Posts

News of the Week; May 17, 2017

GAMES

  1. Judge Explores Boundaries of Authorship With Nods to ‘Star Wars,’ Spike Lee and ‘Love Actually’: Modded video games get likened to movies in a tour de force of legal writing.
  2. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and Valve Corporation v. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. And uCool, Inc. (U.S. Dist. Ct., Northern District of California)
  3. ZeniMax extends legal pursuit to Samsung Gear VR: Former id Software employees John Carmack and Matt Hooper involved in fresh VR lawsuit
  4. ZeniMax sues Samsung over Gear VR tech: Suit says Oculus’ Mobile SDK used stolen trade secrets, copyrighted code.
  5. With a legal win against Oculus, ZeniMax turns to a new target: Samsung’s Gear VR
  6. ZeniMax sues Samsung over Oculus-derived Gear VR headset: The lawsuit claims the Gear headset infringes its property rights in the same way as the Oculus Rift.
  7. Ruslan Sokolovsky Gets 3 And A Half Years Suspended Sentence And A Conviction For Playing Pokemon In A Church
  8. Scientists Still Studying Pokémon Go, Months After We All Moved On: The craze around the augmented reality game offers plenty to study, even if it takes a while
  9. In the name of the algorithm, Valve nerfs Steam Trading Cards
  10. Steam tries to shut down “fake” games that abuse Trading Card system: Algorithms will detect content-free titles that use bots to resell cards.
  11. Alan Wake will be removed from digital stores after this weekend: Expiring music licenses means modern classic can no longer be sold for download.
  12. Alan Wake to be removed from sale over music licenses: Renewal is not “in Remedy’s hands” due to Microsoft publishing deal, so the revered game will be pulled from PC and Xbox today
  13. Makers Of Payday 2 Donating DLC Profits To Help 2 YouTubers Fight Copyright Lawsuit
  14. Nier Automata Modder Includes Piracy Checks In Mod, Causing An Uproar, But Should It?
  15. Pirates upset that popular graphics mod won’t work for them: User-made graphical fix for Nier Automata comes with Steam API check
  16. Bethesda’s Pete Hines Shrugs His Shoulders About Trademark Dispute With No Matter Studios
  17. Is Bethesda’s reviews policy really harming game sales?: We look at the data around Doom, Skyrim Special Edition, Dishonored 2 and Prey
  18. Minecraft dev sacrifices Nirvana in-joke to save players’ parrots
  19. After uproar, Minecraft maker to stop feeding cookies to in-game parrots: Mojang accepts concerns that children might imitate the game’s dangerous avian diet.
  20. UploadVR sued over sexual harassment allegations: Former social media director claims “unbearable” atmosphere for female employees, accuses rising VR company of wrongful dismissal
  21. “No region or city is free of the games industry’s gender disparity”: Gram Games calls on companies around the world to push for better diversity, just as it’s doing with The 22% Project
  22. Why Bungie overstaffed on Halo: to train its devs for Destiny: “We needed to bring extra people on to Halo to train them up, ready [them] for Destiny.”
  23. Glu’s losses widen in Q1 despite revenue gains: Mobile publisher lost $22.8m on $56.8m revenue, but Crowdstar acquisition boosted year-on-year bookings
  24. Square Enix posts ‘record-high’ sales and profits as key franchises deliver
  25. Square Enix puts Hitman dev IO Interactive up for sale
  26. Square Enix drops IO Interactive: “There can be no guarantees,” publisher warns as it hunts for a buyer for Hitman developer
  27. Switch Was Best-Selling Console In The Us In April, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe No. 1 Game
  28. Switch best-selling console in US for second month: Nintendo says it sold more than 280,000 systems last month and 550,000 copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
  29. Two Months In, I’ve Barely Taken My Nintendo Switch Off The Dock
  30. Report: Andromeda’s poor reception sees Mass Effect put on hold – Bioware Montreal staff and resources focused elsewhere for now
  31. Civilization V designer Jon Shafer joins Paradox – under a cloud: Shafer will be game director on new Paradox projects, but his Kickstarted empire builder At The Gates is still years behind schedule
  32. Reported $20m franchise fee is putting esports teams off Overwatch: High costs and scarce events cited as major orgs bide time on OWL
  33. MotoGP owner aims to create “the most important racing esport championship”: Dorna Sports, Milestone and Sony unite for ambitious esports project
  34. Adelaide Crows First Australian Mainstream Pro Sports Organization To Acquire Esports Team
  35. Square Enix posts “record-high” revenue and profits: Full-year results boosted by Final Fantasy XV, weather the storm of IO Interactive withdrawal
  36. “There’s a change in the way games are exploited in the market”: Ubisoft execs explain why they cut unit sales projections by 30% while total revenues are virtually unscathed
  37. Ubisoft’s operating income grows 40% as digital takes 50% of sales: Ghost Recon Wildlands and For Honor were strong performers for the publisher; Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry confirmed for current fiscal year
  38. Google announces support for standalone Daydream VR headsets
  39. Google announces untethered, fully tracked, standalone VR headsets – Also: New “visual position system” is an AR Google Maps for indoors.
  40. PSVR: Losing Steam, or Gaining Traction? – If Sony really has lost interest in PSVR, it’s a major strategic blunder from a company about to face tough competition for the first time this generation
  41. Microsoft intros AR/VR motion controllers: Windows 10 inputs will launch this holiday bundled with an Acer headset for $399
  42. Oculus promises developers better communication
  43. Inside a Chinese Internet Cafe Where Gamers While Away Their Days
  44. Price, scarcity concerns drive a growing bootleg Amiibo scene
  45. Yes, Videogames Are Serious Art. This Guy’s Career Proves It
  46. Derivière: “Games music needs to emancipate itself from Hollywood”
  47. Sega plans to revive ‘major’ franchises by 2020
  48. Sega strategy calls for revival of dormant franchises: Sonic publisher looking to boost game sales 50% in next three years partly by bringing back “major IPs”
  49. Tom Brady Is On Madden 18’s Cover And Life Is Hell
  50. Video games are creating smarter animals: Our relationships to animals in games have evolved, and they just might change the way we treat them in the real world
  51. Playground spent 18 months developing the first 10 minutes of Forza Horizon 3: “First impressions change how players perceive a game,” says creative director Ralph Fulton
  52. The Witcher coming to Netflix as a TV series: Live-action drama is a new direction for video game adaptations.
  53. Characters and Worldbuilding: Analyzing the Strength of Japanese Games
  54. Twitch Unity day aims to promote diversity, inclusivity: Streaming platform also selling t-shirt to raise money for Amnesty International
  55. Sellers of circumvention devices beware!
  56. UKIE lays out new policy manifesto: With an election on the way, UK trade group tells government what the industry needs to succeed in a post-Brexit world

DIGITAL

  1. WannaCry Ransomware That’s Hitting World Right Now Uses NSA Windows Exploit
  2. An NSA-derived ransomware worm is shutting down computers worldwide: Wcry uses weapons-grade exploit published by the NSA-leaking Shadow Brokers.
  3. Leaked NSA Hacking Tool On Global Ransomware Rampage
  4. Massive ransomware attack hits UK hospitals, Spanish banks: Ransomware attack appears to be targeting institutions in several European countries.
  5. Massive cryptocurrency botnet used leaked NSA exploits weeks before WCry: Campaign that flew under the radar used hacked computers to mine Monero currency.
  6. Fearing Shadow Brokers leak, NSA reported critical flaw to Microsoft: WaPo confirms long-held suspicions as NSA cyberweapons crisis threatens to grow worse.
  7. Two days after WCry worm, Microsoft decries exploit stockpiling by governments: Company president specifically notes role of NSA code used by Ransomware worm.
  8. Microsoft Is P___ED OFF At The NSA Over WannaCry Attack
  9. Microsoft Says The NSA Shares Blame For Ransomware Attacks: The WannaCry authors used a stolen NSA vulnerability to hurt Windows users — should the NSA take responsibility?
  10. The Ransomware Meltdown Experts Warned About Is Here
  11. Today’s Massive Ransomware Attack Was Mostly Preventable—Here’s How To Avoid It
  12. Global Ransomware Attack ‘Accidentally’ Halted But It’s Probably Not Over
  13. ‘Accidental hero’ halts ransomware attack and warns: this is not over – Expert who stopped spread of attack by activating software’s ‘kill switch’ says criminals will ‘change the code and start again’
  14. Hackers Behind Massive Ransomware Attack Have Made an Embarrassingly Small Amount of Money
  15. WCry is so mean Microsoft issues patch for 3 unsupported Windows versions: Decommissioned for years, Windows XP, 8, and Server 2003 get emergency update.
  16. FBI Gives Hollywood Hacking Victims Surprising Advice: “Pay the Ransom” – Netflix isn’t alone – Agencies and others are balancing demands for money against the fears of stolen data ending up online.
  17. New Netflix DRM Blocks Rooted Phone Owners From Downloading The Netflix App
  18. Two days after WCry worm, Microsoft decries exploit stockpiling by governments: Company president specifically notes role of NSA code used by Ransomware worm.
  19. The WannaCry Ransomware Hackers Made Some Real Amateur Mistakes
  20. Microsoft Says The NSA Shares Blame For Ransomware Attacks: The WannaCry authors used a stolen NSA vulnerability to hurt Windows users — should the NSA take responsibility?
  21. The WannaCry Ransomware Has a Link to Suspected North Korean Hackers
  22. What the Rise of Russian Hackers Means for Your Business
  23. Thailand Demands More Proxy Censorship From Facebook
  24. Well, Duh: Facebook’s System To Stop ‘Fake News’ Isn’t Working — Because Facebook Isn’t The Problem
  25. Abortion Pill Organization Temporarily Booted Off Facebook
  26. Austrian Court’s ‘Hate Speech’ Ruling Says Facebook Must Remove Perfectly Legal Posts All Over The World
  27. US Court Upholds Enforceability Of GNU GPL As Both A License And A Contract
  28. “Genericide” legal assault to nullify the Google trademark fails: Google doesn’t lose trademark even if it is a generic term for searching the Web.
  29. Google Gets Big Ninth Circuit Win That Its Eponymous Trademark Isn’t Generic–Elliott v. Google (Eric Goldman)
  30. A focus on digital habits could help news publishers fight Facebook
  31. Facebook’s plan to disrupt TV advertising may have hit a wall
  32. Bleacher Report CEO Dave Finocchio Doesn’t Buy That Facebook Isn’t Avid About Securing Sports Rights
  33. Texas Court Orders Sports Streaming Sites To Be Blocked In Anticipation Of Piracy
  34. Facebook Warrant Case: Stark Debate and a Divided Court
  35. The MP3 Is About As ‘Dead’ As Pepe The Frog
  36. Recording Industry Claims Imaginary Value Gap As A Bigger Threat Than Piracy (EFF)
  37. SoundExchange Acquires CMRRA
  38. The Real Threat to Our Government Is Tech Illiteracy
  39. Cambridge Analytica Explained: Data and Elections
  40. Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online
  41. The Apophenic Machine: The conspiratorial mode and the internet’s data hoard were made for each other (Molly Sauter)
  42. Maybe the Internet Isn’t Tearing Us Apart After All
  43. Can These Apps Really Help You Escape Your Filter Bubble?: New tech products offer some tiny first steps toward shaking up our social networks
  44. We Recorded VCs’ Conversations and Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs
  45. Cloudflare, sued by its first “patent troll,” hits back hard: Blackbird Technologies, owned by its own lawyers, has filed over 100 lawsuits.
  46. Patent Trolling Lawyers May Have Picked With The Wrong Company To Shake Down: Cloudflare Hits Back
  47. Dear Google, You Could Start Fixing Content ID By Taking Down Dozens Of YouTube Videos On How To Defeat It
  48. YouTube still has full albums on its platform, and that’s a problem
  49. When a Picture is Worth… Thousands of Dollars: Ontario Court decides Ground-breaking Online Copyright Case
  50. The Kardashians Can’t Keep up with Copyright Law 
  51. Now Canceled Crowdfunding Project Sent DMCA Notice Following Skeptical Review
  52. Story About Ex-Sony Pictures Boss Magically Disappears From Gawker; His Lawyer Tells Reporters Not To Talk About It
  53. Class action against computer manufacturer proceeds
  54. MySpace Tries To Play Dead To Avoid Lawsuits
  55. Trademarks in a “Social” World: A Canadian Perspective
  56. Snap Blows First Earnings—But That’s Not the Whole Story
  57. Magic Leap settles discrimination lawsuit with former exec
  58. Magic Leap settles sexual discrimination case: Terms of the out of court settlement with Tannen Campbell were not disclosed
  59. Magic Leap, and the Troubles In Sexism Valley
  60. Clashing With Second Circuit, Court Orders Google to Turn Over Foreign-Stored Data
  61. Internet providers ordered to block streaming of Premier League
  62. Google’s Fight Against Uber Takes a Turn for the Criminal
  63. Judge refers Waymo v. Uber lawsuit to criminal investigators: Also, Uber’s bid to move the case into arbitration fails.
  64. Judge’s order bars Uber engineer from Lidar work, demands return of stolen files: “Misuse of that treasure trove remains an ever-present danger wholly at his whim.”
  65. Waymo and Lyft team up against Uber: In the self-driving world, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  66. Uber not just a dumb app, must comply with EU transport rules—top law adviser: Taxi-hailing app faces a tough ride from regulators in Europe.
  67. Lawsuit: VR Company Had a ‘Kink Room,’ Pressured Female Employees to ‘Microdose’
  68. Judge Alsup Threatens To Block Malibu Media From Any More Copyright Trolling In Northern California
  69. A new tool to further deter smartphone theft: “Think of it as Carfax for phones.”
  70. Spotify and – no joke – iTunes are coming to the Windows Store: Apple’s music app is a major get for Microsoft and Windows 10 S.
  71. One More Thing: Inside Apple’s Insanely Great (Or Just Insane) New Mothership
  72. 15-second ads coming to Amazon’s Alexa: Ads at the start and end of Alexa conversations, thanks to third-party company.
  73. Twitter, NFL Announce New Multi-Year Partnership To Include Live Pre-Game Coverage
  74. Lululemon Turns To Vice Media For Big Ad Push
  75. Vice Media Said to Be Raising More Cash as Prelude to Possible IPO
  76. How Amazon Go (probably) makes “just walk out” groceries a reality: Amazon’s new age grocery likely wasn’t possible even five years ago.
  77. Can Ticketmaster’s Anti-Bot Assault Fix Its Most Infuriating Problem?: “Verified Fan” fights scalper bots to make those Harry Styles tickets easier to snag—but there’s still room for improvement.
  78. Google Rattles the Tech World With a New AI Chip for All
  79. The Surprising Repercussions of Making AI Assistants Sound Human
  80. AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer
  81. Autonomous Systems — Is it time for empirical research?
  82. Scientists 3-D Print Mouse Ovaries That Actually Make Babies
  83. Fashion visionaries are using 3D printing to create mind-bending textiles that are nearly impossible to wear.
  84. Archive digitization: a coordinated effort by CBC/Radio-Canada to preserve and showcase our heritage
  85. Startup culture’s obsession with “side hustle” gets more unsettling the closer you look
  86. Google’s AI Invents Sounds Humans Have Never Heard Before
  87. Website Blocking, Injunctions and Beyond: View on the Harmonization from the Netherlands (Martin Husovec & Lisa Van Dongen)
  88. Digital copies, exhaustion, and blockchains: lack of legal clarity to be offset by technological advancement and evolving consumption patterns? (Eleonora Rosati)
  89. How 4 Agencies Are Using Artificial Intelligence as Part of the Creative Process: Can algorithms replace humans?
  90. Sorry, Westworld: We Should Be Able to Torture Robots
  91. Cristiano Ronaldo Goes Shirtless On Instagram Live To Celebrate Hitting 100 Million Followers
  92. French Theater Owners Freak Out; Get Netflix Booted From Cannes Film Festival

CREATIVITY

  1. Conan O’Brien Will Go to Court Over Joke Theft Allegations: A lawsuit claims that the late night host stole five monologue jokes from a comedy writer’s blog.
  2. Conan O’Brien Headed to Trial Over Claims of Stealing Jokes: Alex Kaseberg overcomes a summary judgment motion and moves forward on jokes about Caitlyn Jenner, Tom Brady and the Washington Monument.
  3. Here we laugh again! The eternal controversy over parody scope in Copyright law
  4. Latest Attack On A Free Press: Reporter Arrested For Asking Questions To Trump Administration Officials
  5. Does the Media Have a Right to Private Communications?
  6. Cartoonist who claimed to be Kung Fu Panda creator jailed for two years: Jayme Gordon also ordered to repay $3m in legal fees to DreamWorks Animation after filing spurious copyright lawsuit in 2011
  7. Court Finds Infringement of THE KRUSTY KRAB Mark
  8. Paul Levy Hoping To Wake Up Maryland Courts To The Numerous Fraudulent Libel Lawsuits Filed There
  9. Mathew v. The Walt Disney Co.
  10. ITN Flix, LLC v. Univision Television Group, Inc.
  11. Higher Costs Awards for the Winning Party in Federal Court IP Cases
  12. How Pixar Lost Its Way: For 15 years, the animation studio was the best on the planet. Then Disney bought it.
  13. A Candid Conversation About Rap Culture’s Pervasive Disrespect Against Black Women: How do you cope when your social feed reflects how much the world devalues you?
  14. Marvel’s Cancelling Black Panther & The Crew, One of Its Most Important Comics Right Now
  15. Why Drag Is the Ultimate Retort to Trump: RuPaul versus the White House
  16. Kentucky court rejects government attempt to punish printer for refusing to print ‘Lexington [Gay] Pride Festival’ T-shirt
  17. KitKat loses bid to copyright four-finger chocolate bars
  18. Why Photos of President Trump Are So Aggressively Boring
  19. How Amanda Palmer Gave The Music Industry The Finger With Crowdfunding
  20. As Cannes turns 70, must cinema adapt to survive in new digital era?: Festival bosses are welcoming TV shows but have banned Netflix films from the Palme d’Or
  21. Are Your Nails Gucci? Why the Breakout Trend of the Moment Is a Logo Manicure
  22. Revising Non-compete Law to Eliminate Unfair Competition
  23. How Noncompete Clauses Keep Workers Locked In
  24. New Copyright Law declared constitutional (Brazil)
  25. Legal Guide to Music Licensing Contracts
  26. Osgoode Hall Law School appoints two Journalists in Residence

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Internet, TV providers focus on new video packages as 1 million Canadians watch unlicensed content on Android boxes
  2. FCC Temporarily Stops Taking Net Neutrality Comments So FCC Can ‘Reflect’
  3. The FCC Spent Last Week Trying To Make Net Neutrality Supporters Seem Unreasonable, Racist & Unhinged
  4. Flooded with thoughtful net neutrality comments, FCC highlights “mean tweets”: Facing extensive net neutrality support, FCC is ready to gut open Internet rules.
  5. Ajit Pai accidentally supports utility rules and open-access networks: Pai praises Clinton, whose FCC enforced open networks and boosted competition.
  6. Title II hasn’t hurt network investment, according to the ISPs themselves: ISPs continue to invest and tell investors that net neutrality hasn’t hurt them.
  7. Cable lobby conducts survey, finds that Americans want net neutrality
  8. Cable Industry’s Own Survey Shows Majority Support Net Neutrality Rules
  9. It’s Time For The FCC To Actually Listen: The Vast Majority Of FCC Commenters Support Net Neutrality
  10. Cisco And Oracle Applaud The Looming Death Of Net Neutrality
  11. Sprint sues government over elimination of broadband price caps: Business Internet price caps were removed by FCC despite lack of competition.
  12. Verizon outbids AT&T for nationwide “5G” spectrum: Verizon to buy Straight Path and its millimeter-wave spectrum for $3.1 billion.
  13. PSA Leads to Threatened Criminal Investigation for Arizona Radio Station
  14. The Widening Blast Radius of the Fox News Scandal: The metastasizing Ailes affair is spilling over into the politics of New York, Virginia and the White House.
  15. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL): A Statistical Analysis from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Latest FISA Court Order Details Why NSA Didn’t Get Any 702 Requests Approved Last Year
  2. NSA Boss: Section 702 Should Be Renewed Because It Helped Prove Russia Hacked Election
  3. Police Body Camera Giant Made Lawyers Sign Away Client Footage: Fearing for their clients, defense attorneys are refusing to hit ‘agree’ to access the company’s cloud-based body cam footage
  4. America Reloaded: The Bizarre Story Behind the FBI’s Fake Documentary About the Bundy Family
  5. Hollywood Helps China Set Up National Surveillance And Censorship System To Tackle Copyright Infringement
  6. Google collected NHS records of 1.6M patients on “inappropriate legal basis”: “We haven’t shared patient data with other Google products, services,” says DeepMind boss.
  7. Google Lens knows more about what’s in your photos than you do: What flower are you snapping a photo of? Google can tell you that.
  8. Here’s How Facebook Knows Who You Meet In Real Life: It may seem like Mark Zuckerburg is personally tracking your every move — but there’s another explanation for those creepy friend requests you’re getting
  9. Revisiting the Discoverability of Facebook Account Activity–Gordon v. TGR (Eric Goldman)
  10. HP laptops covertly log user keystrokes, researchers warn
  11. Cockpit access codes for United Airlines spill online: “The safety of our customers and crew is our top priority,” United says.
  12. Amazon’s Alexa Is Getting Smarter, But Potentially More Intrusive: Users will be able to opt-in to weather and news notifications with the A.I. home assistant
  13. EU regulators welcome stricter rules on cookies and direct marketing: The European Commission has published a draft Regulation regarding cookies and electronic direct marketing. EU regulators have publicly welcomed the proposal, which has potentially significant consequences for all businesses that engage in online commerce or electronic direct marketing.

