Posts

GAMES

1. Inside Konami: public shaming, tyrannical management and punitive reassignment

+ Report: Konami’s treatment of employees called into question

2. ‘League of Legends’ hero killed and unplayable

3. ‘Resident Evil 2’ fan remake gets Capcom’s attention

4. Xbox One: home of the N64 classics?

5. ‘War Thunder’ producer takes YouTube channel hostage with DMCA takedowns

6. ‘Necromancer’ remains in limbo 15 months after successful crowd-funding campaign

7. Sony: 25.3 million PS4s shipped worldwide to-date

+ Analysis: Sony pushes past 50 percent of the worldwide console market – And Xbox One is bringing in much less revenue for at least one major publisher.

8. Activision Blizzard results up even as WoW subs plummet

9. Disney’s interactive revenue falls by $58m

10. HTC invests $10 million in VR dev community

11. EA beats guidance but sales slip

12. Marvel: Contest of Champions tops $100 million revenue

13. Capcom’s arcade business drives strong Q1: Resident Evil 6 machine proves popular, but mobile revenues fall by more than 50 per cent

14. The $18 million Dota 2 International 2015 marks the end of an era

15. Report: The International halted by DDoS attack

16. The business of eSports in numbers

17. The Newest Job in Sports: Videogame Coach

18. Destiny Players Average 100 Hours of Gameplay Each

19. Evolution’s DriveClub passes 2m sales

20. “AR will be the biggest technological revolution in our lifetimes”

21. Racism and anti-war sentiment serve as the backdrop for ‘Mafia III’

22. How Electronic Arts Lost Its Soul: In 1982, Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts on the principle that the makers of video games ought to be treated like creative superstars. Within a few years, the company entirely abandoned that principle.

23. Ronda Rousey Loves Pokemon

24. Leland Yee associate throws him under the bus in federal racketeering case

DIGITAL

1. The Gawker Controversy + Aftermath

2. Facebook’s legal team goes after defunct Yale class project: Whatsherface-book, a quiz about “friending randos,” becomes a trademark target.

3. Access Copyright, Education, PWC: With due respect to PricewaterhouseCoopers

4. New study shows Spain’s “Google tax” has been a disaster for publishers

5. Judge awards WordPress owner damages in false DMCA takedown case 

6. 9th Circuit Rejects VPPA Claims Against Netflix For Intra-Household Disclosures

+ Appeals Court Says Netflix Doesn’t Violate Privacy By Displaying Viewing History To Anyone Using That Account

7. Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing (EFF)

8. Microsoft Launches Special ‘Scott McNealy’ Edition Of Windows

9. Second Circuit: Facebook shareholders lack standing for derivative suits challenging pre-IPO statements

10. Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video: Facebook says it’s now streaming more video than YouTube. To be able to make that claim, all they had to do was cheat, lie, and steal.

11. Mark Zuckerberg’s Personal News Shows Why Privacy is the True Bedrock of an “Open and Connected World” (Zeynep Tufekci)

12. Facebook kills proposed user data policy after game and app publishers panicked

13. Inside the failure of Google+, a very expensive attempt to unseat Facebook

14. The Amazonization of Everything: Amazon’s success lies in worker exploitation and intrusions into consumers’ private lives.

15. NSA report shows China hacked 600+ US targets over 5 years

16. China to set up government censorship offices inside Internet companies: How do you catch “criminal behaviour” as early as possible? China has the answer.

17. Mississippi’s All Up in Your Google Activity (ACLU)

18. Report: Russian agency launches probe against same-sex kiss, family emoji – Asks pro-government youth activism group to snitch on fellow Facebook users.

