News of the Week; August 5, 2015

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