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Communications Law
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Class 11 Guest Speaker: Mark Devereux
Mark Devereux has been Chief Strategy Officer of Roadhouse Interactive since June 2012. Mark has over 20 years of international corporate and legal expertise ranging from heading up a public company in the green technology sector to running the Canadian subsidiary of a European focused online gaming company to operating a private law practice. He is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School and has been a member of the Law Society of British Columbia since 1992.
In class Mark will be exploring the legal and business relationships between video game developers and publishers.
jon
Class 10 – 11/25/15; “Mass Effects” & Andy Moore
Video and slides follow.
jon
News of the Week; November 25, 2015
GAMES
- Before you circumvent, circumspect! Nintendo TPM triumphs in Italy
- Backlash fears halt global Dead Or Alive Xtreme 3 launch
- Riot to lock trolls out of new League of Legends systems
- Riot’s New LCS Player Contracts – A Legal Analysis
- Judge Tosses Donkey Kong Record Holder’s Lawsuit Against Cartoon Network
- First Amendment Protects Use of Videogamer’s Likeness in Cartoon Network Animated Series
- ‘Gamer’ isn’t a single identity; we need diverse critics too
- Kotaku, blacklisting, and the independence of the gaming press: Actually, it’s about the relationship between the press and the game industry.
- Rhode Island lawmakers sign subpoena to compel Curt Schilling to testify at 38 Studios hearing
- Campus Police Chief Says Former Faculty Member A Threat To Public Safety Because Of A Game He Made 10 Years Ago
- Afro Samurai 2 pulled from PS4, Steam by publisher: Versus Evil gives full refunds, apologises to all purchasers for “failure”
- GameStop: Halo, Star Wars and Assassin’s Creed sold below expectations
- The PS4 can now emulate PlayStation 2 games: The results are rather impressive: 4x the resolution, anti-aliasing, and 60fps.
- PlayStation 4 has sold 30 million units in two years
- Will mobile games in India be different from China?
- Google Play poised for Chinese launch in 2016 – report
- Fans can back – and profit from – crowdfunded games in U.S. next month
- Jason Rohrer to be subject of a solo art exhibition
- Virtual Planes, Virtual Airports And Absolutely No Rogering: Inside The Fascinating World Of VATSIM
- If You Want To See Gaming’s Future, See Guitar Hero Live
DIGITAL
- YouTube Says It Will Offer Legal Protection Of Up To $1 Million For Select Video Creators Facing DMCA Takedowns
- For a few truly bad DMCA takedowns, YouTube offers to cover legal costs: The company will protect some video makers who lean on fair use.
- What creators are saying about YouTube’s help with copyright claims
- Is intellectual property law the new protectionism? Canada should be wary
- One Year on, the Private Copying Exception is now Dead
- Judge sides with Rightscorp, says DMCA doesn’t protect Cox: In what could be a landmark copyright case, an ISP loses its “safe harbor.”
- Chinese Company Learns From The West: Builds Up Big Patent Portfolio, Uses It To Sue Apple In China
- For Auto Enthusiasts, the Right to Tinker With Cars’ Software
- Adele’s new record is not on online streaming services – except where it is – the difference between interactive and noninteractive streaming
- Fox News LLC v. TVEyes, Inc.—does the courts’ expansion of fair use copyright protection promote the “progress of science and useful arts” when it requires increasing judicial oversight over activities that otherwise would be regulated by the marketplace?
- Judge Mocks Public Interest Concerns About Kicking People Off Internet, Tells Cox It’s Not Protected By The DMCA
- German Publisher Axel Springer Just Can’t Stop Suing Ad Blockers, And Attacking Its Own Readers
- Facebook’s Piracy Problem: Are plagiarized YouTube videos helping fuel the social network’s astonishing video growth?
- Transmission not accessible to the public “not a communication to the public”, rules court
- Clinging To Relevance, Yahoo Prevents Ad Block Users From Checking Yahoo Mail
- Paris and Beirut: Data suggests how Social Media shapes the Coverage
- Dumb Idea… Or The Dumbest Idea? Seize Terrorists’ Copyrights And Then Censor Them With The DMCA
- Anonymous’ #OpParis campaign against ISIS goes horribly awry: Anon mass-reporting of Twitter accounts submits thousands with no ISIS connection.
