News of the Week; June 8, 2016

GAMES

1. Fan-Made Star Wars Battlefront 3 Remake Approved For Steam – Don’t call it a comeback.: Fans have been working on a remake of the unreleased Star Wars Battlefront III, and it looks like it’s going to be released on Steam.
2. The Paid Mods Question
3. Maxis does away with gender boundaries in latest Sims 4update
4. Maxis and GLAAD collaborate to remove gender restrictions from The Sims
5. Chinese gov’t aims to tighten its hold on the mobile game market
6. China tightens regulations around mobile games: Month-long process will root out undesirable content, adding yet more complexity to doing business in the world’s most populous country
7. How an American company topped China’s mobile charts
8. Sorry games industry, but VR won’t wait—Hollywood is coming for it: The likes of Take-Two might not believe in VR, but huge VFX studios like Framestore do
9. Capcom bans pro player for sexual harassment: Noel Brown gone for the season after grabbing a woman on camera, second offense will result in lifetime ban
10. eSports’ “path to profitability farther off than VR” for publishers – Pachter
11. Why eSports Tournaments Make Great Venues for Research
12. Spanish soccer club Valencia CF creates eSports team
13. The Difficult History Of Videogames And Indigenous People
14. Conflict mineral sourcing still hazy for games industry: Apple and Microsoft make significant improvements in their supply chains as Activision backslides; Time Warner and Facebook in apparent violation of SEC rules
15. Overwatch Bans Thousands Of Cheaters: Blizzard takes a zero-tolerance stance on hacking.
16. Overwatch surpasses 7 million players in just over a week
17. Video game voice actors’ union calls on state regulator to improve working conditions
18. SAG-AFTRA Asks for Investigation of Videogame Industry Over Vocal Safety Issues
19. Frontier inadvertently drivesElite: Dangerous AI to create superweapons – “We don’t think the AI became sentient in a Skynet-style uprising!”
20. Minecraft has sold over 100 million copies, says Mojang
21. Mad Catz reports $11M loss following bad Rock Band 4 deal
22. Vivendi buys out Guillemot family to seal Gameloft takeover
23. Mohawk wants user reviews, sales, refunds removed from Early Access: Soren Johnson’s Offworld Trading Company postmortem highlights the tension between developer and consumer interests on Steam
24. PayPal Refuses to Refund $50,000 to Twitch Donation Troll
25. Sorry, the Xbox One isn’t going to be a DVR after all: Microsoft scraps plans to turn console into an over-the-air recorder.
26. Tabletop games far outpace video games in pledge money, says Kickstarter
27. Digital games to account for a third of console revenues in 2020 – PwC: “In some ways it’s surprising that physical game disks will continue to be a major force by 2020”
28. Apple will allow subscriptions for games: App Store opening up option for all apps; revenue share for subscription devs will increase after a year
29. ESA: The 50-plus gamer crowd has passed 40m in the US – 75% of the over 50 demographic plays games on a weekly basis; developers need to pay attention to this older audience
30. Facebook signs deal to let users livestream Blizzard games
31. Before Battlefield 1, EA Wasn’t Sure Young People Would Know WW1 Was A Thing
32. How I connected with my autistic son through video games: A PlayStation game opened up a liberating world of play, interaction and co-operation for Keith Stuart and his young son. It continues to be a cornerstone of their relationship – and a place to have fun together as equals
33. Surgeon Simulator Update Lets Players Go ‘Inside Donald Trump’: Make surgery great again.
34. Computer scientists quantify just how hardSuper Mario Bros. is: Solving an arbitrary level belongs to a class of problems called PSPACE.
35. The Incredibly Weird Story Behind Tetris
36. Video games are evidence we’re living in a simulation, says Elon Musk: “The strongest argument for us being in a simulation is the following: 40 years ago, we had Pong. Two rectangles and a dot. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D with millions playing simultaneously.” 

