News of the Week; May 11, 2016

GAMES

1. Copyright Law Does Not Protect Structure and Game Play of Card Game 
2. DaVinci Editrice S.r.l. v. Ziko Games, LLC et al, No. 4:2013cv03415 – Document 44 (S.D. Tex. 2014)
3. Nintendo staves off latest in conga line of patent lawsuits
4. Game Developer Forced To Change Game’s Name Because ‘Wasteland’ Is A Trademark, Apparently
5. Disney Infinity shuts down as Disney drops out of game publishing: Company will take $147 million write down for shuttered toys-to-life line.
6.  Disney Infinity is dead as Disney exits game publishing
7. The Death of Toys-to-Life?: Was Disney Infinity’s demise on the cards, and will others follow?
8. Why You Should Always Register the Trademark on your Kickstarter Game
9. Advice To Immediately Trademark Kickstarter Projects Rests On Crowdfunding Not Being Commerce
10. eSports awareness to surge past 1 billion consumers in 2016 – Newzoo
11. Over a billion people will know about eSports in 2016, as audiences balloon
12. Gambling On Strategy eSports Becoming A Big Business
13. Activision is going all-in on eSports, and CEO Bobby Kotick sees the money
14. West Ham becomes first English Premiership football club to sign an e-sports player
15. League of Legends bans three teams from competition: Team Impulse, Renegades, and Team Dragon Knights banned for variety of offenses, have until May 18 to find new owners
16. Riot hands down team bans in League of Legends, and one lifetime ban
17. The man who tried to reform League of Legends player behavior leaves Riot
18. Over half of Madden NFL’s dollar-sales were from digital downloads
19. Cliff Bleszinski’s LawBreakers: A shooter inspired by sports, not video games – “Boston sports fans are very passionate, to the point of being insufferable.”
20. GameStop CEO: Wii U ‘disappointing to everybody,’ including Nintendo
21. Nintendo licenses out newCruis’n arcade game: Cruis’n Adventure
22. Consoles Will Die Soon According To Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) Exec
23. PS4 and Xbox One have a new competitor in the Chinese console market: Fuze’s new Tomahawk F1 console is smaller and digital only, but the similarities are plain to see
24. Tim Sweeney is still mad at Microsoft
25. Video game sales on the up at Bandai Namco as profits falter
26. New Call of Duty trailer racks up record ‘dislikes,’ but Activision’s unfazed
27. Steam’s turned toxic, and Valve doesn’t care
28. How big a deal is it to get featured by Apple? This big
29. Does App Store placement still matter?: A new App Annie report shows daily download gains of between 100 and 500 per cent depending on territory
30. Star Wars Battlefront ships 14m copies, EA enjoys “phenomenal” FY2016: “We grew non-GAAP net revenue, profitability and cash flow to record highs,” said CFO Blake Jorgensen
31. Microsoft refused to sell Fable IP – Report: Suitors expressed interest in acquiring Lionhead, but refusal to include franchise in the deal cut talks short
32. Metal Gear and mobile games give Konami a boost: Digital Entertainment division doubled its operating profit in the last fiscal year, but Konami sees decline in its future
33. King pushes Activision Blizzard to record Q: Candy Crush acquisition and Activision performance more than offset a down quarter for Blizzard
34. GAME acquires AR ads company
35. Vive maker HTC hits rocky waters in latest results
36. Microsoft’s new haptic VR tech blurs the lines between realities
37. International eGames Committee names advisory board
38. The Nürburgring may be the most-simulated location on the planet: Millions know it intimately more from video games than visiting the real thing.
39. The 13 Biggest Video Games That Never Came Out: The saddest game cancellations from the NES era to present day.
40. Biofeedback and Gaming: The Future Is Upon Us (Seriously)

DIGITAL

1. Stakes Are High in Oracle v. Google, But the Public Has Already Lost Big (EFF)
2. Google to jury: Android was built with our engineers’ hard work – “Android is precisely the kind of thing that fair use was intended to encourage.”
3. Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz at trial: Java was free, Android had no licensing problem – Schwartz parries attacks by Oracle’s lawyer suggesting he was a terrible CEO.
4. Facebook Wins Trademark Case In China Over Chinese Beverage Company
5. HBO Censors Game of Thrones Spoilers With Dubious Copyright Claims
6. Can you get kicked off YouTube for spoiling Game of Thrones?
7. “Venting” on Facebook Leads to $65,000 Defamation Judgment and Liability for 3rd Party Comments
8. Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
9. Facebook Rebuts Criticisms About a Bias Against Conservatives
10. Facebook now directly denies report of biased trends, says there’s no evidence
11. Maybe the real Facebook suppression is of shoddy news, not conservative news
12. The Real Problem With Facebook And The News
13. Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here’s What Happened When It Hired Some.
14. Publishers Strike Back at a Browser That Replaces Their Ads
15. Should it be against the law to share tragic images on social media?
16. Episode 173: Ashley Madison Class Action – No Anonymity for Class Representatives
17. Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Sues Gawker For Pointing Out He Didn’t Invent Email
18. Hail and Farewell to The Google Books Case: Google’s scanning project and the subsequent lawsuits once commanded the attention of the publishing, tech, and library worlds. (James Grimmelmann)
19. At Brandcast, YouTube Touts Audience Scale vs. Primetime TV
20. “Amazon Video Direct” takes aim at the professional side of YouTube: Machinima, TYT Network, Jash, and other pro YouTubers sign up for distribution.
21. Could children one day sue parents for posting baby pics on Facebook?: Pictures once kept hidden in family photo albums are now being shared with the world, and children may not appreciate it in the future
22. Russian Court Sentences Internet User to Two Years Behind Bars for VKontakte Reposts
23. Craigslist seller sentenced to 12 years for armed robbery of a buyer: Records search of phone number used on Craigslist posting led police to suspect.
24. Canada Removes Ban on Exports and Technology Transfers to Belarus
25. Will Yahoo Become A Patent Troll?
26. Who Is Ready for Baseball’s Robot Umpires?: With the proliferation of technology in modern lives, Jason Gay asks where professional sports should draw the line
27. NBC Is Going To Use Snapchat To Expand The Reach Of Its Rio 2016 Olympic Content
28. YouTube Star Hank Green Rebukes ‘Value Gap’ Arguments
29. Emojis: Copyright Law Can Turn Fun Little Symbols Into Big Headaches 
30. Do You Own What You Own? Not So Much Anymore, Thanks To Copyright
31. Regulators In Canada and the U.S. Signal Increasing Interest in the Internet of Things 
32. Millennials prefer Netflix to live TV
33. Streaming music has become Warner Music’s biggest business
34. Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership Turn Silicon Valley Into Detroit?
35. Marquette University’s Troubling Report on Faculty Blogger
36. ‘The Revolution Will Be Digitized’: Panama Papers Leaker Speaks Out

