News of the Week; December 16, 2015

GAMES

1. Publishers sued over fantasy sports patents: EA, Activision, Zynga, Take-Two, Konami among targets of suits over games based on real-time events and TV shows
2. Washington Post editorial compares Trump campaign to GamerGate
3. Survey: “Gamers” are poorer, more male, less white than “game players”
4. Truth Initiative takes aim at videogame smoking
5. The Game Awards draws 2.3 million viewers
6. Former Square Enix exec calls Konami’s treatment of Kojima ‘bad business’
7. Hideo Kojima’s first post-Konami game will be PS4 exclusive
8. Bethesda joins ESA
9. EA sets up Competitive Gaming Division
10. The Climb Is Crytek’s New Virtual Reality Game About Mountain Climbing
11. Crytek’s Oculus debut of The Climb successfully tackles VR sickness, vertigo: 2016 game may be thin on content but stuns with visuals, welcome VR-platformer twists.
12. Project Phoenix’s backers are in for a long wait
13. Star Citizen reaches $100 million in funding
14. The crowdfunding bubble isn’t bursting: But it’s definitely in a decline phase, says ICO Partners’ Thomas Bidaux in this crowdfunding year in review
15. SAVE POINT: How Microsoft plans to make the Xbox great again
16. Streaming’s dark underbelly couldn’t stall its meteoric rise in 2015
17. The discussion in mobile is over, Free-to-Play has won
18. Riot Games one of Glassdoor’s best places to work
19. Report: Malware Targeting Steam Traders
20. Why Nike’s Using a Video Game to Market Kyrie Irving’s Newest Sneaker

DIGITAL    

1. Court strikes down anti-cyberbullying law created after Rehtaeh Parsons’s death: Nova Scotia was 1st jurisdiction in Canada to try to regulate cyberbullying
2. Germany makes Facebook, Google, and Twitter remove hate speech within 24 hours: German government is trying to deal with the rise in xenophobic comments.
3. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Reassures Muslim Users
4. Trump doesn’t want ISIS “using our Internet”: GOP candidates debate closing the Internet, surveillance, and encryption.
5. SCOTUS rules against DirecTV customers
6. Samsung appeals $548M Apple patent verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court: In a bid to reduce or eliminate the $548 million the company has been forced to pay rival Apple over a patent dispute, Samsung on Friday filed a petition to have its appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
7. Google Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over Waze Data
8. Senate Passes Bill Banning Non-Disparagement Clauses
9. Couple takes pics of Star Wars figure they bought, gets DMCA notice from Lucasfilm: Legal action stems from an apparent early release at an Iowa Wal-Mart.
10. Disney drops—then doubles down on—DMCA claim over Star Wars figure pic: Man who took photos of a $6.94 Walmart action figure gets banned from Facebook.
11. Disney Sending Out DMCA Notices Over Pictures Fans Took Of Their Legally Purchased Star Wars Toy
12. Ecuador Likely To Legalize DRM Circumvention In The Exercise Of Fair Use Rights — Something TPP Will Block
13. UK Throws A Copyright Crumb: Confirms That Digitized Copies Of Public Domain Images Are In The Public Domain
14. Chinese Authorities Think Internet Companies Should Reward Netizens Who ‘Spread Good News’
15. Is Canada safe from the Safe Harbor decision?
16. EU plans to harmonise contract laws for supply of digital content and online sale of goods
17. After Spending A Day As The Internet’s Punching Bag, Philips Walks Back Firmware Update That Locked Out Third-Party Products
18. Why parents and administrators are freaking out about an app called After School
19. Facebook’s Mental Health Problem: The most important thing I learned in 2015? That depression and social media do not go well together at all.
20. Pirate Bay Founder: ‘I Have Given Up’
21. Kickstarter failures highlight the “backer” vs “consumer” divide
22. Inside Netflix’s Plan to Boost Streaming Quality and Unclog the Internet
23. Tear down those paywalls!
24. Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame
25. Daily Fantasy Sites Get Reprieve After Initial Loss In New York Court Battle; FanDuel Reenters NY
26. Yahoo ‘is about to have a massive heart attack from obesity,’ says shareholder attacking the company
27. Again, CEO Isn’t Yahoo’s Real Problem
28. How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over: They’re funding a new organization, OpenAI, to pursue the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence — and give the results to the public
29. Websites may soon know if you’re mad—a little mouse will tell them: Cursor speed and precision link to anger and other negative emotions.
30. Block potential Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers with this Chrome add-on – For those watching the film later this week, the Internet is a dangerous place.
31. The First Quantified Brain