+ Russia could ban same-sex emoji under ‘gay propaganda’ laws

19. Facing Islamic State threat, Iraq digitizes national library

20. Google to France: We Won’t Forget It For You Wholesale

21. ISPs argue that they are ‘information services,’ not ‘telecommunication services’ in federal court

22. UK peer calls for universal Internet delete button, may also want unicorns

23. Daily Dot Latest To ‘Keep Conversation Moving Forward’ By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All

24. FCC has already gotten 2,000 “net neutrality” complaints

25. Windows 10 upgrade resets your default browser to Edge; Mozilla is very unhappy

26. From Gamergate to Cecil the lion: internet mob justice is out of control

27. Robot depending on kindness of strangers meets its demise in Philadelphia: HitchBOT interacted with humans through speech, tested “whether robots could trust” us.

28. Self-Defense Against Robots and Drones (Froomkin & Colangelo)

29. Major League Baseball just signed a huge deal to stream NHL content: The $600 million deal will make MLB Advanced Media even bigger.

30. GitHub raises $250 million at $2 billion valuation

31. Thousands of Exhausted Things, or why we dedicated MoMA’s collection data to the public domain

32. Copying And Sharing Was Always A Natural Right; Restricting Copying Never Was

33. Amazon’s Policies Rile Self-Published Authors

34. Do you date people who watch Netflix?

CREATIVITY

1. Freedom Of The Press Foundation Sues DOJ Over Its Secret Rules For Spying On Journalists

2. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter explains why he recently resigned from the Toronto Star

3. And Now Here Comes Every Other Comic Convention With Trademark Apps For The Generic ‘Comic Con’

4. No copyright in individual contributions to a film

5. Did Philadelphia inadvertently step on First Amendment and VARA in painting over Cosby Mural

6. Two Nine-Year-Olds’ Magnificent Open Letter to Disney About Racial and Gender Stereotypes

7.Less Money, Mo’ Music & Lots Of Problems: A Look At The Music Biz

8. Startup Accelerators For The Music Industry Seem To Be Popping Up Everywhere

9. Stakes Is High: Drake Ghostwriting Accusations Matter More Than You Think

+ The Internet Killed Meek Mill, Not Drake: How public shaming turned a pretty average rap battle into an epic one

jon 

GAMES

1. $60 million settlement approved in EA-NCAA athlete suits

2. Nintendo triumphs in handheld patent suit: Deems the case “unnecessary and inefficient,” calls for patent reform in the US

3. Microsoft can’t make Xbox 360 console defect litigation go away: Three years after console’s debut, Microsoft racked up 55,000 scratching complaints.

4. UK agencies CMA and ASA looking into three games over questionable marketing practices

5. Nintendo flip-flops on ‘Super Mario Maker’ hand color

6. Study: Online gaming “losers” are more likely to harass women – Players send more negative comments to female teammates when playing badly.

+ Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour

+ Study Finds That Men Who Attack Women Online Are, Literally, Losers

7. Women in Games conference sets date for September 2

8. FIFA 16 box to feature stars of American, Canadian Women’s National Teams

9. This is exactly how not to run a women’s esports tournament

10. Viewership up for this year’s Evolution Championship Series

11. Study: violent video games cause increased levels of frustration

12. War without tears: The relationship between video games and violence is healthier than we like to think

13. Xfinity Games beta: Surprise, Comcast and EA can’t solve streaming games services

14. Kojima’s name removed from Metal Gear Solid V cover

15. US digital game sales up 18% in June – Report

16. Shenmue 3 breaks Kickstarter video game record

17. Game companies must temper expectations for Chinese market

18. EVO Tournament attracts record viewer numbers

19. Commercial gaming industry takes aim at daily fantasy sports

20. Mobile the new battleground for live streaming

21. Project CARS Wii U version cancelled

22. Beyond Sim City: How Video Games Are Affecting City Planning

23. The Art of Video Game Photography

24. The End Of Videogames

DIGITAL

1. Federal judge gives FilmOn the copyright win Aereo couldn’t get: It’s Big TV’s nightmare: Internet streaming, with a cheap copyright license.

