Posts

GAMES

1. Nintendo asks GitHub to make Javascript-based Game Boy emulator disappear: More than 20 games— Pokémon Silver and Gold included—were formerly available.

2. Randy Pitchford on ‘Aliens Colonial Marines’ lawsuit: ‘a huge waste of time’

3. Multiple Epic Games forums suffer security breach

4. Time study: boys think women are over-sexualised in games

5. Tale of Tales takes aim at game industry’s support of violent content

6. Konami removes ‘ Kojima’ branding from ‘Metal Gear Solid V’ cover art

7. Ubisoft selling twice as many games on PS4 as on Xbox One: Xbox One games only selling at the same rate as last-gen Xbox 360 and PS3.

8. If consoles can’t crack China, their future is limited

9. iOS game revenues show top 20 dominate – Newzoo

10. “It’s down to having to be in the top 10 to actually turn a profit”

11. Capcom signs first-ever 3D printing deal for ‘Street Fighter V’

12. Microsoft: First version of HoloLens won’t be for games

13. EA offers game streaming through Comcast

14. Games deals fell 89% in first half of 2015 – Digi-Capital

15. The UK National Videogame Arcade is the inspirational mecca that gaming needs: More interactive installation than arcade, the NVA shows you what makes games tick.

16. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has died at age 55

+ Obituary: Satoru Iwata

DIGITAL

1. Right to be forgotten: Supreme Court of British Columbia denies injunction to compel a search engine to remove search results worldwide Niemela v. Malamas, 2015 BCSC 2014 

2. British Columbia Court of Appeal orders Google to remove search results worldwide

3. ACLU to appellate court: Please halt NSA’s resumed bulk data collection

4. China’s new Internet law introduces stricter censorship, surveillance powers

+ How China Tamed The Country’s Top Bloggers, And Took Back The Net

5. Putin Aide, Apparently Non-Ironically, Gives Facebook A Lecture On Free Speech

6. Internet censorship reaching dangerous levels in Turkey

7. Patent troll lawsuits head toward all-time high: Of high-tech patent suits, 90 percent are filed by “non-practicing entities.”

8. Troubling Trademark Ruling Over Amazon’s Internal Search Results

9. Here are EFF’s most influential cases from its first 25 years

10. FTC exploring whether Apple’s 30% cut from music streaming apps is legal

11. Creepy or Cool? Your Phone Knows When You’re Depressed: A new study from Northwestern used an individual’s smartphone habits to predict whether or not the individual was depressed.

12. Panopticon For Sale: Trade between authoritarian regimes and corporations peddling cyber-surveillance systems has all but eradicated notions of privacy.

13. Hacking Team orchestrated brazen BGP hack to hijack IPs it didn’t own

14. The Web We Have to Save: The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

15. EU Parliament Rejects Bad Proposals On Copyright Over Outdoor Photography And Links

+ EU parliament defends Freedom of Panorama & calls for copyright reform

16. Canada Completes Ratification of Convention on Cybercrime

17. Conservative MP says Bill C-51 reflects the teachings of Jesus

18. Ellen Pao steps down as reddit CEO: Exit comes one week after massive user backlash against site management.

+ Reddit’s secrets are being leaked by the company’s former CEO

19. reddit loses another prominent female employee as chief engineer quits

20. Canada’s Thriving Tech Sector: By The Numbers

21. Apple is China’s top brand device – Newzoo

22. Nobody can link to this article: considering the legal issues involved in the Pan Am games website’s terms of use prohibition on linking without permission

23. Maybe passwords on sticky notes are the way to go?

24. The HoloLens’ limited field of view doesn’t matter, and here’s why

25. Virtual reality creates potentially real legal issues

26. Intel confirms tick-tock-shattering Kaby Lake processor as Moore’s Law falters 

CREATIVITY

1. Judge Rejects New “Blurred Lines” Trial, Trims Damages to $5.3 Million

2. U.S. museums and Looted art—is it whether you win or how you play?

3. Federal court upholds cancellation of REDSKINS trademark registration

4. Europe Frees Zorro From Trademark Restrictions

5. Why give away your work for free?: What do acclaimed authors Cory Doctorow, Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Hugh Howey all have in common? They give away their best work — for free.