CREATIVITY

1. Competition Tribunal Gives Go Ahead for Price Maintenance Claim Against Music Industry Giants (Michael Geist)
2. Man faces years in jail for alleged online comment insulting Thai king’s dog: Thailand’s military seems to think country’s lèse-majesté law applies to royal pets, too.
3. Online Comments, Free Speech and Internet Defamation: News Outlets Challenged by Internet Commenters 
4. Live Music’s $20 Billion Year: The Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well Reunion, Taylor Swift, One Direction Top Boxscore’s Year-End
5. New Banksy piece puts Steve Jobs in a Syrian refugee camp
6. You may soon need a licence to take photos of that classic designer chair you bought: Copyright strikes again, with photographers and publishers hit particularly hard.
7. Copyright infringement suspends New Milford theater’s production
8. Is Han Solo Legally Justified in Shooting Greedo First? A Lawyer Explains

COMMUNICATIONS

1. News director of two BC radio stations resigns after editorial staff asked to sell ads
2. DC court finds FilmOn X internet TV service is not a cable system and cannot rely on statutory license to retransmit over-the-air TV signals 
3. Verizon Exec In Charge Of TV Services Admits She Cut The Cord
4. Verizon to join AT&T in charging companies for “sponsored data”: Net neutrality rules apparently no obstacle to zero-rating.
5. “The more bits you use, the more you pay”: Comcast CEO justifies data caps: Unfortunately, usage-based billing only works one way: in Comcast’s favor.
6. FCC Boss Mocks Unfair Comcast Broadband Caps At Industry Dinner, Still Hasn’t Done Squat About It
7. Could Canadians who watch the U.S. version of Netflix face new rules?
8. UPDATE: CHCH TV suspends newscasts as company declares bankruptcy
9. The untold story of TV’s first prescription drug ad
10. “Do Not Track” will not be enforced by the FCC

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Let’s stop blaming ‘the internet’ for terrorism
2. All LA schools shut down over message sent from 8chan’s e-mail host, cock.li: “We live in an age where anonymous messages can be sent with extreme ease.”
3. Finding Proportionality in Surveillance Laws – Andrew Murray
4. Fact-checking the debate on encryption: Recent terror attacks have sparked the debate over encryption and backdoors.
5. Beware of state-sponsored hackers, Twitter warns dozens of users: Journalists, security researchers, and activists receive Twitter warning e-mail
6. Tech firms could owe up to 4% of global revenue if they violate new EU data law: After years of negotiation, European Union approves new data protection law.
7. The FTC and DAA Set Their Sights on Cross-Device Tracking 
8. Wish list app from Target springs a major personal data leak: Database is available over the Internet, no password necessary, researchers say.
9. Woman sues Airbnb after finding hidden camera in her rental: Complaint says living room-based camera intercepted couple’s private talks, too.
10. Hit-and-Run Driver Arrested Because Car Reported Accident
11. Got a drone? It’s registration time, says the FAA: $5 fee will be waived for those who register by mid-January.
12. CIS Joins ACLU And ACLU Of Northern California In FOIA Request To Justice Department Seeking Info On Phone Unlocking Orders
13. Law Enforcement is Using a 226-Year-Old Law to Force Tech Companies to Unlock Mobile Phones
14. Backslash: Anti-surveillance gadgets for protesters – Two designers create a toolkit for tech-savvy protesters.
15. New Internet Monitor report: “Openness and Restraint: Structure, Discourse, and Contention in Saudi Twitter”
16. UK man arrested for VTech security breach
17. Quinn: The ethics of digitally snooping on teens
18. Making private information public — the continued expansion of privacy class action liability
19. Judge Tells TCPA Plaintiffs: Quit Being Complainers, Texting “Gamers” Was Consent
20. Twitter rejects accusations for illegally Intercepting messages

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