News of the Week; June 1, 2016

GAMES

1. Texas court affirms game mechanics not protected under copyright law
2. How and why a group of modders have kept NHL 2004 on PC alive
3. Twitch streamers can now create and share 30-second clips of your game
4. GOG Connect will let users import select Steam games
5. Online Harassment and Trolling in Virtual Spaces
6. No Man’s Sky delay results in death threats for dev
7. No Man’s Anger: A peaceful game’s delay sparks online hate – Why is a two-month pushback generating death threats?
8. I Got Death Threats For Reporting On A Video Game Delay [UPDATES]
9. Mojang: Minecraft is not an advertising platform
10. Mojang bars companies and politicians from promoting themselves in Minecraft
11. No Consoles For Old Men: Ageism In The Game Industry
12. Accessibility in gaming should be the rule, not the exception
13. Apple, Arbiters Of Art, Say Game About Surviving The Gaza Strip Isn’t A Game, Even Though It Is
14. Payday 2 dev abandons controversial microtransactions
15. PlayStation 4 sales exceed 40m worldwide
16. PlayStation has become Sony’s cornerstone: PS4 is great, and PSVR/Neo will drive hype – but Sony’s success is also down to its competitors’ failures giving it a clear run at a thriving market
17. Take-Two CEO: ‘There Is No Market’ For VR Right Now
18. Seven months later, Valve’s Steam Machines look dead in the water: Sales of under 500,000 machines so far show an utter lack of market demand.
19. Supercell “printing money” with Clash games – SuperData: Both Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are generating $100m a month as digital sales in April climbed 5% to $6.2 billion
20. Starbreeze acquires Payday rights for $30 million in shares
21. Microsoft lends Fable license to former Lionhead devs
22. It’s been over a decade since Valve first promised Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – Franchise has now been in limbo longer than entire lives of fourth-graders.
23. Pro Counter-Strike: GO team Faze leaves World Esports Association
24. As eSports rise, look back at one of the world’s first video game tournaments: “It may seem extraordinary that you can now fill arenas with people who want to watch videogames…but it’s a perfectly reasonable outcome of what you could already see in 1972.”
25. Bud Light’s confusing entry into esports is sending the wrong message
26. Activision still committed to toys-to-life
27. Report: Vivendi continues Gameloft takeover after winning shareholder support
28. Vivendi succeeds in hostile Gameloft takeover
29. For this gadgethead, the HTC Vive may force my Oculus Rift to collect dust: After one month—and a lot of Elite: Dangerous—I know which one’s better for me.
30. Benchmark: Video Games Now Realistic Enough For Racing Games To Factor Into Racing Certs

