union agrees with him.
  3. The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court
  4. Is Purchase of a Google AdWord use of a Trade Mark? Case Examined by Australian Federal Court
  5. 3D-printed masterpiece? Computer mimics brushstrokes of Rembrandt: New portrait created using machine learning algorithms with help from Microsoft.
  6. Scientists Create a New Rembrandt Painting, Using a 3D Printer & Data Analysis of Rembrandt’s Body of Work
  7. The dark side of Guardian comments: As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, the Guardian commissioned research into the 70m comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black. Hear from three of those writers, explore the data and help us host better conversations online
  8. Facial-Recognition Software Might Have a Racial Bias Problem: Depending on how algorithms are trained, they could be significantly more accurate when identifying white faces than African American ones.
  9. From Siri to sexbots: Female AI reinforces a toxic desire for passive, agreeable and easily dominated women
  10. Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: The Moral Compass of a Machine
  11. In China, Alleged Assault Footage Helps Muffle Panama Talk
  12. How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell
  13. NCAA Reverses Their Ban On Social Media And Texting Communication Between Coaches And Recruits
  14. Is The Era of Live Sports Streaming Upon Us?
  15. Vancouver-based BroadbandTV trails only Google, Facebook for online video views
  16. Global PC shipments continue to fall in 2016
  17. Online courses’ metadata helps NCAA catch cheating coaches red-handed: Head coach sent grad students all over the country to complete online coursework
  18. YouTube Copyright Claim Strips Audio Out of Conference on Surveillance Overreach

CREATIVITY

  1. More People Recognizing Copyright’s ‘Free Speech Problem’
  2. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven may be partly stolen, judge says: ‘Substantial’ similarities are enough to warrant a trial over whether Robert Plant and Jimmy Page lifted opening chords from Taurus by the band Spirit
  3. Led Zeppelin ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Copyright Case Will Go To A Jury… Meaning Band Will Almost Certainly Lose
  4. Theft or inspiration: A musical guide to copyright lawsuitsThe Song Remains… Similar?
  5. Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome”: Civil rights anthem never should have been copyrighted, plaintiffs say.
  6. Lucasfilm Threatens And Threatens Non-Profit Over Lightsaber Battle Event
  7. Richard Prince – an update
  8. Right of Publicity Claim over Straight Outta Compton Gets Kicked Straight Outta Court
  9. The Future of Digital Cinema May Be At Stake in Lawsuit Over Interoperability: GDC and Dolby go to war over whether the messages and commands that allow motion pictures to play on screen are a protected form of intellectual property.
  10. When you can parody another’s work or mark
  11. Authorship and the Boundaries of Copyright: Ideas, Expressions, and Functions in Yoga, Choreography, and Other Works (Christopher Buccafusco)

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Canadian Government Fails To Force Cheaper TV Options, Blames Consumers For Not Trying Harder
  2. Cable cord-cutting numbers soar in Canada thanks to Netflix, high prices, says report: 80% more people cut the cord in 2015 compared with 2014, says report
  3. Affordable Internet access is everyone’s business: Geist
  4. Intervening at the CRTC: Nothing Encourages Participation Like Background Checks and Legally Mandated Undertakings (Michael Geist)
  5. Three-O2 merger hits major snag as UK competition watchdog wades in
  6. Silverpush Stops Using Sneaky, Inaudible TV Audio Tracking Beacons After FTC Warning
  7. Verizon won’t fix copper lines when customers refuse switch to fiber
  8. FCC: Carrier pocketed $10M in bogus cell phone subsidies – Record $51M fine proposed for carrier accused of enrolling ineligible customers.
  9. How Big Telecom Gets Away With Rewriting America’s Laws

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Apple won’t demand to learn how FBI cracked terror suspect’s phone: Gadget maker said it did not know whether FBI employed a software or hardware hack.
  2. US government still pursuing court order to unlock iPhone in New York case: “The government’s application is not moot,” Justice Department says.
  3. Privacy watchdog to investigate RCMP over alleged ‘stingray’ cellphone surveillance: The commissioner has opened an investigation into the use of International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, otherwise known as stingrays, by law enforcement.
  4. FBI paid “gray hats” for zero-day exploit that unlocked seized iPhone: Washington Post says feds likely bought hack from “ethically murky” researchers.
  5. The Senate’s Draft Encryption Bill Is ‘Ludicrous, Dangerous, Technically Illiterate’
  6. MIT Tech Review Tries To Blame Apple Encryption For Wrongful Arrest
  7. Oculus brings real (and pervasive) data-mining to virtual reality
  8. Senator Al Franken questions Oculus’ data collection, calls for transparency
  9. EU-US Privacy Shield in big trouble, may not pass muster, suggests German leak: EU data authorities might push for top EU court case if Commission forges ahead anyway.
  10. Microsoft Endorses the EU-US Privacy Shield. Will Others Follow?
  11. Privacy Shield doesn’t do enough to curtail US surveillance, say EU data watchdogs: “Great step forward,” but still work to do, say privacy experts.

