News of the Week; April 6, 2016

GAMES

1. Valve misled Australian consumers, says court: Valve found to be in violation of Australian consumer law because Steam didn’t have a refund policy
2. Nintendo denies bowing to GamerGate pressure in employee firing: Former staffer Alison Rapp was the subject of intense online harassment in the month preceding her dismissal
3. Studio cancels Wii U game in protest of Nintendo firing employee: Necrosoft Games’ Brandon Sheffield calls on Mario maker to be an industry leader in fight against online harassment
4. IGDA critical of Nintendo’s decision to fire Alison Rapp
5. Surprise: Court Allows Lindsay Lohan’s Suit Against Take-Two Interactive To Go Forward
6. EA issues DMCA takedown on video that overlays footage of Trump onto Mass Effect 2 trailer
7. EA DMCAs Trump/Mass Effect Mashup Video Claiming Trump Re-Tweeting It Made Its Use ‘Political’
8. EA: Trump video “an unauthorized use of our IP” – Presidential candidate tweets fan-made, Mass Effect robbing video
9. Oculus apologises for “unexpected component shortage”
10. How Japanese Mobile Game Makers Go After Whales: 5 Popular Gacha Mechanics
11. Gameloft lays out all the reasons the Vivendi takeover is a bad idea
12. Disney Infinity and the problem with Apple TV’s gaming ambitions: Five months in, signs point to an anemic start for Apple’s living room gaming push.
13. EVE Online’s big battle proves players are the content in a sandbox MMO
14. Blizzard signs children’s book deal: Scholastic will publish World Of Warcraft series
15. Inside the lo-res Roguelike FPS inspired by Canadian politics
16. University of California, Irvine announces a League of Legends scholarship: UC Irvine will be the first public, state-run school to officially support esports
17. eSports driving over 21% of Twitch viewership – Newzoo
18. Alibaba investing in 1200 Chinese eSports events in 2016
19. Vainglory dev and Twitch announce multi-million dollar eSports partnership
20. FACEIT and Twitch launch esports league following the example of traditional sports leagues
21. The British government wants to create the Olympics of esports
22. Any retail Xbox One can be used as dev kit starting now
23. Using retail Xbox Ones as dev kits comes with significant caveats
24. Square Enix backs Final Fantasy XV with feature-length movie
25. To build a new Baldur’s Gate, Beamdog had to reverse-engineer the original
26. Mind Craft :Microsoft’s popular video game Minecraft helps kids learn everything from programming, science and math to art, languages and history.
27. See just how fast mobile has overtaken the rest of games
28. Slice: Mobile gamers spend average of $87 on in-app purchases – Game Of War players spend, on average, $550 to achieve victory
29. The average U.S. paying mobile game player spent $87 on F2P IAP last year
30. Rovio writes off 2015 as an ‘expected’ loss
31. Rock Band 4 crowdfunding campaign fails to take flight
32. GamePolitics shutting down: Entertainment Consumers Association pulls the plug on specialist gaming site after 11 years
33. That Dragon, Cancer Discusses Let’s Play Issues While Clearing Content IDs
34. Players watch streams of the games they like, then buy them
35. eSports driving game purchases – NPD
36. Congressman blames son for spending $1,300 in campaign funds on Steam games: FEC questions California rep for unauthorized “personal expenses.
37. Sony staffer crafts custom PS4 gamepad for player with cerebral palsy
38. The View From the Tower: Why Cambridge graduates struggle to get into the games industry

