News of the Week; April 27, 2016

GAMES

1. Korean authorities arrest 8 forStarCraft II match-fixing
2. 1666: Amsterdam legal battle ends – Patrice Désilets to obtain rights to 1666 Amsterdam from Ubisoft
3. Blizzard finally breaks silence over Nostalrius’ closure
4. Blizzard: Allowing pirate WoW servers would “damage [our] rights” – “Tremendous operational challenges” to setting up official “classic” servers.
5. Ex-Game Maker Atari To Argue To The US PTO That Only It Can Make ‘Haunted House’ Games
6. Sega enables legal modding of console games with Mega Drive emulation hub: Steam Workshop support will allow players to modify retro games such as Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage
7. Alex St. John: Shut up and be grateful for your 80 hour weeks – “Wage slaves” should “shake off mental shackles” says multi-millionaire. [UPDATE: St. John’s daughter blasts his “toddler meltdown”]
8. I am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He is Wrong About Women in Tech
9. UK games industry behind in female employment
10. Hack affects 7 million Minecraft players: Lifeboat Network compromised in January, but company never informed player community
11. PewDiePie asks fans to confront his “immature” past: YouTube has “grown past” insensitive use of language, but his community still pines for the good old days
12. Entering the matrix: CJ Wilson Racing launches a virtual racing series – The team has recreated its car in Forza and is holding an e-racing championship.
13. ESL launching 24/7 eSports channel
14. Toca Boca acquired by Canadian toy firm Spin Master
15. When mobile game investments dry up, that’s when Disney swoops in
16. Titan MMO’s “horrific” collapse led to the creation of Blizzard’s Overwatch: Game director Jeff Kaplan describes his team’s, “ravenous hunger to show the world that we’re not failures”
17. Microsoft financials: Minecraft’s doing better as Xbox revenues falter
18. Mobile to overtake PC in $99.6bn global games market – Newzoo
19. Nintendo’s tumbling profits underline need for new hardware
20. See just how revenues split across PC, mobile, console, and handheld
21. Hearthstone hits 50m players
22. How Infocom fell to ruin under Activision’s watch
23. How could an AI take down the world’s best StarCraftplayers?
24. The Top 10 Weird Children Of Video Games and Neuroscience

DIGITAL

1. Dissidents Worry #TwitterisDead After Company Hires Former Chinese Military Officer
2. NYT: China bans Apple’s iBooks and iTunes Movies stores – Ban comes about six months after the services were introduced in the country
3. In a first, US military plans to drop “cyberbombs” on ISIS, NYT says: Cyber Command plans to mount hacking attacks that disrupt ISIS operations.
4. Tech titans are busy privatising our data: When Facebook and Google finally destroy the competition, a new age of feudalism will arrive (Evgeny Morozov)
5. Just After EU Goes After Google For Antitrust, Microsoft Agrees To Drop All Antitrust Complaints About Google
6. News Corp. Claims Google News Is An Antitrust Violation In Europe
7. Why the EU is going after Google and not Apple
8. Facebook defamation case awards significant damages
9. Facebook Isn’t the Social Network Anymore
10. The Shame and Glory of Yahoo’s China Adventure: In 2005, Yahoo got lucky when it made a deal with Jack Ma for a huge chunk of Alibaba stock. It also got humiliated when it revealed a dissident to the authorities
11. Evidentiary Failings Undermine Arbitration Clauses in Online Terms
12. Google is turning its search engine into a live TV guide
13. Twitter CEO says ‘almost every sports league in the world contacted us’ after inking NFL deal
14. Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants
15. Steam expands its streaming movie biz with Lionsgate partnership
16. Social Media and Jury Selection
17. New Jersey Supreme Court Questions Ethics of “Friending” a Litigation Foe 
18. How the DMCA silences cybersecurity experts, and makes all of us more vulnerable
19. Court Dismisses Trademark Suit Brought By Racetracks Against Gaming Company Referencing Historical Races
20. When a Robot Kills, Is It Murder or Product Liability?: An expert on robotics law responds to Paolo Bacigalupi’s short story “Mika Model.”
21. Robots That Act Differently When You’re Around: The machines of the future will tailor their behavior to humans—and even individual personalities.
22. How to Be Good: Why you can’t teach human values to artificial intelligence.

CREATIVITY

1. Opinion: Aqua-gag — How the Vancouver Aquarium abuses copyright law to silence criticism (Katie Sykes)
2. Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Celebrate Vancouver Aquarium Censoring Critical Documentary With Copyright
3. The Prince of Copyright Enforcement
4. Prince And Negativland: Strange Bedfellows Tilting At A Similar Copyright Windmill
5. Lego Admits It Was a ‘Mistake’ Refusing Ai Weiwei Bricks for Art Exhibition: ‘Danish toy maker says it has changed policies on bulk sales to avoid future disputes
6. The Erdogan Insult Mess: Dutch Reporter, German Politician Arrested For Mocking Erdogan; Swiss Art Exhibit Targeted Too
7. Iranian Cartoonist Atena Farghadani’s Prison Sentence Reduced From 12 Years to 18 Months
8. Copyright chaos: Why isn’t Anne Frank’s diary free now?
9. Our Dated Model of Theatrical Release Is Hurting Independent Cinema
10. For enthusiast media, ethics can be costly
11. About Violence Against Women: If your job requires writing about important issues, having some idea of what you’re talking about is kind of necessary.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Why Federal Leadership on Universal Broadband is a Need, Not a Want (Michael Geist)
2. A Radical Broadband Internet & Cultural Policy for Canada
3. Federal Government Launches Review of Law and Policy on Canadian Cultural Content in an Age of Digital Disruption
4. Regulators OK Charter-Time Warner merger
5. FCC To Ban Charter Communications From Imposing Usage Caps If It Wants Merger Approval
6. Comcast Preventing Customers From Accessing Starz Streaming App, Can Only Offer Flimsy Reasons Why
7. Cold call firms that hide numbers face £2M fine, warns UK government: Repeat offenders also face fines of up to £500,000 from the UK’s data watchdog.
8. When Music Pirates Used Pirate Ships: Renegade radio stations in the ’60s challenged government control of the airwaves from international waters and helped launch the rock revolution. 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. BeautifulPeople.com Leaks Very Private Data of 1.1 Million ‘Elite’ Daters — And It’s All For Sale
2. From Ashley Madison to the Panama Papers: Is Hacked Data Fair Game?
3. FBI Allegedly Paid More Than $1 Million To Get Into Encrypted iPhone… And To Avoid Setting Legal Precedent It Didn’t Like
4. FBI paid at least $1.3M for zero-day to get into San Bernardino iPhone: FBI Director James Comey: “But it was, in my view, worth it.”
5. Feds: someone gave us the passcode in NY drug case, so we don’t need Apple – In February, judge warned of “virtually limitless expansion” of gov’t authority.
6. UK intel agencies spy indiscriminately on millions of innocent folks: Docs revealed by court order show only flimsiest safeguards against abuse.
7. Court Says National Security Letters Are Now Constitutional Under USA Freedom Act
8. FISA Court Still Uncovering Surveillance Abuses By NSA, FBI
9. House Reps To James Clapper: No, Really, Stop Ignoring The Question And Tell Us How Many Americans Are Spied On By NSA
10. Indian Government Agencies Demand Access To WhatsApp Messaging Groups
11. Court Tells Cops They Can’t Open A Flip Phone Without A Warrant
12. The Fourth Amendment in the Information Age (Robert S. Litt)
13. Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance And Wikipedia Use (Jonathon W. Penney)

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