jon

News of the Week; April 6, 2016

GAMES

  1. Valve misled Australian consumers, says court: Valve found to be in violation of Australian consumer law because Steam didn’t have a refund policy
  2. Nintendo denies bowing to GamerGate pressure in employee firing: Former staffer Alison Rapp was the subject of intense online harassment in the month preceding her dismissal
  3. Studio cancels Wii U game in protest of Nintendo firing employee: Necrosoft Games’ Brandon Sheffield calls on Mario maker to be an industry leader in fight against online harassment
  4. IGDA critical of Nintendo’s decision to fire Alison Rapp
  5. Surprise: Court Allows Lindsay Lohan’s Suit Against Take-Two Interactive To Go Forward
  6. EA issues DMCA takedown on video that overlays footage of Trump onto Mass Effect 2 trailer
  7. EA DMCAs Trump/Mass Effect Mashup Video Claiming Trump Re-Tweeting It Made Its Use ‘Political’
  8. EA: Trump video “an unauthorized use of our IP” – Presidential candidate tweets fan-made, Mass Effect robbing video
  9. Oculus apologises for “unexpected component shortage”
  10. How Japanese Mobile Game Makers Go After Whales: 5 Popular Gacha Mechanics
  11. Gameloft lays out all the reasons the Vivendi takeover is a bad idea
  12. Disney Infinity and the problem with Apple TV’s gaming ambitions: Five months in, signs point to an anemic start for Apple’s living room gaming push.
  13. EVE Online’s big battle proves players are the content in a sandbox MMO
  14. Blizzard signs children’s book deal: Scholastic will publish World Of Warcraft series
  15. Inside the lo-res Roguelike FPS inspired by Canadian politics
  16. University of California, Irvine announces a League of Legends scholarship: UC Irvine will be the first public, state-run school to officially support esports
  17. eSports driving over 21% of Twitch viewership – Newzoo
  18. Alibaba investing in 1200 Chinese eSports events in 2016
  19. Vainglory dev and Twitch announce multi-million dollar eSports partnership
  20. FACEIT and Twitch launch esports league following the example of traditional sports leagues
  21. The British government wants to create the Olympics of esports
  22. Any retail Xbox One can be used as dev kit starting now
  23. Using retail Xbox Ones as dev kits comes with significant caveats
  24. Square Enix backs Final Fantasy XV with feature-length movie
  25. To build a new Baldur’s Gate, Beamdog had to reverse-engineer the original
  26. Mind Craft :Microsoft’s popular video game Minecraft helps kids learn everything from programming, science and math to art, languages and history.
  27. See just how fast mobile has overtaken the rest of games
  28. Slice: Mobile gamers spend average of $87 on in-app purchases – Game Of War players spend, on average, $550 to achieve victory
  29. The average U.S. paying mobile game player spent $87 on F2P IAP last year
  30. Rovio writes off 2015 as an ‘expected’ loss
  31. Rock Band 4 crowdfunding campaign fails to take flight
  32. GamePolitics shutting down: Entertainment Consumers Association pulls the plug on specialist gaming site after 11 years
  33. That Dragon, Cancer Discusses Let’s Play Issues While Clearing Content IDs
  34. Players watch streams of the games they like, then buy them
  35. eSports driving game purchases – NPD
  36. Congressman blames son for spending $1,300 in campaign funds on Steam games: FEC questions California rep for unauthorized “personal expenses.
  37. Sony staffer crafts custom PS4 gamepad for player with cerebral palsy
  38. The View From the Tower: Why Cambridge graduates struggle to get into the games industry

DIGITAL

  1. Twitter Makes Huge Move In Winning Rights To Live Stream NFL Thursday Night Football Games
  2. Yahoo Will Stream One MLB Game Every Day For The Rest Of The Season
  3. The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court
  4. For The Fifth Time Now, German Court Says Adblocking Is Legal
  5. Supreme Court Agrees to Consider Samsung-Apple Patent Case
  6. $85 million patent verdict, largest ever against Google, wiped out on appeal: Patent describes a failed company’s 1996 desktop notification system.
  7. Using Adblock Plus to block ads is legal, rules German court—for the fifth time: Adblock’s whitelisting scheme for advertisements also acceptable, Munich court says.
  8. Linux kernel lawsuit SCO v IBM is alive, 13 years and counting: Suit claims IBM allegedly placed commercial UNIX code in the Linux kernel’s codebase.
  9. Oracle will seek a staggering £6.5 billion in second copyright trial against Google: Oracle will ask another jury to make Google pay the biggest IP verdict ever.
  10. Quebec bill would force Internet firms to block access to online gaming sites
  11. Degrees of Freedom, Dimensions of Power (Yochai Benkler)
  12. Chinese Censors Erase #PanamaPapers Evidence From Web
  13. A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again: Meet accused hacker and copyright infringer Alexandra Elbakyan.
  14. Posting Photos of Red Bowls on Facebook Is Now Deemed Seditious by the Thai Junta
  15. DMCA’s Notice And Takedown Procedure Is A Total Mess, And It’s Mainly Because Of Bogus Automated Takedowns
  16. RIAA: How Dare The Internet Use The DMCA That We Wrote To Build Useful Services!
  17. Our Comment On DMCA Takedowns: Let’s Return To First Principles (And The First Amendment)
  18. More Evidence That Tons Of DMCA Takedowns Are Bad News… And That People Are Afraid To Counternotice
  19. CNBC Asks Readers To Submit Their Password To Check Its Strength Into Exploitable Widget
  20. How to Make a Bot That Isn’t Racist
  21. Microsoft accidentally revives Nazi AI chatbot Tay, then kills it again: A week after Tay’s first disaster, the bot briefly came back to life today.
  22. Microsoft reactivates Twitter bot ‘Tay’, and it promptly tweets about smoking weed in front of cops
  23. Clippy’s Back: The Future of Microsoft Is Chatbots: CEO Satya Nadella bets big on artificial intelligence that will be fast, smart, friendly, helpful, and (fingers crossed) not at all racist.
  24. Regulators grapple with how a robo-adviser can be a fiduciary: SEC commissioner Kara Stein says agency is being ‘disrupted’ by technology along with everyone else
  25. The biggest mystery in AI right now is the ethics board that Google set up after buying DeepMind
  26. Meet the Robocar, an autonomous racing car: Yes, it does look like something straight out of Hollywood.
  27. Man who sued over a patent on online photo contests must pay fees to EFF: “Ranking things in categories… was well known before the Internet.”
  28. This Russian Website Uses Neural Networks to Combine Images, With Awesome Results
  29. So Teenagers Now Prefer YouTube To Netflix And TV: According to a new survey, it’s *all* about vloggers and viral vids these days…
  30. There Are Now 2,000 YouTube Channels With At Least One Million Subscribers
  31. Marissa Mayer vs. “Kim Kardashian’s A__”: What Sunk Yahoo’s Media Ambitions?
  32. Stupid Patent Of The Month: Mega-Troll Intellectual Ventures Hits Florist With Do-It-On-A-Computer Scheduling Patent
  33. Why we’re talking differently about the web: The ways in which we talk about technology – and how we communicate through it – are rapidly changing. What does this mean for the future of our language?
  34. Adventures in the Trump Twittersphere
  35. Swedish Court: Wikipedia Hosting Photos Of Public Artwork Is Copyright Infringement For Some Reason

