News of the Week; April 15, 2015

GAMES

1. Baker v. Microsoft Corporation: game companies beware, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision may make it more difficult to defeat class actions 

2. Publishers fight to block third-party revival of “abandoned” game servers: ESA sees proposed DMCA exemption as encouraging piracy, limiting copyright.

+ The legal battle for gaming’s past

3. Grand Theft Auto V for PC ships with built-in mods and machinima tools

4. The first gay character in ‘Mortal Kombat’ revealed

5. Koei Tecmo Goes DMCA On DOA Modders For Undressing Its Already Scantily Clad Characters

6. Theorizing gender and digital gameplay: Oversights, accidents and surprises (Jennifer Jenson & Suzanne De Castell)

7. Thoughts from a woman who posts on the Internet: On being scared

+ Ms. Quinn goes to Washington

8. Google Rejects Postal For Google Play Store Due To Violence; GTA Games Still Available For Purchase

9. Modders Un-Region-Restricting Halo Online Undeterred By Microsoft DMCA

10. Cops nab murder suspect who played with victim’s stolen PlayStation: Online gaming activity traced to defendant’s mother’s house, where he was living.

11. Man ruptures tendon in hand playing ‘Candy Crush Saga’

12. Microsoft Facing New Criticisms Over Xbox One Energy Consumption

13. Phantom Dust dev collapsed under Microsoft’s demands – report

14. EA Shutting down ‘Battlefield Heroes’ and three other free-to-play games

15. Don Mattrick leaves Zynga, stock tanking

16. Sandra Day O’Connor’s post-court legacy: Civics games

17. Bill Paxton to play Jack Thompson in BBC’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ film

18. NCSoft invests $5m in mobile start-up: This Game Studio focused on mobile, based in Vancouver

19. How Tax Is Giving Video Games A British Accent

20. New research using video games explores how people justify violent acts

21. Modern Games Are Easily Patched. So How Can We Review Them?

22. Square Enix Launches A Cloud-Powered Final Fantasy XIII For iOS And Android In Japan

23. Good Game: Why Esports Is The Next Major League Sport

24. Fantasy eSports—Think Fantasy Football for Video Games—Is Officially a Thing

25. Devastatingly Challenging Modern Games

26. Video Games’ Place in American Culture 

DIGITAL

27. Russia’s Internet censor reminds citizens that some memes are illegal

+ Russian censor warns against meme ‘misuse’

+ Latest Russian Censorship Move: Banning Internet Memes Using Photos Of Celebrities

28. NSA dreams of smartphones with “split” crypto keys protecting user data: Proposal is part of a tense stand-off between US government and tech industry.

29. Apple and the Self-Surveillance State (Paul Krugman)

30. The most concerning element of Facebook’s potential new power (Trevor Timm)

31. Canada’s Non-Commercial Copyright Fail: Why Did YouTube Mute a Holocaust Memorial Video? (Michael Geist)

32. The Copyright Notice Flood: What to Consider If You Receive a Copyright Infringement Notification (Michael Geist)

33. A Japanese court has ordered Google to take down negative business reviews

34. Internal Google Memo Responds To EU Antitrust Objections

35. Judge: Browsing Data Shared With Facebook Doesn’t Violate Privacy Law

36. Our Transparent Future: No secret is safe in the digital age. The implications for our institutions are downright Darwinian. (Daniel Dennett & Deb Roy)

37. Meet “Great Cannon,” the man-in-the-middle weapon China used on GitHub: Powerful weapon could easily be used to inject malware attacks into traffic.

38. Netizen Report: Turkey’s Erdogan Fights to Control the Conversation, Online and in Print

+ Everyone Is Getting Turkey’s Twitter Block Wrong: Turkey isn’t trying to be North Korea, China or Iran; it’s trying to be Azerbaijan

39. Rights groups take UK surveillance fight to Europe’s highest court

40. NJ lawmaker seeking tougher penalties for swatting gets targeted over the weekend

41. Big Names in Canadian Tech Sign ‘Stop Bill C-51’ Letter

+ The Real Agenda behind Bill C-51 (Craig Forcese & Kent Roach)

42. Lawyer representing whistle blowers finds malware on drive supplied by cops: Says police department brass tried to infect him, seeks criminal sanctions.

43. Police asked telcos for client data in over 80% of criminal probes

44. Kim Dotcom Megaupload case falters over sharing Canadian data

45. Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview: Post-it note on wall revealed network’s passwords for YouTube, Instagram.

46. Wireless, Cable Industries Show Their Love Of An ‘Open Internet’ By Suing To Overturn Net Neutrality Rules

+ Telco Lobby Sues FCC Over Net Neutrality Rules Yet Again… Just In Case The First Time Didn’t Work

47. The Mere Threat Of Google Fiber Has Time Warner Cable Offering Speeds Six Times Faster At The Same Price

48. Report: popular online gambling sites taken out by DDoS attacks

49. Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Critical Reviews From Google Maps

50. Maximum sentence for internet trolls raised to 2 years in the UK

51. This Year’s Fight for the Tech Industry: Patent Trolls

52. Court Adds Much-Needed Element Of Malice To Nova Scotia’s Terrible Cyberbullying Law

53. The Mobile Video Moment Has Finally Arrived

54. Twitter shakes up the big data supply chain: What are the privacy law implications?

55. Facebook is facing 25,000 users in Vienna court over EU privacy violations

56. Drug Information Startup Diagnosia Sued By Big Pharma

57. Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit Fails–Infogroup v. DatabaseLLC (Eric Goldman)

58. Mapping Out the Copyright Semicommons (Bruce Boyden)

59. Copyrights & Patents Have Become A Religion; All Data Will Be Ignored

60. EFF Successfully Challenges Key Claims in “Podcasting Patent”

+ Infamous “podcasting patent” knocked out

61. Should you pay if you get an illegal download notice?

62. Eighth-grader charged with felony for shoulder-surfing teacher’s password: The larger crime may be school administrators’ poor op sec.

63. Large-scale Game of Thrones leak has HBO targeting Periscope streams: Piracy in various forms didn’t hurt too much, as 8 million watched GoT premiere.

64. Amazon drops the hammer on website that sells 5-star reviews: SoCal Web designer’s reviews-for-sale biz is illegal, Amazon lawyers say.

65. Why Google’s Robot Personality Patent Is Not Good for Robotics (Kate Darling)

66. Can we stop killer robots? UN meets to debate possible treaty

67. The Path of Robotics Law (Jack Balkin)

68. The Case For An Internet Ratings System

69. Will autocomplete make you too predictable? 

CREATIVITY

70. Photos secretly taken of family through window are art, not invasion of privacy: court

71. Hecklers Try To Veto University Screening Of ‘American Sniper;’ May Find Themselves Watching ‘Paddington Bear’ Instead

72. The Abuse of Satire: Garry Trudeau on Charlie Hebdo, free-speech fanaticism, and the problem with “punching downward”

73. Joss Whedon On #GamerGate, JURASSIC WORLD, Adam Baldwin And Speaking Out

74. Kristen Stewart and the Movie Actor’s Dilemma

75. Who Owns the Copyright to “Happy Birthday”?

76. The Full History Of Board Games

77. The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins

78. Rachmaninov on the future of broadcasting: A revealing interview with Sergey Rachmaninov from April 1931

79. Time Warner, Viacom Back Away From Nielsen Guarantees For Ads

80. “Quite Unintelligible,” Derrida’s Scathing Criticism From A Teacher

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