Jon

News of the Week; May 10, 2017

GAMES

  1. Russian Who Played Pokemon Go in Church Is Convicted of Inciting Hatred
  2. Diego Maradona settles with Konami over likeness dispute: As part of the settlement, the legendary player will sign a deal this month to promote Pro Evolution Soccer
  3. Bethesda Trademark Bullying Results In Indie Game Adding A Whole Letter To Its Name, But Not Its Logo
  4. ZeniMax trademark forces indie to rename Prey for the Gods: “We could’ve fought this but we didn’t want to spend our precious Kickstarter funds”
  5. Oculus Story Studio is getting shut down
  6. Why the Closure of Oculus Story Studio is Good News for VR Filmmakers
  7. ‘Antisocial VR’ and the power of isolation: How Recluse Industries is embracing the power of minimalism to offer a refuge for the solitary gamer
  8. Half Of NBA Teams Jump Into The NBA’s New eSports NBA2K League, FIFA League To Start Soon
  9. 17 NBA Teams Buy In For Startup NBA 2K Esports League
  10. Here Are The 17 Teams Participating In NBA 2K Esports League’s Inaugural Season
  11. Blizzard’s new MLG eSports division to focus on Overwatch: Major League Gaming now fully integrated into Blizzard, will also handle Call of Duty World League
  12. eSports broadcasting – a difficult balance to strike
  13. With streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch now serving as popular hubs for professional gamers, both game developers and the platforms themselves are struggling to forge new rules
  14. ‘Skin economy is a good thing,’ says Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds creator
  15. Activision Blizzard sees record Q1 earnings — 80% of which came from digital sales
  16. Nintendo Switch boosts Nvidia revenues by up to $192m: Graphics hardware firm reports Q1 revenues of $1.94bn, aided by new console’s use of Tegra processor
  17. Minecraft on Nintendo Switch does the trick, hides most of its compromises: Visual and rendering compromises are totally fine, but do you have enough controllers?
  18. EA goes from cautious to “bullish” on Nintendo Switch support: Mega-publisher is “looking at other titles” to bring to hot-selling hardware.
  19. EA Responds To Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Mixed Reaction, Talks BioWare New IP Delay: CEO Andrew Wilson says Mass Effect still has a bright future.
  20. Zynga CEO: “We’ll be profitable in the very near future”
  21. NaturalMotion founder Torsten Reil leaves Zynga
  22. Chinese games market to hit $35bn by 2021 – Niko Partners: Mobile revenue to account for 58% of the market
  23. EA expects console game sales to be 40% digital this year: And that the install base of PS4/Xbox One will hit 105m
  24. YouTubers struggling to make money from Call of Duty: WWII – Depictions of real-war are seeing videos demonetised
  25. TIGA aiming to increase employment in UK games industry by 40 percent
  26. Things to Learn from 2016 Global Mobile Market and Actions to Take in 2017
  27. The Extremes of Mental Presence: Cognitive Enhancement, Biohacking, Psychedelics, & Transhumanism
  28. Top 5 VR Racing Sims for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
  29. Gear VR far and away the leader with almost 7m expected to be sold in 2017: SuperData’s latest figures show 782,000 units sold in Q1; HTC Vive continues to outpace Oculus Rift despite price cut
  30. Microsoft Technical Evangelist on Presence in VR Game Design
  31. This Pulsating ‘Haptic Skin’ is Somewhat Creepy, Mostly Awesome
  32. Fan buys box of Blizzard stuff on eBay, finds StarCraft source code
  33. Four games, including Pokemon and Halo, join World Video Game Hall of Fame
  34. How Moral Panics Can Turn Into Therapeutic Tools: The Dungeons And Dragons Edition
  35. Arcade group promises ticket and claw games will no longer be “rigged”: “Fair Play Pledge” says all redemption games can be “won by the application of skill.”
  36. Rapidly Deflating Pikachu Rushed To Safety By Small Horde Of Suited Men
  37. Vice Will Bring More Of Its Brands To Twitch After Successful Gaming Stream
  38. Execution Labs wraps up with fund “fully deployed”: Indie incubator has a portfolio of 19 active studios; Jason Della Rocca, Keith Katz and support team are all moving on

DIGITAL

  1. Trump administration to Supreme Court: Don’t hear EFF “Dancing Baby” case: Copyright fight over 29 seconds of a toddler dancing to Prince is now a decade old.
  2. The Trump Admin’s Advice to Supreme Court in Copyright Case Is a True Mind-Bender
  3. Hackers Hit Macron With Huge Email Leak Ahead of French Election
  4. Evidence suggests Russia behind hack of French president-elect: Russian security firms’ metadata found in files, according to WikiLeaks and others.
  5. Dear France: You Just Got Hacked. Don’t Make The Same Mistakes We Did. – A brief guide to the information wars. (Zeynep Tufekci)
  6. Here’s How Far-Right Trolls Are Spreading Hoaxes About French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron
  7. Why the Macron Hacking Attack Landed With a Thud in France
  8. Macron campaign team used honeypot accounts to fake out Fancy Bear: Digital team filled fake accounts with garbage data to slow information operation.
  9. A Last Minute Influence Op by Data DDoS: Where there’s smoke, there’s a smoke machine!
  10. As France becomes latest target, are election hacks the new normal?: After the hacking of the Democratic party in the US, governments have been braced for similar attacks. The onslaught has arrived
  11. The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked – A shadowy global operation involving big data, billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign influenced the result of the EU referendum. As Britain heads to the polls again, is our electoral process still fit for purpose?
  12. We are not done with state-sponsored hacking. Far from it.
  13. Russians Say They’re Sick Of Hacking Accusations
  14. China’s New Online Encyclopedia Aims To Surpass Wikipedia, And To ‘Guide And Lead’ The Public
  15. UK Parliament Takes First Step Towards Making Google & Facebook Censor Everything
  16. Dear Europe: Please Don’t Kill Free Speech In The Name Of ‘Privacy Protection’
  17. Cisco kills leaked CIA 0-day that let attackers commandeer 318 switch models: Fix neutralizes attack code that was put into the wild in early March.
  18. Trump’s Campaign Can’t Just Erase History on the Internet
  19. Activists Are Pushing Back Against Tech Platforms That Quietly Empower Hate Groups
  20. No More Trolls: Austria Rules Facebook Must Remove Hate Speech: An Austrian court case aimed at making Facebook responsible for policing vitriolic posts could have an international ripple effect.
  21. Will Facebook actually hire 3,000 content moderators, or will they outsource?: The company refuses to comment on where those 3,000 workers will be employed.
  22. Facebook Sees Video Views Rise By 32% In Q1 2017, Doubles Down On Long-Form Content
  23. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg: Paying For Live Sports Video Content Isn’t A ‘Long-Term Goal’
  24. How Sheryl Sandberg’s Sharing Manifesto Drives Facebook: The COO inspires her fans, and her employees, to talk about sadness, even tragedy, at work. That can be healing—and very good for business.
  25. Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable
  26. On Facebook: Why won’t the company let us truly filter our feeds?
  27. Facebook Tweaks News Feed to Crack Down on ‘Low Quality’ Sites
  28. Facebook takes to newspapers to teach UK users how to spot “fake news”: Social network claims to have killed “tens of thousands of fake UK accounts.”
  29. Ridiculous Lawsuit Looks To Hold Social Media Companies Responsible For The San Bernandino Shooting
  30. Norwich orders: who pays under the notice and notice regime? Voltage v Doe
  31. Microsoft’s bid to bring AI to every developer is starting to make sense: The APIs are getting good enough to be built into production systems.
  32. The Commodification of People
  33. Kodi: Open source TV app inspires full-blown copyright panic in the UK – Descended from Xbox Media Center software, it’s a crime wave to copyright cops.
  34. AG Szpunar says that Uber is a transport activity, not an information society service
  35. Warner Music Inks New Deal With YouTube, But Does Not Cease Its Complaints
  36. The Premier League Kindly Requests Google De-List All Of Facebook Over Copyright Infringement Claims
  37. Creator of infamous Playpen website sentenced to 30 years in prison
  38. Kardashian lumped with lawsuit over Instagram snap
  39. Third verse same as the first – Will Richard Prince’s transformation defense work yet again?
  40. 5th Circuit: ISP Not Liable for Infringement Due to Lack of Volitional Conduct, Despite Ineligibility for DMCA Safe Harbor
  41. Megaupload users still can’t get data back: The answer for users waiting five years for their seized data? Keep waiting.
  42. YouTube taps creators, celebrities for new original shows on ad-supported site: Fitness with Kevin Hart, behind-the-scenes with Ellen, and more.
  43. Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s music ambassador, makes his case to the big music labels: Warner Music Group signed a deal with YouTube and then complained about it. Here’s the video site’s response
  44. Maker Studios wrapped up in new, more ‘curated’ Disney YouTube network
  45. Disney rebrands all Youtube content under Disney Digital Network: Maker Studios output subsumed into new ‘Polaris’ channel
  46. Time Inc. To Launch ‘Sports Illustrated’ SVOD Service, Slew Of Social Video Brands
  47. What’s Wrong With Twitter’s Live-Video Strategy
  48. Anti-Authoritarian Book Club: Twitter And Tear Gas (James Grimmelmann)
  49. Report: Uber faces federal criminal probe over regulator-evading software
  50. Imagination Technologies can’t resolve Apple IP spat, opens formal dispute: Starting in 2019, Apple will no longer use firm’s designs.
  51. Tim Cook announces $1 billion investment in “advanced” US manufacturing: Apple also created a page highlighting the jobs it already supports in the US.
  52. When Internet Memes Infiltrate the Physical World: Deplorable frogs and “nasty women” aren’t just online for comic relief. They’re central to how people engage with political issues.
  53. What You Need to Know About Emoji Law (Yes, That’s a Thing)
  54. Surveying the Law of Emojis (Eric Goldman)
  55. Copyright Considerations for using Emoji in Commercial Ads
  56. Data is giving rise to a new economy
  57. Why Do Gas Station Prices Constantly Change? Blame the Algorithm: Retailers are using artificial-intelligence software to set optimal prices, testing textbook theories of competition; antitrust officials worry such systems raise prices for consumers
  58. SpaceX Just Laid out a Plan to Give Everyone Internet Access
  59. US Legislators Form VR-centric “Reality Caucus” to Guide Immersive Technology Policy
  60. Verizon Is Paying the NFL $21 Million for Exclusive Streaming Rights to One Football Game
  61. Premier League scores a big win against illegal streaming
  62. Snapchat lines up media companies to produce original shows for Snap TV: Could your next favorite show be a Snapchat exclusive?
  63. Amazon Alexa Will Now Wait On Seattle Mariners Fans In Private Suites At Safeco Field
  64. Alexa, is Amazon poised to control the connected ecosystem of the future?
  65. Social media and personal injury lawsuits
  66. Libel in the age of the Internet: click with caution
  67. Building a Better Loom: How technology might serve, rather than hinder, democracy
  68. How Vladimir Putin mastered the art of ‘online Judo’ – and why the west should be worried: Russia is using the internet’s idealistic freedom as a hybrid-warfare weapon against the west
  69. The inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the internet, ‘fake news,’ and why net neutrality is so important
  70. Google and Facebook aren’t fighting fake news with the right weapons
  71. Facing digital reality: Regulation, product complexity, and insurers’ large balance sheets have kept digital attackers from insurers’ gates. That is changing, but in ways incumbents should embrace. They can flourish in the digital age—if they move swiftly and decisively.
  72. The meaning of life in a world without work
  73. As technology renders jobs obsolete, what will keep us busy? Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari examines ‘the useless class’ and a new quest for purpose
  74. University Of Alberta Develops Smallest-Ever Edmonton Oilers Logo Via Nanotechnology

CREATIVITY

  1. Spanish Citizen Sentenced To Jail For Creating ‘Unhealthy Humoristic Environment’
  2. Police Union Sues Toy Gun Maker For Not Doing Enough To Keep Cleveland Cops From Killing 12-Year-Old Boys
  3. Rome Court of Appeal confirms that mere indication of a work’s title is enough to trigger hosting provider’s liability
  4. CJEU to rule on enforceability of German press publishers’ right
  5. Molteni and Cassina duke it out over Gio Ponti chair design
  6. “Turn Down for What” Becomes Latest Target for “Blurred Lines” Lawyer
  7. US Entertainment Firm Milks Croatian Concert Promoter With Trademark Rights It May Never Have Owned
  8. Sad Raiders Fans Fail To Keep Team In Oakland By Squatting On Trademark
  9. A Photographer Sued a Student Over a School Project. Guess How That Turned Out–Reiner v. Nishimori (Eric Goldman)
  10. How Zeke Smith’s Being Outed as Trans May Have Gotten Him Kicked Off Survivor
  11. “Digital Is Cheaper” & Other Bogus Arguments
  12. Illinois right of publicity allows truthful statements about performers in ads (Rebecca Tushnet)
  13. Engineered To Deceive: Many of today’s visual artists are technological innovators, using advanced materials, industrial design, and sophisticated light manipulation to build experiences that trick your brain. Look inside their imaginations—and allow them to expand your own.
  14. Is It “Fake News” To Call The Media “Fake News?”
  15. The Local News Business Model
  16. Vogue India Celebrated Its 10th Anniversary by Getting Kendall Jenner Into Even More Trouble
  17. Coca-Cola and Music: A Case Study
  18. The New Intellectuals: Political wars on college campuses aren’t really about free speech. They’re about what it means to be a student.
  19. The Art Market’s Modigliani Forgery Epidemic: A skyrocketing interest in Amedeo Modigliani’s work is producing Picasso-level price tags, with major museum shows stoking the flame. Buyers are wary, though: the mystery surrounding one of the world’s most-faked artists has led to death threats, lawsuits, and hoaxes.
  20. Branding “Vaverisms”: All I Really Need To Know I Learned From His Quips 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Lawsuit depicts Fox News as not just sexist. Not just misogynistic. Barbaric.
  2. FCC to investigate, ‘take appropriate action’ on Colbert’s Trump rant
  3. Opening up broadcast indecency
  4. The FCC ‘Investigation’ Into Stephen Colbert Is A Complete Non-Story
  5. FCC to Investigate Steven Colbert? – Much Ado About Nothing
  6. A John Oliver Net Neutrality Rant Has Crippled The FCC Website A Second Time
  7. FCC: John Oliver Didn’t Bring Down Our Site, Attackers Did – Just as the comedian sent a flood of people to support net neutrality, attackers brought commenting site down
  8. After net neutrality comment system fails, senators demand answers: John Oliver caused big comment increase, but FCC blames DDoS attacks.
  9. The FCC Claims A DDoS Attack — Not John Oliver — Crashed Its Website. But Nobody Seems To Believe Them
  10. The FCC has received 128,000 identical anti-net neutrality comments: There might be a bot faking widespread net neutrality opposition.
  11. The FCC Is Using Garbage Lobbyist Data To Defend Its Assault On Net Neutrality
  12. AT&T Takes Heat For Avoiding Broadband Upgrades For Poor Areas
  13. AT&T could be punished for unlimited data throttling after all: Ajit Pai cheers court decision, says case to overturn Title II is strengthened.
  14. Comcast, Charter Join Forces In Wireless, Agree Not To Compete
  15. Plan to kill municipal broadband fails in state legislature: Angry constituents convince Maine lawmakers to vote against Republican bill.
  16. UK’s New ‘Digital Economy’ Law Somehow Now Gives Police The Power To Remotely Kill Phone Service
  17. How the NFL is Crippling ESPN and Harming the Future of TV Sports
  18. Only Connect

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Massive vulnerability in Windows Defender leaves most Windows PCs vulnerable: PCs can be compromised when Defender scans an e-mail or IM; patch has been issued.
  2. Google phishing attack was foretold by researchers—and it may have used their code: A potential threat from spoofing Google applications was cited in 2011.
  3. Security News This Week: Oh Good, Hackers Beat Two-Factor to Rob Bank Accounts
  4. Man: Border agents threatened to “be dicks,” take my phone if I didn’t unlock it – “I believe strongly in the Constitution and in my right to privacy.”
  5. Privacy, Poverty and Big Data: A Matrix of Vulnerabilities for Poor Americans
  6. How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful
  7. Lawyers: How can we scrutinize surveillance records that remain sealed?: Stanford attorneys make unusual request to a federal court itself, DOJ opposes.
  8. Lawyer: Cops “deliberately misled” judge who seemingly signed off on stingray – “Any system that is not transparent is inherently corrupt.”
  9. Watch a cop’s staged body cam footage made “to look like it was done in real-time”: “The staging was done in such a way to make it look like it was done in real-time.”
  10. Ahead Of His Senate Hearing, James Comey Pushes His ‘Going Dark’ Theory
  11. James Comey Says Real Journalists Check With The Government Before Publication
  12. Feds propose heightened social media vetting of visa applicants: Plan applies to applicants “who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny.”
  13. Investigatory Powers Act: Back doors, black boxes, and tech capability regs: Expert legal analysis of the UK’s spy law and what it could mean for end-to-end crypto.
  14. Hidden Cameras And Zoom Lenses: Meet The Voyeur Pornographers: Revenge porn gets all the attention, but other forms of nonconsensual adult content are thriving under the radar
  15. Is Facebook Taking Its First Steps Into VR Surveillance?: With new ‘Spaces’ app, privacy advocates warn it could one day offer a wealth of new data to advertisers
  16. More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads: Your Android phone may be listening to ultrasonic ad beacons without your knowledge.
  17. Your Keystrokes Can Reveal Who You Are — And How You Feel: An NYU researcher is using machine learning to show how easy it is to identify people and emotions from typing patterns
  18. Happy or sad? Your future car might know the difference: Using deep learning technology, Affectiva developed an emotion recognition engine, and it promises to make cars much more human.
  19. How Facial Recognition Will Help Doctors Take Better Care Of Babies: Medical researchers are developing facial analysis apps that diagnose genetic disorders and monitor babies’ pain
  20. Facial Recognition Helps Parents Find Son 27 Years After Abduction: Tens of thousands of Chinese children are kidnapped every year, but artificial intelligence is helping families reunite
  21. Internet Privacy – ISP Snooping and U.S. Surveillance Laws 