6. What Is Canada’s International Copyright Policy?

7. Chain, Chest, Curse: Combating Book Theft In Medieval Times

jon

GAMES

1. Report: Apple reinstating historical war games on Apple App Store that use confederate flag

2. Australia sees surge in banned games

3. Parents of rampage killer Elliot Rodger sued by one of his victims

4. A Brief History Of Gay Marriage In Video Games

5. Cliff Bleszinski makes a business case for diversity

6. France reforms cultural tax breaks for games

7. Batman: Arkham Knight PC sales suspended

8. Destiny’s business model leaves Bungie walking on eggshells

9. Fallout Shelter was a top five earner in 37 countries

10. Sony claims up to 90% market share in Europe

11. How Sony Won Call of Duty DLC Exclusivity Away From Microsoft

12. Sony launches a crowdfunding platform for internal projects

13. Suzuki: Sony won’t get “a cent” of Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter cash

14. Minecraft just hit 20 million sales on PC

+ Microsoft wants to see Minecraft in the classroom

15. Industry’s days of stability are over – Square Enix CEO

16. Final Fantasy VII remake director didn’t realise he’d got the job

17. Demi Lovato latest star to sign game deal

18. Miyamoto: VR isn’t a good fit for Nintendo’s philosophy

19. How Tetris Can Prevent PTSD: Playing The Game While The Memories Are Still Forming Can Create A “Cognitive Blockade.”

20. The fear you experience playing video games is real, and you enjoy it, IU study finds

21. Why Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

22. Single Player Game: An essay retrospective of computer games, esports, and DotA.

DIGITAL

1. Digital Privacy Act: mandatory breach notification and other important changes to Canadian privacy law

2. Sony data breach suit to proceed

3. The Pope, Lonely on the Internet: Francis says the Internet is undermining people’s relationships, and the media isn’t helping.

4. The psychology of emojis

5. Professor Says Facebook Can Help Informal Learning

CREATIVITY

1. Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling

jon

GAMES

1. YouTube Announces YouTube Gaming, A Standalone App To Compete With Twitch

2. Shenmue 3 Raises More Than $1M On Kickstarter In Less Than Three Hours

3. Winko Games raises $1.4 million for core mobile title

4. €2m for eSports startup Dojo Madness

5. No Man’s Sky E3 2015 Gameplay Shows Universe-Sized Sandbox

6. Arc System Works buys Double Dragon rights

7. Xbox One to be Backward Compatible with Xbox 360 Games, Microsoft Reveals at E3 2015

8. 3DS tops 15 million sold in US

9. EA: “We have to start building new IP that might feel like a big risk today”

10. EA VP: “It’s not worth paying for Paris Hilton”

11. Minecraft “Playdate”

12. Amazon embraces “long-form” mobile gaming 

DIGITAL

1. B.C. Court of Appeal decision prohibits Google from delivering offending search results

+ BC Court of Appeals affirms worldwide injunction against search engine

+ Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Google Inc., 2015 BCCA 265 (CanLII)

2. Russian Roulette and the Right to be Forgotten: The newest Russian proposal to restrict free speech on the internet

3. Entrepreneurs And Investors In Turkey Emboldened By Election Results

4. USA Freedom Act to end NSA bulk data collection

+ Thought bulk data collection was gone? Think again

5. What The U.K. Surveillance Powers Review Says On Encryption And Hacking

6. An Online Refuge for Venezuela’s Intellectuals

7. Stephen Witt: ‘Music piracy is illegal – but morally, is it wrong?’ – Kitty Empire talks to Stephen Witt about his eagerly awaited book charting the rise of the MP3 file, the online pirates who exploited it and the record industry that ignored its cultural impact until it was far too late

8. Juror ruling prompts call to look at Criminal Code

9. Reddit Bans Five Harassing Subreddits, Its Trolls Respond Exactly As You’d Expect

10. Facebook Now Cares About How Long You Look At Stuff In Your News Feed

11. The FTC Goes After Its First Failed Crowdfunding Campaign

12. The FCC will now take your net neutrality complaints: File complaint on FCC.gov, and your ISP has to respond within 30 days.