+ Court Surprises Everyone: Says Filmon Streaming Service May Be Able To Get Compulsory License To Stream TV Online

+ Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FilmOn X, LLC

2. Canadian Court Says Google Isn’t A ‘Publisher,’ Not Responsible For Defamatory Content Returned In Search Results

3. Newegg wins TQP patent case after challenging judge over delays

4. High court rules data retention and surveillance legislation unlawful

5. How Instagram closed my account and gave it to a football celebrity: My name is Andrés Iniesta and my only mistake was having the exact name and last name as a famous football player.

6. reddit rolls out new rules, CEO says hiding racist subreddits is better than banning them: With Ellen Pao out and Steve Huffman in, mods and reddit users look for answers.

7. Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet

8. President Putin Signs Russian ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Into Law

9. U.S. Supreme Court addresses criminal liability for Facebook threats 

10. Is there a “constitutional right to informational privacy”?

11. Using Big Data for targeted advertising could violate Canadian privacy law

12. Journalist group and civil liberties association start constitutional challenge to anti-terrorism Bill C-51: Toronto-based organizations file lawsuit against ‘the most dangerous legislation we’ve had in recent Canadian history.’

13. Snowden to the IETF: Please make an internet for users, not the spies

14. Hacking Team built drone-based Wi-Fi hacking hardware

15. Who’s peeking at your personal data?

16. Fiat Chrysler “connected car” bug lets hackers take over Jeep remotely

17. Clickthrough Agreement Upheld–Whitt v. Prosper (Eric Goldman)

18. UK High Court Goes Even Further In Emphasizing That You Cannot Rip Your Own CDs

19. One Direction Offers Remix Competition, Then Sony/Soundcloud Punish The Entrants As Copyright Infringers

20. How Do You Solve A Problem Like Netflix?

21. 2 Gawker Editors Resign Over Article’s Removal

22. No evidence that “personal information was ever transmitted” so Google wins privacy lawsuit! 

23. Cyber-insurance: What you need to know?

24. Blame Society, Not the Screen Time (Danah Boyd)

25. The Pink Ghetto of Social Media: In news organizations, female leaders outnumber men in only one division. What does that mean for the future of women in the newsroom?

26. Organizational Doxing of Ashley Madison (Bruce Schneier)

+ Fairly Random Thoughts on Ashley Madison & the Swiftly Moving Line

27. What claims work when D allegedly drives P down in Google rank through copying?

28. Triple Play: FCC Chairman Endorses AT&T-DirecTV Merger Under Net Neutrality Conditions

29. A compulsory license for internet TV platforms to retransmit broadcast TV? One US District Court considering FilmOnX seems to think so 

30. Enterprise-first gives Hololens the best possible start

31. Apple revenue up 33% year-on-year

32. Do We Need New Laws For Rise Of The Robots?

33. Developing a $10 Digital Textbook: Purdue University is reducing textbook costs with a digital publishing platform that can deliver interactive content to any device.

CREATIVITY

1. Judge says Gaye family can’t get infringing song “Blurred Lines” banned: Heirs will get 50% of profits off the sale of the song in the future.

2. High Court quashes UK’s right to private copy Regulations

3. Is the media becoming a wire service? (Ezra Klein)

4. Charlie Hebdo Bows To Assassins’ Veto, Hecklers’ Veto; Will No Longer Mock Mohammed

5. Slam Dunk in Paris Court for French Sculptor Over Churchill Statue

jon

GAMES

1. Vegas casinos going for video-game gambling

2. Daybreak CEO rages at hacker on Twitter

+ Lizard Squad member ordered to fight against other hackers, gets no jail time for Xbox Live and PSN attacks

3. Square Enix pulls Mac Final Fantasy XIV from sale

+ Square Enix blames OpenGL for Final Fantasy 14 Mac refunds: Publisher Square Enix pulls game from sale and offers refunds.