- File Says N.S.A. Found Way to Replace Email Program
- It’s official—NSA did keep its e-mail metadata program after it “ended” in 2011: The New York Times gets a new NSA doc confirming what some had long suspected.
- NSA Collected Americans’ E-mails Even After it Stopped Collecting Americans’ E-mails (Bruce Schneier)
- What’s The Evidence Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much
- The Paris Attacks And The Encryption/Surveillance Bogeyman: The Story So Far
- Terrorist attacks: Mass surveillance is the problem, not the solution – Time to stop blaming encryption and Snowden, and to address the real problem.
- French state of emergency allows website blocking, device search powers: Hints it may make it illegal to merely visit sites connected with terrorism.
- ISIS’ OPSEC Manual Reveals How It Handles Cybersecurity
- Influencers: Paris attacks don’t justify government access to encryption
- Australian Police Officials Smacked Around By Judge For Support Of Illegal Surveillance Of A ‘Closed’ Facebook Account
- Digital defamation update: recent decisions highlight issues with tweets, hyperlinks
- Another Court Logically Concludes That Linking To Allegedly Defamatory Content Isn’t Defamation
- Case Law, Australia: Duffy v Google Inc, Google liable for search results, hyperlinks and autocompletes – Lorna Skinner
- Bell is lobbying the Canadian government for a “free pass”: Bell is invoking an obscure, rarely-used parliamentary process to play politics with your Internet bill.
- Chinese Company Learns From The West: Builds Up Big Patent Portfolio, Uses It To Sue Apple In China
- Dear ZDNet: Comcast Has Been Sketchily Injecting Messages Into User’s Browsers For Years
- Comcast Tests Net Neutrality By Letting Its Own Streaming Service Bypass Usage Caps
- Whither the “Nigerian Prince”? Another Canadian business pays penalty under anti-spam law (David Elder)
- CRTC settles alleged CASL violation — deficient unsubscribe mechanism (Bradley Freedman)
- FCC fines more companies for Wi-Fi blocking
- Kickstarter has no clue how drone startup raised $3.4M then imploded: “We sent an e-mail to the Zano team informing them of their obligations to backers.”
- From the computer to the courtroom: daily fantasy sports websites to take on New York Attorney General in high stakes legal battle
- Young ‘digital natives’ naive about internet advertising
- The Last Days Of Marissa Mayer?
- Can Someone — Anyone — Please Explain To Me Why Marissa Mayer Is Still Employed?
- Yahoo Scorecard: Measuring Marissa Mayer Against Her Words
- Nokia layoffs strike a blow against diversity at Microsoft
- It’s Not About Yik Yak: app enables bullying and hate speech on campus. But the bigger problem is college students who don’t want to be in college.
- Free Amazon scriptwriting app lets scribes pitch directly to Amazon Studios: Amazon Storywriter replaces former Storyteller app, can work in offline Chrome form.
- Netflix Now Used By Over Half of American Internet Users
- A New Business Model for the Web? The Subscription Wars Are Here.
- Amazon backtracks after covering NYC subway car in Nazi symbols
- New Jersey makes swatting a felony
- Is Hello Barbie every parent’s worst nightmare?
- Online Shopping While Black: Until racial profiling stops, the internet has an edge over the mall
- How Railroad History Shaped Internet History: It’s no accident that Iowa, where the first transcontinental railroad began, is now home to a huge data-center industry.
- Canadian versus U.S. Copyright Law
CREATIVITY
- Eagles of Death Metal Discuss Paris Terror Attacks
- Okay, Now A Survivor Member Really Did Sue Mike Huckabee For Using ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ At Kim Davis Rally
- Parody of copyrighted work entitled to copyright protection
- The Hollywood Ten: The Men Who Refused to Name Names: When the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed filmmakers to testify about communism in the industry, a few held their ground — and for a time, lost their livelihood.
- The appropriation artist who can’t get George Lucas to sue him
- Quebec artist “borrows” Tanya Tagaq’s music: Nunavut singer furious
- You say “Tomaydo”, I say no copyright infringement: recipe book not an original compilation
- Conde Nast guilty of contempt in U.K. over phone hacking story
- Iranian Cartoonist Who Drew Sadness of Paris Attacks Jailed
jon
Class 9 – 11/18/15; “Controlling Originality” & Jennifer Kelly
Video and slides below.
jon
Class 10 Guest Speaker: Andy Moore
Andy Moore will be joining us next class to talk about the future of games, the games industry and the role of “indy developers”.
