Posts

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

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

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

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

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