CREATIVITY

  1. Lions Gate Entertainment Inc. v. TD Ameritrade Services Co. Inc.: District court holds Lions Gate’s trademark-related claims under Lanham Act and related state law are preempted by Copyright Act in suit over financial services ad campaign that used modified version of famous line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” from movie “Dirty Dancing.”
  2. Court Rules Against Lionsgate In TD Ameritrade Suit For Dressing Up Copyright Claim As A Trademark Claim
  3. Abdullah v. Walt Disney Co. – USDC, C.D. California, March 14, 2016: District court grants motion to dismiss children’s author’s copyright infringement lawsuit, holding that defendant Walt Disney’s animated film “Frozen” is not substantially similar to plaintiff’s copyrighted children’s story “The Snow Princess.”
  4. Don’t Mention the IP Law: John Cleese and The Faulty Towers Dining Experience – So there’s this dinner theatre show called The Faulty Towers Dining Experience. It’s been running for years. But apparently John Cleese has only just heard about it and he’s not too pleased. The similarity with his own Fawlty Towers is obvious and TFTDE is clearly ‘dining out’ (yes) on the popularity of Cleese’s show.
  5. John Steinbeck Heirs Now Feuding Over Steven Spielberg ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Adaptation
  6. Gawker begins appeal against $140M Hulk Hogan sex-tape verdict: Was it wrong for a jury to decide “what’s news?”
  7. The science behind the insane popularity of “react” videos on YouTube: Controversial theory may explain why we love watching people experience stuff.
  8. Competition Bureau releases updated Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines
  9. Campaign IP Violations Part 2 – Trump Sued for Copyright Infringement 
  10. The Latest In Reputation Management: Bogus Defamation Suits From Bogus Companies Against Bogus Defendants
  11. How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History
  12. Ontario Music Fund Oversight Hits Sour Note: Gov Docs Discuss “Breach of Integrity” (Michael Geist)
  13. Kylie Jenner’s new ‘Paper’ cover reveals how teens and social media are reshaping print publications
  14. Did the city steal the idea for its Toronto sign? Mayor, councillors and city face $2.5M lawsuit over concept
  15. 27 Stores That Were Named By Absolute Geniuses: Grab some baked goods at “Bread Pitt,” then get your laundry done at “Lord of the Rinse.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Netflix throttling itself isn’t a net neutrality problem, FCC chair says: Wheeler disappoints Netflix critics who called for investigation.
  2. FCC votes to help poor people buy broadband and protect privacy online: 3-2 votes anger Republicans after last-minute compromise is dropped.
  3. FCC’s “nutrition labels” for broadband show speed, caps, and hidden fees: New labels will help ISPs comply with net neutrality transparency rules.
  4. Painful Comcast cancelation phone calls targeted by California legislation: Bill requiring online cancellation a response to infamous Comcast call.
  5. ISPs Now Charging Broadband Users A Steep Premium If They Want To Avoid Usage Caps
  6. CRTC enters into MOU with FTC on spam and unlawful telemarketing 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. The Scarlett Johansson Bot Is the Robotic Future of Objectifying Women
  2. WhatsApp is Now End-to-End Encrypted (Bruce Schneier)
  3. Reddit’s Warrant Canary Just Died (Bruce Schneier)
  4. Reddit removes “warrant canary” from its latest transparency report – CEO is staying mum: “I’ve been advised not to say anything one way or the other.”
  5. Canadian Court Says Vice Magazine Must Hand Over Its Communications With A Suspected Terrorist
  6. Cases highlight legal debate over texting privacy rights
  7. Appeals Court: No stingrays without a warrant, explanation to judge: Police also barred from shrouding stingray use in ridiculous NDAs.
  8. Appeals Court Says Indiana’s Bad Anti-Texting Law Can’t Be Used To Justify Stops Or Searches
  9. UK Law Enforcement Trying To Force Man They’ve Never Charged With A Crime To Decrypt His Computers
  10. UK cops tell suspect to hand over crypto keys in US hacking case: Lauri Love faces extradition to US over hitting Federal Reserve, among others.
  11. Hacking Team Has Lost Its License to Export Spyware
  12. Hundreds of requests to unlock phones flood FBI
  13. FBI Won’t Tell Apple How It Got Into iPhone… But Is Apparently Eager To Help Others Break Into iPhones
  14. Feds used 1789 law to force Apple, Google to unlock phones 63 times: “These cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes.”
  15. How a spy probe wound up as a child pornography prosecution
  16. Foia Request – Government Attempts To Access Encrypted Messages: Request for records related to attempts by the government to access encrypted messages sent using the messaging platforms of mobile communications providers. (ACLU)
  17. Brussels terror attacks: Why ramping up online surveillance isn’t the answer – Op-ed – Brief moratorium needed on calls for new spying laws after atrocities.
  18. Privacy and Cybersecurity Issues in Canadian M&A Transactions

jon

News of the Week; March 30, 2016

GAMES

  1. Trendy sues Studio Wildcard over origins of Ark: Survival Evolved – Former creative director Jeremy Stieglitz violated non-compete and non-interference clauses, says Dungeon Defenders dev
  2. Dev explains why he copyright claimed ‘That Dragon, Cancer’ Let’s Plays
  3. That Dragon, Cancer dev says Let’s Play videos took away sales
  4. Sim racing enthusiasts ordered to take down unlicensed Formula 1 mods: F1’s commercial rights holder is notoriously protective of its intellectual property.
  5. Formula E And Virtually Live Partner To Bring Fans Unique Sports VR Experience
  6. The Ars review: Oculus Rift expands PC gaming past the monitor’s edge
  7. The biggest non-VR stories at GDC 2016
  8. Roundtable: What we learned about VR at GDC – Virtual reality is a current reality, but its future remains a question mark 
  9. Legal Issues in VR
  10. Valve loses Australian legal battle, found guilty of breaking consumer law
  11. Valve misled Australian consumers, says court: Valve found to be in violation of Australian consumer law because Steam didn’t have a refund policy
  12. Female gamers and the difference between trash talking and sexual harassment
  13. Blizzard pulls “sexualised” victory pose from Overwatch: “This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective”
  14. Muslim fighter given Christian celebration in UFC 2: EA apologizes to Khabib Nurmagomedov, pledges to fix issue in game’s next update
  15. Capcom cops to wonky Street Fighter Vlaunch—then delays paid download store: Offers pair of measly fighter costumes as “thanks for… patience and understanding.”
  16. Sony plans to bring PlayStation IP to mobile
  17. More confirmation, speculation on “PlayStation 4K” rumors
  18. The Future of Data Analysis: Better games, better players, and AI interpretation?
  19. Your kids want to make Minecraft YouTube videos – but should you let them?
  20. Pratchett: AAA becoming braver at tackling serious subjects – Award-winning writer believes we’ll see a “trickle up” of maturity in content from indies and mid-level studios
  21. Harvard Team Is Disqualified for Cheating in College Video-Game Competition
  22. Nintendo Korea restructuring results in massive layoffs