Andy is a programmer by trade (but a teacher at heart), and has helped game studios and other digital-media companies as a consultant, contractor, and specialist; focusing in the fields of rapid development, prototyping, data collection & analysis, and the “lean startup” pivot-style project management. He developed productivity-applications for ten years before going all-in on independent video game creation in 2008, opening his studio Radial Games. Within a year he produced the SteamBirds franchise, an award-winning free-to-play turn-based strategy game; and subsequently launched the critically acclaimed title Monster Loves You! on Steam. Currently, Andy is working on future games for the Steam and mobile platforms. Among his most recent games is (the quite wonderful) ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS (http://rocketsrocketsrockets.com)
jon
News of the Week: November 18, 2015
GAMES
- How the Baseless ‘Terrorists Communicating Over Playstation 4’ Rumor Got Started
- How Paris ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PlayStation 4 To Discuss And Plan Attacks (Forbes)
- Nintendo wins major victory in Italian court against PC Box
- Nintendo wins court ruling against modchips and homebrew software: Security measures ruled proportionate, despite preventing legitimate use.
- Nintendo Victory Against Piracy Mod Doesn’t Set Precedent, Says Lawyer: European Court rules in favour of platform holder, but that doesn’t make all modchips illegal.
- Blizzard sues ‘World of Warcraft,’ ‘Diablo 3’ and ‘Heroes of the Storm’ bot maker
- Yet Again, Blizzard Looks To Twist Copyright Law To Use It To Go After Bot Makers It Considers Cheaters
- Rockstar Whips Out The Ban-Hammer On GTAV Players Over Mod
- That Didn’t Take Long: MLB Plans Action Against Fallout 4 David Ortiz Mod
- Nintendo wins another patent case against Wii U, 3DS
- Plaintiff loses in-app gambling suit
- Players are value creators – Paradox CEO
- Understanding this year’s biggest video game copyright ruling
- ESAC report shows healthy growth of Canadian video games industry
- Video games contributed $3bn to Canada’s GDP in 2015
- Canadian video game industry catching up to TV & film production: Video game industry spent $2.36 billion in Canada in 2014, up 50% from 2013
- Fallout 4 ships 12 million
- Unpacking the $5.9BN King acquisition price
- Kim Kardashian game points to underserved audience
- Mobile study reveals F2P gender preferences: FPS titles 90% male, hidden object 90% female, says DeltaDNA
- Lessons from the PC video game industry: The future of media is here — it’s just not evenly distributed
- From Cartridge To Club: A Look At The Labels That Recontextualise Video Game Music
- Research: professional game critics more respected by older consumers
- “Gap between console and mobile is not as big as it seems” – Newzoo
- Why these comedians can’t stop playing the worst game in history: Members of the sketch comedy group Loading Ready Run tell CNET about their strange journey for charity, driving from Phoenix to Las Vegas and back again (and again and again) in the game Desert Bus.
DIGITAL
- Anonymous Vs. The Islamic State: For nearly a year, a war has been unfolding in strange corners of the Internet. But can a bunch of hackers really take on the world’s deadliest jihadi group?
- Post arguing for separation of church and state gets pulled by Facebook: Moderators for the site seem to either intervene too much or not enough.
- FCC chairman suggests expanded wiretap laws in response to the Paris attacks
- Metadata Surveillance Didn’t Stop the Paris Attacks: And yet intelligence officials and politicians are now saying it could have. They’re wrong.
- After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
- Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism (NY Times Editorial Board)
- NY Times Gets It Right: Officials Calling For More Surveillance Are Proven Liars; Don’t Listen To Them
- Edward Snowden Explains How To Reclaim Your Privacy
- No one has beat the government in court on spying
- Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users?
- Tor Project Claims FBI Paid Carnegie Mellon $1 Million To Deanonymize Tor Users
- Tor Says Feds Paid Carnegie Mellon $1M to Help Unmask Users
- Academics ‘Livid,’ ‘Concerned’ Over Allegations that CMU Helped FBI Attack Tor
- FBI: “The allegation that we paid CMU $1M to hack into Tor is inaccurate” – Revelation raises more questions than it answers, Carnegie Mellon still silent.
