News of the Week; May 4, 2016

GAMES

1. inXile legal challenge forces indie dev to rebrand game: The Alien Wasteland now called Action Alien following cease and desist letter over “Wasteland” trademark
2. Steam’s Sega Genesis mods: Tweaks, translations, and copyright infringement – New Steam Workshop support allows for uploading of arbitrary ROMs.
3. Blizzard agrees to meet with team behind shut-down “pirate server”: “We are the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire WoW community”
4. PS4 boosts Sony to first full-year profit in three years
5. Sony’s games business bolstered by rising PS4 sales
6. Sony shipped 17.7 million PS4s in the last fiscal year: Operating profit for games up 84 per cent, while Network revenue doubled year-on-year
7. How consoles survived the rise of the smartphone
8. Nintendo stops selling indie game in an attempt to cut off 3DS hackers
9. Smart device pivot could cost Nintendo at home
10. Nintendo’s president gets grilled on its mobile business, NX plans
11. “The roadmap for a successful Nintendo console is unclear”
12. Nintendo to sell majority stake in Seattle Mariners
13. Chinese mobile games market is now the most valuable in the world: Newzoo and TalkingData report pegs annual revenue for 2015 at $7.1 billion, rising to $10 billion this year
14. Zynga’s latest results: Steady as she goes, under new CEO Gibeau
15. Vivendi increases its stake in Ubisoft to almost 18%
16. Gears of War 4 would have cost Epic $100m – Sweeney: Epic CEO also laments how “toxic and destructive” some publishing arrangements can be
17. Survey: Less than half of U.S. households own dedicated game consoles
18. Game over: Windows 10 update crashes pro gamer’s broadcast session on Twitch
19. 7 million unsalted MD5 passwords leaked by Minecraft community Lifeboat: Worse still, service recommended “short, but difficult to guess passwords.”
20. ZOMG! ACCC beats US gamers Valve and proves ACL applies to foreign companies
21. How Games Are Helping Veterans Recover From Injury: Amputees and PTSD patients turn to virtual worlds
22. Australian Parliament report calls for renewed game industry funding
23. ESA loses three members
24. Riot’s path to building a collegiate eSports program
25. Social media is most common way to follow eSports – Survey
26. Almost twice as many UK games now supported by Games Tax Relief
27. Greenlighting a Niche Game: The Long Journey Ahead
28. Guinness Record Set With 25 Continuous Hours in Virtual Reality
29. Researcher Espen Aarseth wins $2.3M grant to create a theory of games 

DIGITAL

1. On Trolling ([Aristotle] translated by Rachel Barney)
2. How IBM’s new five-qubit universal quantum computer works
3. Strange Smoke Signals From the NFL: The drama surrounding Laremy Tunsil underlined the ludicrousness of NFL Draft weekend, and the surreal environment of modern digital life
4. Could YouTube Replace Your Cable TV?
5. FTC strikes a blow against Amazon in IAP lawsuit: US judge calls out, “millions of dollars billed to Amazon customers without a mechanism for consent”
6. Redaction Failure In FTC/Amazon Decision Inadvertently Allows Public To See Stuff It Should Have Been Able To See Anyway
7. FTC rules don’t explain excessive redactions in FTC v. Amazon
8. Voltage Pictures Launches Canadian File Sharing Lawsuit With Reverse Class Action Strategy (Michael Geist)
9. Done properly, can a Creative Commons license make for an easy defense?
10. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Withdraws Google Subpoena As Google Appeals Court Ruling
11. EU Regulators Can Barely Contain Their Desire To Attack Google And Facebook, Believing It Will Help Local Competitors
12. Google Isn’t Required To De-Index Negative Ripoff Report (Eric Goldman)
13. YouTube amends Content ID dispute process: Videos can now earn revenue while a Content ID claim is being disputed
14. French National Assembly Votes (Sorta) To Finally Kill Its Three Strikes Hadopi Program
15. Lessons From Prince’s Legacy And Struggle With Digital Music Markets
16. Public Opinion toward Internet Freedom in Asia: A Survey of Internet Users from 11 Jurisdictions
17. Nvidia and Samsung settle all existing patent litigation
18. Death by GPS: Why do we follow digital maps into dodgy places?
19. Bad drivers don’t think they’re bad: What Twitter tells us about road rage – Road deaths may be down, but accidents are on the rise.
20. 10-year-old gets $10,000 bounty for finding Instagram vulnerability: Facebook pays out as part of its bug bounty program.
21. Yahoo Just Lost a Deal Worth $100 Million a Year: More bad news for Marissa Mayer.
22. The White House Considers Artificial Intelligence an Important Policy Issue
23. Digital Gerrymandering and the Dangerous Influence of the Internet on Politics
24. Rethinking Knowledge in the Internet Age (David Weinberger)
25. Yes, All DRM (EFF)