Jon

News of the Week; May 3, 2017

GAMES

  1. ZeniMax pressures Prey for the Gods devs to make a name change
  2. Prey developer: Go ahead, use Steam refunds to demo our game – Colantonio – “Steam players can just return the game” before playing for two hours.
  3. Nintendo issues unsurprising take down notice for fan-made Zelda: “Breath of the NES” developer publishes email from NoA attorney
  4. Nintendo comes out on top in Mii patent infringement case
  5. Copyright claim yanks fan-made Breath of the Wild 2D adaptation: Creator vows it will be back ‘bigger and better than ever.’
  6. Nintendo sold 2.3 million NES Classic Editions
  7. Nintendo Switch sold 2.74 million units in March alone: Profits up 5x in the last fiscal year, with Nintendo expecting a further 10 million Switch sales in the year ahead
  8. Switch shipments selling out same day – GameStop: Specialty retailer can’t keep console stocked nearly two months after launch
  9. Switch boasts 2:1 software tie ratio: Sales not limited to Zelda, as Nintendo touts figures for 1-2 Switch, Super Bomberman R, and Snipperclips
  10. Nintendo president: Switch can approach ‘relative parity’ with Wii
  11. Super Mario Run nearing 150m downloads: Nintendo’s mobile platformer has been installed on nearly 72m devices since January
  12. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe becomes fastest-selling title in franchise history
  13. Nintendo now believes Switch can reach Wii sales levels: “We have greatly increased the quantity we can produce in a single month,” says Tatsumi Kimishima
  14. 4 interesting comments from Nintendo’s Q&A session
  15. Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event – “Smiling Dog Crew” shows how you should never let a wolf guard your chickens.
  16. Sarkeesian finishes Tropes vs. Women in Video Games: Feminist Frequency founder reflects on five years of harassment and progress as she brings video series to a “bittersweet” close
  17. Breathing In: The Industry in Consolidation – Vivendi, Tencent, Softbank, Activision; the list of companies with billion-dollar shopping lists continues to grow. Is Disney next?
  18. 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles were sold in just the last year
  19. Profits up in Sony’s games division as PS4 sales near 60M
  20. Hearthstone gains 20M players in a year, surpassing 70M to date
  21. Some advice for modders from the creator of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds
  22. Game Maker Sues Milwaukee Over Permit Requirement To Make Augmented Reality Games
  23. VR exclusivity should be a last resort – Owlchemy: Job Simulator studio boss Alex Schwartz talks about his approach to the VR market, where it’s headed and why AR is much further away
  24. You Can Catch A Real Ball While Immersed In Virtual Reality, So What Comes Next?
  25. Unity CEO: VR Will Get Huge, But Devs Need to Survive and Avoid Hype Until it Does
  26. VR/AR to “rival the internet” – Riccitiello: Unity boss kicks off the Vision Summit, noting the success and opportunity in the burgeoning VR/AR market
  27. Oculus VR is the latest company to forgo paying for a booth at E3
  28. The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming: The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke.
  29. Online games in China are now required to disclose random loot box odds
  30. Was Uber’s CEO really the second-best Wii Sports tennis player? – Short answer: “Yes, with an if…” Long answer: “No, with a but…
  31. NBA COO Mark Tatum Reaffirms Global Vision For New NBA 2K Esports League
  32. eSports investments need a 10-year view – Hi-Rez: Smite and Paladins studio co-founder says competitive gaming is more about community than revenue, takes stock of console platforms’ changing attitudes on free-to-play
  33. “2022 Asian Games is another step towards mainstream acceptance of esports”: Pro-gaming leaders discuss the recent introduction of esports in the Asian games
  34. The Rock Hilariously Reveals Rampage Movie’s Plot: “And when I find them, I will not lick them.”
  35. Mental Models: The reality that we sense in front of us is a fiction created by our brains. A host of modules process information in various ways and the end result is a mental model of the outside world. Knowing how this works is crucial to game development as the shape of these mental simulations has a huge effect on how a game feels and plays.
  36. The AI revolution is making game characters move more realistically: Neural network makes for smarter-looking avatars, not just smarter enemies
  37. Video Games Are Better Without Stories: Film, television, and literature all tell them better. So why are games still obsessed with narrative? (Ian Bogost)
  38. A Dream of Embodied Experience: On Ian Bogost, Epistemological Gatekeeping, and the Holodeck (Bianca Batti & Alisha Karabinus)

DIGITAL

  1. Report: Facebook helped advertisers target teens who feel “worthless”: Leaked 2017 document reveals FB Australia’s intent to exploit teens’ words, images.
  2. Facebook Told Advertisers How It Could Target Vulnerable Teens: “Anxious” and “overwhelmed” Australians as young as 14 were swept up by algorithm, though Facebook said it was never used to target ads
  3. Facebook: leaking info about gender bias damages our ‘recruiting brand’ – Tech company is disputing analysis that female engineers have code rejected 35% more than male engineers and said such leaks make it harder to hire women
  4. Facebook To Target Fake News “Information Operations”: The social media giant is getting serious about its role in global civics
  5. Facebook enters war against “information operations,” acknowledges election hijinx: Facebook no longer wants to be a tool for enlisting “useful idiots.”
  6. Facebook will hire 3,000 more moderators to keep deaths and crimes from being streamed
  7. Response To Facebook Video Of Murder Is The Call For An Actual ‘Godwin’s Law’
  8. Mounting Privacy Problems In Europe For Facebook’s Acquisition Of WhatsApp
  9. The Age of Misinformation: Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft must recognize a special responsibility for the parts of their services that host or inform public discourse. (Jonathan Zittrain)
  10. A Look at Government Censorship in the Age of Facebook
  11. The Terrible History Of Using Biased Technology To Lock People Up: Courts are relying on racist algorithms in judicial decisions — apparently we’ve learned nothing from the rise and fall of the polygraph
  12. More penalties for digital “drip pricing” 
  13. New Tools Allow Voice Patterns To Be Cloned To Produce Realistic But Fake Sounds Of Anyone Saying Anything
  14. Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For
  15. New Private Right of Action in Canada for False or Misleading Electronic Advertising
  16. Companies Don’t Really Want You to Read Their Terms of Service: As the uproar over Unroll.me shows, being opaque is part of their business model.
  17. Brands and Influencers Continue to Flout Disclosure Rules Despite FTC Warning
  18. Your Newest Instagram Follower, the FTC: Agency Reminds Endorsers and Marketers to #Disclose with Over 90 Warning Letters
  19. Website/App Provider in Hot Water for Ambiguous Privacy Policy
  20. Neo-Nazi website unleashed Internet trolls against a Jewish woman, lawsuit says
  21. Suing the trolls: A woman’s lawsuit against a neo-Nazi’s “troll storm” could change how to fight back against online harassment
  22. White Supremacists, Brought To You By Squarespace: Website building service Squarespace’s acceptable use policy bans bigotry. So why does it allow prominent white nationalists to use it to create their websites?
  23. ‘Troll Army’ Raises $24K In One Day For Neo-Nazi Leader’s Legal Fund: Andrew Anglin’s trolls are emptying their pockets to preserve his neo-Nazi blog
  24. 20,000 Chinese writers will create their own Wikipedia competitor
  25. Prior Exposure Increases Perceived Accuracy of Fake News (Gordon Pennycock, Tyrone Cannon, David Rand)
  26. Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action
  27. Copyright Troll Sends DMCA Notices Targeting Anti-Troll Websites & Lawyers
  28. DMCA and monitoring – damned if you do, damned if you don’t?
  29. Kodi: The copyright cops want to lock up this free and legal TV app – Fully loaded Kodi boxes, the future of home entertainment, are a thorn in the side of Big Content 
  30. Italian court finds Google and YouTube liable for failing to remove unlicensed content (but confirms eligibility for safe harbour protection)
  31. When a ‘Remix’ Is Plain Ole Plagiarism: Digital technologies make it easier for people to copy the work of other artists—yet the same tools make it more likely for them to get caught.
  32. Lawyering at the Edge of Innovation: A Conversation with Kent Walker, Google’s General Counsel and Senior Vice President
  33. Filmspeler, the right of communication to the public, and unlawful streams: a landmark decision
  34. You Can’t Be Fired For a Facebook Post Calling Your Boss a “LOSER”–NLRB v. Pier Sixty
  35. Google rater fired after speaking to Ars about work conditions: After public revelations, workers report chaos, layoffs, and at least one firing.
  36. Internal Uber e-mail reveals Levandowski stepping down from self-driving car job: “I will be recused from all LiDAR-related work and management at Uber.”
  37. Sent to Prison by a Software Program’s Secret Algorithms
  38. Washington State Enacts Law Defining Licensing Requirements for Transmitters of Money and Virtual Currency
  39. The Internet of Things Needs a Code of Ethics: Technology is evolving faster than the legal and moral frameworks needed to manage it.
  40. Catching Up On Some Recent Click Fraud Rulings (Eric Goldman)
  41. Will Technology Destroy Our Democracy–or Save It? A Series of Papers at The Atlantic (Eric Goldman)
  42. European Court Of Justice Tightens Screws On “Streaming”
  43. Twitter Goes Bigger On Video With 16 New Streaming Partnerships
  44. Twitter Announces New Sports Live Streaming Initiatives With 24-Hour Sports Channel, NFL, WNBA, PGA TOUR
  45. Hulu’s Live TV Service Launches To Save You From Your Cable Bill
  46. Hulu debuts $40-per-month live TV streaming service with over 50 channels: And it includes Hulu’s regular subscription content, too.
  47. Yik Yak is finally relegated to the dustbin of Internet history: Founders not totally closing up shop, will “start tinkering around” for a while.
  48. Why is Microsoft trying to turn its Surface business into the next Nokia?: Microsoft is developing a worrying habit of neglecting its hardware products.
  49. Samsung could displace Intel as the world’s biggest chip company in 2017
  50. Dating App Lets You Flirt With Coworkers On Slack: Feeld introduces a Slack bot to encourage workplace romances
  51. DARPA Is Planning to Hack the Human Brain to Let Us “Upload” Skills
  52. The Google Assistant SDK will let you run the Assistant on anything: Build your own Google Home out of whatever you want.
  53. YouTube Says Its Six-Second Ads Result In “Significant” Lift In 70% Of Cases
  54. Apple Music To Supply Songs For Musical.ly As Part Of Larger Partnership
  55. This Week In Creative Commons History 

CREATIVITY

  1. French Court Finds Jeff Koons Appropriated Copyrighted Photograph That “Saved Him Creative Work”
  2. Khloé Kardashian sued by paparazzi agency for copyright infringement
  3. Kardashian #copyright saga
  4. Andy Warhol Foundation Asks SDNY to Declare Prince Series Not Infringing
  5. The Michelle Obama Mural Controversy, Explained
  6. Myth: Fair use decimated educational publishing in Canada
  7. Can You Copyright Infringe Anonymously?
  8. This Is The Story About Robert Kraft’s Casino Holdings That Rupert Murdoch’s Paper Never Ran
  9. Game of Thrones-inspired SodaStream advert banned for being offensive
  10. Without Volitional Conduct, Establishing Direct Copyright Infringement Gets Hairy
  11. Australia’s Copyright Agency Keeps $11 Million Meant For Authors, Uses It To Fight Introduction Of Fair Use
  12. Hacker leaks Orange is the New Black new season after ransom demands ignored: Breach of post-production company poses potential threat to many networks’ shows.
  13. That Orange Is the New Black Leak Was Never Going to Pay Off
  14. Hacker Extortion Attempt Falls Flat Because Netflix Actually Competes With Piracy
  15. The Company Behind “The National Enquirer” Just Bought “Us Weekly” — Here’s Why That Matters: American Media — the company behind the National Enquirer, Radar Online, and a handful of others — recently acquired Us Weekly. Its editorial director, Dylan Howard, has an old-fashioned newfangled vision for the future of the tabloid in the era of Trump.
  16. Is ‘Wonder Woman’ receiving the same advertising treatment as her Justice League peers?
  17. Parody Protection For Fair Use Is Important: Taiwanese Man Faces Jail Time Over Parody Videos Of Movies
  18. Exclusive: The Leaked Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Is Beyond Parody – But it’s also the latest chapter in the battle between consumers and advertisers in the digital age.
  19. ‘Hot Girls Wanted’ Producers Deny Outing Sex Workers: They also mock their accusers and allege that sex workers were pressured into making claims against the Netflix series
  20. Mac DeMarco Tells Concert Goers To Go Pirate His Music
  21. The Reports Of The Record Industry’s Rebirth Are Greatly Exaggerated
  22. New York City’s Museum of Trash Rescued by a Sanitation Worker: Tucked away on the second floor of an East Harlem garage, the Treasures in the Trash Museum features items saved from the landfill over three decades by Nelson Molina.
  23. Could libel laws change under Trump?
  24. No, President Trump Isn’t Ditching The First Amendment, But He Is Undermining Free Speech
  25. Is It Time To Examine The Concept Of Originality In Musical Works? (Andres Guadamuz)
  26. Is Trademark Dilution a Unicorn? An Experimental Investigation (Barton Beebe, Roy Germano, Christopher Jon Sprigman & Joel Steckel)
  27. What does a counterfeit look like? (Rebecca Tushnet)
  28. US companies can be enjoined from false advertising in China (Rebecca Tushnet) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Ex-CRTC commissioner claims victory following Federal Court ruling
  2. Why Canada’s Net Neutrality Commitment Places Consumers in Control (Michael Geist)
  3. Too little, too late? FCC wins net neutrality court case: Wheeler’s court win over ISPs reaffirmed, but Pai plans to overturn the rules.
  4. ISPs Lose En Banc Appeal, Current Net Neutrality Rules Remain Intact…For Now
  5. GOP’s “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority: ISPs would gain the freedom to block and throttle websites and applications.
  6. Don’t Get Fooled: The Plan Is To Kill Net Neutrality While Pretending It’s Being Protected
  7. F.C.C. Invokes Internet Freedom While Trying to Kill It
  8. Verizon and AT&T both launched misleading services this week — and it points to a larger problem
  9. Verizon’s bizarre claim that the FCC isn’t killing net neutrality rules: Verizon says it supports open Internet rules despite its role in ending them.
  10. New Verizon Video Blatantly Lies About What’s Happening To Net Neutrality
  11. Net neutrality rules took away your Internet freedom, FCC chair claims: It’s not clear exactly which “freedoms” ordinary consumers lost.
  12. Soundboard Technology Calls Qualify as Robocalls Under TCPA
  13. Google Fiber building in Louisville despite lawsuit from AT&T and Charter: Google Fiber filing permit to begin construction in Louisville.
  14. ESPN Axes Long-Standing Reporters, But Not The Execs That Failed To See Cord Cutting Coming
  15. How ESPN Became A Conservative Cause: Conservative media has seen ESPN’s business problems through the prism of politics. But the network’s struggles are much more straightforward.
  16. Choosing which cable channels to provide is speech, but offering Internet access is not
  17. Broadband Internet Service Providers In Regulatory Limbo After Repeal of FCC Privacy and Data Security Rules

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Public Safety Committee Recommends Against Lawful Access Reforms (Michael Geist)
  2. MPs calling on federal government to boost protection of Canadian civil liberties: Liberals on the Commons public safety committee have made 41 recommendations designed to increase oversight.
  3. A Feast of Commons Reports: National Security Studies by ETHI and SECU Released (Craig Forcese)
  4. VPPA Still Doesn’t Protect App Downloaders–Perry v. CNN
  5. Russian-controlled telecom hijacks financial services’ Internet traffic: Visa, MasterCard, and Symantec among dozens affected by “suspicious” BGP mishap.
  6. Russia Tries To Deliver The Killing Blow To VPN Use
  7. Personal Security Takes A Hit With Public Release Of NSA’s Hacking Toolkit
  8. Facebook Reports More Than Half Of Gov’t Demands For Content And Data Come With Gag Orders Attached
  9. US Intelligence “transparency report” reveals breadth of surveillance by NSA, others: Over 151 million call records collected to track 42 targets under new “limited” access arrangement.
  10. The Email Collection The NSA Shut Down Has Been Abused For Years
  11. Surprise: NSA Stops Collecting Americans’ Emails ‘About’ Foreign Targets
  12. The NSA’s 702 Shutdown Is Good News, But There Are A Whole Lot Of Caveats
  13. NSA ends spying on messages Americans send about foreign surveillance targets: FISA court narrows what NSA can collect, because NSA can’t stop “incidental” collection.
  14. Sextortion suspect must unlock her seized iPhone, judge rules: “For me, this is like turning over a key to a safety deposit box.”
  15. Sketchy Bogus Crowdfunding Campaigns To ‘Buy’ Congress’s Private Web Browsing… Only Now Realize That’s Impossible
  16. Punching holes in nomx, the world’s “most secure” communications protocol: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and nomx implodes under scrutiny.
  17. Miami sextortion case asks if a suspect can be forced to decrypt an iPhone: Does the Fifth Amendment mean you don’t have to hand over your password?
  18. A False Facial Recognition Match Cost This Man Everything: Denver resident Steve Talley files $10 million lawsuit after face-matching technology ruined his life
  19. All your Googles are belong to us: Look out for the Google Docs phishing worm: An e-mail disguised as a Google Docs share is ingenious bit of malicious phishing.
  20. Don’t trust OAuth: Why the “Google Docs” worm was so convincing – You really think someone would just go on the Internet and tell lies?
  21. The spammer who logged into my PC and installed Microsoft Office: Spam text made a tempting offer—so I let the spammer take control of my PC.
  22. A Cloud Over the Microsoft Warrant Case
  23. Babies and Baby-making, or Not… Privacy and Security Lessons for the Internet of Things

Jon

News of the Week; April 26, 2017

GAMES

  1. Two-year jail sentence for teen who hacked Xbox: Convict carried out more than 1.7m cyber attacks and enabled further crimes globally
  2. Teenager behind Microsoft and Sony hacks jailed for two years: “I have a duty to the public who are worried about this,” says judge.
  3. Creator of DDoS program used against Minecraft and RuneScape sentenced to prison
  4. Game over for Canadian game copier and Mod chip seller
  5. UK Crime Agency’s Latest Moral Panic: Kids Modding Videogames May Be A Gateway To Becoming Criminal Hackers
  6. Game localization shenanigans in the Chinese-speaking world
  7. Overwatch Pro’s Racist Tirade Ends His Career
  8. Pro Overwatch player dropped for racial slurs: Toronto Esports cuts ties with Matt “Dellor” Vaughn for prolonged outburst during Twitch stream; Vaughn says he’s quitting competitive gaming
  9. Stephens College is now the first all-women’s school to offer eSports scholarships
  10. To create a quality Final Fantasy V translation, fans reworked the game’s code
  11. NPD has been underestimating digital game sales since at least 2010
  12. We’ve been missing a big part of game industry’s digital revolution: NPD “restatement” shows consistent spending growth as digital sales dominate.
  13. Report: Vivendi’s takeover of Ubisoft planned for this year
  14. Vivendi to attempt hostile bid for Ubisoft this year: Reuters’ sources claim that this is the year that the French media giant will accelerate its expansion into video games
  15. Palmer Luckey funds Trump through Chrono Trigger shell companies: Oculus co-founder continues his support for US President, despite controversy over involvement with “s***posting” group
  16. Valve asks for phone numbers to confirm Dota 2 player identities: Move should cut down on expert players intentionally smurfing noobs.
  17. Bleszinski: “AAA is a nearly unsustainable model” – The Gears of War creator discusses why blockbuster games often feel repetitive, and looks ahead to VR
  18. The ESA figures 67% of U.S. households play games
  19. Esports Will Join Real Sports At 2022 Asian Games
  20. Number of college varsity e-sports programs quadruple in 9 months
  21. Stephens College is now the first all-women’s school to offer eSports scholarships
  22. Nintendo Switch drives March games sales to $1.36B in US – NPD: The hardware category nearly doubled year-over-year thanks to Nintendo’s record-breaking Switch launch
  23. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Critical Consensus: Switch software lineup gets a turbo boost with Nintendo racer’s victory lap
  24. A major Nintendo policy change has saved at least one Switch game: Third major patch for Nintendo Switch exclusive Bomberman does the unexpected.
  25. Nintendo, Ever the Toy Company: The fate of NES Classic is a reminder that while Nintendo may be a console firm, its DNA remains that of a toy maker
  26. This Zelda fan game takes the fun of Breath of the Wild to 2D: Forget emulating, you can experience a small sliver of Breath of the Wild right now.
  27. FTC Warns: That Nintendo Switch Emulator Is A Scam: Play ‘Breath of the Wild’ on your computer for free? That download is probably malware
  28. G2A’s reputation can still be fixed, indies say – “Just stop being s***”: Rami Ismail, Mike Bithell and Dan Da Rocha on the art of managing reputation in the games business
  29. G2A: “We’re not a grey marketplace, people just don’t understand our business” – It is the video games industry vs G2A at Reboot Develop
  30. Shopify enables devs to sell physical merchandise in-game: SDK opens potential revenue source for developers, Alto’s Adventure the first to use new tool
  31. Disabled Streamer Receives Hundreds In Donations After Bullies Kick Him From Match
  32. We need game design tools that work for everyone
  33. Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard: Sakurai programmed a Game Boy classic with a trackball and a Famicom Twin.
  34. Unity devs can now sell actual hats (and other merch) in-game via new Shopify SDK
  35. Video Games Help Model Brain’s Neurons
  36. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association Volume 3, issue 1

a. Introduction (Christy Dena, Brendan Keogh)

b. Ways of Being: Pervasive Game Design Ethos in Urban Codemakers (Steven Conway, Troy Innocent)

c. Finding a Way: Techniques to Avoid Schema Tension in Narrative Design (Christy Dena)

d. Scarcity and Survival Horror: Trade as an Instrument of Terror in Pathologic (Julian Novitz)

e. Adolescents as Game Designers: Developing New Literacies (Pilar Lacasa, Sara Cortés, María Ruth García-Pernía)