- Why the attack on Tor matters – Op-ed: Comp sci researchers have a blind spot to ethical issues in their field.
- Why the G20’s new “anti-hacking” agreement is pointless: Members claim to protect against “unlawful and arbitrary interference of privacy.”
- Not the way the datr cookie crumbles. Belgian courts on soggy jurisdictional grounds in Facebook privacy ruling.
- Microsoft building data centers in Germany that US government can’t touch: Microsoft will then hand the keys over to a local “data trustee.”
- Why Microsoft’s ‘Data Trustee’ Model is a Potential Game-changer in the Privacy War
- Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC: Privacy advocates warn feds about surreptitious cross-device tracking.
- Despite Aereo Supreme Court Ruling, TV Cloud Service CloudAntenna Insists It’s On Solid Legal Ground
- Here’s a Spy Firm’s Price List for Secret Hacker Techniques
- Password-pilfering app exposes weakness in iOS and Android vetting process: Vetting process for both App Store and Google Play failed to spot suspicious app.
- This startup makes it easy for anyone to launch their own streaming TV service: Will the future see a million tiny Netflixes bloom?
- FCC Refuses To Force Websites To Adhere To ‘Do Not Track,’ And That’s A Good Thing
- Time Warner Promises To Adapt To Cord Cutting With Fewer TV Ads, Gets Punished By Wall Street For It
- Comcast sent collection agencies after customer who paid all his bills: And it took 18 months to fix Comcast’s mistake.
- Quebec Bets on Internet Blocking: New Bill Mandates ISP Blocking of Gambling Websites (Michael Geist)
- No Liability for Linking to Defamatory Content–Life Designs Ranch v. Sommer (Eric Goldman)
- Ontario Passes Law Targeting Bogus Defamation Lawsuits
- The Ethics of Virtual Reality Storytelling
- The Cost of Canadian Copyright Term Extension Capitulation in the TPP – Estimates Based Upon New Zealand Study (Howard Knopf)
- Head Of House Judiciary Committee Dines With MPAA, Joins Their Fundraiser, Following LA Copyright Hearing
- TPP treaty: changes to Canadian copyright and trade secret laws
- FilmOn Loses A Second Case, Meaning That Supreme Court May Get A Second Shot At Aereo Decision
- Judge: Internet broadcaster FilmOn isn’t a cable system – Win in LA, lose in DC: High court may have to reconsider half-baked Aereo opinion.
- Leval On Fair Use And Google Books: A Sketch Of A Story
- Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’: A new report suggests that the marriage of AI and robotics could replace so many jobs that the era of mass employment could come to an end
- New Yahoo survey shows blacks, Hispanics see tech as a more positive force in politics than whites do
- Hackathons Have a Gender Problem: And they might explain why it’s so difficult to attract women to work in cybersecurity.
- On Gawker’s Problem With Women: A former staff writer describes how a media company founded on whistleblowing and radical transparency failed its female employees.
- Tensorflow And Monetizing Intellectual Property
- Comprehensive crowdfunding rules published in final form
- The new kings of YouTube botting
- AS Roma, Maker team up for online
- Failed Windows 3.1 system blamed for shutting down Paris airport: And the people who understand the old operating system are all retiring.
- Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s Then Totally Blew It
- Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold Plan For The Future Of Facebook: Facebook is firing on all cylinders. Now Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the decade ahead, from AI to VR to drones.
- I Don’t Want My MTV
- Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • October 2015
- The Doomsday Invention: Will artificial intelligence bring us utopia or destruction?
CREATIVITY
- The Paris Court of Appeals Gives Freedom of Expression the Ax in Favor of Droit Moral
- Judge throws out $42 million copyright case against Taylor Swift, quotes Swift hits in lawsuit dismissal
- Charity claims it now owns lucrative “Happy Birthday” copyright: The most valuable “orphan work” has attracted a new claimant.
- Anne Frank foundation moves to keep famous diary copyrighted for 35 more years: Group says Otto Frank was a “co-author,” throwing a wrench into online projects.
- Anne Frank And The Lasting Legacy Of The Public Domain
- How Disney Is Making Sure You’ll Never Be Able to Escape Star Wars
- Did The Jian Ghomeshi Allegations Teach Us Anything?: It’s been a year since the allegations against the former Q host were made public. Plenty of us thought it was a watershed moment, but when it comes to assault and violence against women, can anything be?
jon
Class 9 Guest Speaker: Jennifer Kelly
We are particularly privileged this coming week to have as our guest Jennifer Lloyd Kelly. Ms. Kelly is IMHO the leading video game law litigator in the world. She is (for the third time) making the trek from San Francisco where she practices at Fenwick & West LLP.