DIGITAL

  1. Microsoft’s teenage AI shows I know nothing about millennials: But like all teenagers, she seems to be angry with her mother.
  2. Microsoft terminates its Tay AI chatbot after she turns into a Nazi: Setting her neural net processor to read-write was a terrible mistake.
  3. Tay, the neo-Nazi millennial chatbot, gets autopsied: Microsoft apologizes for her behavior and talks about what went wrong.
  4. Who turned Microsoft’s chatbot racist? Surprise, it was 4chan and 8chan
  5. It’s Your Fault Microsoft’s Teen AI Turned Into Such a Jerk
  6. Here’s How We Prevent The Next Racist Chatbot: Tay.AI Is The Consequence Of Poor Training
  7. Can a Computer Get a Patent?
  8. A Computer Wrote A Novel — And Nearly Won A Literary Prize For It
  9. Budget 2016: Is It The End of a Canadian Digital Strategy? (Michael Geist)
  10. Trump’s Incomprehensible ‘Cyber’ Policy: ‘Make Cyber Great Again’
  11. The state has lost control: tech firms now run western politics (Evgeny Morozov)
  12. Why Are People Using Ad Blockers? Ads Can Eat Up To 79% Of Mobile Data Allotments
  13. Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (Jennifer M. Urban, Brianna L. Schofield & Joe Karaganis)
  14. The Hidden Cost of Signing Up for Internet in Spain: Your Sanity
  15. The Unseen Threat of Digital Warfare
  16. Indian Migrant Worker Arrested in Saudi Arabia For Denouncing Working Conditions on Facebook
  17. Rage-quit: Coder unpublished 17 lines of JavaScript and “broke the Internet” – Dispute over module name in npm registry became giant headache for developers.
  18. Social media “influencers”: the do’s and don’ts of disclosure 
  19. Donald Trump’s Social Media Ties To White Supremacists
  20. Landmark Daily Fantasy Sports Settlement between DraftKings, FanDuel and New York
  21. The Sharing Economy’s Dirty Laundry: Sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb aren’t helping local economies — they’re just helping themselves.
  22. In foam-arrow patent fracas, Newegg swoops in to aid LARPer defendant – Newegg lawyer Lee Cheng: “We geeky types like to stick together.”
  23. Record companies made $2.4B last year from streaming, but it’s not enough
  24. Report: “YouTube Connect” will be a livestreaming Periscope competitor – News of yet another live YouTube service surfaces.
  25. Most young viewers feel it’s OK when YouTube stars shill for sponsors, study says
  26. Demolition company says a Google Maps error led them to tear down the wrong house
  27. It’s Not Just You: Netflix’s Movie Catalogue Keeps Getting Smaller – It seems to be part of the company’s plan.
  28. How well online dating works, according to someone who has been studying it for years
  29. Clickbait Obsession Devours Journalism
  30. 4 Reasons America’s Laws Governing Robots Are Terrifyingly Outdated: Robots are evolving faster than the laws that rule their existence.

CREATIVITY

  1. The Mandatory Tariff Issue – The Follow Up and the Future – Implications for the Access Copyright v. York University Case. etc. (Howard Knopf)
  2. Despite Massive Streaming Revenue Gains, RIAA Still Lying & Crying
  3. Time Warner, Defenders Of Copyright, Forced To Pay Up For Copyright Infringement
  4. House Of Cards Sued Over Trademark Regarding Themed Slot Machines
  5. Patent that cost Microsoft millions gets invalidated: For over a decade, Uniloc pursued royalties for various anti-piracy schemes.
  6. Court To Film Director: You Must First Create An Infringing Work Before We Can Discuss Whether Or Not It’s Actually Infringing
  7. Judge Rejects Film Producer’s Bid to Have Buck Rogers Character Declared in Public Domain
  8. Brothers in Law: A Photographer’s Artistic Freedom v. an Individual’s Rights to Privacy
  9. Video rental past due for 14 years leads to arrest of NC man: Rental store is defunct. Format is obsolete. Movie is bad.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Dissenting Commissioner Thinks Corus Has Too Sweet A Deal
  2. Memorandum of Understanding between the United States Federal Trade Commission and the CRTC on mutual assistance in the Enforcement of Laws on commercial email and telemarketing (CRTC)
  3. ‘March 1 is the new January 1’ – A ‘new year’ in Canadian television services
  4. Netflix throttles video on AT&T and Verizon to keep users under data caps: Netflix limits video to 600kbps and 360p, says “data caps are bad for consumers.”
  5. Netflix Reveals It Throttles AT&T, Verizon Customers To Save Them From Usage Caps, Overage Fees
  6. Netflix should be investigated for throttling itself, FCC Republican says
  7. The Cable Industry Wants Netflix Investigated… For Throttling Itself
  8. Zero-rating by major ISPs “threatens open Internet,” advocates tell FCC: FCC urged to stop data cap exemptions at Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
  9. Google Fiber makes phone service official, starts at $10 a month: A “cloud based” phone number brings Google Voice features to landlines.
  10. Prison Telco Claims Prisoners Will Riot If Company Can’t Keep Overcharging Inmate Families