DIGITAL

  1. Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug?
  2. Father in Thailand Kills 11-Month-Old Daughter Live on Facebook
  3. Facebook shows Related Articles and fact checkers before you open links
  4. Facebook To Reportedly Pay Publishers To Create Videos That Feature New Mid-Roll Ads
  5. The Weird Antitrust Questions Of A Google Chrome Ad Blocker
  6. Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria: “Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”
  7. Google pushes fake news, hate-speech workshops (and YouTube) on UK teens: After backlash over censored LGBTQ+ content, Google debuts “Internet Citizens” project.
  8. Wikitribune is Jimmy Wales’ attempt to wage war on fake news: Wikipedia cofounder says pages won’t go live until trusted volunteers verify stories.
  9. Palantir settles US charges that it discriminated against Asian engineers
  10. The Surprising Speed with Which We Become Polarized Online: Users isolate themselves in social media echo chambers, even when they start out looking at a variety of posts.
  11. Instagram Now Has 700 Million Users
  12. Khloe Kardashian Sued for Posting a Photo of Khloe Kardashian on Instagram: This follows a lawsuit focused on Tom Holland republishing an image of Tom Holland on Instagram.
  13. More Shady Libel Lawsuits Resulting In Dubious Delisting Court Orders Uncovered
  14. Feds Say Jewelry Company CEO Scrubbed Google Results With Fake Court Orders And Forged Judge’s Signatures
  15. Five years later, legal Megaupload data is still trapped on dead servers: EFF lawyers head to appeals court to demand one man’s data.
  16. Dutch Court Rules That Freely Given Fan-Subtitles Are Copyright Infringement
  17. Fansubs for TV shows and movies are illegal, court rules: Anti-piracy group tells Dutch court they damage the industry.
  18. CJEU in Filmspeler rules that the sale of a multimedia player is a ‘communication to the public’
  19. Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf applies CJEU McFadden decision
  20. Car Ad Websites Slightly “Scraped” in Copyright Case, Court Puts Brakes on Statutory Damages Minimums
  21. After Bill Gates Backs Open Access, Steve Ballmer Discovers The Joys Of Open Data
  22. Silicon Valley Losing Ground in Washington
  23. Oh Yes They Did! – Ninth Circuit Holds that Use of Moderators May Impact DMCA Safe Harbor Shield
  24. Dozen Amicus Briefs Oppose the Worst Section 230 Ruling of 2016 (and One Supports It)–Hassell v. Bird (Eric Goldman)
  25. Can Your Employer Fire You For Posting Vacation Photos to Facebook?-Jones v. Accentia (Eric Goldman)
  26. Faulty Mobile Device User Interface Jeopardizes Uber’s Contract Formation–Metter v. Uber (Eric Goldman)
  27. Uber’s app fingerprinted iPhone hardware, breaking App Store rules 
  28. Man sues Confide: I wouldn’t have spent $7/month if I’d known it was flawed
  29. Patent-holding company uses ex-Nokia patents to sue Apple, phone carriers: Nokia has spread its patents around widely, and they keep popping up in lawsuits.
  30. Singapore Court Tosses Copyright Troll Cases Because IP Addresses Aren’t Good Enough Evidence
  31. He Tweeted About Chinese Government Corruption. Twitter Suspended His Account.
  32. Russia Is Trying to Copy China’s Approach to Internet Censorship
  33. Russian man gets longest-ever US hacking sentence, 27 years in prison: Roman Seleznev bankrupted businesses, did $170 million in damage.
  34. Internet Censorship Is Advancing Under Trump: We expect attacks on internet speech in Zimbabwe and Russia. Under Trump, it’s hitting home.
  35. Russian DNC Hackers Are Now Targeting Germany’s Merkel — Report
  36. Russia’s Fake News Crusade Is Still Pushing For Le Pen: Kremlin-backed news sites at home and abroad have long favored the pro-Russia French presidential candidate
  37. NY Judge Says Prior Restraint Is America’s Best Defense Against Internet ‘Chaos’
  38. North Korean Media: A Story of Language, Censorship, and Tech
  39. Governing body declares: No IP addresses for governments that shut down internet access
  40. Netflix Hits 100 Million Subscribers, Vows To Raise Another Billion Dollars Of Debt
  41. Cord Cutting Is Very Real, And 25% Of Americans Won’t Subscribe To Traditional Cable By Next Year
  42. Here Comes The Attempt To Reframe Silicon Valley As Modern Robber Barons
  43. Here’s Everything You Need to Know about Elon Musk’s Human/AI Brain Merge
  44. With Neuralink, Elon Musk Promises Human-to-Human Telepathy. Don’t Believe It.: Why the billionaire is wrong that telepathy technology will be available in a few short years.
  45. How Garry Kasparov Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Machines That Beat Him At His Job
  46. YouTube TV review: Not a game-changer out of the gate, but it could be soon – Using it is easy, but it doesn’t offer multiple tiers or apps for many platforms.
  47. Twitter: PGA TOUR LIVE Averages Almost 500,000 Unique Viewers Daily
  48. Regulation of Fintech in Canada
  49. 162 Tech Companies Tell Appeals Court That Trump’s 2nd Travel Ban Is Illegal
  50. Make America Troll Again (James Grimmelmann)
  51. Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic
  52. Picture this: Senate staffers’ ID cards have photo of smart chip, no security: Senate employees just use passwords, and their badges sport a picture of an alternative.
  53. Senate ID Cards Use A Photo Of A Chip Rather Than An Actual Smart Chip
  54. How Should a Lawyer Respond to a Yelp Review Calling Him “Worst. Ever.”?–Spencer v. Glover (Eric Goldman)
  55. Rubbing Elbows and Blowing Smoke: Gender, Class, and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Patent Office (Kara Swanson)
  56. An AI wrote all of David Hasselhoff’s lines in this bizarre short film – Ars film debut: Watch It’s No Game and meet the Hoffbot, written by an algorithm.

CREATIVITY

  1. This Lawsuit Goes to 11: The creators of This is Spinal Tap, the most influential mockumentary ever made, have been paid almost nothing. The rock gods are angry.
  2. Beyoncé Aims to End Copyright Suit Against “Formation”: The singer says the claims against her are “grossly overstated.”
  3. Copyright Law Precludes Athletes’ Publicity Rights Suit, Ninth Circuit Rules
  4. Artist Sues Church For Moving His 9/11 Memorial Sculpture
  5. Texas Lawmaker Wants To Decide Who’s A Real Journalist, Make It Easier To Sue Them
  6. Charging Bull, Fearless Girl and comparative moral rights
  7. Horizon’s Copyright Claim Against Marvel’s Iron Man Promotional Poster Survives Motion to Dismiss 
  8. Sixth Circuit has nominative fair use sans la letter: Oaklawn Jockey Club, Inc. v. Kentucky Downs, LLC, No. 16-5582 (6th Cir. Apr. 19, 2017)
  9. Is France Right To Criminalize Online Hate Speech?: Facebook says it’s wary of crossing the boundary into censorship but minorities say France’s muscular approach on the ground is the bigger problem
  10. The Reel Story: Why Changing How We Measure a “Canadian Film” is Long Overdue (Michael Geist)
  11. A Chicago Artist is Under Fire For Plagiarizing a Black Woman’s Artwork For His Michelle Obama Mural
  12. Australian Copyright Scandal Points to the Need for Greater Oversight of Copyright Collectives (Michael Geist)
  13. Duke Ellington And Copyright: Five Things You Should Know

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. As US prepares to gut net neutrality rules, Canada strengthens them: Canada cracks down on zero-rating while FCC allows paid data cap exemptions.
  2. Canada Rushes To Defend Net Neutrality As The U.S. Moves To Dismantle It
  3. As U.S. gears up for Internet fight, Canada sees an opportunity
  4. A very Canadian approach: How net neutrality rules reflect a country’s true nature: Reasonable, fair, no-nonsense. Typical Canucks
  5. Canada Just Took a Major Stand for Net Neutrality
  6. Win for citizens as CRTC framework will help prevent telecoms from engaging in differential pricing practices: Today’s ruling strengthens Net Neutrality protections by discouraging telecom providers from zero-rating certain apps and services and not others
  7. Net Neutrality is alive and well in Canada (Scott Prescott)
  8. Net Neutrality Alive and Well in Canada: CRTC Crafts Full Code With Zero Rating Decision (Michael Geist)
  9. CRTC’s Zero Rating Ruling Kills Proposals for Preferential Treatment for Cancon Online (Michael Geist)
  10. Dispelling the net neutrality and zero rating FUD (Peter Nowak)
  11. CRTC Chair Blais Calls Out Telcos For Double-Talk on Internet Fibre Investment (Michael Geist)
  12. Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-104: Framework for assessing the differential pricing practices of Internet service providers
  13. Ajit Pai announces plan to eliminate Title II net neutrality rules: Vote to begin net neutrality rollback scheduled for May 18.
  14. FCC Chair Ajit Pai Announces Plan to Destroy Net Neutrality
  15. FCC Boss Unveils Ingenious Plan To Replace Net Neutrality Rules With Fluff & Nonsense
  16. Comcast and other ISPs celebrate imminent death of net neutrality rules: ISPs say they support net neutrality—but oppose FCC’s authority to enforce it.
  17. FCC helps AT&T and Verizon charge more by ending broadband price caps: Business Internet price caps eliminated even when customers have only one choice.
  18. FCC Moves To Make Life Easier For Business Broadband Monopolies
  19. Mobile industry loses its bid to stop Berkeley’s cellphone warning law – 9th Circuit: Local law actually “complements and reinforces” federal law, policy.
  20. Verizon lost 400,000 customers in the 6 weeks before it launched unlimited data: Verizon turned things around but still lost 289,000 phone subscribers.
  21. FCC Changes in Rules on Computation of Foreign Ownership of Broadcast Stations Now Effective 
  22. In Trump era, Rachel Maddow starts beating Fox News
  23. CTV Toronto (CFTO-DT) & CP24 re promos for CHUM-FM (CBSC decision)
  24. Another Reminder to Comply with CASL: The CRTC Imposes $15,000 Penalty for Non-Compliance 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Search Warrant Gag Order Successfully Challenged In Court
  2. The U.S. government’s ‘witch hunt’ to root out a Trump critic has now sparked an investigation
  3. Man suspected in wife’s murder after her Fitbit data doesn’t match his alibi: Officials say the timeline given by Richard Dabate, accused of killing his wife in their Connecticut home, is at odds with data collected by her wearable device
  4. IoT Privacy Lawsuit- Bose sued for taking headphone data without consent!
  5. Silicon Valley security robot beat up in parking lot, police say: The droid can scan 300 license plates a minute.
  6. A vigilante is putting a huge amount of work into infecting IoT devices: When it comes to features and robustness, Hajime surpasses its blackhat rivals.
  7. Malware Hunts And Kills Poorly Secured Internet Of Things Devices Before They Can Be Integrated Into Botnets
  8. Lessons from the FTC’s First Enforcement Action Against an IoT Company 
  9. Amazon’s Echo Look takes outfit photos and suggests the best styles for you: Is the mirror-selfie dead?
  10. Amazon Wants To Put A Camera In Your Bedroom To Watch You Dress: The Echo Look will mine your mirror selfies and judge your style. What’s unclear is how else this data will be used
  11. Amazon Wants to Put a Camera and Microphone in Your Bedroom: Echo Look will use machine learning to decide if you look fat in that shirt.
  12. Activist’s protest against practice of ‘carding’ derails Toronto police board meeting: Meeting adjourned after journalist Desmond Cole refuses to leave following deputation. Of data collected on citizens by police, Cole said: “It was never your information to take in the first place.”
  13. >10,000 Windows computers may be infected by advanced NSA backdoor: Did script kiddies use DoublePulsar code released by NSA-leaking Shadow Brokers?
  14. NSA backdoor detected on >55,000 Windows boxes can now be remotely removed: Microsoft dismisses DoublePulsar infection estimates, but otherwise remains silent.
  15. Tanium CEO admits using real hospital data in sales demos
  16. Windows bug used to spread Stuxnet remains world’s most exploited: Code-execution flaw is triggered by plugging a booby-trapped USB into vulnerable PCs.
  17. Taking Trust Seriously In Privacy Law (Neil Richards & Woodrow Hartzog)

Jon

News of the Week; April 19, 2017

GAMES

  1. Sweeney: “The future of the games industry? Make everyone a creator” – The Epic Games CEO discusses the importance of open platforms, the benefits of non-games projects and why he’s preserving a forest
  2. Twitch Builds Innovative Features For Its Most Popular Game, ‘League Of Legends’
  3. 2022 Asian Games adds eSports as medal sport: Professional gaming will also feature in next year’s event in Indonesia
  4. “We want to be the global community for people to play, watch and share games”: Facebook is rolling out new features for Instant Games, Gameroom and its gaming videos
  5. Nintendo Ended Up Creating A Competitor After DMCAing Fan-Game It Decided It Didn’t Want To Make Itself
  6. Nintendo Switch becomes fastest-selling system in Nintendo history: NPD reports that 906,000 units were sold in March, and Zelda broke records as well
  7. Nintendo Switch Tops PS4, Xbox One In US March Sales – Report: The new Nintendo console was No. 1 in March.
  8. Why Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the biggest system seller in history: The game is actually selling better than the system it runs on, somehow.
  9. Nintendo Discontinues The NES Classic
  10. Why Did Nintendo Just Kill One of Its Coolest Products in Years?
  11. One-upping the NES Classic Edition with the Raspberry Pi 3 and RetroPie: NES Classic is no more, but luckily cheap hobbyist boards are great for little projects.
  12. Sony is cutting online support for Kill Strain and 5 other games this summer
  13. In Australia, Microsoft offers free in-store game dev classes
  14. Ricky Gervais Says Magic Leap Will “Change the World,” as Company Courts Celebs
  15. Andre Iguodala has tried Magic Leap. What’s it like?: The Golden State Warrior and 2015 NBA Finals MVP talks about his favorite tech and the mixed-reality eyewear that blew his mind.
  16. Xbox chief Phil Spencer is not a fan of VR game exclusivity deals: “I do not like that people are having to say, which of these VR verticals do I go pick right now, as a developer? Because I don’t think any of them are really big enough yet to support a single experience.”
  17. Global Virtual Reality Industry to Reach $7.2 Billion in Revenues in 2017
  18. Original StarCraft is finally free-as-in-beer after delayed patch: Version 1.18 now live for Windows and Mac, will be compatible with summer remaster.
  19. Gaming video to generate $4.6 billion this year – SuperData: Research firm says there are now 665 million viewers of gaming video content worldwide
  20. That Was Fast: Denuvo’s Version 3 Update Has Been Cracked
  21. Digital sales now represent 74% of the US game market: The games industry added $11.7 billion to the US GDP in 2016, according to ESA’s new Essential Facts report

DIGITAL

  1. Facebook video of elderly man being murdered gets over 1.6 million views: Grandson urges the public to stop sharing footage of his grandfather being killed.
  2. Moral Panics: Don’t Blame Facebook Because Some Guy Posted His Murder Video There
  3. The man behind the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website is being sued by one of his ‘troll storm’ targets
  4. Lawsuit: Neo-Nazi website owner is liable for harassing Montana real estate agent: “It’s that time, fam… ready for an old fashioned Troll Storm?”
  5. China’s Precision Censorship Machine Allows Some Controversial Keywords, But Blocks Combinations Of Them
  6. Facebook highlights its fight against “Fake News” in print: The 10 tips are basic news literacy, but Facebook wants the world to know.
  7. Facebook Launches New Camera Tools as a Foundation for Advanced Augmented Reality
  8. Video Calling, 3D Drawing, and Shared Experiences Inside Facebook’s Social VR App
  9. Facebook’s first VR app surprises, lets us collaborate and be juvenile: Has serious issues, but hand tracking, doodling, media sharing work great in VR “Spaces.”
  10. Facebook Finally Released Details on Their Top Secret Brain-Computer Interface
  11. Facebook is Researching Brain-Computer Interfaces, “Just the Kind of Interface AR Needs”
  12. Tumblr Is The Latest Platform To Launch A Co-Viewing App
  13. ‘Alien’, ‘Blade Runner’ Director Ridley Scott Launches VR Film Division
  14. Social Media Is Not Contributing Significantly to Political Polarization, Paper Says
  15. Secret Sorority Handshakes, Questionable Lawsuits, Free Speech, The Right To Be Forgotten And Section 230
  16. IoT garage door opener maker bricks customer’s product after bad review: Startup tells customer “Your unit will be denied server connection.”
  17. The Strange Story Of Why Millions Of Indians Are Furious At Snapchat: The social media company’s CEO allegedly said India and Spain were too poor to care about expanding there.
  18. How Opioid Addicts Are Using Social Media To Get Clean: Facebook groups and other online forums offer many addicts a digital path to recovery
  19. Everything on the Dark Web is not illegal, only half!
  20. FTC Staff Reminds Brands and Influencers About Disclosure Requirements
  21. Kim Kardashian West promotes morning sickness drug on Instagram despite previous FDA warning
  22. Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • March 2017
  23. Music industry goes to war with YouTube: Record labels are angry about the relatively small fees the platform pays for music videos compared with streaming services
  24. Patent troll with an “Internet Drink Mixer” and a nonexistent office could be in trouble
  25. EFF Goes To Court To Stop Australian Patent Troll From Stifling Free Speech
  26. How a Law School Is Preparing Its Students to Compete Against AI
  27. Machines Learn To Stereotype Humans Just Like Humans: Researchers find AI systems are ready and willing to adopt racial and gender biases
  28. Princeton researchers discover why AI become racist and sexist: Study of language bias has implications for AI as well as human cognition.
  29. Report: Google will add an ad blocker to all versions of Chrome Web browser – The owner of the Web’s biggest advertising platform is building an ad blocker?
  30. FTC Explains Why It Thinks 1-800 Contacts’ Keyword Ad Settlements Were Anti-Competitive–FTC v. 1-800 Contacts (Eric Goldman)
  31. The Future of Ad Blocking: An Analytical Framework and New Techniques (Grant Storey, Dillon Reisman, Jonathan Mayer & Arvind Narayanan Princeton University)
  32. How Copyright Law Creates Biased Artificial Intelligence (Amanda Levendowski)