DIGITAL

1. Twitter Makes Huge Move In Winning Rights To Live Stream NFL Thursday Night Football Games
2. Yahoo Will Stream One MLB Game Every Day For The Rest Of The Season
3. The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court
4. For The Fifth Time Now, German Court Says Adblocking Is Legal
5. Supreme Court Agrees to Consider Samsung-Apple Patent Case
6. $85 million patent verdict, largest ever against Google, wiped out on appeal: Patent describes a failed company’s 1996 desktop notification system.
7. Using Adblock Plus to block ads is legal, rules German court—for the fifth time: Adblock’s whitelisting scheme for advertisements also acceptable, Munich court says.
8. Linux kernel lawsuit SCO v IBM is alive, 13 years and counting: Suit claims IBM allegedly placed commercial UNIX code in the Linux kernel’s codebase.
9. Oracle will seek a staggering £6.5 billion in second copyright trial against Google: Oracle will ask another jury to make Google pay the biggest IP verdict ever.
10. Quebec bill would force Internet firms to block access to online gaming sites
11. Degrees of Freedom, Dimensions of Power (Yochai Benkler)
12. Chinese Censors Erase #PanamaPapers Evidence From Web
13. A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again: Meet accused hacker and copyright infringer Alexandra Elbakyan.
14. Posting Photos of Red Bowls on Facebook Is Now Deemed Seditious by the Thai Junta
15. DMCA’s Notice And Takedown Procedure Is A Total Mess, And It’s Mainly Because Of Bogus Automated Takedowns
16. RIAA: How Dare The Internet Use The DMCA That We Wrote To Build Useful Services!
17. Our Comment On DMCA Takedowns: Let’s Return To First Principles (And The First Amendment)
18. More Evidence That Tons Of DMCA Takedowns Are Bad News… And That People Are Afraid To Counternotice
19. CNBC Asks Readers To Submit Their Password To Check Its Strength Into Exploitable Widget
20. How to Make a Bot That Isn’t Racist
21. Microsoft accidentally revives Nazi AI chatbot Tay, then kills it again: A week after Tay’s first disaster, the bot briefly came back to life today.
22. Microsoft reactivates Twitter bot ‘Tay’, and it promptly tweets about smoking weed in front of cops
23. Clippy’s Back: The Future of Microsoft Is Chatbots: CEO Satya Nadella bets big on artificial intelligence that will be fast, smart, friendly, helpful, and (fingers crossed) not at all racist.
24. Regulators grapple with how a robo-adviser can be a fiduciary: SEC commissioner Kara Stein says agency is being ‘disrupted’ by technology along with everyone else
25. The biggest mystery in AI right now is the ethics board that Google set up after buying DeepMind
26. Meet the Robocar, an autonomous racing car: Yes, it does look like something straight out of Hollywood.
27. Man who sued over a patent on online photo contests must pay fees to EFF: “Ranking things in categories… was well known before the Internet.”
28. This Russian Website Uses Neural Networks to Combine Images, With Awesome Results
29. So Teenagers Now Prefer YouTube To Netflix And TV: According to a new survey, it’s *all* about vloggers and viral vids these days…
30. There Are Now 2,000 YouTube Channels With At Least One Million Subscribers
31. Marissa Mayer vs. “Kim Kardashian’s A__”: What Sunk Yahoo’s Media Ambitions?
32. Stupid Patent Of The Month: Mega-Troll Intellectual Ventures Hits Florist With Do-It-On-A-Computer Scheduling Patent
33. Why we’re talking differently about the web: The ways in which we talk about technology – and how we communicate through it – are rapidly changing. What does this mean for the future of our language?
34. Adventures in the Trump Twittersphere
35. Swedish Court: Wikipedia Hosting Photos Of Public Artwork Is Copyright Infringement For Some Reason