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. FBI Denies It Lied About Ability To Crack iPhone, Also Suggests Cellebrite Rumor Is Wrong
  2. Apple Asks Judge Overseeing NY iPhone Case To Wait Until More Is Known About FBI’s New Magic Unlocking Trick
  3. Apple likely can’t force FBI to disclose how it got data from seized iPhone: “It is an important test for the government’s disclosure policy.”
  4. Influencers: FBI should disclose San Bernardino iPhone security hole to Apple
  5. FBI hacks into terrorist’s iPhone without Apple
  6. Feds break through seized iPhone, stand down in legal battle with Apple: DOJ won’t say how, but its mysterious new method to bust through iPhone 5C worked.
  7. DOJ Says That The Crack Of Syed Farook’s iPhone Only Applies To That Model Of iPhone
  8. FBI Breaks into iPhone. We Have Some Questions. (EFF)
  9. FBI Is Pushing Back Against Judge’s Order to Reveal Tor Browser Exploit
  10. Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI.: When Johns Hopkins discovered a different security flaw, it notified Apple so the problem could be fixed. The FBI is keeping its newly found breach a secret from everyone.
  11. Some Thoughts On What, Exactly, The DOJ’s ‘Inaccurate Assertion’ Might Be Concerning Secret Legal Opinion
  12. If FBI Can Get Into A Device Running iOS 9, Why Does It Say It Still Needs Apple’s Help To Get Into One Running iOS 7?
  13. Encryption Is a Luxury: The people that most need privacy often can’t afford the smartphones that provide it.
  14. Under Surveillance: Examining Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring (Elizabeth Stoycheff)
  15. France Still Thinks It Regulates Entire Internet, Fines Google For Not Making Right To Be Forgotten Global
  16. American Big Brother: A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression

jon

News of the Week; March 23, 2016

GAMES

  1. Supreme Court punts in 1st AmendmentMadden NFL legal fight: EA said it was being wrongly punished because its virtual gridiron looked too real.
  2. Supreme Court rejects EA defense in Madden suit: Lawsuit brought by former pros used in games without permission can now proceed as publisher faces familiar setback
  3. Xbox chief: “We justly deserve the criticism” for GDC party with hired dancers
  4. Xbox chief: Company party’s hired dancers “not consistent with our values”
  5. The SXSW Online Harassment Summit Was A Small But Necessary Step Forward: It was a misunderstanding of online harassment that led to the creation of the summit, and there’s still a lot more work to be done.
  6. Gone Home Dev: Look past “the best person for the job”: Steve Gaynor wants industry veterans to open the door to more talented women
  7. GDC panel says that, in games, “Muslim blood is cheap”
  8. Beyond ageism: Industry must think about older gamers
  9. Machinima settles with FTC over undisclosed payments to online ‘influencers’: The network reportedly compensated YouTubers for feature Microsoft’s Xbox in their videos
  10. Pokkén Tournament penalizes players for rage quitting
  11. Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million
  12. Nintendo: Bravely Second localization change due to player feedback
  13. Report: Wii U will be Nintendo’s shortest-lived home console
  14. How the demonization of emulation devalues gaming’s heritage – Or: Why Uncle Buck is easier to buy than Duck Tales for the NES.
  15. Sony: We’re “happy to have the conversation” on cross-platform play – Vague statement hints at case-by-case openness to Microsoft’s invitation.
  16. Report: Sony working on upgraded, 4K-capable PS4 – Development sources say hardware refresh would sport more powerful GPU.
  17. PlayStation VR: Sony is “probably going to reject” games under 60 fps
  18. PlayStation VR launch lineup has five slick Sony-made games: PlayStation VR Worlds and The Playroom VR to become the Wii Sports of PSVR.
  19. PlayStation VR to sell 8m units in 24 months – analyst
  20. Amazon selling out of PSVR across Europe: Supplier limiting second batch of headsets to one per customer
  21. Survey: PlayStation/Xbox gamers more interested in VR than PC players: Exclusive results from Ipsos show PS4/Xbox One owners most engaged group
  22. PlayStation VR Launch Bundle Pre-orders Opening at Amazon Today (Update: Sold Out)
  23. Oculus will launch with 30 VR games—but are they any good?: Launch preview event weirdly focused on future Touch titles, and we think we know why.
  24. Vertigo lives: Oculus Rift preview event suffers from VR tracking woes – Launch game devs admit they’ve seen bug, “can’t repro” it. Will Oculus fix it in time?
  25. Why VR is not the most important trend at GDC: The democratisation of game engines and creative tools is the most exciting and powerful movement in games this decade – and the best is yet to come
  26. Epic looks outside of gaming for new uses of Unreal Engine: Powerful real-time 3D is revolutionizing everything from film to architecture.
  27. Take it from a pro, Street Fighter 5’s changes are for the greater good: One Guinness Worlds Record-holding champ believes the community needs SFV to succeed.
  28. Xbox Survey asks users if they want to sell back digital content: Question suggests potential trade-in price of 10%; analyst downplays potential threat to GameStop
  29. Tencent cleared $3 billion smartphone game revenue in 2015
  30. Game dev reveals correlation between a translation and a region’s piracy: Localization in Western Europe paid off—but Brazilian Portuguese didn’t fare so well.
  31. Valhalla moves HQ to Vancouver: Tomonobu Itagaki believes talented devs more attracted to Western countries than Japan
  32. IGDA to name best companies for crunch: Dev group hopes transparency around uncompensated overtime will improve employers’ behavior, will name-and-shame if it doesn’t
  33. Downtown Grand adds dedicated eSports Lounge
  34. GDC 2016 attracts 27,000 attendees

DIGITAL

  1. 9th Circuit revisits Dancing Baby copyright case: No fair use via algorithm – In a sharp dissent, one judge argues EFF should win its case immediately.
  2. New Decision In Dancing Baby DMCA Takedown Case — And Everything Is Still A Mess
  3. Eight-second videos are long enough to infringe on copyright, says UK judge: High Court rules that sharing sports highlights on Fanatix is not “fair dealing.”
  4. Court Rejects “Browsewrap.” Is That Surprising?–Long v. ProFlowers
  5. Spotify inks “no copyright claim” royalty deal with music publishers: “Only a temporary solution,” says copyright lobby group.
  6. Big Win For Free Speech Online In Backpage Lawsuit (Eric Goldman)
  7. Streetmap seeks to appeal against High Court ruling in Google case: UK-based mapping outfit continues to challenge search giant despite major setback.
  8. EU Court Of Justice Advocate General Says Open WiFi Operators Shouldn’t Be Liable For Infringement
  9. Wikileaks Exaggerates Story About State Department Working With Google To Block Video
  10. Machines That Will Think and Feel: Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy—and that should scare us
  11. DailyDirt: AlphaGo Plays Better Go Than Puny Humans…
  12. ‘Facebook for guns’ app aims to take America’s gun culture online
  13. Live Streaming Virtual Reality Company Receives Investment Of $12.5 Million From Intel Capital, Sacramento Kings, A&E
  14. Why apps like Siri and Cortana need to understand suicide: Study reveals that smartphones respond to emergencies with confusion, bad info.
  15. Netflix rescued “The Little Prince” after it was abruptly dropped from US theaters
  16. Where’s The Money? YouTube Revenues Explained
  17. YouTube was meant to be a video-dating website: Co-founder Steve Chen tells SXSW conference that ‘we thought dating would be the obvious choice’ – but internet users didn’t agree
  18. Twitter in 10 tweets: The social network is celebrating 10 years of letting folks share their thoughts in 140 characters or fewer. Here are the moments that stand out.