CREATIVITY

  1. Legal Threat From Creator Of Wall St. Bull Statue Even More Full Of Bull Than Expected
  2. No, The ‘Charging Bull’ Artist Can’t Force Anyone To Take Down ‘Fearless Girl’
  3. ‘Fearless Girl’ and ‘Charging Bull’ lurch towards courtroom showdown
  4. Public Art Installations: Is Fearless Girl ’s girl power trampling moral rights in Charging Bull ? We say no.
  5. On Fearless Girl, women & public art; or, no, seriously, the guy does not have a point.
  6. Separating Art from Function: Supreme Court Creates Copyright Test for Designs
  7. Asos Accused Of Ripping Off Indie Brand After Visiting Its Showroom
  8. My Other Bag Seeks Nearly $1 Million in Legal Fees in Louis Vuitton Case
  9. Bushwick Street Artists Threaten Legal Action Against McDonald’s for Using Their Work: The work appeared in a Dutch ad titled “McDonald’s Presents the Vibe of Bushwick NY.”
  10. Copyright Society’s ‘World IP Day’ Lesson: Give Us Your Copyrights For Nothing
  11. An interview with Michael Geist: copyright reform in Canada and beyond
  12. Fair Dealing in Canada: Dry Erase Boards and Overhead Projectors – Believe It Or Not?
  13. European Court Of Human Rights Revisits Once More Intermediary Liability
  14. Cara Delevingne Rimmel mascara ad banned for airbrushing: Watchdog pulls TV campaign promising ‘dangerously bold lashes’ for using inserts and redrawing to exaggerate effects
  15. How Artists Push Social Change
  16. Copyright in the Public Interest: How Canada Can Establish a Pro-Innovation Reform Agenda
  17. Someone tried to own ‘take off, eh’: Secrets from the Canadian trademarks database
  18. Copyright’s missing voices
  19. Copyright Reform in Canada and Beyond (Michael Geist)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Bill O’Reilly out at Fox after harassment allegations
  2. Fox News Found the Perfect Woman-Hater to Replace Bill O’Reilly 
  3. Alex Jones’ Defense in Upcoming Custody Battle Is That He’s a Fake
  4. When Is An Insane Conspiracy Theorist A Bad Parent?: Bizarre strategy in Alex Jones case.
  5. FTC Commissioner: If The FCC Kills Net Neutrality, Don’t Expect Our Help
  6. Web Firms Urge FCC to Preserve Open Internet Order
  7. Don’t Wait For Google, Netflix Or Facebook’s Help If You Want To Save Net Neutrality
  8. Roku Hires DC Lobbyists For First Time To Fight For Net Neutrality
  9. Verizon CEO: We’d consider merger with almost anyone, including Comcast: No deal is imminent as Verizon CEO claims no one has the fiber to match Verizon.
  10. FCC helps AT&T and Time Warner avoid lengthy merger review: Time Warner sells a TV station to avoid public interest review of AT&T deal.
  11. One broadband choice counts as “competition” in new FCC proposal: Price caps would be eliminated when there’s one more ISP within half a mile.
  12. Future of FCC Privacy Rules Unclear
  13. NBC Reaches Deal With TV Affiliates for Opting in to Internet Video Distribution Agreements
  14. T-Mobile dominates spectrum auction, will boost LTE network across US: Dish, Comcast, and US Cellular also bought plenty of 600MHz spectrum.
  15. Ofcom fine BT a record breaking £42 million: A move to a more punitive approach?
  16. The Internet as Cable: The Risk of Treating Telecommunications as Cultural Policy (Michael Geist)
  17. Canada’s analog broadcasting policy makes no sense in a digital world

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Plaintiff Can’t Erase Court Order From the Internet–Nelson v. Social Security Commissioner (Eric Goldman)
  2. Lawyers, malware, and money: The antivirus market’s nasty fight over Cylance – On the front lines of the antivirus industry’s “testing wars.”
  3. Massachusetts AG Settles Geofencing Case 
  4. Geotargeting Medical Facilities? Massachusetts Says ‘No Snoop For You!’ 
  5. These Popular Headphones Spy on Users, Lawsuit Says
  6. Bose headphones spy on listeners: lawsuit
  7. German Consumers Face $26,500 Fine If They Don’t Destroy Poorly-Secured ‘Smart’ Doll
  8. Microsoft Latest Service Provider To Pry A National Security Letter Free From Its Gag Order
  9. Apple Takes Heat For Software Lock That Prevents iPhone 7 Home Button Replacement By Third-Party Vendors
  10. The Teddy Bear And Toaster Act Is Device Regulation Done Wrong
  11. The Illicit Aura of Information
  12. NSA-leaking Shadow Brokers just dumped its most damaging release yet: Windows zero-days, SWIFT bank hacks, slick exploit loader among the contents.
  13. Liberal inaction frustrates Canada’s exiting information watchdog: Stepping down, but not quietly, Suzanne Legault urges reforms to open up Ottawa
  14. Hypocritical CIA Director Goes On Rant About Wikileaks, Free Speech
  15. Vigilante botnet infects IoT devices before blackhats can hijack them: Hajime battles with Mirai for control over the Internet of poorly secured things.
  16. Legislation allowing warrantless student phone searches dies for now – Proponent: California law aimed to bolster student safety, help investigate cyberbullying.
  17. Why one Republican voted to kill privacy rules: “Nobody has to use the Internet”: Republicans encounter angry citizens after killing online privacy rules.
  18. Trump Privacy Rollback Continues, States Step Up 
  19. Claims under the Data Protection Act can be linked with defamation claims (U.K.)

Jon

News of the Week; April 12, 2017

GAMES

  1. Maradona sees red as he sues ProEvo over image rights
  2. Oculus has filed a motion to request a new trial against ZeniMax
  3. Oculus wants a new trial in ZeniMax case: VR company says initial verdict was “tainted” and the $500 million damages “excessive”
  4. New report delves into the dodgy world of PSN account reselling
  5. Xbox Scorpio: Are its 4K chops masking a change of VR heart?: Some unanswered questions leave us perplexed.
  6. Sony will struggle with location-based VR: PSVR is the biggest success story of consumer VR; but Sony’s location-based plans will leave it a long way outside its comfort zone
  7. Mass Effect update leaves pirates with rough facial animation: BioWare patches in new, uncracked Denuvo version alongside improvements.
  8. The MASSive Mass Effect: Andromeda writing contest: Send in a 500-word fic and you could win a copy of Andromeda for PC and an RC Nomad.
  9. Nintendo v. King: Answering Questions, and Raising New Ones, About Technological Protection Measures
  10. Court Strikes Probation Restrictions Banning Teen From Using Encryption, Accessing Internet For Personal Reasons
  11. First-gen VR won’t live up to hype – Report: IDATE DigiWorld expects 60 million headsets worldwide by 2020, with mobile VR losing share to PC/console
  12. Dear CD Projekt Red: Please Stop Trying To Get Trademarks On The Common Name Of A Genre
  13. Microsoft formally bans emulators on Xbox, Windows 10 download shops: Rules change comes ahead of formal Xbox Live Creators Program unveil.
  14. Microsoft bans and removes emulators from Windows Store: Updated policies blocks all games emulation across PC, mobile and Xbox
  15. The Xbox One loses another exclusive third-party developer: As Remedy goes multi-platform, Microsoft’s exclusive slate looks worse and worse.
  16. Microsoft opening new Minecraft marketplace to sell user-made content
  17. Pokemon Go pulling in over 65M monthly active users
  18. Nintendo will pay up to $20,000 for Switch security information: The scheme started to find 3DS vulnerabilities now includes Nintendo’s new console
  19. Creating a game that is appealing to Youtubers
  20. Twitch unleashes scorched-earth attack to unveil malicious spambot creator: PayPal, Cloudflare, Shaw, and Whois “are involved” in attacks, Twitch claims.
  21. Pewdiepie starts crowdsourced channel on Twitch with new weekly show: YouTube’s biggest star looks elsewhere for livestreaming.
  22. PewDiePie launches weekly show on Twitch: Popular YouTuber is branching out, at the very moment that major advertisers are walking away from YouTube
  23. Why Peter Moore once told Sega’s Yuji Naka to “f*** off”
  24. Peter Moore swears it wasn’t his idea to kill the Dreamcast
  25. Minecraft introduces in-app purchases: New Marketplace feature and Minecraft Coins virtual currency will be used for community creators to sell their own work
  26. Electronic Arts pledges to invest $500 million in Montreal’s game industry over 10 years
  27. Report: GameStop customer information at risk following possible breach
  28. The battle for fair game prices—and Gearbox’s attempt to ruin it: What would you pay for an identical 2011 game with a badly shoehorned Duke Nukem cameo?
  29. Gearbox partners with G2A, then vows to back out unless G2A takes steps to fight fraud
  30. Gearbox backs out of deal with controversial online marketplace G2A
  31. Gearbox severs ties with G2A over fraud backlash: Bulletstorm deal falls apart as reseller fails to comply with developer’s ultimatum to change how it does business
  32. What impact is outsourcing having on the video game industry?
  33. Why Sega is obsessed with Humble Bundle: The Sonic maker has raised over $2m via the charity retailer
  34. Luxor Hotel to get Las Vegas Strip’s first dedicated eSports arena: eSports Arena Las Vegas to be built on the site of a 30,000 square-foot nightclub, will open in 2018
  35. Why Aren’t NFL Owners, Teams Investing In Esports?
  36. University of Utah becomes first top sports school to offer eSports scholarships
  37. eSports Gets An Introduction To Major College Sports At The University Of Utah
  38. University Of Utah Becomes First Power Five School To Offer Varsity Esports
  39. Kansas City Chiefs’ Eric Berry: Video Gaming Kept Him ‘Mentally Sharp’ During Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Battle
  40. I’m Dying to Play
  41. This Dark Souls 3 video is bananas, literally: Like someone actually made a controller out of bananas.
  42. “Play is universal, even more universal than humanity”: Pioneer Raph Koster reflects on metrics, VR and the human need to play

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Rules Website Moderators Can Potentially Undercut Copyright Defense
  2. DMCA “safe harbor” up in the air for online sites that use moderators: Etsy, Kickstarter, Pinterest, and Tumblr say site moderation hangs in the balance.
  3. Dangerous Ruling On DMCA Safe Harbors May Backfire On Hollywood
  4. DMCA, Moral Rights and Photography
  5. Narcissism, Social Media and Power
  6. Yahoo Is Sued Over $17 Million Fund for Chinese Dissidents
  7. Qualcomm loses legal battle with Blackberry, must pay $815M: Huge, non-appealable award makes BlackBerry stock jump 15%.
  8. Qualcomm accuses Apple of Intel chip foul play, egging on regulatory attacks: Chipmaker demands “fair value for our technological contributions to the industry.”
  9. Amazon to refund $70m in IAP after year of legal appeals: Both Amazon and the FTC appealed aspects of a ruling made by the federal court in April 2016
  10. If Facebook Becomes The Internet’s Authentication System, Can Citizen Scores Around The World Be Far Behind?
  11. We Need More Alternatives to Facebook: Chastened by the negative effects of social media, Mark Zuckerberg says he will tweak his service and upgrade society in the process. Should any company be that powerful?
  12. Google expands automatic “fact check” insertion into search results: You’ll want to phrase your searches very carefully to trigger it.
  13. Uber said to use “sophisticated” software to defraud drivers, passengers: Class action says Uber’s “methodical scheme” manipulates rider fares, driver pay.
  14. Burger King’s new ad forces Google Home to advertise the Whopper
  15. Burger King ‘O.K. Google’ Ad Doesn’t Seem O.K. With Google
  16. Google Brings Fake News Fact-Checking to Search Results: Search giant is letting partners and publishers decide what’s true, what’s false and what’s in between.
  17. New York Attorney General Enters Digital Health App and Privacy Enforcement Fray: Announces Three Settlements with Health and Fitness App Providers’ Due to Efficacy Claims and Privacy Practices
  18. MPA Gets Ireland To Crack Open The Site-Blocking Door It Plans To Bust Through
  19. Ubuntu Unity is dead: Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year – Ubuntu phones and tablets also dead, but the desktop, server, and cloud live on.
  20. YouTube nixes monetization until channels hit 10,000 views: Video giant says move is an effort to crack down on impersonating channels
  21. Technology is a marvel – now let’s make it moral: If Britain is bold after Brexit, we can lead the way in demanding more control over our digital destiny
  22. Utah to treat certain virtual currency as abandoned property 
  23. What Do the SEC’s Recent Bitcoin Disapproval Orders Really Mean for Investors?
  24. Portugal Pushes Law To Partially Ban DRM, Allow Circumvention
  25. India Learns The Hard Way That Equating Patents And Innovation Comes At A Price
  26. Italian Court Says Due Process Isn’t Necessary For Blocking Sites Over Copyright Infringement
  27. Who Owns the Copyright in an Instagram Image?
  28. Sketchy Copyright Takedown Kills Bad Lip Reading’s Force Awakens Remix
  29. Revenge Pornster Craig Brittain Issues DMCA Notices Demanding Google Delist Entire Websites, Including Wikipedia
  30. Why Jian Ghomeshi’s New Podcast Is Absolutely Guaranteed to Fail: A friend recently asked me if his firm should consider representing the former CBC Radio host’s media business. Here’s what I told him
  31. You Are Almost Definitely Sharing Memes Made By Nazis
  32. Is Instagram Killing The Graffiti Artist?
  33. Study Claims To Know What Was Going On With That Stupid Dress
  34. Emotional Chatting Machine Assesses Your Emotion and Copies It: Chatbots have never been able to empathize. That looks set to change, thanks to a Chinese team that has built a chatbot capable of conveying specific emotions.
  35. How Trolls Are Stifling Innovators, Gamers and Netflix Junkies: Copyright policy in the public interest
  36. Insurers Scramble to Put a Price on a Cyber Catastrophe: Trying to estimate the maximum cost of a devastating cyber event before one actually happens.
  37. How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing
  38. Adidas wants to sell 100,000 3-D printed sneakers: A personalized shoe that can “adjust the strength, durability, and the shape.”
  39. Disney files patent for “huggable and interactive” humanoid robots: Robots have already been tested, described as “robust to playful, physical interaction.”
  40. The legal issues of robotics
  41. Deciphering the U.S. NAFTA Digital Demands, Part Two: Digital Economy, Services and Transparency (Michael Geist)

CREATIVITY

  1. Universal wins copyright case over sample in Justin Timberlake hit
  2. Andy Warhol Estate Sues over Image of Prince
  3. U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies Separability Analysis in its Ruling on Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc.
  4. Lombardo v. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P.
  5. No evidence of harm means no disgorgement in false advertising case (Rebecca Tushnet)
  6. Copyright preemption and the right of publicity in the 9th Circuit (Rebecca Tushnet)
  7. Statutory Damages Awarded in Copyright Infringement Case
  8. First judicial consideration of information location tool under the Copyright Act- Trader Corporation v. CarGurus Inc.
  9. Can a public domain artwork be registered as a trade mark or would that be contrary to public policy and morality?
  10. Irish Burger Chain Accuses McDonald’s of Trademarking Every Word That Starts With ‘Mc’
  11. Defamation Law Series: Melania Trump Settles Her Libel Lawsuit Against Daily Mail 
  12. Author of Wall Street Charging Bull is raging over Fearless Girl, but does he have a valid moral right claim?
  13. ‘Charging Bull’ sculptor says New York’s ‘Fearless Girl’ statue violates his rights: Arturo Di Modica says ‘advertising trick’ placed in Wall Street before international women’s day infringed artistic copyright
  14. The Bull Statue Copyright Claim Is Ridiculous… But Here’s Why It Just Might Work
  15. UK supreme court denies tobacco firms permission for plain packaging appeal: Final legal decision in UK means that all cigarettes sold after 20 May must come in standardised packaging
  16. Marvel Comics Responds To X-Men Gold Art Controversy
  17. How much dough are smells worth?: Hasbro files a scent mark in the US
  18. Copyright as Medium: Art and law might seem like polar opposites. But in the wake of Conceptual Art’s challenge to the traditional operations of the art market, the law—and copyright in particular—has become an increasingly popular subject, and even a medium, for artists. 
  19. Bigger Picture, Bigger Frame? Dr. Saptarishi Bandopadhyay’s Recast of Narrative in Copyright and Disaster Photography
  20. Copyright Protection of Street Art and Graffiti under UK Law (Enrico Bonadio)
  21. The Uncoordinated Public Domain (Robert Spoo)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Paul, Weiss Investigating Bill O’Reilly
  2. Yochai Benkler: The Right-Wing Media Ecosystem
  3. FCC Kills Charter Merger Condition That Would Have Forced ISPs To Compete
  4. President Trump Nullifies FCC Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules 
  5. Yes, There Are Other Laws That Protect Privacy, But FCC’s Rules Were Still Helpful
  6. FCC chair wants to replace net neutrality with “voluntary” commitments: “Voluntary” net neutrality commitments may not be so easy to enforce.
  7. FCC Boss Wants ‘Voluntary’ ISP Net Neutrality Promises Instead Of Real Rules
  8. “Unenforceable”: How voluntary net neutrality lets ISPs call the shots – Pai’s plan would “tilt everything in favor of the incumbents,” regulator says.
  9. Ajit Pai can’t convince websites that killing net neutrality is a good idea: Reps for Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix lobby to keep net neutrality rules.
  10. Comcast to sell “unlimited” mobile plans that get throttled after 20GB: The good news is throttled speeds aren’t horrible at 1.5Mbps.
  11. 70% Support Letting Cities Build Their Own Broadband Networks, So Why Are We Still Passing State Laws Banning It?
  12. Murdoch’s multi-billion pound Sky/Fox merger bid gets thumbs up from EU – Brussels: Murdoch’s grab for full control of Sky isn’t a competition concern in Europe.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. U.S. Gov Demanded Twitter Unmask Mean Anti-Trump Account: Twitter has filed a lawsuit to protect this user
  2. Twitter Sues Government Over Attempts to Unmask Anti-Trump Account
  3. Twitter Sues Homeland Security Over Attempt To Unmask ‘Alt’ Immigration Twitter Account: Twitter brings in Biglaw to sue government.
  4. Well, That Was Quick: Twitter Dismisses Lawsuit After Feds Drop Attempt To Unmask Rogue Tweeter
  5. Oh, Sure, Now Congress Is Serious About Asking NSA About Surveillance On Americans
  6. WikiLeaks just dropped the CIA’s secret how-to for infecting Windows: Latest batch of documents details how CIA infects targets’ Windows-based computers.
  7. New York Appeals Court Says Facebook Can’t Challenge The 381 Broad Warrants Handed To It By New York Prosecutors
  8. State Appeals Court Says There’s An Expectation Of Privacy In Vehicle Data Recorders
  9. Named Plaintiff Drops Claims Against Gannett as the Definition of “Personally Identifiable Information” Under the Video Privacy Protection Act Evolves
  10. Researcher: 90% Of ‘Smart’ TVs Can Be Compromised Remotely
  11. Booby-trapped Word documents in the wild exploit critical Microsoft 0-day: There’s currently no patch for the bug, which affects most or all versions of Word.
  12. Hacking Attack Woke Up Dallas With Emergency Sirens, Officials Say
  13. Canada’s National Police Force Officially Confirms Ownership, Use Of Stingray Devices
  14. Lenovo and Superfish: Proposed Class Action Proceeds on Privacy Tort and Statutes 
  15. Rash of in-the-wild attacks permanently destroys poorly secured IoT devices: Ongoing “BrickerBot” attacks might be trying to kill devices before they can join a botnet.
  16. The U.S. Congress Is Not the Leader in Privacy or Data Security Law (Daniel Solove)
  17. This Teen’s Story Is Your Worst ‘Predictive Policing’ Nightmare: Crime-prediction algorithms remain unproven and problematic — but that hasn’t stopped police departments across the country from using them
  18. The Ghost in the Algorithm: The necessary struggle to reject “technology first” and develop an ethical framework for the automated era

Jon

News of the Week; April 5, 2017

GAMES

  1. Blizzard awarded $8.5M in damages following copyright infringement lawsuit
  2. Blizzard awarded $8.6m in Bossland lawsuit: German cheatbot company failed to appear in court, ordered to halt sale of Blizzard related products in the US
  3. Nintendo v. King: Answering Questions, and Raising New Ones, About Technological Protection Measures
  4. UK ad authority rules against Liberators dev for misleading images in ads
  5. ASA Ruling on Mutant Box Interactive Ltd
  6. ASA bans Mobile Strike ad for objectifying women: Machine Zone’s latest YouTube video shows women playing the game by the pool in bikinis
  7. ASA Ruling on Machine Zone Inc
  8. How do you deal with CS:GO gambling? Legitimize it: Faceit’s ECS league partners with Genius Sports to provide data to regulated bookmakers.
  9. HTC: There will be no escaping ads in VR, either – Gaze-based technology “can also track whether the users have viewed them.”
  10. HTC introduces eye-tracking VR ads: It can track when players look away to judge ad effectiveness
  11. CCP CEO: “I would call the VR installed base huge” – CCP’s Hilmar Pétursson explains how the EVE developer got into sports with Sparc and why the VR space isn’t as tough as some might think
  12. Sony looking for new markets for PSVR
  13. Sony going commercial with PlayStation VR after making slow progress with consumers
  14. 1-in-4 VR pros say biz growth disappointed in 2016 – Survey: 26% expected more from their VR business last year, but 46% of respondents said they saw strong or very strong growth
  15. Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Out at Facebook
  16. Palmer Luckey to leave Facebook: Company declined to say if Oculus co-founder is leaving voluntarily
  17. BioWare devs respond to Andromeda criticism with ambitious patch plan
  18. Bioware Apologizes For How It Handled Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Transgender Character
  19. Struggling peripheral maker Mad Catz files for bankruptcy
  20. Mad Catz enters bankruptcy: Peripheral company halts operations as it enters liquidation process
  21. Nintendo’s soul-searching on F2P: Super Mario Run was a bold experiment in mobile business models – but the company may not have realised the enormity of the task it was undertaking
  22. Mobile game spend will double to $105 billion by 2021: App Annie’s forecast shows massive gains for games over five years, with China representing 41% of all spending on mobile apps
  23. Activision plans many years of ‘Marvel-esque’ film/TV based on game IP
  24. Would you consider a disc-free console option?: Some gamers may be ready to ditch the disc drive to save on hardware.
  25. BAFTA-winning Brenda Romero: “We need to expand the range of voices making games”: Long-running games designer advocates teaching kids to code, broadening the scope of development and learning from board games
  26. Women In Games launches Ambassador programme: New initiative designed to double the number of women working in games over 10 years
  27. Why depicting gruesome historical moments in games can be a tough call
  28. 16 years later, Blizzard is still patching Diablo II: New update helps the game run on modern operating systems
  29. Two-fifths of gaming firms ‘could relocate over Brexit’
  30. Devs Answer: What are the best ways to trick players?
  31. Indie Games Scene – 2017 Overview
  32. Historians aim to recover, restore, and archive video game media assets