CREATIVITY

1. Looking for art in artificial intelligence
2. Supervising Automated Journalists in the Newsroom: Liability for Algorithmically Produced News Stories
3. Supreme Court to hear copyright fight over cheerleader uniforms: 3D printing companies are cheering for a cheerleading industry underdog.
4. Did litigation kill the Beatles?
5. ‘Zappa Plays Zappa’ Pits Zappa vs. Zappa
6. Zappa Threatens Zappa Over Zappa Plays Zappa
7. Copyright Holders Try To Stop Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ From Entering Public Domain Using Co-Author Trick
8. Summary Judgment Upheld In Avatar Creators’ Favor After California Appellate Court Determines That Film Is Not Substantially Similar To Plaintiff’s Sci-Fi Work 
9. The potential impact of Brown v. Canada on ownership of intellectual property by employers
10. The New ‘Defend Trade Secrets Act’ Is The Biggest IP Development In Years (Eric Goldman)
11. Productivity Commission calls for free import of books, copyright shake-up
12. Australian Gov’t Commission: Copyright Is Copywrong; Hurting The Public And Needs To Be Fixed
13. Productivity Commission’s recommendations on IP reform likely to be lost in election haze
14. Illegality doesn’t negate copyright protection
15. This Amicus brief written partially in Klingon is the nerdiest legal document you’ll read today
16. Paramount Copyright Claim on Klingon Language Challenged in Klingon Language
17. Salvatore Ferragamo Brings Trademark Claims Against Former NFL Quarterback’s Ferragamo Winery 
18. Vice Media Sends Cease And Desist To ViceVersa Over Trademark Infringement
19. What Happens in the U.S. Stays in the U.S.: IP Dispute Against Canadian Company Will Not be Moved to Canadian Forum 
20. High Court finds that there was no goodwill in colours
21. Why Do So Many Asian Brands Hire White Models?
22. How Superman Defeated the KKK

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. The Digital CanCon Review: Be Wary of Old Whine in New Bottles (Michael Geist)
2. The challenge of reshaping Canada’s cultural landscape
3. New tariffs on the horizon after CRTC revamps rate-setting process for wholesale broadband Internet services 
4. FCC proposes new price regulations for cable—but not for home Internet: New “special access” rules would put cable and phone companies on equal ground.
5. Tom Wheeler: Comcast’s TV app proves the FCC is right about set-top boxes – Rules are needed, because “that which Comcast giveth, Comcast can taketh away.”
6. ‘Broadcast’ rights do not cover internet streaming rights, says Australian Court
7. EU slashes mobile roaming charges again, debuts net neutrality rules
8. Brazil Has To Pause Adoption Of Broadband Usage Caps After Consumers Revolt

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Challenges with the implementation of a right to be forgotten in Canada
2. Canada’s spies in spat over privacy breach reporting: Communications Security Establishment says reporting details of privacy breaches would jeopardize secret spying operations.
3. Secret US spy court approved everysurveillance request in 2015: Perfect batting average continues with the FISA Court two years in a row now.
4. FBI Spent $1.3 Million To Not Even Learn The Details Of The iPhone Hack… So Now It Says It Can’t Tell Apple
5. US woman forced to provide her fingerprint to unlock seized iPhone
6. The government wants your fingerprint to unlock your phone. Should that be allowed?
7. National Intelligence Office’s Top Lawyer Fires Off Spirited Defense Of Bulk Surveillance, Third Party Doctrine
8. Legal quirk enabling surveillance state expansion absent Congressional vote
9. Toymaker’s website pushes ransomware that holds visitors’ files hostage: Out-of-date Web app on Maisto.com causes site to attack its visitors.
10. Privacy Commissioner of Canada cracks down on Mobile Health Devices
11. You Can’t Escape Data Surveillance In America: The Fair Credit Reporting Act was intended to protect privacy, but its provisions have not kept pace with the radical changes wrought by the information age.
12. The Chilling Effect Of Mass Surveillance Quantified
13. Can Americans Resist Surveillance? (Ryan Calo)
14. Norms of Computer Trespass (Orin Kerr)
15. Incoded counter-conduct: What the incarcerated can teach us about resisting mass surveillance (Jessa Lingel, Aram Sinnreich)
16. Berkeley Technology Law Journal Volume 30, Issue 3 (Open Data, Privacy Issue)
17. If the Empire in Star Wars Had Big Data . .  (Daniel Soleve)

jon