News of the Week; February 17, 2016

GAMES

  1. Apple Rejects Game Based On Bible Story Due To Content Including Violence Against Children
  2. Apple’s Binding of Creativity
  3. Hatred Devs Next Game Has You Fighting An ISIS Invasion
  4. Bethesda gets appeal of German Fallout 3 ban
  5. Yes, you can rely on Amazon’s new game engine during the zombie apocalypse: Lumberyard terms of service features a carve-out in case of reanimated human corpses.
  6. Kids, forget console gaming—play the FBI’s browser-based game instead: “Slippery Slope to Violent Extremism” is an awful game unworthy of even pirating.
  7. War Stories: What It’s Really Like Working on AAA Games at Ubisoft – Or why I quit my dream job to go indie
  8. Zoe Quinn drops harassment suit against ex
  9. US game industry pulls in $23.5 billion in 2015
  10. Mad Catz axing 37% of staff as Q3 profit dips 10%
  11. Play 1,000 Windows 3.1 games for free on Internet Archive
  12. Twitch’s Users Watch More Video In A Month, On Average, Than Typical YouTube Users Do
  13. Activision Blizzard gunning for NFL-scale eSports revenue
  14. It’s Time To Think About Protecting Nicknames In Esports
  15. Zynga posts $117 million full-year loss
  16. King’s profit and sales fall in 2015
  17. Kickstarter “maturation means more money, but not for more people” – ICO
  18. Rise of the Tomb Raider wins Writers Guild award
  19. Mattel gets Halo master license
  20. Who Really Conceived Guitar Hero Live?: A former Activision developer says the game was his concept and he ought to be credited.
  21. Headshot: A visual history of first-person shooters
  22. Study: As gamers age, their competitive instincts wane
  23. ESA mourns Scalia: Industry trade group remarks on passing of Supreme Court Justice who wrote majority opinion in 2011 game legislation case

DIGITAL

  1. Women are better at coding than men—if they hide their gender
  2. High Schooler’s “Murder” Tweet Isn’t “Cyberstalking”–State v. Kohonen
  3. Wikimedia Takes Down Diary Of Anne Frank, Uses It To Highlight Idiocy Of DMCA Rules, Copyright Terms
  4. Embattled copyright lawyer uses DMCA to remove article about himself: Marc Randazza tells WordPress that the unflattering story “is not fair use.”
  5. Six Strikes gets another extension
  6. Dish Agrees To Cripple Its Ad-Skipping DVR To Settle Fox Lawsuit
  7. BT ad claims that the Internet was invented in the UK: Surely the telco giant should know the difference between Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee?
  8. Viacom and Snapchat strike bigger ad and content deal
  9. Microsoft looks to be retreating from EU antitrust fight against Google – ICOMP lobby group’s long-running campaign against search and ad giant collapses.
  10. Judge: Google dominance didn’t hurt online maps competitor – StreetMap traffic fell after Google began showing map previews in search results.
  11. France says Facebook must face French law in nudity censorship case – Paris court says Facebook cannot mandate that its French users sue in California.
  12. Why Journalism is not Dying in the Digital Age (Michael Geist)
  13. This woman is sharing millions of research papers online—and making some major enemies
  14. Kids will soon make their own toys with Mattel’s $300 ThingMaker 3D printer
  15. One Year In: Why A Die-Hard Mechanical Watch Lover Can’t Get The Apple Watch Off His Wrist (And Why That Matters)
  16. Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning
  17. The incredibly sad world of niche dating apps
  18. Moore’s law really is dead this time: The chip industry is no longer going to treat Gordon Moore’s law as the target to aim for.
  19. Barry Diller: Data is the new cable
  20. Cryptopolitik and the Darknet (Daniel Moore & Thomas Rid)
  21. Robot Art Raises Questions about Human Creativity
  22. On the Ethics of Online Shaming