DIGITAL

  1. Use Of VPNs Banned Completely For Millions Of People By Chinese Authorities
  2. New Regulations Appear To Authorize Chinese Law Enforcement To Hack Into Computers Anywhere In The World
  3. A Pic Of Putin In Makeup Is Now ‘Extremist’ Material: Disseminating the image could lead to a fine and even jail time, but some Russians don’t care
  4. Where Speech Goes, Repression Follows: The Global Trend of Criminalizing Online Speech
  5. Social media firms faces huge hate speech fines in Germany
  6. How YouTube Can Fix Its White Nationalism and Anti-Semitism Problem: The Google-run video giant is losing advertisers due to its inability to police its own content. Here’s how it can turn things around.
  7. Netizen Report: India Had 31 Internet Shutdowns in 2016. How Many Did Your Country Have? – The quiet cost of regional Internet shutdowns in India, China and beyond.
  8. Here’s Why Facebook and Google Can’t Fix the Fake News Problem
  9. Study: Fake election news flooded Mich. Twitter feeds
  10. Lawyers win again in latest privacy class-action settlement: iOS address book deal, if split evenly among class members, pays 53 cents each.
  11. German Court Rules Parents Must Out Their Family Members For Copyright Trolls Or Pay Fines Themselves
  12. Microsoft sued for millions over Windows 10 upgrades: Class action accuses operating system of causing hard drive failures and other problems.
  13. 8,000 aspiring Uber and Lyft drivers fail state background check
  14. Uber exec accused of stealing IP from Google made $120M, but worked on the side: Google hammers on Levandowski, who remains in charge of Uber’s self-driving cars.
  15. Judge orders Uber to search servers, work harder to find Waymo’s 14,000 files: “In 42 years, I’ve never seen a record this strong. You are up against it.”
  16. YouTube TV goes live today in five US cities, gears up to add more networks: AMC, BBC World News, Sundance TV, and more to come at no extra cost.
  17. Top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide • February 2017
  18. ASA orders takedown of Instagrammer’s post for not having #ad: A promotional post by Instagrammer Sheikhbeauty for the brand Flat Tummy Tea failed to comply with CAP rulings as it lacked any disclosure that the post was an ad.
  19. IoT garage door opener maker bricks customer’s product after bad review: Startup tells customer “Your unit will be denied server connection.”
  20. You Can Now Beg for Money on Facebook
  21. Facebook plans a free version of its Slack competitor 
  22. Spotify finally lets artists restrict new albums to premium subscribers: Plus Kanye West is the first artist to have an album go Platinum on streams alone.
  23. Amazon – Not Twitter – To Stream Thursday Night NFL Games As League Is ‘Expanding Reach’
  24. Amazon outbids Twitter for rights to livestream Thursday Night Football games
  25. But you must be a Prime member to watch.
  26. Amazon agrees to refund up to $70 million worth of in-app purchases made by kids
  27. Amazon’s Kodi Box Ban And Copyright Liability For Device Distributors
  28. Kim Dotcom’s Canadian connection: Servers in Ontario could be key in case against alleged Internet pirate
  29. A kitten becomes Exhibit 41 in defamation suit against Buzzfeed over Trump dossier: “Six ways Buzzfeed has misled the court… and a picture of a kitten.”
  30. Bad Copyright Laws Are Creating Junky, Biased AI: Machine learning systems need lots of data to overcome bias — but copyright limits their menu
  31. Can AI Ever Be as Curious as Humans?
  32. A.I. Versus M.D.: What happens when diagnosis is automated?
  33. Hologram Calls Could Be The Future FaceTime: Verizon and Korean Telecom held the first international live 5G hologram chat
  34. Within the Next Decade, You Could Be Living in a Post-Smartphone World
  35. Golden State Warriors, Philips Lighting Bring Oracle Arena Experience Inside Fans’ Homes
  36. Brazil Proposes New Digital Copyright Rules for the WTO
  37. Attention Markets & the Law (Tim Wu)

CREATIVITY

  1. Jeff Koons Parody Defense Fails in French Copyright Infringement Case
  2. Horizon Comics Productions, Inc. v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC
  3. 5 Pointz Graffiti Artists’ Major Win in Suit against Developers, Explained
  4. If you publish Georgia’s state laws, you’ll get sued for copyright and lose: In some states, you can’t read the law without paying a corporation.
  5. Newly Leaked Documents Expose Stunning Waste And Incompetence At The Copyright Office
  6. Another Major Scandal At The Copyright Office: $25 Million ‘Fake Budget’ Line Item
  7. How to make Millennials hate you, The Pepsi Way.
  8. Pepsi Pulls Controversial Kendall Jenner Ad Following Twitter Uproar
  9. How Pepsi Got It So Wrong: Unpacking One of the Most Reviled Ads in Recent Memory: Experts weigh in on the soda-maker’s tone-deaf debacle
  10. Pepsi’s New Ad Is a Total Success: Every feature of the “Jump In” ad benefits the company—even the act of pulling it from the airwaves.
  11. Moral Rights in America: “the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself”
  12. Myths and Legends of Copyright Reform: A New Hope
  13. Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law (Barton Beebe)
  14. The Terminator Comes to Hollywood to Destroy Old Copyright Grants
  15. Canadian Copyright: Year in Review 2016
  16. Deciphering the U.S. NAFTA Digital Demands, Part One: Intellectual Property (Michael Geist)
  17. The Relative Virtues of Bottom-Up and TopDown Theories of Fair Use (Pamela Samuelson)
  18. Monster Energy Attempts To Run From Laughable Trademark Spat It Started With Thunder Beast Root Beer
  19. Brewery Looks To Reform Trademark Practices After Its Lawyers Bully A Pub Over Its Name
  20. Brexit: what might change Intellectual Property
  21. Law review article ‘Defining Hate Speech’ attempts the impossible
  22. Did Reddit’s April Fool’s gag solve the issue of online hate speech?: Nations battled, voids came and went, and one million pixels said a lot about humanity.
  23. The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism (Emily Bell & Taylor Owen) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Net Neutrality Is Trump’s Next Target, Administration Says
  2. Ajit Pai says broadband market too competitive for strict privacy rules: FCC Chair ignores lack of home Internet competition in argument against privacy rules.
  3. FCC, FTC Bosses Pen Misleading Editorial Falsely Claiming The Best Way To Protect Your Privacy Moving Forward… Is To Gut Net Neutrality
  4. FCC Boss Takes Aim At Efforts To Bring Broadband To The Poor
  5. Fox serves up a fetid reminder that when you’re a star, you can still do anything
  6. Free Market Does What The Court System Could Not: Hurt Bill O’Reilly – This is the PR debacle that pulled the advertiser’s dollars.
  7. Understanding the Role of the BBC as a Provider of Public Infrastructure (Brett Frischmann)
  8. Tweeting #Justice: Audio-Visual Coverage Of Court Proceedings In A World Of Shifting Technology (Itay Ravid)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Canadian Appeals Court Says Vice Media Must Turn Over Communications With Source To Law Enforcement
  2. RCMP reveals use of secretive cellphone surveillance technology for the first time: After CBC investigation into suspicious signals in Ottawa, police offer new insight into their own tactics
  3. Taser stuns law enforcement world, offers free body cameras to all US police: Company also changes name to Axon to reflect its primary body-camera product.
  4. Why Warrantless Access to Internet Subscriber Information is Back on the Legislative Agenda (Michael Geist)
  5. Snoops may soon be able to buy your browsing history. Thank the US Congress: Not only did they vote to violate your privacy for their own profit – they are seeking to make it illegal for a key watchdog to protect your privacy online (Bruce Schneier)
  6. Want to Stop Your Internet Provider From Selling Your Browsing Data? It Ain’t Easy
  7. President Trump delivers final blow to Web browsing privacy rules: ISP privacy rules are dead as Trump signs repeal instead of issuing veto.
  8. Trump move to kill privacy rules opposed by 72% of Republicans, survey says: Privacy is partisan for lawmakers, but not necessarily for the rest of us.
  9. Trump’s Internet Brigades Shocked To Realize The Government Just Sold Them Out On Privacy
  10. After vote to kill privacy rules, users try to “pollute” their Web history: “ISP Data Pollution” fills browsing history with noise to protect your privacy.
  11. Tim Berners-Lee: selling private citizens’ browsing data is ‘disgusting’
  12. The NYPD Posed as Black Lives Matter Protesters and Spied on Their Text Messages
  13. Samsung’s Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written: Researcher calls it the “worst code [he’s] ever seen.”
  14. ISP privacy rules could be resurrected by states, starting in Minnesota: Minnesota could prevent ISPs from collecting personal data without consent.
  15. Comcast Paid Civil Rights Groups To Support Killing Broadband Privacy Rules
  16. AT&T, Comcast & Verizon Pretend They Didn’t Just Pay Congress To Sell You Out On Privacy
  17. Comcast: We won’t sell browser history, and you can opt out of targeted ads
  18. Congress’s vote to eviscerate Internet privacy could give the FBI massive power
  19. Russia’s hack of State Department was “hand-to-hand” combat: State-sponsored hackers are going increasingly brazen and confrontational.
  20. Wikileaks releases code that could unmask CIA hacking operations: “Marble” libraries include code used to obfuscate—and unscramble— CIA malware.
  21. DOJ Refuses FOIA Request On Emails, Claiming ‘Personal Privacy’
  22. Oversight Committee Finds FBI’s Facial Recognition Database Still Filled With Innocent People, Still Wrong 15% Of The Time
  23. FBI Arrests Creator Of Remote Access Tool, Rather Than Those Abusing It To Commit Crime
  24. How A Little Metadata Made It Possible To Find FBI Director James Comey’s Secret Twitter Account
  25. Smart TV hack embeds attack code into broadcast signal—no access required: Demo exploit is inexpensive, remote, scalable—and opens door to more advanced hacks.
  26. Pennsylvania Court Says Bloggers Protected By Journalist Shield Law; Don’t Have To Reveal Commenter IP Addresses
  27. If A Phone’s Facial Recognition Security Can Be Defeated By A Picture Of A Face, What Good Is It?
  28. Canadian Prosecutors Cut Loose 35 Mafia Suspects Rather Than Turn Over Info On Stingray Devices
  29. Microsoft opens up on Windows telemetry, tells us most of what data it collects: Windows telemetry is getting a lot more transparent.
  30. Privacy, Poverty And Big Data: A Matrix Of Vulnerabilities For Poor Americans (Mary Madden, Michele Gilman, Karen Levy & Alice Marwick)

Jon

 

News of the Week; March 29, 2017

GAMES

  1. Playtonic removes controversial YouTuber JonTron from Yooka-Laylee: “We do not endorse or support JonTron’s personal viewpoints”
  2. JonTron Loses Out On Video Game Role After Racist Rant
  3. JonTron Out As Voice In ‘Yooka-Laylee’
  4. Australian Classication Board reverses Outlast 2 ban: After refusing to rate survival horror game, regulators have now cleared it to launch as R18+ title
  5. Red Barrels made a mistake with Outlast 2 classification: Australian Classification Board’s refusal based on content never intended for game’s final build
  6. Psyonix disapproves of Rocket League gambling: Developer speaks out after betting platform Unikrn adds its hit title to line-up
  7. StarCraft remaster unveiled, and original SD version becomes free-as-in-beer: Original version’s patch to 1.18 will make it free; remastered gameplay revealed.
  8. Take a look at how Blizzard decides which mods live and die
  9. Nintendo Flags YouTuber For Using Switch Sound
  10. GameStop: Switch demand ‘incredibly strong’, Zelda attach rate ‘almost 1:1’
  11. GameStop expects Switch shortages all year: Executives tell investors each shipment sells out in hours, “we’re going to be chasing supply this entire year”
  12. UK retailer GAME blames falling profits on lacklustre console sales
  13. Twitch to start selling video games this week
  14. Super Mario Run revenue fell short of expectations, says Nintendo
  15. Nintendo disappointed by Super Mario Run revenues: However, company says it still prefers pay-once model to free-to-play formulas like the one used in Fire Emblem Heroes
  16. PS4 is clear leader in media coverage despite Switch hype: According to ICO Partners, Switch is seeing around 40% of the coverage that Sony’s console gets on a weekly basis
  17. Overwatch League could bring in $720 million annually – Analyst: Most bullish scenario from Morgan Stanley researchers puts game’s eSports revenues on par with WWE, 20% larger than MLS
  18. Blizzard’s Overwatch League could see $100M in its first year, says analyst
  19. Boston Celtics Co-Owner Wyc Grousbeck: ‘There Will Be An eCeltics’
  20. The Future of Sport—An eSports Epiphany
  21. British Esports Association: ‘Esports Is Not A Sport, But A Credible Activity’
  22. Hearthstone is killing itself – Superdata: Research firm’s monthly digital revenue report says Blizzard’s card game hits new low on mobile as worldwide digital sales growth slows
  23. BioWare Releases Statement On Mass Effect: Andromeda Criticism, Says Improvements Are Coming: “We’ve received quite a bit of feedback, some of it positive and some of it critical.”
  24. Mad Catz to be delisted over “abnormally low” share price: NYSE has already started a process, and Mad Catz does not intend to appeal
  25. Four years later, Xbox exec admits how Microsoft screwed up disc resale plan: Compare and contrast with Mehdi’s marketing push for the plan back in 2013.
  26. Mobile Games’ Booming Market: Opportunity for Hollywood and IP Owners
  27. Devs can now reply directly to user reviews on the Apple App Store
  28. The strange case of the phantom Pokemon: In August 2016, a woman claimed to have been attacked by a real Pokemon. Her terrifying hallucination reveals the mysterious ‘twilight zone’ between waking and sleep — a strange state of consciousness that may also lie behind various phenomena, from the Salem Witch Trials to alien abductions. Psychologist Matthew Tompkins explains.
  29. Roam free: A history of open-world gaming – You know the violence, but there were text-adventures, skiing, space, and ants(!) too.
  30. The Video Game That Claims Everything Is Connected: Instead, it shows how individual and unique things really are.
  31. Pokemon, Halo, and Donkey Kong among 2017 World Video Game Hall of Fame finalists
  32. Check out the handwritten game design doc for Asteroids
  33. 1975-2015 – Building a timeline of computer and video game history

DIGITAL

  1. Supreme Court Says You Can Copyright Elements Of ‘Useful Articles’ — Which May Spell Disaster For 3D Printing & More
  2. Victory for Varsity! But Also for Fashion? Supreme Court Rules in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands
  3. Ruffled feathers or serious harm? Controversial UK personality sued for libellous tweets 
  4. Man sentenced to 3 years for Facebook threat to kill Obama loses appeal
  5. Judge: eBay can’t be sued over seller accused of patent infringement
  6. Will the Supreme Court end the East Texas patent scam?: Tech companies and interest groups seek to alter the geography of litigation.
  7. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case About Copyright Protection Of Pre-1972 Sound Recordings
  8. Supreme Court of Canada to address jurisdiction issues in online defamation case
  9. CD, DVD pirate sentenced to 5 years in prison: FBI investigated piracy ring with assistance from the RIAA and MPAA.
  10. In settlement, app makers change their tune on health benefits and privacy: NY Attorney General says three popular app makers over promised and misled.
  11. Consumer Law Group announces the filing of a Canadian class action against Amazon for the collection of undue sales tax
  12. Streaming Video Competition Slowly Begins Killing The Bloated, Pricey Cable Bundle
  13. Big US companies pull YouTube ads after extremist content sparks uncertainty: The ads might not have run over hateful videos, but they’re not taking any chances.
  14. YouTube’s Better-Than-TV Pitch Undermined by Offensive Video
  15. YouTube faces exodus of advertisers: Latest example highlights hidden perils of online ads.
  16. AT&T, Verizon Feign Ethical Outrage, Pile On Google’s ‘Extremist’ Ad Woes
  17. Google and Facebook Can’t Just Make Fake News Disappear: Fake news is too big and messy to solve with algorithms or editors — because the problem is….us.
  18. Trolling Scholars Debunk the Idea That the Alt-Right’s Sh**posters Have Magic Powers: Asserting that alt-right “trolls” were a deciding factor in Trump’s victory minimizes the broader trends that amplified their influence. (Whitney Phillips, Jessica Beyer & Gabriella Coleman)
  19. We’ve Heard All about Fake News—Now What?
  20. Tell California Assembly Not To Ignore The First Amendment As It Tries To Ban Fake News
  21. Real Talk About Fake News
  22. Facebook Officially Toying With Snap Stock Price Like A Sadistic Cat Playing With A Captured Mouse
  23. Elon Musk is setting up a company that will link brains and computers: The ultimate goal would be a “neural lace” to enhance people’s cognitive abilities.
  24. Germany’s Flawed Plan to Fight Hate Speech by Fining Tech Giants Millions
  25. Netflix: The Monster That’s Eating Hollywood: The streaming-video service is hogging talent and pushing up prices, spurring pushback from rival TV producers who once saw it as a partner; 70 new titles this year
  26. Tractor Owners Using Pirated Firmware To Dodge John Deere’s Ham-Fisted Attempt To Monopolize Repair
  27. Guy Who Wants Everyone To Believe He Created Bitcoin, Now Patenting Everything Bitcoin With An Online Gambling Fugitive
  28. How AI Can Aid Authoritarians—And How Humans Fight Back: Hidden algorithms reflect and amplify racism and other human biases, but researchers hope to fix them
  29. Google reportedly removing SMS texting from Hangouts on May 22: But Google Voice users won’t be affected as much.
  30. The Death of Advertising: And what will rise from its ashes.
  31. Creativity and the Internet
  32. In Support of Untargeted Ads
  33. Kerr: What if your ‘doctor’ were a robot? How Artificial Intelligence is challenging our ethics
  34. Australian Govt.: Just Kidding On That Whole Safe Harbors Reform Thing, Guys
  35. What Would a Digital Economy-Era NAFTA Mean for Canada? (Michael Geist)
  36. On computational ethics: Is it possible to imagine an AI that can compute ethics?
  37. Whack a Meme: Is It Possible to Contain (Let Alone Stop) the “Crying Jordan”?
  38. Man who claims he invented e-mail is now running for US Senate: Shiva Ayyadurai, who sued the Techdirt blog for libel, will run in Massachusetts.
  39. Intel is keeping Moore’s Law alive by making bigger improvements less often