DIGITAL

1. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft agree to remove hate speech across the EU
2. Top Internet Companies Agree To Vague Notice & Takedown Rules For ‘Hate Speech’ In The EU
3. Google, Twitter, Facebook hate speech deal with EU is rash, say digi warriors: EDRi and Access Now warn against tech giants acting as online thought police.
4. RPT-EU hate speech deal shows mounting pressures over internet content blocking
5. Twitter Bans Obvious Putin Parody Account, Retreats After International Shaming
6. Thailand Government Wants To Undermine Website Encryption, Hold ISPs Responsible For Third-Party Content
7. Ontario Court Adopts New Cause Of Action To Combat Online Bullying
8. This YouTube Star Got Sued, Raised $130,000, and Wants to Change the Site Forever: One of their own was in trouble. Now YouTube creators are fighting back
9. Tunecore CEO: YouTube Is Not The Enemy – It’s A Goldmine Of ‘Found Money’
10. GoFundMe For H3h3productions’ Copyright Suit Raises $100,000 From Philip DeFranco, Markiplier, PewDiePie
11. YouTube Personality Files Bogus Copyright Infringement Lawsuit To Shut Up Two Critics
12. Author Sues Publisher For Portraying eBook Licenses As ‘Sales’ To Pay Out Fewer Royalties
13. Digital Deceit: Study Reveals Consumer Misconceptions About Ownership Rights
14. Google Wins Trial Against Oracle, Saves $9 Billion
15. Google beats Oracle—Android makes “fair use” of Java APIs: Oracle has spent many millions trying to get a chunk of Android, to no avail.
16. Why Google’s victory in a copyright fight with Oracle is a big deal
17. Why Google’s fair use victory over Oracle matters: Had Oracle won instead, a cascade of liability could have meant every Android phone owner in the world was breaching copyright law
18. Big Win For Fair Use: Jury Says Google’s Use Of Java API’s Was Fair Use… On To The Appeal
19. Google’s Fair Use Victory Is Good for Open Source (Pamela Samuelson)
20. Thoughts on Google’s Fair Use Win in Oracle v. Google (Michael Risch)
21. Who won Google VS Oracle? Developers won.
22. Independent Musician Sues Justin Bieber & Skrillex For Copyright Infringement… Over A Sample They Didn’t Use
23. Kraftwerk loses hip-hop music-sampling copyright case – German Supreme court: Kraftwerk copyright claim doesn’t outweigh “artistic freedom.”
24. The German Constitutional Court on Sampling (31 May 2016)
25. Fair Use In The Age Of Social Media
26. Software patent post Alice world – Section 101 Patent Eligible Subject Matter – Enfish v. Microsoft, Fed. Cir. No. 2015-1244 (May 12, 2016)
27. Google has increased its lead as the world’s top media owner and shows no signs of slowing
28. Should it be legal to resell e-books, software, and other digital goods?: With e-book reselling heading to the EU Court of Justice, we examine the complexities of the law.
29. The DMCA Should Not Be An All Purpose Tool For Taking Down Content; And It’s Espeically Bad For Harassment
30. Why 3D scans aren’t copyrightable
31. Youtube Threatens Legal Action Against Video Downloader
32. Twitter’s Periscope Has A New Way To Deal With Trolls: Trial By Jury – An innovative moderation system will allow Periscope viewers to quickly zap abusive comments, while offering trolls a chance at redemption.
33. Website for models can be sued for not warning users about rapists: Communications Decency Act doesn’t immunize Modelmayhem.com from legal liability.
34. Government-Mandated Website Blocking Comes to Canada as Quebec’s Bill 74 Takes Effect (Michael Geist)
35. News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016 (Pew Research Center)
36. Judge Says The FBI Can Keep Its Hacking Tool Secret, But Not The Evidence Obtained With It
37. Why Netflix Isn’t a European Company
38. Why can’t the Estonian president buy a song off iTunes for his Latvian wife?: Toomas Hendrik Ilves really, really wants a much more digitally integrated Europe.
39. Bankruptcy Fight May Be The Least Of Team Prenda’s Concerns, As The FBI Comes Knocking
40. ‘Black box’ no more: This system can spot the bias in those algorithms – Why was your loan denied? A university’s technique can shed some light
41. I’m a black man. Here’s what happened when I booked an Airbnb.
42. Facebook Wants to Help Sell Every Ad on the Web: The social network will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites
43. The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback: The social network had a grand plan to connect millions of Indians to the internet. Here’s how it all went wrong
44. The Playlist That’s Helping Spotify Win The Streaming Music Battle: Originally an experiment, Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist now has twice as many listeners as Apple Music and Tidal combined
45. Yahoo’s False Prophet: How Marissa Mayer Failed to Turn the Company Around
46. The Myth of Sentient Machines: Digital computers might be fundamentally incapable of supporting consciousness.
47. B.C. Court Grants Ex Parte Injunction Against Google and GoDaddy and Awards $1.2 in Damages in Internet Defamation Case 
48. Microsoft gets into VR by letting others build HoloLens gear: Microsoft is opening up Windows Holographic at the perfect time.
49. Beware the Trojan Horse: Elsevier’s repository pilot and our vision for IRs & Open Access
50. Study Shows People Don’t Trust Robots – Unless They’re Carrying Cookies
51. Internet trends report | Mary Meeker, KPCB | Code Conference 2016
52. It’s Official: The ‘Internet’ Is Over