4. New governance system having a real impact on ‘League of Legends’ community

+ Homophobia, sexism, racism reduced to 2% of League of Legends matches

5. Fallout Shelter shatters the dogma of core gamers hating F2P

6. Funcom reboots LEGO Minifigures Online as pay-to-play

7. European devs are moving from mobile to PC

8. Evolutionary biologist: we play violent games, because sex

9. Inside the world of India’s badass girl gamers

10. Anti-game-violence legislator pleads guilty to racketeering: State Senator Leland Yee faces up to 20 years for bribery, money laundering.

11. Corporate crowdfunding might not be all bad: Sony’s First Flight is a morally uncomfortable development – but could result in better games and products

12. Minecon breaks records with 10,000 attendees

13. Inafune: Kickstarter is “confidence-building” for Japanese devs

14. Reactions to Nintendo’s E3 “not that unfavorable” – Iwata

15. Nintendo’s alleged nationalism and “awful” working conditions killed Wii game

16. We’ve lost the trust of older fans – Sega CEO

17. Anxious Greeks Buy Macs and PlayStations While They Still Can

18. PlayStation Now will give new long tail to industry, says Sony

19. Hear how Steve Ballmer bailed out Xbox after Red Ring of Death

20. 3 video games teach kids on summer vacation about politics

21. PewDiePie responds to “haters” over $7 million YouTube earnings

22. Amazon now lets you create customized 3D printed figures of video game characters

23. Former Valve economist is now a former Greek finance minister too

24. How Video Games Changed Popular Music

DIGITAL

1. Meta-morphosis: tag, you’re it: Federal Court decision gives no copyright or trademark protection to metatags 

2. Appeals judges hear about Prince’s takedown of “Dancing Baby” YouTube vid: Years after Stephanie Lenz uploaded a video to YouTube, precedent will be set.

3. The battle to reform 300-year-old copyright law for the digital age

4. Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

5. Hacking Team gets hacked; invoices suggest spyware sold to repressive govts: invoices purport to show Hacking Team doing business in Sudan and other rogue nations.

6. Secret US court allows resumption of bulk phone metadata spying

7. Quebec’s Website Blocking Plan Gambles With the Open Internet (Michael Geist)

8. The Saudi Cables beyond the Saudi Cables: How to Assess the Impact

+ Should some secrets be exposed? (Bruce Schneier)

9. Appeals court says Apple is liable for e-book price-fixing: Apple lost a price-fixing case, fought the charges, but found no help in higher court.

10. Judge tosses jury’s $533M patent verdict against Apple, orders new trial: Jury may have had a “skewed damages horizon,” judge explains.

11. Will the European Parliament criminalize street photography?

12. DOJ shifts position on web access: stating in court filings that public accommodations have a “pre-existing” obligation to make websites accessible

13. Top five mistakes when drafting website privacy policies

14. A most unpatriotic YouTube hijacking: America the Beautiful

15. As Reddit Burns, Some Hard-Earned Lessons on Building an Open Community

16. Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children

17. The Loud Fight Against Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism

18. Microsoft renames Xbox Music Groove Music, drops Xbox branding from video store: Xbox Music doesn’t require an Xbox. Obvious, right? The renaming may help, but the service still lacks subscribers.

19. ICANN’s Threat To Privacy Is Not Theoretical

20. FCC Chairman lays out schedule for future broadband actions

21. Salon writers and editorial staff demand representation by the News Guild – union organizing in electronic media continues to grow 

22. Why Bitcoin is good for law enforcement 

23. Not-so-guilty pleasure: Viewing cat videos boosts energy and positive emotions

24. Witness ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ Through Google’s Deep Dream: Neural network algorithm makes film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic even more trippier

CREATIVITY

1. Appeals Court Rules Producer, Not Director, Gets Film Copyright

2. The Southern District of New York finds play to be fair use parody of “Three’s Company”

3. Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944)