CREATIVITY

  1. Supreme Court Clarifies Test For Determining Whether Designs On Useful Articles Are Eligible For Copyright Protection: Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc.
  2. Supreme Court Clarifies Copyright Eligibility for Useful Articles
  3. Supreme Court Seeks to Clarify Copyrightability of Design Features on Useful Articles in Cheerleading Uniform Case
  4. Supreme Court Resolves Split on Design Copyright Eligibility
  5. Supreme Court Finds Cheerleading Uniform Designs Copyrightable
  6. Cheering on the Fashion Industry: U.S Supreme Court Issues Landmark Copyright Decision That Will Have Deep Implications for Fashion and Sports Industries
  7. More Financial Scandals Involving A Collecting Society: Remind Me Again Why They Are Credible Representatives Of Artists?
  8. The Future of Copyright post Brexit
  9. GS Media and its implications for the construction of the right of communication to the public within EU copyright architecture: a new article
  10. Your Periodic Reminder That Initial Interest Confusion Lawsuits Are Stupid–Epic v. YourCareUniverse
  11. Archie Comics Is Trying to Trademark the Cute Couple Names for Betty and Jughead
  12. Broadway Play Changes Set Design Over Cafe Trademark Threat And, No, That Doesn’t Make Any Damned Sense
  13. Does “Raiders Fancast” Infringe the “Fancaster” Trademark? (Eric Goldman)
  14. Trademark Lawsuit Claiming Organic Search Results Create Initial Interest Confusion Falls Apart–Larsen v. Larson (Eric Goldman)
  15. Higher Costs Likely to be the Norm in Federal Court IP Cases
  16. Social Media Erupts as the Art World Splits in Two Over Dana Schutz Controversy: The art world is not a monolith, social media posts reveal.
  17. “Fearless Girl” Sculpture Near Wall Street Prompts Copyright Allegation That is More Bull than Bear 
  18. Hugo, Inc.: Les Misérables was born of one of the riskiest—and shrewdest—deals in publishing history.
  19. Why Hollywood As We Know It Is Already Over
  20. Bibliodiscotheque: Array of Events Planned to Celebrate Disco Culture (Library of Congress)
  21. Extremist Speech and Compelled Conformity (Danielle Keats Citron)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Germany wants to regulate a 24-hour livestream as a broadcaster: Running a non-stop Twitch channel could be expensive.
  2. Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections Are Dead
  3. Senate votes to let ISPs sell your Web browsing history to advertisers: ISP now stands for “invading subscriber privacy,” Democratic senator says.
  4. U.S. Senate Approves Resolution to Repeal FCC’s Broadband Privacy Rules; Resolution Heads to U.S. House of Representatives for Consideration
  5. Congress Just Voted To Kill Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections
  6. How ISPs can sell your Web history—and how to stop them: How the Senate’s vote to kill privacy rules affects you.
  7. No, You Can’t Buy Congress’s Internet Data, Or Anyone Else’s
  8. With U.S. Retreat from Online Privacy, Canada Needs to Safeguard the Internet in NAFTA Talks (Michaele Geist)
  9. AT&T/DirecTV give in to government demands in collusion lawsuit settlement: Customers lost when pay-TV companies illegally shared information, DOJ says.
  10. AT&T Settles With DOJ Over LA Dodgers Channel Collusion Allegations
  11. In New CASL Case, CRTC Sends $15,000 Message 
  12. FCC to halt expansion of broadband subsidies for poor people: Pai won’t approve new applications, drops court defense of Lifeline broadband order.
  13. Netflix Is No Longer Worried About Net Neutrality Now That It’s Massive And Successful
  14. Does a sales tax on Uber pave way for a ‘Netflix tax’ in Canada? Probably
  15. Cable retransmission within reception area copyright free?!
  16. Alex Jones Apologizes For Pizzagate Coverage, Blames Other Media Outlets
  17. Charter promises Trump a broadband push, but no extra Internet connections: Charter’s $25 billion promise is vague and includes stuff it already planned.
  18. Warner Bros., Trademark Lawyers Target “Golden Ticket” Beer Brand

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Key priorities of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in 2017
  2. Fixing PIPEDA: My Appearance Before the Access to Information, Privacy & Ethics Committee (Michael Geist)
  3. Appeal court says reporter must hand over material to RCMP
  4. Secretly recorded Planned Parenthood tapes barred from publication: Two activists criminally charged with allegedly violating privacy of people filmed.
  5. Oculus’ VR Privacy Policy Serves the Needs of Facebook, Not Users
  6. Whistleblower Says UK Police Worked With Hackers To Access Activists’ Email Accounts
  7. Someone is putting lots of work into hacking Github developers: Dimnie recon trojan has flown under the radar for three years… until now.
  8. Doxed by Microsoft’s Docs.com: Users unwittingly shared sensitive docs publicly: Thousands of docs with sensitive data still reachable from search engines, including health data.
  9. Vizio Must Face VPPA Suit Over Smart TVs, Court Rules
  10. Dish Network Seeks New Trial After $20 Million TCPA Jury Verdict
  11. US Senate votes to let internet providers share your web browsing history without permission: Just what no consumer asked for
  12. Encryption Workarounds Paper Shows Why ‘Going Dark’ Is Not A Problem, And In Fact Is As Old As Humanity Itself
  13. Google takes Symantec to the woodshed for mis-issuing 30,000 HTTPS certs 
  14. NY Senator Pulls Sponsorship From ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Bill, Effectively Killing It
  15. NSA Official Says It Might Have Been Nice If The Agency Had Handled The Public Disclosure Of The Section 215 Program
  16. Judge rules in favor of “Drone Slayer,” dismisses lawsuit filed by pilot: Is it trespassing if you fly over your neighbor’s land? The answer remains unclear.
  17. Cybersecurity and the Yahoo experience – Legal pays the price
  18. Goldilocks and the Interactive Bear: The Privacy Nightmare 
  19. “Samsung Connect” wrangles all the insecure Things in your Internet of Things: Controlling your home—or the security-nightmare “smart” parts of it—with your voice.

Jon

News of the Week; March 22, 2017

GAMES

  1. Appeals Court Affirms Rejection of Gambling Claims Against Machine Zone
  2. A real win for a virtual casino: game developer avoids class action liability under gambling loss recovery statute
  3. Blizzard files for $8.5m in damages from Bossland: Motion for default judgement filed after German cheatbot company failed to comply with court’s request for response
  4. Nintendo seals victory in 3DS tech lawsuit
  5. Nintendo says “Mama Mia!” to Tokyo’s Real-Life Mario Kart
  6. Australian senator urges censors to “leave gamers alone”: Denying Outlast 2 a certificate sends a message of “censorship, disapproval and discouragement”
  7. Australia’s restrictive video game ratings discourage innovation, says senator
  8. As white nationalism grows, how are Jewish game developers responding?
  9. Unlicensed eSports gambling sites are “parasites feeding off popular video games”: UK Gambling Commission’s official paper gets tough on rise of skin gambling in eSports
  10. Inside The Unregulated And Scam-Filled World Of Video Game Betting
  11. YouTube’s restricted mode is hurting video game channels and LGBT content creators
  12. YouTube Just Made Its Biggest Bet Yet on E-Sports
  13. Esports ‘set for £1bn revenue and 600 million audiences by 2020’
  14. Sacramento Kings, Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers Discuss New NBA 2K eLeague
  15. Toronto Raptors Planning To Be On ‘Ground Floor’ Of New NBA 2K eLeague
  16. NHL sizing up eSports opportunity: Commissioner Gary Bettman envisions something like the NBA 2K eLeague, with each team running its own gaming squad
  17. Experts say publisher involvement is key to effective eSports regulation
  18. Facebook takes on Twitch with its own live gameplay streaming: Social network has expanded its Facebook Live functionality to PC software
  19. Escape To Another World: As video games get better and job prospects worse, more young men are dropping out of the job market to spend their time in an alternate reality. Ryan Avent suspects this is the beginning of something big
  20. BioWare: “Attacking individuals is never acceptable” – Mass Effect dev disputes false reports after woman is harrassed over Andromeda animations
  21. Game developers react to abusive tweets by donating to Girls Make Games: Positive fallout from recent Mass Effect: Andromeda attacks
  22. Hard-to-find Nintendo Switch sees 47% resale markup: $300 system selling for up to $810 on eBay.
  23. Nintendo set to double Switch production – report: Total raised to 16 million units for next fiscal year, on expectation of 10 million sales
  24. Report: Nintendo plans to double Switch production for coming year: Shipping 16 million units in 12 months would approach Wii-level numbers.
  25. Why Breath Of The Wild Is The Future Of Blockbuster Games
  26. Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Easter Egg May Pay Tribute To Late Nintendo President Saturo Iwata
  27. Nintendo increasing US Switch shipments: GameStop confirms new stock inbound this week, although not enough for online sales
  28. Switch “could possibly eclipse” Wii – GameStop: Specialty retailer rep says Nintendo’s latest has phenomenal start, soaring attach rates for games and accessories
  29. Tencent cleared $10 billion game revenue in 2016: Chinese company pulls away from rival publishers with new and old hits and Supercell acquisition
  30. Tencent grows online game business, makes gains in mobile
  31. EVE Online devs cause a kerfuffle over in-game currency revamp
  32. The worldwide console market shrank by 2.5 percent in 2016
  33. A taste for Adventure: TIGA CEO Dr Richard Wilson considers new data on which genres UK developers specialise in
  34. Zynga buys four Solitaire games for $42.5 million: Harpan’s two-man team is richly rewarded for its social card titles
  35. House of cards: Zynga splashes $42.5M on solitaire apps
  36. Why A Secretive Company Wants To Make A Smartphone For Gamers
  37. The sorry saga of the crowdfunded Sinclair Vega+ console
  38. How Forza overtook Need for Speed to become the world’s biggest racing IP: Playground and Turn10 directors discuss where the series goes from here
  39. Proposed presidential budget cuts could hurt game development and education
  40. Oculus spending $500M+ on funding VR devs because ‘we don’t want this to take decades’
  41. Oculus not doing developers a service, says HTC Vive: Rikard Steiber and Joel Breton explain the HTC Vive approach to VR, which differs quite a bit from Oculus
  42. Netmarble to raise $2.4 billion with an IPO: Around $1.3 billion will be used for deals and acquisitions as Korean publisher strides towards global top five
  43. Ed Fries uncovers earliest known arcade game Easter egg in Starship 1

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Rules TV Streamers Don’t Get Compulsory License to Broadcast Networks
  2. YouTube’s Restricted Mode Is Hiding Some LGBT Content
  3. How YouTube’s Block Of LGBTQ Videos Could Hurt Kids: The platform has helped many teens come to terms with their sexuality, but lately videos are harder to access
  4. YouTube faces social media storm over LGBT-blocking ‘restricted mode’
  5. LGBT community anger over YouTube restrictions which make their verideos invisible: #YouTubeIsOverParty trends on Twitter after users say videos referencing same-sex relationships are being filtered out
  6. Unless online giants stop the abuse of free speech, democracy and innovation is threatened
  7. A Tweet to Kurt Eichenwald, a Strobe and a Seizure. Now, an Arrest.
  8. Man accused of sending a seizure-inducing tweet charged with cyberstalking: Allegations are a first for an online attack with an epileptogenic image.
  9. Internet warriors: inside the dark world of online haters – Why do people vent such toxic opinions online? Filmmaker Kyrre Lien spent three years travelling the world to find out who these anonymous ‘internet warriors’ are and why they do it
  10. How online hate infiltrates social media and politics: For hate groups, there’s unprecedented opportunity to finally plug their fringe movements into a mainstream circuit
  11. Dissecting Trump’s Most rabid Online Following
  12. Twitter uses software to ban 377,000 accounts advocating violence
  13. Fake News and Fake Solutions: How Do We Build a Civics of Trust?
  14. ‘Who shared it?’: How Americans decide what news to trust on social media – This research was conducted by the Media Insight Project — an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
  15. UK government halts its YouTube ads after some appear on extremist videos: Doesn’t like taxpayer-funded ads showing up before David Duke videos.
  16. Danger in the internet echo chamber: To combat endless feeds of one-sided data, Sunstein suggests an ‘architecture of serendipity’
  17. Platforms, Networks, and Information Literacy
  18. It’s Time to Stop Blaming Social Media for Political Polarization: New research shows that spending less time online is just as bad.
  19. The Like Button Ruined the Internet: How “engagement” made the web a less engaging place
  20. Pope cautions youths about social media’s “false image of reality”: “Don’t let yourselves be led astray,” Francis says.
  21. Convicting cybercriminals no easy task, UBC prof says: Amanda Todd case shines light on how Canadian justice system deals with cybercrime
  22. Facebook Sued In Israel For Blocking All Links To Site Critical Of Facebook & Suggesting Site Was ‘Unsafe’
  23. Google, Facebook, Twitter must amend ToS for EU users or face fines: Trio given one month to clean up fraud, scams, and make other fixes.
  24. This Won’t Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank ‘Offensive’ Search Results
  25. Big Hollywood Studios Win Injunction Against Streamer VidAngel in Copyright Infringement Case 
  26. Hey That’s Me Drinking That Beer! UGC Rights at Issue in Beer/Photo Lawsuit 
  27. eBook Pirates Tend To Be Older And Well Off, Which Means They Pirate Because Of Human Intuition On Economics
  28. University Puts 20,000 Lectures Behind A Registration Wall In Response To DOJ Pressure On Website Accessibility Compliance
  29. Judge Balks At Section 230 Protection For Email Forwarding–Samsel v. DeSoto County School District (Eric Goldman)
  30. Chinese Website Operator Dismissed from Copyright Infringement Suit in United States
  31. Australia’s Prime Minister Supports Expanded Safe Harbor Protections Down Under
  32. Bill Gates And Other Major Investors Put $52.6 Million Into Site Sharing Unauthorized Copies Of Academic Papers
  33. Ed Sheeran Vs. The CopyBots: Artist Goes To Bat For Musician That Covered His Song On Facebook
  34. How Drones Help Transparency Activists To See Things The Hungarian Government Wants To Hide
  35. Class-action lawsuit targets LG over legendary G4, V10 bootloop issues – Suit: LG replaced phones with faulty ones—didn’t replace out-of-warranty devices.
  36. Keyword ads — Only infringing if they’re confusing
  37. Apple illegally fixed prices of iPhones in Russia, investigation finds: Apple contacted retailers who were selling the iPhone at “inappropriate” prices.
  38. Apple sold $4.2 billion of product in New Zealand, paid $0 local taxes: “Their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers.”
  39. 10 media trends for 2017 and beyond
  40. I used YouTube Red for months—here’s why I cancelled my subscription: Another $10-per-month service that isn’t totally worth it yet.
  41. Insights: The Great SVOD Land Rush – British Invasions And The OTT Channel Grab
  42. Researchers Just Unveiled a New Li-Fi System That’s 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi
  43. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Movie Theaters Haven’t Innovated Beyond Popcorn
  44. Tim League Refutes Netflix’s Reed Hastings On Movie Theater Innovation
  45. The Corrupt Personalization of Netflix: The company embodies one of the most seductive myths of the algorithmic age.
  46. Tech and Entertainment in the ‘Era of Mass Customization’
  47. Microsoft and Sony set sights on the Netflix model: A subscription service providing ongoing revenue could be a win-win for creators and platform holders; can MS or Sony make this model work?
  48. MLB Network Launches On PlayStation Vue With Exclusive World Baseball Classic Coverage
  49. Microsoft’s silence over unprecedented patch delay doesn’t smell right: Canceling Patch Tuesday at the last minute warrants an explanation, not platitudes.
  50. Red Flag Windows: Microsoft modifies Windows OS for Chinese government – Chinese government blocked Microsoft product purchases after NSA leaks.
  51. NFL ‘Intent On Staying Contemporary’ With Technology After Streaming Games On Twitter
  52. What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know: Big Data has transformed everything from sports to politics to education. It could transform mental-health treatment, too—if only psychologists would stop ignoring it.
  53. The Long, Weird History Of Companies That Put Your Life Online
  54. In 2010, The Social Network was searing — now it looks quaint
  55. Software used to predict crime can now be scoured for bias
  56. Which lawyers will win or lose in front of which judges? There’s now an app to predict that
  57. Transhumanism Is the Next Step in Human Evolution
  58. Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity Will Happen by 2045
  59. What Rights Should We Give to Sentient Robots?
  60. When beauty is in the eye of the (robo)beholder: Beauty.AI saw a lucrative problem and tried solving via algorithms. It ended poorly.
  61. IP for AI: can we patent an artificial human expert?
  62. SEC Issues Guidance on Robo-Advisers
  63. How Aristotle Created the Computer: The philosophers he influenced set the stage for the technological revolution that remade our world.
  64. Budget 2017: Why Canada’s Digital Policy Future Is Up For Grabs (Michael Geist)
  65. How Navdeep Bains Can Get His #Innovation Groove Back (Michael Geist)
  66. Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality (Mark A. Lemley & Eugene Volokh)

CREATIVITY

  1. Supreme Court Says Decorative Fashion Design Elements Protected By Copyright Law
  2. Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. (Supreme Court Of The United States)
  3. Cheerleading company can get copyrights, pursue competitors, Supreme Court says: The high court ponders copyrighted uniforms, Van Gogh, and cat-shaped lamps.
  4. Supreme Court Says Patent Trolls Can Wait A While Before Suing
  5. Protect Fair Dealing – Canada’s Upcoming Copyright Act Review
  6. Filmmaker challenges court injunction on Vancouver Aquarium documentary: BC Civil Liberties says the injunction could endanger free speech
  7. The Media Scores a “Win” at the Texas Supreme Court
  8. Judge Decides Free Speech Is Still A Right; Dumps Prior Restraint Order Against Mattress Review Site
  9. Appeals Court Says Prior Restraint Is Perfectly Fine, Refuses To Rehear 3D-Printed Guns Case
  10. Released Russian Putin Critic Recalls Prison Torture: Ildar Dadin says he was transferred to a penal colony where prison guards tortured inmates while accompanied to music of Putin’s favorite rock group
  11. Garry Kasparov on the press and propaganda in Trump’s America
  12. China Clamps Down On Another Serious Threat To The Middle Kingdom: Western Animal Cartoon Books For Children
  13. Iconic movie scene allows copyright but not TM claim against multimedia installation: Harold Lloyd Entertainment, Inc. v. Moment Factory One, Inc., No. LA CV15-01556, 2015 WL 12765142 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 29, 2015) (Rebecca Tushnet)
  14. Disney Hit With Lawsuit Claiming ‘Zootopia’ Ripped Off ‘Total Recall’ Writer
  15. Jeff Koons LLC and the Centre Pompidou are both found liable for copyright infringement in Paris court case: The lawsuit concerns the reproduction of a sculpture by Koons that resembles a picture by the French photographer Jean-François Bauret
  16. Spain: The battle around the “Kukuxumusu Universe” and the right of transformation, can the artist’s personal style be limited?
  17. Copyright case against U2 latest to test boundary of originality and creativity
  18. Scare Tactics Down Under: The Ongoing Global Effort to Mislead on Canadian Copyright (Michael Geist)
  19. Marrakesh Treaty For Blind Readers Jeopardised By EU Publishing Industry Lobbying, Group Says
  20. Mormon Church Tries To Censor MormonLeaks Using Copyright, Streisand Effect Takes Over
  21. Sports Photographer: Don’t Mess with My Copyright
  22. Photographer hits retailer over photo of player hitting Joey Bats
  23. How The Grateful Dead Revolutionized Rock and Created Modern Jam Bands
  24. How News Organizations Inadvertently Spread “Alternative Facts”: The way they construct stories makes it likely that readers will believe things that aren’t true
  25. How the New York Times’ mobile-first strategy has turned millennials into its biggest audience
  26. How TiVo Confronted the Disruptor’s Dilemma
  27. SXSW has been s____ing over artists since way before the visa controversy
  28. Creating in an Age of Anxiety, Depression, and Dread: Anxiety can lead to better art, but do the two have to be so mutually intertwined?A Transactional Theory of the Reader in Copyright Law (Zahr K. Said)
  29. Reading the Readers (Andrew Gilden)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. The Netflix Effect?: Foreign Sources Outspend Canadian Broadcasters and Distributors for English TV Production (Michael Geist)
  2. Court of Appeals Rules that Over-the-Top Video Service is Not a Cable System Entitled to Statutory License to Retransmit TV Station Programming
  3. Hope fades for cheap TV-over-Internet as FilmOn loses copyright fight: TV networks’ expert witness: “The Internet is not a communications channel.”
  4. Federal Court of Appeal upholds interlocutory injunction directed at retailers of set-top boxes loaded with copyright-infringing applications
  5. Let’s Talk Broadband Fund: The CRTC’s New Initiative
  6. Bell and Rogers offer sports bars unpleasant choice: Give us more money or lose TSN and Sportsnet
  7. Despite Gigabit Hype, Comcast Is Facing Less Broadband Competition Than Ever
  8. FCC Approves First 100% Foreign Owner of US Broadcast Stations
  9. ISPs say your Web browsing and app usage history isn’t “sensitive”: ISP lobby groups make case against the FCC’s broadband privacy rules.
  10. The Ad Industry Is Really Excited About Plans To Gut Broadband Privacy Protections
  11. DirecTV admits screwing up regional sports fees, starts issuing credits: Customers get credits after being charged different prices for the same network.
  12. Donald Trump’s presidency is shaped by Fox News.
  13. Google Fiber’s About-Face Provides Useful Lessons For A Broken Broadband Industry
  14. How Netflix Wants to Rule the World: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Global TV Network
  15. A timeline of Netflix’s conflicting stances on net neutrality
  16. TV’s Dead Zone: How the Cable Sector Is Killing Off Struggling Networks
  17. Charter’s Trying To Kill Recent Merger Conditions Banning Usage Caps, Net Neutrality Violations
  18. Charter Tries To Tap Dance Out Of Lawsuit Over Substandard Broadband
  19. The President’s Regulatory Agenda and the FTC
  20. Senators Fighting Online Privacy Rules Take Money From Industry: Analysis shows the 22 Republican senators behind a controversial resolution have received more than $1.7 million from the industry in recent years