CREATIVITY

  1. Sony Music Issues Takedown On Copyright Lecture About Music Copyrights By Harvard Law Professor
  2. Children’s show in tribute to Frozen cancelled after legal threat from Disney
  3. “Happy Birthday” is public domain, former owner Warner/Chapell to pay $14M – Winning lawyer says more bogus copyrights may come under legal attack.
  4. “Rime” Graffiti Case Against Moschino Survives Dismissal 
  5. It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s…Superdad? California District Court Rules That DC Comics Can Pursue Its Trademark Infringement Lawsuit Against T-Shirt Maker
  6. Without Copyright Infringement, Deadpool Doesn’t Get Made
  7. Pirates in your neighbourhood: How new online copyright infringement laws are affecting Canadians one year later
  8. It’s not just the Oscars. The Grammys are incredibly white, too.
  9. Unbelievable: Saudi Arabia’s Vice Police Arrests a “Female” Mascot
  10. After Revealing Workplace Sexual Harassment, an Iranian Newscaster Says It’s ‘Time to Break Free’
  11. Cross-Border Copyright Guide 2016 (RPC)
  12. The Good, the Bad and the Strange of the Department of Commerce’s White Paper on Copyright
  13. International Intellectual Property Alliance wants more countries on USTR’s ‘Watch List’
  14. Copyright Protection in Canada for Artists
  15. The Perils of Going Native: Why Canadians Should Heed US Guidelines on Native Advertising 
  16. NY Attorney General Announces 4 Settlements Over False Endorsements 
  17. Why student journalists at University of Kansas filed a federal lawsuit
  18. What Vanna White, Albert Einstein, and Johnny Carson have in common: the right of publicity 
  19. Lights, Camera, Love: From ‘The Dating Game’ to ‘The Bachelor,’ TV dating shows have reflected, and even influenced, how we date in real life
  20. Which Comes First in Contemporary Music Technology: the Musician or the Machine?
  21. Why messaging is the future of the news brand
  22. The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide.

COMMUNICATIONS

  1. Why watching online video in Canada sucks
  2. Comcast begs Atlanta customers not to switch to Google Fiber – Comcast touts more on-demand video, voice remote; leaves out price and data caps.
  3. CRTC CASL Compliance and Enforcement Update 
  4. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 29: Cultural Policy Innovation Uncertainty (Michael Geist)
  5. Do customers still want landlines? Telecom industry doesn’t want anyone to hear the answer
  6. Here’s Why CBS Is The Future Of Television No One Saw Coming (Except Les Moonves)
  7. Full Copyright Royalty Board Decision on Webcasting Royalties Now Public 
  8. Current Telecom Developments

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Judge: Apple must help FBI unlock San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone – Specifically, Apple must create custom firmware file so FBI can brute force passcode.
  2. No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  3. It’s legal for GCHQ to break into computers and install spyware, tribunal rules: Investigatory Powers Tribunal also says “thematic warrants” to hack an entire city are fine.
  4. AT&T Does Not Care about Your Privacy (Bruce Schneier)
  5. Apple: Dear judge, please tell us if gov’t can compel us to unlock an iPhone
  6. ISPs want “flexible” privacy rules that let them “innovate” with customer data – ISPs should be able to choose how they protect customer data, they tell FCC.
  7. O2 customers will have their Underground journeys tracked, analysed by advertisers – O2 will sell anonymised bulk data of about 1 million Tube journeys per day to Exterion.
  8. Google Partially Caves To French Demands For More Global Censorship Of ‘Forgotten’ Links
  9. Internet of Things to be used as spy tool by governments: US intel chief – Clapper says spy agencies “might” use IoT for surveillance, location tracking.
  10. Pressure grows to rethink Snooper’s Charter as Labour winds back its support: Opposition’s initial enthusiasm for the Investigatory Powers Bill has apparently cooled.
  11. The Limits of Tower Dump Privacy Protections
  12. New report contends mandatory crypto backdoors would be futile: With two-thirds of crypto developed abroad, crooks have plenty of non-US alternatives.
  13. The Trouble With the TPP, Day 28: Privacy Risks From the Source Code Rules (Michael Geist)
  14. The dark side of big data

jon