4. Handbook on laws protecting free expression launched

jon

GAMES

1. Bandai Namco overhauls US executive team

2. Over 12,000 sign petition to cancel Metroid Prime: Federation Force

3. Game-over HTTPS defects in dozens of Android apps expose user passwords

4. Sony’s Yoshida admits he was nervious about a female lead in Horizon

5. HoloLens’ field-of-view may be a problem without a solution

6. Warren Spector on E3: VR is a fad

7. Hitman dev: Season pass “wrong approach” for gamers

8. Nintendo should pull out of E3 entirely

9. It’s time for game financing to catch up with distribution – Marks

10. The average game on Steam sells only 32,000 copies

11. Original vision for Xbox One hasn’t changed – Xbox CMO

12. Bethesda wins E3 coverage race – ICO

13. Unity’s users can now access its internal roadmap

14. Roblox integrates SuperAwesome’s ad platform

15. Unity’s users can now access its internal roadmap

16. Scientists weigh in on the effect of games on players

DIGITAL

1.  B.C. ruling on jurisdiction over Google ‘disastrous’

2. Google calls for anti-Isis push and makes YouTube propaganda pledge: Executives vow video site will not be used as a platform for ‘brutally violent propaganda produced by terrorists’, but argue against blanket censorship

3. The “world wide” web: a recent UK approach to determining copyright jurisdiction

4. BC Privacy Act does not oust Facebook’s forum selection clause: BC Court of Appeal

5. Canada moves forward with mandatory federal security breach notification law 

6. The Internet That Was (and Still Could Be): As corporations like Facebook gain control over more and more online activities, the web’s core values are at stake.

7. Apple Music and the Future of the Music Industry

8. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver takes aim at online harassment

9. Apple Reverses Course, Will Pay Artists During Apple Music Free Trial

10. BitLicense: New York issues licensing and regulatory framework for virtual currencies

11. Senate of Canada releases report on digital currencies

12. California’s Eraser Law: what IP attorneys and owners need to know

13. AT&T to face $100 million FCC fine for throttling unlimited data

14. Microsoft stealthily backs away from free Windows 10 promise: We thought this would happen.

15. Hack and Field: The Cardinals allegedly hacked the Astros. But is it really hacking if you have a password?

16. Internet of Things: continued regulatory focus and consistent themes, but not without discord 

17. Internet of Things, news websites fare poorly in security and privacy review

18. Curation and Algorithms

19. Is the NFL-Yahoo Streaming Deal the Start of a Sports Television Revolution?

CREATIVITY

1. Speaker’s Corner: Surprise copyright changes have no place in omnibus budget bill

2. Creators frustrated with Copyright Office’s outdated technology, procedures (U.S.)

3. Freedom of Panorama is under attack: On 9 July 2015, the European Parliament will vote on whether to abolish our right to freely take and share photographs, videos and drawings of buildings and works of public art.

4. Beastie Boys win sizeable attorney’s fee award from Monster Energy

5. The ‘super powered’ rule of stare decisis defeats Spider Man

+ US Supreme Court decision in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC leaves Brulotte’s Ban on post-expiration royalties intact but confirms how to escape its web

6. Steroid parody strikes out against the Yankees

7. Translating Seinfeld: Translator Sabine Sebastian tried to bring Seinfeld to Germans, yada yada yada, it flopped

jon

GAMES

1. Report: some ‘The Witcher 3’ Xbox One owners can’t play the game at all

2. Dota 2 breaks e-sports prize record with $11.5 million crowdfunded pot

3. Steam refunds: Young Horses and The Indie Stone react

4. Desura to devs: “We are not refusing to pay you”

5. ‘Rock Band 4’ not planned for PC, because piracy

6. XCOM 2 vows all-out support of modding

7. Windward is what happens when Sid Meier says it’s ok to ‘copy’ his game

8. Facebook’s Messenger Platform Gets Its First Game

9. Digital-only games account for 66% of console releases – EEDAR

10. Angry Birds strike Lego deal

11. Project Cars sells one million copies

12. Controversial Magic: The Gathering card sells for $14,900 on eBay, half goes to charity

13. Inside the World’s Biggest ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Tournament: Battling it out in Las Vegas with Tarmogoyf, Vraska the Unseen and more than 11,000 card-carrying members of the Multiverse