CREATIVITY

  1. Copyright Board Ruling Strikes Fair Balance in Heated Education Fight (Michael Geist)
  2. The Copyright Board’s K-12 Tariff: Good, Bad, Retroactive, Mandatory? A Seven Year Itch? (Howrad Knopf)
  3. False Alarms: Examining the Misleading Claims About the State of Canadian Publishers (Michael Geist)
  4. The ‘Monkey Selfie’ Monkey Just Filed an Appeal
  5. Amazon Defeats Lawsuit Over ‘A Gronking To Remember’ Book Cover (Eric Goldman)
  6. As Predicted, Elsevier’s Attempt To Silence Sci-Hub Has Increased Public Awareness Massively
  7. Jim Balsillie: Canada’s intellectual property red tape holding the country back from innovating
  8. Princess Cruises Faces Lawsuit Over Barry Manilow Concert Broadcasts
  9. Authoritarian hold music: How Donald Trump’s banal playlist cultivates danger at his rallies
  10. Donald Trump Thinks Hulk Hogan/Gawker Jury Award Is Good For His Plans To ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws
  11. Supreme Court: 8 Potential Cases That Would Impact Entertainment and Media

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. Canadian Cable Companies Make A Mockery Of Government’s Push For Cheaper TV
  2. CRTC flooded with complaints about new $25 skinny basic TV package: The commission has already received nearly 600 complaints about the mandated TV deals
  3. John Doyle: Canadian TV is a place of squalor and neglect
  4. FCC’s cable box rules won’t prohibit extra ads around TV channels: Ban unneeded as companies like TiVo “are not disrupting advertising,” FCC says.
  5. Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Charges Fly in TV Distribution Fights
  6. T-Mobile and YouTube compromise on video throttling and zero-rating: YouTube joins Binge On, videos won’t count against T-Mobile data caps.
  7. Prison phone company says rate caps will make inmates angry and dangerous: Confusion about prices could lead to damage in prisons, CEO tells court.
  8. Despite Gigabit Hype, U.S. Broadband’s Actually Getting Less Competitive Than Ever
  9. FCC Chairman Calls For New Consumer Privacy Regulations Of Internet Service Providers
  10. Why Tom Wheeler rejected broadband price caps and last-mile unbundling: FCC chairman has hammered ISPs, but he could have gone even further.
  11. Tennessee kills muni-broadband expansion bill after AT&T opposition: Lawmakers caved to lobbyists, disappointed rep says.
  12. ISPs Are Blocking Google Fiber’s Access To Utility Poles In California
  13. AT&T Uses Binding Arbitration Mouse Print To Kill Throttling Class Action
  14. Government announces media ownership law changes: The changes recognise that traditional media platforms need greater freedom to restructure and rescale the ownership of their businesses to respond to competition from new forms of media. (Australia)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Hulk Hogan Awarded $115 Million in Privacy Suit Against Gawker
  2. $115 million verdict in Hulk Hogan sex-tape lawsuit could wipe out Gawker – Hogan’s lawyer: Gawker editor was “playing God” with my client’s privacy.
  3. Facebook’s ad platform now guesses at your race based on your behaviour: Company profiles users so Facebook can sell against their “ethnic affinity.”
  4. Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling: It just wants to assign you an “ethnic affinity” based on what you do and like.
  5. Another FBI Filing on the San Bernardino iPhone Case (Bruce Schneier)
  6. Apple Tells Court That The DOJ Is Lying About It Advertising The Fact That Encryption Keeps Out Law Enforcement
  7. US government pushed tech firms to hand over source code: Obtaining a company’s source code makes it radically easier to find security flaws and vulnerabilities for surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.
  8. US Government Has Apparently Demanded, And Obtained, Tech Companies’ Source Code In The Past
  9. Apple’s VP Of Software Engineering: No, We Have Never Given A Backdoor To Any Government
  10. Apple Encryption Engineers, if Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
  11. How Apple Could Lose By Winning: The DOJ’s Next Move Could Be Worse
  12. Former Presidential Cybersecurity ‘Czar’ Slams DOJ/FBI For Its Position On Apple Encryption
  13. Apple defends crypto fight against government during launch event – Cook: “We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government.”
  14. FBI says it might be able to break into seized iPhone, judge cancels order to aid decryption: “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance of Apple.”
  15. DOJ To Court: Hey, Can We Postpone Tomorrow’s Hearing? We Want To See If We Can Use This New Hole To Hack In
  16. Apple gets short-term win, but new mysterious FBI unlocking method looms
  17. Government keeping its method to crack San Bernardino iPhone ‘classified’
  18. Gov’t accidentally publishes target of Lavabit probe: It’s Snowden
  19. Apparent Redaction Failure Leads To Government Confirming Target Of Lavabit Investigation
  20. We need stronger limits on Apple-style court orders
  21. Burner phones, not encryption, kept Paris terrorists off the authorities’ radar: Terrorists not using encryption undermines gov’t calls for it to be backdoored, weakened.
  22. French Police Report On Paris Attacks Shows No Evidence Of Encryption… So NY Times Invents Evidence Itself
  23. Google Searches & Jury Selection: What Role Should Social Media Have in Voir Dire?