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal: “Our client has now been in custody for almost 18 months,” defense attorney says.
  2. Third Circuit Appeals Court Says All Writs Orders Can Be Used To Compel Passwords For Decryption
  3. California court declines request to unmask author of anonymous post
  4. Just Prior To Hearing Over NSL Gag Orders, Court Allows Cloudflare & CREDO Mobile To Be Named As Plaintiffs
  5. TSA explains why it won’t allow electronics on some USA-bound flights
  6. McDonald’s Says Twitter Account Compromised After Anti-Trump Post
  7. Rep. Devin Nunes’ Hypocrisy On Display In ‘Concerns’ Over NSA Surveillance
  8. Court Says FBI Doesn’t Have To Hand Over Its Rules For Surveilling Domestic Journalists
  9. The New Handbook For Cyberwar Is Being Written By Russia: “It’s not that the Russians are doing something others can’t do,” a US intelligence officer said. “It’s that Russian hackers are willing to go there, to experiment and carry out attacks that others countries would back away from.”
  10. Hackers Stole My Website…And I Pulled Off A $30,000 Sting Operation To Get It Back1
  11. Smart Vibrator Company To Pay $3.75 Million For Private Data Collection
  12. Is New York Poised to Adopt a Right to be Forgotten?
  13. Privacy in VR Is Complicated and It’ll Take the Entire VR Community to Figure It Out
  14. 6 Great TV Series About Privacy and Security

Jon

News of the Week; March 15, 2017

GAMES

  1. Gamer’s Death Pushes Risks of Live Streaming Into View
  2. John Carmack: ZeniMax owes me $22.5M as part of 2009 id Software deal: “Sour grapes is not an affirmative defense to breach of contract.”
  3. John Carmack sues ZeniMax for $22.5m from id Software deal: Oculus CTO alleges “sour grapes” as ZeniMax refuses to pay due to the findings of its Oculus VR lawsuit
  4. Oculus CTO John Carmack is suing Zenimax for $22.5M
  5. Oculus VR breach of contract suit dismissed: Total Recall Technologies’ charges against Palmer Luckey thrown out by Californian court
  6. Oculus in the clear of TRT confidentiality lawsuit
  7. Facebook may one day have no need for Oculus
  8. CITY OF HEROES for Clothing Confusable with Same Mark for Video Games, Says TTAB 
  9. China will ban new Korean games from being published – report: Controversial THAAD missile system has sparked a crackdown on Korean products of many kinds
  10. How emulation helped save two video game rarities: Primal Rage 2, Dreamcast’s Millennium Racer are now preserved for history.
  11. Go Cyber Shopping ordered to stop its activities and pay a $12.7 Million award for selling game copiers and mod chips for Nintendo game systems
  12. Nintendo Switch Has Huge Launch At GameStop, Retailer Says
  13. Nintendo Switch has sold 1.5m worldwide – SuperData: And 9 out of 10 Switch owners bought Zelda with it
  14. Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty resigns following controversial tweet: Prominent games media figure was under fire over comments widely regarded as sexist
  15. The Future of Sports is Virtual
  16. Washington D.C. pushing to be “the capital of eSports”: U.S. city now sponsors NRG Esports, will host live events in new $65 million stadium
  17. eSports YouTube star and business partner prosecuted for operating and promoting an unlicensed gambling website 
  18. Why the CIA is using games to train its operatives: “The greatest power of simulation games is that players have to operate these games themselves and know the rules.”
  19. PlayStation Now to add PS4 games: Streaming service will expand catalog to current-gen console later this year
  20. Sony will soon let console haters get their PS4 fix on Windows PCs: Starting with “private test”; we have good guess for PlayStation Now’s upgrade date.
  21. Tencent topped mobile revenue charts in 2016 – App Annie: Supercell loses the top spot to Tencent, NetEase climbed six places to finish in third for the year
  22. An Epic shift to games-as-a-service: Unreal maker’s worldwide creative director Donald Mustard discusses how changing business models upend the way competition works
  23. Australian political party promises $4m games development fund: The Greens plans to “level up Western Australia” after this week’s state election
  24. How to Protect Your Online Games in China
  25. “Mobile PR doesn’t follow the same path as traditional gaming”
  26. The Good and Bad of a Decentralized Game Industry
  27. What it’s like making games in Pakistan: From indie political games to mainstream outsourcing
  28. War Child Armistice campaign raises $122k through game devs: Positech Games, Wargaming, iNK Stories and BlackMill Games created peaceful playthroughs for the charity
  29. Permission to cheat
  30. Video: A legal expert’s guide to IP law for game devs

DIGITAL

  1. How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It (Farhad Manjoo)
  2. Kodi crackdown: Premier League wins High Court order to block illegal streams – Sky, TalkTalk, BT, and Virgin will block servers that host pirated footie games.
  3. UK ISPs to block set-top boxes that illegally live-stream soccer matches: Premier League wins court injunction requiring server-level blocking.
  4. UK Court Grants First Live Blocking Order To Stop New Infringing Streams As Soon As They Start
  5. First live blocking order granted in the UK
  6. UK Local Government Confirms Surprising EU Position That Viewing Pirated Streams Probably Isn’t Illegal
  7. Political Polarization On Twitter Rose Up To 20 Percent In Obama Era: An analysis of 679,000 users over last year 8 years shows how we’re becoming more divided online
  8. The social media “echo chamber” is real
  9. Active social media users are self-segregated and polarized in news consumption.
  10. Facebook—in hate-crime clash with MPs—claims it’s “fixed” abuse review tool: Lawmaker accuses Twitter, Google, and Facebook of “commercial prostitution.”
  11. Technology To Blame For Nearly All Serious Crimes: Europol – The main police agency of the EU says its officers need to get more tech-savvy, too
  12. Tech’s political impact? “14 people watch me on C-SPAN… 1M on Facebook” – Senator: Social media sites aren’t bad or good—ceding them to hate is the problem.
  13. How To Improve Online Comments: Test Whether People Have Read The Article Before Allowing Them To Respond
  14. Tim Berners-Lee: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it – It has taken all of us to build the web we have, and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want – for everyone
  15. We didn’t lose control – it was stolen: The Web we have is not broken for Google and Facebook. People farmers are reaping the rewards of their violations into our lives to the tune of tens of billions in revenue every year. How can they possibly be our allies?
  16. Biotyranny and its Resistance: Who Owns Your Body?: Inspired by Foucault, Chelsea Manning and techniques like gene editing, artists and activists are taking back power over our bodies from governments and corporations.
  17. AI’s PR Problem: Had artificial intelligence been named something less spooky, we’d probably worry about it less.
  18. Germany May Fine Social Media Companies For Allowing Hate Speech: New bill could make Facebook and Twitter pay for not policing their platforms
  19. Facebook and Twitter Could Face Fines in Germany Over Hate Speech Posts
  20. Watch what you tweet! ‘Serious harm’ test clarified
  21. Prenda May Be Dead, But Copyright Trolling Still Going Strong
  22. The Kim Dotcom film: How to avoid a trial for 5 years and counting: Dotcom’s showmanship throws a small democracy for a loop.
  23. Ed Sheeran: Piracy Is What Made Me
  24. Ed Sheeran intervenes for fan, saying he will sort out Facebook copyright ban
  25. ‘I Don’t See A YouTube Value Gap. Over 45% Of Our Revenue From The Platform Is From UGC’
  26. Google’s Uptime App Promotes Collaborative YouTube Viewing
  27. How YouTube TV stacks up against DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV: Google entered TV streaming with a feature-rich service at an aggressive price.
  28. Bad Libel Law Strikes Again: Silly UK Twitter Spat Results In Six Figure Payout
  29. Oil Company Files Bogus Libel Lawsuit Over ‘Substantially True’ Facebook Comment By Local Activist
  30. Man behind GemCoin, a fake cryptocurrency, settles lawsuit for $71M – Judge: “Defendant has shown no sign of recognition of wrongdoing.”
  31. Study: U.S. Ad-Supported Internet Generated $1.21 Trillion, 10.4 Million Jobs In 2016
  32. Insights: How Snapchat Is Changing The Way The Web Works And Looks
  33. Samsung Shut Out Of Arbitration In Recent Consumer Class Actions
  34. EU Parliament Report Recommends Throwing Out Something Even Worse Than The Link Tax: Upload Filtering
  35. Uber an avatar of innovation and progress? The economic evidence says otherwise.
  36. Uber says it will stop using Greyball to evade authorities: Uber’s chief security officer says the changes won’t be immediate but gradual.
  37. Uber’s Going To Follow The Rules Now, Uber Says: The company, bombarded with bad press, has stopped digging in its heels about certain high-profile issues
  38. Sharing Economy Giants Are Using Data To Build “The Taking Economy,” Study Warns: Information imbalances benefitting Uber and other services might need new solutions.
  39. Google tops Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For: Tech giant tops list that also features NVIDIA at 39 and Activision Blizzard at 66
  40. Report: Lack of Mentors, Female Role Models Top List of Barriers Facing Women in Tech
  41. Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?: Tech companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions for female employees. Here’s why not much has changed—and what might actually work.
  42. Yahoo to give Marissa Mayer $23 million parting gift after sale to Verizon: Mayer will leave as what remains of Yahoo becomes Altaba holding company.
  43. Marissa Mayer Getting $23 Million For Running Yahoo Into The Ground
  44. S.E.C. Rejects Winklevoss Brothers’ Bid to Create Bitcoin E.T.F.
  45. US Regulator Makes Important Decision About Bitcoin Derivatives
  46. Vice Media Will Produce Original, Exclusive Programming for Snapchat
  47. Hologram Sports Broadcasts Of Olympics Competition Being Considered By IT Provider Atos
  48. Facebook Scores Major League Soccer Streaming Deal, Continuing Push Into Premium TV Content
  49. Facebook signs deal with MLS, Univision to stream live soccer games: Games that were previously Spanish-only will be streamed in English on Facebook.
  50. The optimist’s guide to the robot apocalypse
  51. A Robot Lawyer Is Officially Assisting With Refugee Applications
  52. Canadian firms can’t use social media to report key information, CSA rules
  53. Software results in mistaken arrests, jail time? No fix needed, says judge: “Clerical errors… will occur regardless of the case management system used by the court.”
  54. One Day You Might Choose The Ending To A Netflix Show: The company experiments with interactive storytelling technology
  55. Wowing and washable: Google’s smart jacket wears and works well at first glance: “Blinking on your jacket is uncool”—luckily this looks the part while having its brains.
  56. Common Ethical Issues To Consider When Researching Jurors And Witnesses On Social Media
  57. Why China’s internet use has overtaken the West
  58. Advertising in Windows has reached an exasperating new low
  59. ICANN’s Special Privileges for Trademark Owners are The.Worst
  60. Trademarks and Digital Goods (Mark P. McKenna & Lucas Osborn)
  61. Are Algorithms In Tune With Music?: What impact do algorithms have for music curation and creation? 

CREATIVITY

  1. Canada Says It Won’t Attend Special 301 Hearing Because USTR Prefers Industry Allegations To Facts And Data
  2. Is Blacklock’s Now Engaging in a Strategy of Start, Stay and Delay? (Howard Knopf)
  3. French court finds Jeff Koons guilty of copyright infringement
  4. When Morality and Copyright Collide
  5. Copyright: the right to exploit vs the right not to exploit
  6. Concordia University caught on the wrong side of copyright
  7. Who is on the Wrong Side?: Why the Copyright Mistake at Concordia Highlights the Problems with Collective Licensing (Michael Geist)
  8. Yes We Scan: Why Concordia Should Not Shelve Its Book Scanner (Michael Geist)
  9. Breaking News: OUP and other Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University and Photocopier
  10. Photocopying Textbooks Is Fair Use In India: Western Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University
  11. UC Berkley To Remove More Than 20,000 Online Videos From Public Access In Response To DOJ Captioning Demand 
  12. Get back to whom you once belonged: Paul McCartney seeks to reclaim ownership of music catalog through interesting provision of copyright act 
  13. ‘Fake news’: the best thing that’s happened to journalism – Fake News has upset a lot of people and caused real damage but it’s been good news for journalism analysts like me. I’ve never had more interest in a media issue than this. I’ve never been busier talking and researching a topic and it’s consequences. Here are some notes that I use when I give talks about fake news.
  14. How South Korea’s Fake News Hijacked a Democratic Crisis
  15. Trump ‘Fake News’ Story Punished In Tanzania: A Tanzanian news outlet suspended nine people after airing a false story claiming that Trump thought its president was an “African hero.”
  16. Fixing Fake News Won’t Fix Journalism: Scammers have become a scapegoat for the ailing press. What we really need is a deeper fix.
  17. This Article Won’t Change Your Mind: The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs
  18. SXSW has rescinded its incendiary immigration policy after a huge backlash
  19. When Art Meets Power
  20. Ad Agencies And Accountability
  21. China Busily Approving ‘Trump’ Trademarks With Stunning Speed
  22. Judge Allows for Possibility “Marilyn Monroe” Is Too Generic for Trademark
  23. No Photographs, Please, We Are French
  24. The Role Insurance Can Play in Your IP Strategy
  25. In liberal Hollywood, a conservative minority faces backlash in the age of Trump
  26. Are Black Brits Black Enough to Play Black Americans?: Samuel L. Jackson questioned the casting of black British actors in American roles on Hot 97 earlier this week, but his comments neglect both shared history and the reality of Britain’s entertainment industry
  27. The Fate Of The Critic In The Clickbait Age
  28. Pi(e) Is Not Protected By Copyright Laws
  29. Music as a Matter of Law (Joseph Fishman) 

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. For the first time, more people subscribe to Netflix than have DVR: The streaming service has dramatically changed how Americans watch TV.
  2. The Cord Cutting The Cable Industry Says Isn’t Happening, Keeps Happening
  3. USAToday Latest News Outlet To Completely Miss The Point Of Cord Cutting
  4. New York City Sues Verizon For Fiber Optic Bait And Switch
  5. 1 million NYC homes can’t get Verizon FiOS, so the city just sued Verizon: Verizon wants another four years to cover remaining 1 million households.
  6. Is There Any Rhyme or Reason for Which TV Networks are Included in Skinny Bundles?
  7. Net neutrality hurts health care and helps porn, Republican senator claims: Does the senator’s argument make any sense? Let’s look at the facts.
  8. Senate Democrats question FCC chair’s independence from Trump: Dems want promise that Pai won’t “penalize free speech” to punish Trump enemies.
  9. Net neutrality DOA? Here’s what’s next for the internet
  10. On Eve of Broadband Privacy Rule’s Effective Date, FCC Pauses Implementation 
  11. AT&T allegedly “discriminated” against poor people in broadband upgrades: “Digital redlining” leaves poor people with the slowest Internet, report says.
  12. In Dodging FCC Review, AT&T’s Time Warner Mega-Merger Just Got Much Easier Under Trump
  13. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Interview: Media Ownership Rules ‘Quite Antiquated’
  14. After escaping net neutrality probe, Verizon expands data cap exemptions: With net neutrality worries gone, FiOS TV goes “data-free” on Verizon Wireless.
  15. DirecTV’s ‘Regional Sports Fees’ Make No Coherent Sense, Company Won’t Explain Why
  16. Mayors slam AT&T for slow Internet, long phone outages: “AT&T has reneged on its responsibility to customers,” mayor says.
  17. Will The Investigation Into Fox News Be Blunted Now That Preet Is Gone
  18. Hannity pretends Crowley didn’t plagiarize: Are Monica Crowley and Sean Hannity in denial about Crowley’s plagiarism? Brian Stelter says Hannity hurts his viewers by ignoring real reporting.
  19. Law School vs. TV Station: Showdown Over Racial Bias Questions
  20. When times get tough, media consolidates. Tech? Not so much.: Code Advisors partner Quincy Smith talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the state of M&A on Recode Decode.
  21. Compliance and Enforcement Decision CRTC 2017-65: William Rapanos – Violations of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation
  22. Google Fiber Was Doomed From the Start: The internet access answer won’t come from private markets, but rather from policies that make for competitive networks. (Susan Crawford)
  23. Amendments to the Films Act and the Broadcasting Act (Singapore)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. US charges two Russian agents with ordering hack of 500m Yahoo accounts: Russian law enforcement agency that works with FBI hired Yahoo hackers.
  2. Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says
  3. Are White House Officials Breaking the Law by Using Secret Messaging Apps
  4. Secretary of State Tillerson used e-mail alias as Exxon CEO: Climate change investigation leads New York AG to request “Wayne Tracker” e-mails.
  5. Privacy commissioner investigating Canada Border Services Agency over electronic media searches
  6. High Court reserves judgment in Facebook case: Data watchdog wants EU court to decide on European Commission data-transfer rulings
  7. Constitution Protects Publication of Politicians’ Home Address/Phone Number–Publius v. Boyer-Vine (Eric Goldman)
  8. Advertisers look forward to buying your Web browsing history from ISPs: Ad groups thank Republican lawmakers for move to kill ISP privacy rules.
  9. NY Legislators Looking At Installing A Free Speech-Stomping ‘Right To Be Forgotten’
  10. French Government Adopts Long-Awaited Decree Compensating ISPs for HADOPI-relatedTasks
  11. the internet of (very private) things (Brenda Pritchard)
  12. Maker of ‘Smart’ Vibrators Settles Data Collection Lawsuit for $3.75 Million
  13. Vibrator maker ordered to pay out C$4m for tracking users’ sexual activity: Canadian manufacturer We-Vibe collected data about temperature and vibration intensity, revealing intimate information without customers’ knowledge
  14. Judge Rules For Golden State Warriors, Dismisses Eavesdropping App Lawsuit
  15. FBI’s methods to spy on journalists should remain classified, judge rules – Reaction: “It is antithetical to a democracy that supposedly values a free press.”
  16. US spies still won’t tell Congress the number of Americans caught in dragnet: Electronic surveillance programs Prism, Upstream hang in the congressional balance.
  17. Despite Stream Of Leaks Exposing Tremendous Gov’t Surveillance Capabilities, James Comey Still Complaining About ‘Going Dark’
  18. Congressman Introduces Bill That Would Allow People And Companies To ‘Hack Back’ After Attacks
  19. Controversial ‘Vigilante’ App Relaunches To Help People Go Film Police
  20. Tobii Recommends Explicit Consent for Recording Eye Tracking Data
  21. Threat via Whisper prompts FBI to show up: “holy **** I’m… going to get raided”: Seriously, don’t post violent threats on “anonymous” messaging apps.
  22. There were more device searches at US border last month than all of 2015: CBP has not answered Ars’ questions; ACLU has heard no explanation.
  23. Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices and In the Cloud
  24. Big data to get intellectual property protection in Japan: Companies would be freer to sell information they now collect and hoard
  25. Consumer Reports Proposes Open Source Security Standard To Keep The Internet Of Things From Sucking
  26. DeepMind says no quick fix for verifying health data access
  27. Data Mining for Personally Targeted Politics
  28. Judge Grants Search Warrant Demanding Info On Everyone Who Searched For A Certain Person’s Name
  29. Geohot’s new automated-driving device can only be redeemed by coughing up data: Answers questions about NHTSA letter from October, Tesla snafu.
  30. Consumer protection & privacy paramount at the FTC Forum on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain

Jon