CREATIVITY

1. Billionaire Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogan lawsuit to take down Gawker
2. Yes, A Billionaire Looking To Destroy A Media Organization Through Lawsuits Is A Big Deal Even If You Don’t Like The Media Organization
3. Some Thoughts on Thiel’s Lawfare Against Gawker (Eric Goldman)
4. How Can We Make You Happy Today, Peter Thiel?
5. The legal campaign against Gawker has roots in the racist South
6. Gawker Smeared Me, and Yet I Stand With It
7. The Silencing of Japan’s Free Press
8. CBS Beats Lawsuit Over Pre-1972 Songs With Bold Copyright Argument: A judge determines that remastered versions of old songs get copyright — and owners of the originals can’t stop the public performance of them.
9. Maker of film critiquing Vancouver Aquarium wins right to appeal copyright ruling
10. Star Trek Fan Film Axanar Lawyers Tell Court About JJ Abrams Claims Of Paramount Dropping Suit, Express Confusion
11. Comic-Con, Costumes, and Copyright Concerns
12. No Copyright in Facts
13. Council of the European Union calls for full open access to scientific research by 2020
14. Beyonce, Drake and the ‘Exclusives’ Explosion: How Streaming Has Changed the Way Albums Are Released
15. The enduring whiteness of the American media
16. Can Anyone Save The New York Times From Itself?: It’s been two years since Dean Baquet vaulted over Jill Abramson to claim the top editorial job, but the prospect of deeper change is still stirring at the 164-year-old Times. With longtime publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. seeking a successor, Baquet’s would-be replacements already jockeying for position, and drastic cuts looking all but inevitable, Sarah Ellison surveys the internal power players—past, present, and future—to see if any of them have answers to the existential questions plaguing the paper of record.
17. Scientists show how we start stereotyping the moment we see a face
18. How the Textbook Industry Tries to Hook Your Prof
19. Open Letter on Ethical Norms in Intellectual Property Scholarship

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. CRTC reviewing controversial ‘zero-rating’ in internet plans: Inquiry has major implications for internet service, net neutrality advocates say
2. Should broadband data hogs pay more? ISP economics say “no”: The idea has a certain logic—those who use more should pay more—but should it work IRL?
3. Why Telecom Transparency Reporting in Canada Still Falls Short (Michael Geist)
4. Why Bell’s Bid to Buy MTS is Bad News: Report Submitted to the Competition Bureau assessing Bell Canada Enterprises’ proposed bid to acquire Manitoba Telecommunications Services
5. Bell customers to receive up to $11.82 million as part of Competition Bureau agreement: Agreement also requires Bell to donate approximately $800,000 to support public interest advocacy groups
6. More Orphan Black, less Canadiana: An American on Canadian culture
7. AT&T Falsely Blames The FCC For Company’s Failure To Block Annoying Robocalls
8. ISPs and pay-TV lowest-rated industries, with Comcast worst in sector: Comcast ranks 289th out of 294 companies—and last in least-liked industry.
9. Study: How Cable News Talks About Abortion – Anti-Choice Speakers And Misinformation Dominate Abortion Coverage On Evening Cable News
10. Viacom in Turmoil: Will Shari Redstone Succeed in Seizing Control of Her Father’s Empire? 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Why Microsoft Is Suing the Feds Over Issues of Privacy and Security: President Brad Smith explains the company’s stance on searches and seizure of data in secret
2. Privacy injunctions in the age of the Internet and social media: PJS v News Group Newspapers 
3. Virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Echo break US child privacy law, experts say: Storing voice recordings of people younger than 13 via Alexa, Google Home and Siri appears to flout the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
4. How LinkedIn’s password sloppiness hurts us all: Second data dump lets hackers be 6 times better cracking future dumps.
5. Uber Knows Too Much About You
6. Doctors fire back at bad Yelp reviews — and reveal patients’ information online
7. Cops can easily get months of location data, appeals court rules: Relying on third-party doctrine, Fourth Circuit finds for gov’t in US v. Graham.
8. GCHQ and NSA routinely spy on UK politicians’ e-mails—report: Microsoft’s Office 365 and MessageLabs said to leave MPs’ e-mails open to snooping.
9. Irish watchdog refers Facebook privacy case to Europe’s top court: EU-US data transfer debate intensifies as thorny “model contracts” are eyeballed.
10. Surveillance technology has advanced far beyond the laws that govern it
11. How Russia’s New Facial Recognition App Could End Anonymity: FindFace’s technology may one day allow anyone to identify you with their phone.
12. How Genius annotations undermined web security: To comment on other people’s websites, Genius broke a 20-year-old browser security system
13. Anonymized Data Really Isn’t Anonymous: Vehicle Data Can Easily Be Used To Identify You
14. If, As Eric Holder Now Admits, Snowden Did ‘A Public Service,’ Why Does He Still Want Him In Jail?
15. China Gets Its First ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Lawsuit

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