13. YouTube trains its sights on traditional TV: ‘It’s a no-growth business’

14. Periscope, Piracy, Profit? What the future holds for live-streaming apps: An intellectual property attorney and video streaming executive discuss the possible outcomes of this new form of media infringement.

15. AMC’s streaming move sends shudders through cable but will the bubble burst?: As AMC tests Shudder, its horror-only streaming service, Brian Moylan sees the future less in a proliferation of niche subscriptions than in mergers

16. Will Bitcoin Finally Bring Down The House Of Medici?

17. Will Shazam Break the Video-Recognition Logjam?

18. Canadian Competition Bureau issues draft update of Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines

19. This Is How Men and Women Handle Email Differently

20. Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy: New technologies offer important tools for empowerment — yet democracy is stagnating. What’s up?

CREATIVITY

1. Numaish Karachi – can art installations change this violent megacity’s image?: Pakistan’s largest city has suffered 13,500 killings in the past five years – a level of violence that has severely restricted the use of its public spaces. So a group of local residents decided it was time to reclaim them for the people of Karachi

2. Are We All Mistuning Our Instruments, and Can We Blame the Nazis?: A small cadre of fanatics insists music would sound better if instruments were tuned differently.

3. PC Music And The Limitations Of Parody

4. Divining the Future of Television

5. Why a groovy 1970s sex ed comic book sparked lawsuits and loathing

jon

GAMES

1. Rockstar sues BBC

+ Take-Two sues BBC over ‘Grand Theft Auto’ movie

2. These two Diablo III players stole virtual armor and gold — and got prosecuted IRL

3. ‘League of Legends’ player admits swatting and stalking multiple victims in the U.S. and Canada

+ 17-year-old pleads guilty to swatting: British Columbian admits to 23 offences, harassment mostly aimed at young women who played League of Legends

4. Wii blamed for RV Fire in Colorado Springs

5. Dodgy Elder Scrolls Online keys deactivated from today

6. Desura addresses delays in payments to developers

7. GTA Player Says He Hired Cheater To Rescue Him From…Another Cheater

8. BioWare Writer Talks Gay Romances and Sexual Diversity in Gaming: “Ultimately, it hasn’t really affected our sales insofar as we can tell.”

9. Multiplayer video games may improve cooperation, mitigate aggression: Research suggests cooperative gamers play nicer, even when the game is violent.

10. F2P Comes of Age: How to make money without being ‘evil’

11. Zynga’s old sports team hired by FanDuel – Report

12. Double Fine regains Iron Brigade publishing rights

13. How Sony Or Microsoft Could Use Subscription To Win Video Games

14. Kickstarter, or, Every Publisher’s New Greenlight Process

15. The First First-Person Shooter

16. This Is What Pac-Man‘s Creator Thinks 35 Years Later

17. My son has $23.6 billion. How is yours doing?

DIGITAL

18. The Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2015 Report

19. »Intellectual property rights are not human rights«, UN special rapporteur tells European Parliament

20. Garcia v. Google reversed; many sigh in relief (Rebecca Tushnet)

21. The NSA tried to use app stores to send malware to targets

22. The End of Privacy

23. Young Saudis, Bound by Conservative Strictures, Find Freedom on Their Phones

24. Anti-NSA Pranksters Planted Tape Recorders Across New York and Published Your Conversations

25. Which Students Get to Have Privacy?: There’s a fresh push to protect student data. But the people who need the most protection are the ones being left behind. (danah boyd)

26. If You Know About It, You’re the Publisher – Website Operator Liability for Defamation (Bob Tarantino)

27. This Is What It’s Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn’t Exist: Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud – a multiyear hoax that depended on stealing someone else’s life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.