CREATIVITY

1. The Rolling Stones demand Trump stop using its music at rallies, but can the band actually stop him?
2. Turkish President Erdogan Now Demands Injunction Against German Media Boss For Saying He Laughed At Anti-Erdogan Poem
3. Evidence of gang ties does not include music on cell phones, court says: Use caution “when drawing conclusions from a defendant’s musical preferences.”
4. There’s no cushioning this blow: Comparative advertising is copyright fair use (Rebecca Tushnet)
5. Judge Refuses to Dismiss Lawsuit Over Crowdfunded ‘Star Trek’ Film: The use of Klingon — a language allegedly not copyrightable — in a not-yet-produced feature film can’t doom this lawsuit.
6. Judge Says Copyright Case Against Star Trek Fan Film Can ‘Live Long’ And Possibly ‘Prosper’
7. Minnesota Legislators Go Crazy, Pushing Dangerous PRINCE Act (EFF)
8. Minnesota’s Broad Publicity Rights Law, The PRINCE Act, So Broad That It May Violate Itself
9. Hasty action on a PRINCE Act would be pure folly: Take time to weigh the complex issues surrounding publicity rights, free speech, taxes and copyrights.  (William McGeveran)
10. Public Enemy #1: The Trans-Pacific Partnership vs. Free Expression
11. Trainor pulls video after she says her waist was altered
12. Snowden interview: Why the media isn’t doing its job
13. Meet the Woman Who Invented Cosplay: Myrtle R. Douglas, otherwise known as Morojo, rarely gets the credit she deserves for the worldwide phenomenon
14. Exposing the David Miscavige of Furries: Dominic Rodriguez, director of the doc Fursonas, on the furry community—adults interested in dressing like anthropomorphic animals—and its charismatic, abusive de facto leader.
15. Hollywood’s special effects industry is cratering, and an art form is disappearing along with it
16. Signs with registered English only trademarks in Québec? Not a problem if you have sufficient and visible French somewhere close by
17. The digital age of data art
18. Baidu Pushes Back On Chinese Gov’t Investigation By Freeing Up Images Related To Tiananmen Square

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Forget a Netflix Tax: How The Digital CanCon Review Can Shake Up the Status Quo (Michael Geist)
2. BCE Strikes $2.5 Billion Deal for Manitoba Telecom
3. Why Bell’s Bid to Buy MTS is Bad News
4. Europe’s antitrust chief rejects Three-O2 merger in UK: Commissioner Vestager kills takeover plan, citing significant UK competition concerns.
5. Europe’s Flimsy Net Neutrality Rules Go Live, Are Actually Worse Than No Rules At All
6. The Disturbing Decline Of Sumner Redstone
7. Cable lobby group: Broadband competition is bad for customers – FCC requires Charter to overbuild competitors, angering small cable providers.
8. Feds probe mobile phone industry over the sad state of security updates: FCC and FTC coordinate probe of OS developers, hardware makers, and carriers.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Commissioner seeks public input on consent (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
2. Facebook Loses Bid to Dismiss Privacy Lawsuit Over its Facial Recognition Feature
3. Facebook Gets Bad Ruling In Face-Scanning Privacy Case–In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation
4. Lauri Love case: NCA’s legal backdoor for crypto keys bid rejected by judge – National Crime Agency must use existing RIPA powers, judge rules.
5. When A Fingerprint IS The Password, Where Does The Fifth Amendment Come Into Play?
6. Is It Really That Big A Deal That Twitter Blocked US Intelligence Agencies From Mining Public Tweets?
7. FBI Harassing Core Tor Developer, Demanding She Meet With Them, But Refusing To Explain Why
8. Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment
9. Oregon DOJ Encourages Surveillance Of First Amendment Activities; Acts Surprised When Agents Do Exactly That
10. The Panama Papers — it’s still not over, source says
11. Chinese ARM vendor left developer backdoor in kernel for Android, other devices
12. UK Sports Star Threatens American Newspaper For Posting Public Information About His New Home
13. Facing Privacy Tradeoffs to Restore Trust and the Rule of Law
14. Is Blackberry’s Enhanced Security a Myth?
15. Do Babies Have the Right to Privacy?
16. The New Age of Surveillance

jon