Jennifer’s bio on Fenwick’s website says it all:
“Jennifer Lloyd Kelly focuses her practice on commercial and intellectual property litigation and counseling, with a particular emphasis on copyright, trademark, right of publicity, trade secret, and false advertising disputes for technology companies, and particularly companies in the gaming industry. She is one of the foremost authorities on intellectual property issues pertinent to video games/mobile apps. The Daily Journal named Jennifer as one of the “Top Intellectual Property Attorneys” in California in both 2014 and 2015 and one of the “Top Entertainment Lawyers” in California in 2015, a list that honors the top 50 litigators and dealmakers who are reshaping the movie, music, and game businesses. In 2015, The Legal 500 recognized her as a leading copyright attorney. Also in 2015, Jennifer was named to the San Francisco Business Times’ list of the Most Influential Women in the Bay Area, a list that honors outstanding leaders and role models across a broad range of industries.
Jennifer has extensive experience handling disputes at all stages and prides herself in winning or resolving cases early. One notable example was her victory for Capcom in Capcom v. MKR, 2008 WL 4661479 (N.D. Cal. 2008) wherein she obtained a dismissal with prejudice, on an initial motion to dismiss, of copyright and trademark counterclaims asserted against Capcom in connection with its zombie-themed video game, Dead Rising (which paved the way for Capcom to release Dead Rising 2). Jennifer’s IP counseling practice includes advising game industry clients during the product development phase, providing advice about how to design games/apps to avoid claims for copyright infringement or violations of other intellectual property rights.
Jennifer regularly authors articles and lectures on intellectual property issues and disputes involving video games and mobile apps, including at the Gamer Technology Law Conference sponsored by Law Seminars International and the Game Business and Legal Affairs Conference sponsored by the Video Game Bar Association. She also guest lectures at courses on video game law at the University of British Columbia Law School and Berkeley Law, and provided legal commentary in a documentary film published on Polygon about game cloning called Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing.
Jennifer has also authored amicus briefs on matters within her expertise in a number of high profile litigations, including MGM v. Grokster, one of the most significant copyright cases in decades, and In re: National Security Agency Telecommunications Records Litigation, a consolidation of cases asserting privacy and related claims against the major telecommunications carriers and federal government relating to their unauthorized surveillance of domestic communications.
While in law school, Jennifer served as an extern to the Honorable Vaughn R. Walker in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. During college, she worked as a research analyst at the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in Sacramento, California and completed an internship at the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.”
jon
UNESCO Convention Roundtable Video & Slides
For the sake of completeness here is video of my short presentation on “Relevance for Creative Digitization & the Internet” at the “Roundtable on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions – Impacts and Implications of the UNESCO Convention Ten Years After and Ten Years Ahead: The View From BC” as well as the related slides, the explanatory poster for the event and . Although the conference took place at Simon Fraser University on February 25, 2015, the video has only been posted much more recently.
Of relevance to themes of the course are the tensions existing between cultural protections and the digital age.
jon
Pitblado Lectures Talk
On Friday November 6, 2015 I was honoured to be invited to be on a panel and give a talk at the Pitblado Lectures in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This 55th edition of the Pitblado Lectures was put on by the Law Society of Manitoba, The Manitoba Bar Association, and The University of Manitoba Faculty of Law (http://www.pitbladolectures.com/). This years theme was “From Blackacre to Blackberry: Redefining Property and Ownership”.
Attached are a set of post-final slides from my presentation as well as a short written piece. Thanks to Professors Doug Harris and Graham Reynolds of the Allard School of Law @UBC and Professor Katie Sykes of the TRU Faculty of Law for their comments on a draft of the latter.
Both the slides and the short writing take on the utility of defining virtual goods as property, particularly in a “Post I.P.” world effectively ruled by contracts. The slides also go on to explore the contradictions between patent law and copyright law which seem to favour innovators over creators for (IMHO) no particular or particularly good reason. Much of what you will see is consistent with things we have talked about in class but their recasting may prove useful to you in some way.
jon