28. Reddit CEO: Getting Rid of Salary Negotiations Helps Everyone, Not Just Women -Ellen Pao says her fight against gender discrimination in Silicon Valley isn’t over.

29. What If Facebook Actually Paid People For Content?

30. Lawyers circling lawyers in frenzied Facebook ownership flap: Attorneys who assisted fugitive’s claim to Facebook are fighting Zuckerberg back.

31. Trivial thoughts on substantial parts (Bob Tarantino)

32. Why It’s Time to Stop Hating Spotify

33. Robot Journalism: Algorithms are More of a Tool than a Threat

34. Will Periscope and Other Live-Streaming Apps Kill the Cable TV Star?

+ Fan streaming apps have sports world debating TV rights

35. David Letterman and the long, Internet-enabled decline of the nightly talk show

36. More Provinces Crowd into Crowdfunding, but Not Yet Ontario or Alberta

37. This Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Has a Few Concerns

38. Hacking Our Moral Compass

39. How The Raspberry Pi Sparked A Maker Revolution

40. What’s Hot in the Art World? Algorithms: Admirers hold on to computerized formulas; paying $2,500 for a ‘qrpff’ necktie 

CREATIVITY

41. Brands, The New Merchants of Cool: What happens when corporations replace major labels as patrons of independent music?

42. Creative Thinking Can Inspire Unethical Behavior

43. Pop Music Is More About Advertising Now Than Before — And Nobody Realizes It

44. 7 Deadly Sins: Where Hollywood Is Wrong About The Future Of TV

45. Jorge Ramos: Of journalists and dinosaurs

46. How Indie Rock Changed the World: The influence of geeks with guitars on culture, from DIY to social media

jon

GAMES

1. Duke Nukem rights suit settled

+ Duke Nukem lawsuit ends with settlement, possible license transfer: Screenshot confirms that embroiled Mass Destruction game reborn as Bombshell.

2. ASA spanks Sony and GAME over 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 competition

3. Daybreak Game Company bans nearly 25K ‘H1Z1’ players for cheating and hacking

+ Daybreak Game Company on H1Z1 banning blitz

4. Microsoft severely punishes testers who leaked ‘Gears of War’ remake info, video

+ Microsoft disables online capabilities for Gears leakers

+ Xbox One still suffers from Microsoft’s need for control

5. YouTube Reinstates Metal Gear Video Konami Took Down, Warns Konami Not To Be Jerks

6. AMD says Nvidia’s GameWorks “completely sabotaged” Witcher 3 performance: There are plenty of performance issues in The Witcher 3, but who’s to blame?

7. Keen offers $100k for Space Engineers mods: Czech studio also makes source code available to the public as an incentive to modders

8. ‘World of Warcraft’ bot maker admits defeat

9. 100,000 WoW players banned for using bots – report

10. Bethesda clarifies: ‘The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited ‘ does not use one-time activation code

11. The Witcher 3 Downgrade Controversy Sucks

12. Del Toro reacts to Silent Hills cancellation

13. GamerGate critic posts death threat voicemail, requests subpoena: Wu complains about “radio silence,” wants “to get anyone to bring a case to trial.”

14. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo: ‘Boys risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin’

15. Inside The Research That Could Change The Perception Of Kids, Gaming And Gender

16. Why Indie Video Games Can Be Great For Kids

17. Gaming cooperatively makes you more sociable, say scientists

18. Let Your Children Play Video Games, Mark Zuckerberg Says: “I definitely wouldn’t have gotten into programming if I hadn’t played games.”