CREATIVITY

1. Lions Gate Entertainment Inc. v. TD Ameritrade Services Co. Inc.: District court holds Lions Gate’s trademark-related claims under Lanham Act and related state law are preempted by Copyright Act in suit over financial services ad campaign that used modified version of famous line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” from movie “Dirty Dancing.”
2. Court Rules Against Lionsgate In TD Ameritrade Suit For Dressing Up Copyright Claim As A Trademark Claim
3. Abdullah v. Walt Disney Co. – USDC, C.D. California, March 14, 2016: District court grants motion to dismiss children’s author’s copyright infringement lawsuit, holding that defendant Walt Disney’s animated film “Frozen” is not substantially similar to plaintiff’s copyrighted children’s story “The Snow Princess.”
4. Don’t Mention the IP Law: John Cleese and The Faulty Towers Dining Experience – So there’s this dinner theatre show called The Faulty Towers Dining Experience. It’s been running for years. But apparently John Cleese has only just heard about it and he’s not too pleased. The similarity with his own Fawlty Towers is obvious and TFTDE is clearly ‘dining out’ (yes) on the popularity of Cleese’s show.
5. John Steinbeck Heirs Now Feuding Over Steven Spielberg ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Adaptation
6. Gawker begins appeal against $140M Hulk Hogan sex-tape verdict: Was it wrong for a jury to decide “what’s news?”
7. The science behind the insane popularity of “react” videos on YouTube: Controversial theory may explain why we love watching people experience stuff.
8. Competition Bureau releases updated Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines
9. Campaign IP Violations Part 2 – Trump Sued for Copyright Infringement 
10. The Latest In Reputation Management: Bogus Defamation Suits From Bogus Companies Against Bogus Defendants
11. How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History
12. Ontario Music Fund Oversight Hits Sour Note: Gov Docs Discuss “Breach of Integrity” (Michael Geist)
13. Kylie Jenner’s new ‘Paper’ cover reveals how teens and social media are reshaping print publications
14. Did the city steal the idea for its Toronto sign? Mayor, councillors and city face $2.5M lawsuit over concept
15. 27 Stores That Were Named By Absolute Geniuses: Grab some baked goods at “Bread Pitt,” then get your laundry done at “Lord of the Rinse.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Netflix throttling itself isn’t a net neutrality problem, FCC chair says: Wheeler disappoints Netflix critics who called for investigation.
2. FCC votes to help poor people buy broadband and protect privacy online: 3-2 votes anger Republicans after last-minute compromise is dropped.
3. FCC’s “nutrition labels” for broadband show speed, caps, and hidden fees: New labels will help ISPs comply with net neutrality transparency rules.
4. Painful Comcast cancelation phone calls targeted by California legislation: Bill requiring online cancellation a response to infamous Comcast call.
5. ISPs Now Charging Broadband Users A Steep Premium If They Want To Avoid Usage Caps
6. CRTC enters into MOU with FTC on spam and unlawful telemarketing 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. The Scarlett Johansson Bot Is the Robotic Future of Objectifying Women
2. WhatsApp is Now End-to-End Encrypted (Bruce Schneier)
3. Reddit’s Warrant Canary Just Died (Bruce Schneier)
4. Reddit removes “warrant canary” from its latest transparency report – CEO is staying mum: “I’ve been advised not to say anything one way or the other.”
5. Canadian Court Says Vice Magazine Must Hand Over Its Communications With A Suspected Terrorist
6. Cases highlight legal debate over texting privacy rights
7. Appeals Court: No stingrays without a warrant, explanation to judge: Police also barred from shrouding stingray use in ridiculous NDAs.
8. Appeals Court Says Indiana’s Bad Anti-Texting Law Can’t Be Used To Justify Stops Or Searches
9. UK Law Enforcement Trying To Force Man They’ve Never Charged With A Crime To Decrypt His Computers
10. UK cops tell suspect to hand over crypto keys in US hacking case: Lauri Love faces extradition to US over hitting Federal Reserve, among others.
11. Hacking Team Has Lost Its License to Export Spyware
12. Hundreds of requests to unlock phones flood FBI
13. FBI Won’t Tell Apple How It Got Into iPhone… But Is Apparently Eager To Help Others Break Into iPhones
14. Feds used 1789 law to force Apple, Google to unlock phones 63 times: “These cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes.”
15. How a spy probe wound up as a child pornography prosecution
16. Foia Request – Government Attempts To Access Encrypted Messages: Request for records related to attempts by the government to access encrypted messages sent using the messaging platforms of mobile communications providers. (ACLU)
17. Brussels terror attacks: Why ramping up online surveillance isn’t the answer – Op-ed – Brief moratorium needed on calls for new spying laws after atrocities.
18. Privacy and Cybersecurity Issues in Canadian M&A Transactions

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