News of the Week; September 10, 2014

GAMES

1. As The Mod Turns: The Latest In The Ongoing Minecraft ‘Bukkit’ Saga

2. Report: Microsoft in Talks to Buy Mojang for $2 Billion

3. Destiny day-one shipments top $500 million

4. Sega Takes Aim at Gearbox in Latest ‘Aliens: Colonial Marines’ Court Filing

+ Sega Also Has Copyright Complaints Against Hi Score Girl Manga

5. Pro Music Artists/Reps Force Shutdown Of Awesome Fan-Music Contest For Video Game

6. IGDA Working With FBI to Combat Developer Harassment

7. The #Gamergate Question

+ Death to the Gamer

+ Not All Gamers

+ To fair-minded proponents of #GamerGate:

+ The steel man of #GamerGate

+ Losing our voices

+ #GamerGate: Here’s why everybody in the video game world is fighting

+ Chat logs show how 4chan users created #GamerGate controversy: “I think all the sleeper cells are hard at work.”

8. Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest (The New Yorker)

9. EA working to fix block on gay name sharing in The Sims 4: Overzealous filter blocks players from sharing names with LGBT terms online

10. EA Sports to Remove Ray Rice from ‘Madden NFL 15’ Roster in Future Update

11. Microsoft to replace noisy Xbox One units

12. Rovio: Leading the way on gender balance

13. How ‘Minecraft’ is Encouraging Children to Read More

14. What Does a Hermit Do While Living in the Woods for 27 Years? Steal Pokemon Games: Christopher Knight lived without human contact in the woods of Maine for almost three decades

15. Study: Swedish Children Learn English Better Through Playing Games

16. Engines of Horror: How Video Games Are Confronting Our Darkest Subconscious

17. First-Person Temple Run Makes Samsung’s VR Headset Terrifying

18. The US Army Has a New Laser Cannon, And It Works With an Xbox Controller

19. ESPN boss declares eSports is “Not A Sport”

+ eSports will be bigger than hockey – ESL CEO

20. Research: Winning Isn’t Everything

21. Downloading Games Might Not Be Better for the Environment After All, Study Finds: New study looks at the carbon emissions generated from downloading a game versus buying a physical copy at a store.

22. New research suggests deep learning could improve AI in video games

23. EA: We Never Want to Be Named Worst U.S. Company Again

24. Several Robin Williams NPCs Spotted in ‘Warlords of Draenor’ Beta

25. Epic on Unreal Engine 4: “It’s the right time to be democratic”

26. Unreal Engine 4 free for schools, students

27. The evolution of the role-playing game: from table top to video games, and back again

28. Games Law History: the first ever games patent

29. Exploring The Psychology Of Civil Forfeiture Through Video Games

DIGITAL

30. Parents to get full refund for kids’ app purchases under $19M Google Play settlement

31. App Store revenue up 70 YoY

32. Verizon pays record fine for violating phone customers’ privacy rights: For seven years, Verizon marketed to customers without seeking their permission.

33. Judge mulls contempt charges in Microsoft’s e-mail privacy fight with US: US claims it has rightful access to data stored on servers anywhere in the world

+ Microsoft agrees to contempt order so e-mail privacy case can be appealed: The contempt order doesn’t include any sanctions, but those could be sought later.

34. Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA

35. Does obtaining leaked data from a misconfigured website violate the CFAA?

36. How to make sure your app complies with the Safe Harbor rules

37. Horizon: The defenders of anonymity on the internet

38. Google plans debates on ‘right to be forgotten’

39. Infamous “podcast patent” heads to trial: Personal Audio LLC has sued Apple, SiriusXM, and podcasters. CBS is up next.

40. Leak Of Complete CETA Text Shows Canada Fought Off EU Demands For More Extreme Copyright Rules

41. NLRB protects Facebook “Like” and signals standard for analyzing social media posts

42. NVIDIA Sues Samsung and Qualcomm, Tries To Get Samsung Galaxy Devices Blocked From The U.S.

43. The Ramifications of Alice: A Conversation with Mark Lemley

44. When does an employer own copyright in a photograph made by an employee?

45. Apple Denies Any Breach Of Its Systems In Celebrity Photo Leak

+ Inside AnonIB, Where Hacking Is a Sport and Women’s Bodies Are the Prize

+ A Letter To Jennifer Lawrence

+ reddit shuts down subreddit that showcased celebrities’ stolen nude photos: System admin says taking down the images became “a game of whack-a-mole.”

+ Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul (Reddit CEO)

+ Why We’re Winning: Social Justice Warriors And The New Culture War

46. Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Will Too

47. How Should We Program Computers to Deceive?

48. Our Cyborg Future: Law and Policy Implications (The Brookings Institution)

49. There’s Something Rotten In The State Of Social Media

50. Error Correction in the Digital Age

51. When A Machine Learning Algorithm Studied Fine Art Paintings, It Saw Things Art Historians Had Never Noticed: Artificial intelligence reveals previously unrecognised influences between great artists

52. Brain-to-brain ‘telepathic’ communication achieved for first time: Team of US-led researchers successfully achieves brain-to-brain communication between humans from India to France

+ Brain-to-brain communication is finally possible. It’s just very clunky.

53. When We Play Video Games, Who Are We?

CONSTRAINTS

54. Disney Officially Seeks To Block Deadmau5’s Trademark Claim

55. Court says Facebook “likes” not a form of IP right

56. Hacked naked celebrity photos to be exhibited by artist in Florida

57. Reddit at a crossroads: The inevitable clash between free speech and a desire for funding

58. Zappos is going holacratic: no job titles, no managers, no hierarchy

59. The New Luddites: Why Former Digital Prophets Are Turning Against Tech

60. How YouTube inspired a new generation of DIY makers

61. Software is Eating the Camera: How software is changing the form and substance of cameras and photos

62. Canadian Internet TV Is Starting To Beat the CBC

jon