19. How Violence is Perceived in Game Design

20. Barriers breaking down for disabled videogamers

21. When Art Targets Marginalized People

22. Games poised to outstrip broadcast TV revenues, SuperData finds

23. Global games market at $74.2 billion annually – Superdata

24. Nevada approves Call of Duty-for-cash concept

25. Analysis: GTA V Live Viewership on Twitch

26. E-Sports, Real Sports?

27. Here’s the insane training schedule of a 20-something professional gamer

28. eSports an advertising goldmine

29. eSports is now a $612 million business – Superdata

30. Why Blizzard is committed to Heroes of the Storm’s esports future

31. Toy Story: Another Fad or Future of Videogames?: ‘Skylanders’ and ‘Infinity’ transport figurines into virtual worlds; now Lego wants to cash in

+ Toys-to-life category primed for more growth – NPD

32. Analysts turn against Candy Crush maker King Digital: ‘3 out of 5 launches will be a commercial failure’

+ Candy Crush Saga maker King reports strong Q1 with $569M in adjusted revenue and 61 cents-a-share profit

33. Unity chief John Riccitiello on clash of big ideas: ‘Sony nailed it, and they deserve the victory’

34. Zynga cuts 18% of staff

35. Xbox One gets a price cut in China and Japan

36. Tencent clears $1.1bn profit for Q1

37. CD Projekt accused of freezing out rival retailers on The Witcher 3

38. GTA V ships 52m as Take-Two’s annual revenue dips to $1.1 billion

39. Where in the world did blockbuster educational games go?

40. Xbox One Over-The-Air TV Tuner Now Available

41. The Hopes And Fears Of Using A Videogame As An Online Confession Booth

42. “The old publishing model has died”

43. The Horrible World Of Video Game Crunch

44. ‘GameSpot Game Guide’ and ‘Delta Force Extreme 2 Videogame Guide’ found in Osama bin Laden’s Compound

45. A Red Flag for Greenlight: Valve was laudably quick to deal with homophobia, but Greenlight is still failing devs and consumers alike

46. Microsoft celebrates 25 years of wasting time at work with Solitaire tournament

47. Reality Check: The real origin of GamerGate — a different GamerGate

48. Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back – The video game Eve Online is one of Iceland’s biggest exports and has become the world’s largest living work of science fiction. While rival games have come and gone, it has survived – thanks to a unique experiment in democracy

49. Behind the indie video game sensation that caught NASA’s attention

50. World Without End: Creating a full-scale digital cosmos.

51. Deconstructing Videogames For The Purpose Of Art

DIGITAL

52. The info moralist: Persecuted little guy, or powerful revolutionary – what sort of wunderkind was Aaron Swartz?

53. Did judge who ruled NSA phone dragnet illegal call Snowden a whistleblower?: “Secretive bureaucratic agencies… benefit from a breath of fresh air,” judge says.

54. The Anxiety of Being Watched by Machines: There’s an App for That

55. Why Google and other tech giants are creating tools for political dissidents: After taking fire for caving to repressive regimes on data privacy, can the tech industry rehabilitate its reputation?

56. Who The Smartphone Revolution Left Behind

57. Verizon-AOL, Facebook Instant Articles, And The Future Of Digital Advertising

58. Counterpoint: Bring telecom into the Internet age (Timothy Denton)

59. Order restored—copyright claim to individual performance in “Innocence of Muslims” fails 

+ Appeals Court Gets It Right The Second Time: Actress Had No Copyright Interest In ‘Innocence Of Muslims’

+ I didn’t say that – the ability of actors to control their performances under Canadian copyright law (Bob Tarantino)

+ 9th Circuit Judge Slams His Colleagues For First Amendment Failings In Waiting So Long To Fix Cindy Garcia Ruling

+ Actor did not have copyright interest in Mohammed film, Ninth Circuit rules 

+ Full 9th Circuit nixes controversial copyright decision 

+ Google v Garcia 9th Circuit en banc decision

60. Another copyright absurdity: using film screenshots

61. CMRRA Confirms Denial of Licences for Public Domain Recordings (Michael Geist)

62. Appeals Court chops Apple’s 2012 $930 million patent case award nearly in half

63. Rightscorp loses more cash than ever, tells investors all is well: Sending thousands of alleged pirates a bill for $20 per song isn’t working out.