14. The real scars of Korean gaming

15. Dota 2 tournament prize-pool is the largest in eSports

16. The persistent myth of the “MOBA market”

17. The Witcher 3 sold 4 million in two weeks

18. This Week in Video Game Criticism: From race in Witcher 3 to local level design

19. Ninja Theory’s Hellblade to tackle mental health, backed by Wellcome Trust

20. Paid betas hurt Early Access – Tripwire

21. How Electronic Arts stopped being the worst company in America: Being named the worst company in America two years in a row was a wake-up call for the video game maker. Interviews with current and former executives, employees and partners show how EA changed the way it worked as it tries to redeem itself.

22. The post-apocalyptic dimensional space of Native video game design: First-ever summit explores how games can preserve cultural stories, languages.

23. Super Mario, Pong among World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees 

DIGITAL

1. The Online Privacy Lie Is Unraveling

2. 2015 is a transition year to the (somewhat creepy) machine learning era. Apple, Google, privacy and ads.

3. Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance

4. Canada greenlights an anti-terror law that hurts internet privacy

5. Erasing History: EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ case will have global ramifications

6. Copyright Board issues landmark decision in government copying proceeding

7. Netflix: piracy helped prepare Spain for watching content online

8. Sorry Bell, accessing U.S. Netflix is not theft: Geist – Mary Ann Turcke’s comments provide evidence of the mounting frustration among Canadian broadcasters over Netflix’s remarkable popularity.

9. Emails between USTR and ESA, MPAA, and RIAA show influence on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

10. Defamation suit against EFF dropped three days after it’s served: EFF is fine and still thinks Scott Horstemeyer’s patent is stupid.

11. The Cuban Internet Crisis: Ninety miles to our south, young people’s dreams are dashed because they have no digital access

12. PSA: net neutrality rules go into effect June 12

13. Man vs. machine: why Apple doesn’t want to pick

+ Flipboard CEO: Apple didn’t surprise us because it’s always been watching us

14. Intel creates $125 million fund for tech firms led by women and minorities

15. Holus Is A Tabletop Device That Turns Digital Media Into A 3D Hologram

16. Weaving The Future of Textiles With Google’s Project Jacquard

17. The Dawn of Virtual Reality

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

19. Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Pay for Facebook

20. Billboard Cover: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Taylor Swift, His ‘Freemium’ Business Model and Why He’s Saving the Music Industry

21. Looking For A Connection In An Infinite Jukebox: With Millions Of Songs At Our Fingertips, Is The Idea Of Owning Music A Thing Of The Past?

22. Why Can’t Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

23. A Periodic Table Of Wearable Technology

24. Ray Kurzweil: Humans will be hybrids by 2030

25. Artificial intelligence?: AI scares us because it could be as inhuman as humans.

26. The Good, The Bad and The Robot: Experts Are Trying to Make Machines Be “Moral”

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

28. Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy

29. Stephen Witt: ‘Music piracy is illegal – but morally, is it wrong?’

30. The Emerging Science of Human Computation: The Web has turned the wisdom of the crowd into a valuable, on-demand resource. Now scientists are asking how best to put crowdsourced cognition to work.

31. How To Build A Cutting-Edge Digital Strategy From World-Class Art

CREATIVITY

1. 1 million streams = $90? NeYo reveals the truth about how songwriters get paid

2. The 3 ways women are photographed for the cover of Rolling Stone

3. CBC host Evan Solomon fired after Star investigation finds he took secret cut of art deals: CBC journalist facilitated sales of art to wealthy Canadians he dealt with in his job — including one buyer who had no idea Solomon was collecting a commission.

4. Life after Snowden: Journalists’ new moral responsibility

5. No Money, No Space, No Time: How London Has Forced Out Musicians

jon