jon

News of the Week; March 16, 2016

GAMES

  1. Judge Allows Lindsay Lohan to Advance in ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Lawsuit: The actress says the game publisher used her image in violation of New York civil rights laws.
  2. Conspiracy Theories Over Steam Game Suddenly Crashing Wrong; Just More Broken Anti-Piracy Code
  3. French politics places hard regulations over the esports industry
  4. Kim Kardashian banks $80 million from Glu Mobile’s game
  5. 16 years later, Blizzard is still patchingDiablo II: New update helps the game run on modern operating systems
  6. Fake ‘Minecraft’ app puts spotlight on coding marketplaces that are “fuelling pirate community on app stores”
  7. How free-to-play has evolved game marketing
  8. Supercell books record sales of over €2bn for 2015
  9. Riot Games acquires Radiant Entertainment
  10. Nexon to acquire Big Huge Games
  11. Paradox-Ruffian partnership “amicably terminated”
  12. Steam Early Access is hitting its stride – EEDAR
  13. Microsoft needs to clearly articulate its vision for PC gaming
  14. Xbox Live adds cross-network multiplayer: Microsoft allowing developers to make Xbox One games that can connect with other console networks
  15. Why Microsoft is finally pushing for cross-platform online gaming: The Xbox One can’t afford to lock out competing consoles, and gamers stand to benefit.
  16. Xbox indie gaming opens the door to playing against PlayStation owners: MonoGame is also welcomed to the Xbox One, finally filling the XNA hole.
  17. The Division Isn’t Just Ubisoft’s Next Game, It’s The Company’s Future
  18. Ubisoft calls The Division a record breaker: Doesn’t share numbers, but says its first 24 hours are unprecedented
  19. Inside the new book, ‘Sex, Drugs and Cartoon Violence: My Decade as a Video Game Journalist’VR devs call for restraint on horror games and jump scares
  20. My virtual living room: Setting up a social VR space in the house – Drilling, furniture-clearing, ceiling-testing, and Pictionary hacking.
  21. PlayStation VR surprises with $399 price point
  22. Crytek announces CryEngine 5, adopts “pay what you want” model
  23. Group Explorations of User-Generated Worlds with VRChat
  24. “Our brains essentially are always screwing with us”: Radial Games’ Dr. Kimberly Voll tells devs the weird ways our brains work, and how that can be used (or abused) in VR
  25. You Don’t Have as Much Control in Videogames as You Think
  26. Google’s AI beats world Go champion in first of five matches
  27. Google AI goes 3-0, wins Go match against Lee Se-dol: The last two games will still be played, but DeepMind’s AlphaGo has officially won.
  28. In the Age of Google DeepMind, Do the Young Go Prodigies of Asia Have a Future?
  29. The Sadness and Beauty of Watching Google’s AI Play Go

DIGITAL

  1. DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis on how AI will shape the future: Beating Go was just the start — DeepMind has designs on healthcare, robots, and your phone
  2. You can Google it: Supreme Court of Canada grants leave to appeal global injunction
  3. Supreme Court of Canada to hear Google Injunction Appeal
  4. FTC Announces Settlement With Lord & Taylor After Accusing Retailer of Deceptive Advertising
  5. Google loses appeal against Russian search engine over Android bundling: Search and ad giant has to tweak contracts with smartphone makers in the country.
  6. Microsoft upgraded users to Windows 10 without their OK
  7. Baltimore school cops charged with beating boy after video goes online
  8. Don’t Post About Me on Social Media, Children Say
  9. Customer Loses Suit Over Employees’ Disparaging Facebook Posts–Howard v. Hertz
  10. Google Defeats Lawsuit Over Duplicate Content Penalty–D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone
  11. New Zealand Expert paper #7 TPPA: Intellectual Property and Information Technology
  12. White House’s Claims that the TPP Would Curb Internet Censorship are Fantasy (EFF)
  13. Man accused of jamming passengers’ cell phones on Chicago subway: Windy City commuters were complaining for months about dropped phone service.
  14. Big-name sites hit by rash of malicious ads spreading crypto ransomware
  15. Searching Places Unknown: Law Enforcement Jurisdiction on the Dark Web (Ahmed Ghappour)
  16. Inside Instacart’s fraught and misguided quest to become the Uber of groceries
  17. The creepy, inescapable advertisements that could define virtual reality
  18. The Intersection of Big Data and Antitrust Law − Finally a Case in the EU 
  19. Adobe issues emergency patch for actively exploited code-execution bug: Critical bug was used to take control of vulnerable computers.
  20. Botched Java patch leaves millions vulnerable to 30-month-old attack: Oracle said the flaw was fixed. Newly released exploit code shows otherwise.
  21. Is Twitter Making Us More Productive?
  22. Why we use adblockers: ‘We need to have more control over what we’re exposed to’
  23. Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1: We may be on the verge of creating a new life form, one that could mark not only an evolutionary breakthrough, but a potential threat to our survival as a species
  24. Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 2: Self-driving cars, war outsourced to robots, surgery by autonomous machines – this is only the beginning
  25. The Early History Of The Streaming Media Industry and The Battle Between Microsoft & Real
  26. Internet of Things Bill Introduced 
  27. Anti-swatting Representative leads first-ever SXSW Online Harassment Summit
  28. SPJ ‘president-elect’ headlines SXSW panel about gaming
  29. The disturbingly simple way dozens of celebrities had their nude photos stolen

CREATIVITY

  1. Americans scooping up key jobs on Canadian film sets thanks to new rules from Ottawa
  2. There Are Many, Many Things the Chinese Communist Party Doesn’t Want Shown on TV
  3. Russia’s Paranoid Patriotism Gets a Cartoon Movie
  4. Harry Potter Author Offends Native American Scholars With New Story 
  5. Free Speech Protection for Critical Online Review
  6. ‘Happy Birthday’ settlement terms made public
  7. The Mass-Market Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird Is Dead: Harper Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the inexpensive paperback edition that was popular with schools.
  8. Music Licensing Shop Harry Fox Agency Appears To Be Scrambling To Fix Its Failure To Properly License Songs
  9. Can’t Make This Up: Paramount Says Star Trek Fan Flick Violates Copyright On Klingon And ‘Uniform With Gold Stars’
  10. Paramount, CBS list the ways Star Trekfanfic Axanar infringes copyright: Suit cites Warp Drive, Klingon High Council, Uniform with Gold Shirt, more.
  11. The Gloves Are Off: Competing Biopics Battle For Hollywood Purse 
  12. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine: copyright preempts Dirty Dancing trademark claim (Rebecca Tushnet)
  13. ESPN Sends Cease & Desist Letter To Barstool Sports Over “Pardon My Take” Podcast
  14. Middle Earth Enterprises Attempts To Block Wine Importer From Using The Word ‘Hobbit’
  15. Glee Spins Us Wrong Way Round
  16. The Registrability of the Trademark Consisting of an Acronym
  17. Professor Rebecca Tushnet Says the CAFC’s Reasoning in In re Tam Was Wrong 
  18. The First Amendment Walks Into A Bar: Trademark Registration And Free Speech (Rebecca Tushnet)
  19. Supreme Court Declines To Hear Batmobile Copyright Case
  20. Supreme Court won’t tinker with ruling giving copyright to the Batmobile: The Batmobile is for Batman and Robin, unless you get a license from DC Comics.
  21. Should All Research Papers Be Free?
  22. Silicon Valley writer: The show’s lack of diversity is accurate
  23. The price of Hollywood whitewashing: How this complex drama about a Latina woman became just another Keanu Reeves cop movie: I watched “Daughter of God,” the original film that was mangled beyond recognition into “Exposed”
  24. The Saga of Kesha, Dr. Luke and a Mother’s Fight: ‘He Almost Destroyed Us’ 
  25. Ai Weiwei brings white grand piano to muddy refugee field 