64. Canadian Piracy Rates Plummet as Industry Points to Effectiveness of Copyright Notice-and-Notice System (Michael Geist)

65. While Other Countries Debate Copyright Terms, Canada Just Takes Record Labels’ Word That It Needs To Increase

66. Open Letter to Google From 80 Internet Scholars: Release RTBF Compliance Data

+ Call For Google To Show Its Right To Be Forgotten Workings

67. The philosophy of privacy: why surveillance reduces us to objects

68. South Korea’s New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware On Teens’ Smartphones

69. Keurig didn’t learn a damned thing about DRM: You just don’t know what’s best for you

70. Why Patents And Innovation No Longer Mix

71. ISPs really don’t want to follow new customer data privacy rules: Lawsuit to overturn net neutrality also complains about privacy requirements.

72. Secret Information Undermines the Legitimacy of CRTC Decisions

73. RIP AOL: Where the Net Was Born for Many

74. To Take On HBO And Netflix, YouTube Had To Rewire Itself

75. Periscope ushers in wild-west era for sports broadcasting

76. Why publishers had to partner with Facebook

77. More media companies need to think of themselves the way Quartz does

78. The New York Times And Its Faustian Facebook Pact

79. Inside ViralNova, the Most Cynical, Amazing, Horrific, and Ingenious Media Company in New York

80. Facebook and the Illusion of Safety: After the massive earthquake in Nepal, the social network implemented a post-disaster check-in button. It may be reassuring, but it isn’t necessarily accurate.

81. Spotify Inks Deal With Starbucks Tasking Customers With Picking In-Store Music

82. After years of false starts, Apple is finally poised to kill Spotify and take over streaming music. There’s just one catch…

83. Snapchat is going to be huge in 2016 — and regulators have no idea how to handle it

84. Read the NDA a Comcast customer was told to sign to get a $600 refund: Comcast: Here’s your money—please don’t tell anyone.

85. How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy

86. The Ultimate Interface: Your Brain

87. How Old Do I Look Microsoft website raises privacy concerns: Microsoft says it won’t keep your photos, even though users agree to allow that

88. How Blockchain Tech is Inspiring the Art World

89. Truth in Digital Advertising: As we consume more and more of our media on mobile devices, advertisers are finding sneakier ways to deliver their messages

90. “Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds: Consumers lost money to credit card debt reduction scam

91. Did this cybersecurity firm use a data breach for extortion?: A whistleblower claims his company fabricated evidence in retaliation for a lost contract

92. The Computers Are Listening: How The NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

93. Listicles, aggregation, and content gone viral: How 1800s newspapers prefigured today’s Internet – “Many 19th-century newspapers are comprised primarily of content from other newspapers.”

94. Clinkle Implodes As Employees Quit In Protest Of CEO

95. Inside Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s radical management experiment that prompted 14% of employees to quit

96. Sorry Milan, only one fashion week boasts drone models and fiber optic dresses

97. Copyright for Literate Robots (James Grimmelmann)

98. When Bots Collude

99. Why you should confront bigots and racists on Facebook

100. Bob Bowman, CEO Of MLB Advanced Media, On Deciding To Build A Streaming Video Service In 2002

101. The Debacle of Google Glass

CREATIVITY

102. Appeals Court Rightly Overturns NAACP’s Successful Attempt To Censor Speech Via Trademark Law

103. “Copyright trolling” movie studio gets hit with Godzilla-sized lawsuit: Voltage Pictures sued thousands for torrenting. Now, it’s the alleged infringer.

104. Is the Long War Between American Radio and the Record Business About to End?

105. When metrics drive newsroom culture

106. How Hollywood stays white and male

107. How the cable industry became a monopoly

108. The TV Industry’s Lack of Imagination

109. How the biggest hit in TV history predicted the death of TV

110. Why the Comic Book Store Just Won’t Die

111. Blood, sweat and DVDs: owning a video store in the age of Netflix

112. The First Kiss in Cinema: How Thomas Edison Scandalized the World in 1896

113. The State of Music Distribution in China

114. J.J. Abrams on the Secret Movie References He Snuck into Star Wars: The Force Awakens

jon