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

  1. ‘Skinny Basic’ Cable Will Reduce Consumer Choice? Claim Earns Rating Of ‘Some Baloney’
  2. “Drop Comcast today,” Yankees network tells baseball fans: Comcast won’t pay for Yankees games, so network urges viewers to switch.
  3. ISPs won’t be allowed to serve targeted ads without customers’ permission: FCC chair proposes new privacy rules for fixed and mobile broadband.
  4. Broadband Industry Has A Hissy Fit As FCC Unveils Some Fairly Basic New Broadband Privacy Protections
  5. Canada lags U.S. privacy rules for ISPs
  6. You Didn’t Notice It, But Google Fiber Just Began the Golden Age of High Speed Internet Access: Its “dark fiber” project in Huntsville creates a model that might finally thrust US Internet access into the 21st Century (Susan Crawford)
  7. Verizon to Pay Nearly $1.4M Over Use of ‘Supercookie’
  8. FCC Fines Verizon Wireless US$1.35 Million for Use of Tracking Cookies Without Consent
  9. 5 Things You Should Know About the FCC’s Proposed Privacy Rules: It stops Verizon’s zombie cookie in its tracks, but allows AT&T to keep charging customers extra if they want privacy.
  10. There Are Many, Many Things the Chinese Communist Party Doesn’t Want Shown on TV
  11. Why Russian Television Said Nothing When a Nanny Beheaded a Four-Year-Old Girl
  12. The Dragonslayer: A year ago, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saved the internet. In this exclusive interview, he tells us what’s next.
  13. The Cord Cutting The Pay TV Sector Keeps Saying Isn’t Happening — Keeps Happening
  14. How Donald Trump Proves the Equal Time Rule Is a Joke

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. China is building a big data platform for “precrime”: Using online profile and movements, government aims to catch “terrorists” in advance.
  2. We Now Have Algorithms To Predict Police Misconduct: Will police departments use them?
  3. France votes to penalize companies for refusing to decrypt devices, messages: But UN official warns: “Without encryption tools, lives may be endangered.”
  4. Where European countries stand on privacy versus security
  5. UN tells UK to “desist from setting a bad example” with Snooper’s Charter: Says Investigatory Powers Bill “runs counter” to key European court rulings on privacy.
  6. Time for Change: Reform of the Federal Privacy Act
  7. In Apple vs. the FBI, There Is No Technical Middle Ground
  8. There are ways the FBI can crack the iPhone PIN without Apple doing it for them: Getting Apple to write new firmware is the easiest route—but probably not the only one.
  9. Feds fire back on San Bernardino iPhone, noting that Apple has accommodated China
  10. Apple General Counsel Blasts Justice Department For Crazy Filing
  11. We Read The DOJ’s Latest Apple Filing To Highlight All Of Its Misleading Claims
  12. DOJ Keeps Pointing To A ‘3 Factor Test’ In Its Cases Against Apple; Except No Such ‘Test’ Exists
  13. Obama weighs in on Apple v. FBI: “You can’t take an absolutist view”
  14. President Obama Is Wrong On Encryption; Claims The Realist View Is ‘Absolutist’
  15. Former cyber czar says NSA could crack the San Bernadino shooter’s phone: Richard Clarke tells NPR that the FBI just wants precedent and could have data already.
  16. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Encryption
  17. John Oliver explains why iPhone encryption debate is no joking matter: Comedian dissects FBI technical and legal fallacies without lionizing Apple.
  18. John Oliver Explains Why You Should Side With Apple Over The FBI Better Than Most Journalists
  19. Florida sheriff pledges to arrest CEO Tim Cook if Apple resists crypto cooperation: If Apple wouldn’t comply with a court order, sheriff vows: “I’ll lock the rascal up.”
  20. Apple fires back: “Government is adept at devising new surveillance techniques”: In final filing before hearing, Apple says gov’t hasn’t shown “necessity.”
  21. Apple’s Response To DOJ: Your Filing Is Full Of Blatantly Misleading Claims And Outright Falsehoods
  22. Senator Lindsey Graham Finally Talks To Tech Experts, Switches Side In FBI V. Apple Fight
  23. FBI v. Apple is a security and privacy issue. What about civil rights? – Jesse Jackson: “Activities of civil rights organizations and activists” at stake.
  24. White House Begins To Realize It May Have Made A Huge Mistake In Going After Apple Over iPhone Encryption
  25. John McAfee tells Ars he’s fighting a lonely battle, but that he’s not lying: The dangers of government overreach are real—and he just wants you to see them.
  26. Encrypted WhatsApp messages frustrate new court-ordered wiretap: DOJ and Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, may clash just like in iPhone case.
  27. Facebook, Google and WhatsApp plan to increase encryption of user data: Spurred on by Apple’s battles against the FBI, some of tech’s biggest names are to expand encryption of user data in their services, the Guardian can reveal
  28. Go ahead, make some free, end-to-end encrypted video calls on Wire: Switzerland-based startup trumpets its strong security and pro-privacy stance.
  29. Google says it won’t Google jurors in upcoming Oracle API copyright trial: Oracle worried Google might research jurors’ Gmail, ad-viewing, browsing history.
  30. Surveillance and Our Addiction to Exposure

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