DIGITAL

1. Russia Imprisoning Dozens Of Social Media Critics For ‘Hate Speech’
2. How Donald Trump Hijacked the Authenticity of the Web: His credibility is zero, but by attacking political correctness he projects a true voice to his internet followers (David Weinberger)
3. Two Separate Copyright Rulings Around The Globe May Finally Clear The Copyright Way For Sampling
4. Madonna Gets Victory Over ‘Vogue’ Sample at Appeals Court: The 9th Circuit rules that a trivial taking isn’t enough to establish copyright infringement.
5. De Minimis Music Sampling Isn’t Infringement–Salsoul v. Madonna
6. The De Minimus Exception to Infringement is Now in Vogue for Sound Recordings
7. VMG Salsoul LLC v. Madonna Louise
8. Ciccone, United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, June 2, 2016
9. Madonna’s Copyright Win Is Good News for Fans and Musicians
10. Youtuber Sued Over Stanley Kubrick Movies Analysis
11. Axl Rose tests the Streisand Effect by demanding Google removes fat photos: Singer’s heavy-handed attempt to suppress “fat Axl” meme hasn’t paid off.
12. Donald Trump Meets Intellectual Property
13. Another Entity Thinks A Random Bundle Of URLs Is A Legitimate DMCA Takedown Request
14. California Ruling Against Facebook on Right of Publicity Blows Huge Hole in Section 230 Immunity
15. WTF Is Going On With Section 230?–Cross v. Facebook (Eric Goldman)
16. Another Bad Ruling In California Threatens To Massively Undermine Section 230 By Exempting Publicity Rights
17. EFF Urges Supreme Court To Throw Out $399 Million Damage Award Against Samsung in Apple Smartphone Patent Case: ‘Total Profits’ Damage Awards For Infringing Design Patents Are Excessive, Unfair
18. Digital Trademark and Design Patent Infringement
19. Hacker Lexicon: What Is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
20. Google’s fair use victory is good for open source (Pamela Samuelson)
21. Judge Upholds Google’s Win Over Oracle in $9 Billion Trial Over APIs
22. Oracle accused of cooking “cloud services” books to boost stock price: Accusations follow Oracle’s major defeat in API copyright suit against Google.
23. Website blocking: saving Lotto Quebec from competition (Timothy Denton)
24. How Binding Is Your Browsewrap Agreement?
25. CurrentC—retailers’ defiant answer to Apple Pay—will deactivate its user accounts: The mobile payments scheme was distrusted before it even hit the big time.
26. Warner Bros. DMCAs Insanely Awesome Recreation Of Blade Runner By Artificial Intelligence
27. Here’s how Airbnb plans to tackle racism on the platform
28. Here’s How Neo-Nazis Identify (((Jews))) on Twitter
29. Putin’s Internet Trolls Mercilessly Smear Finnish Reporter Simply For Pointing Them Out
30. Yelp Forced To Remove Defamatory Reviews–Hassell v. Bird
31. Company Sues Customer For $1 Million, Claiming Yelp Review Was ‘Defamatory,’ Violated Non-Disparagement Clause
32. Nest May Be The First Major Casualty Of Hollow ‘Internet Of Things’ Hype
33. PwC: Internet Advertising Will Overtake Broadcast Advertising in the U.S. Next Year: Mobile to see biggest growth, report says
34. The New Television: The next few years will see a massive shift of ads and attention from TV to mobile. A handful of companies, led by Facebook, are poised to make a killing.
35. How YouTube May Now Be Worth $90 Billion (or More) on a Standalone Basis
36. Facebook’s Race To Dominate AI
37. Twitter Reportedly Held Merger Talks With Yahoo
38. Cambridge’s Akamai will pay feds in Chinese bribery case
39. Bad news for P.F. Chang -Court rules that all claims for 2014 data breach are not covered under its cyberinsurance! 
40. The Ethical Quandary of Self-Driving Cars: When a crash is inevitable, autonomous vehicles will have to decide whom to collide with.
41. Man v machine: can computers cook, write and paint better than us?: Artificial intelligence can now win a game, recognise your face, even appeal against your parking ticket. But can it do the stuff even humans find tricky?
42. Can Artificial Intelligence achieve human-like consciousness?: A philosophical question — not a technical one.
43. Software is still eating the world

CREATIVITY

1. The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder Is Reinventing The Washington Post – and What Lessons It Might Hold for the Beleaguered Newspaper Business
2. Hollywood Has a Huge Millennial Problem: 2016 is on pace to be the worst year for movies—by tickets bought per U.S. adult—since before the 1920s. What’s going on?
3. The world’s tyrants clamp down on free speech — including against a king’s dog
4. Under attack: Curbs on free speech are growing tighter. It is time to speak out
5. Choosing Principles Over Publication: Psychology instructor withdraws book chapter after refusing to add language that he asserts a publisher demanded but he deemed too flattering to the textbook industry.
6. Canada Post Drops Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Codes (Michael Geist)
7. US District Court Finds Digitally Remastered Pre-1972 Sound Recordings Are “Derivative Works” Covered By Federal Law – Dismisses Suit against Broadcaster Seeking Over-the-Air Performance Royalties 
8. Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to Be Scrutinized in Court in Copyright Case
9. The Perversion Of Trademarks: Jose Mourinho Can’t Coach Man-U Yet Because Former Club Trademarked His Name
10. Sid Vicious’s Photographer Sues Richard Prince for Copyright Infringement
11. Appeals Court Burns Defamation Lawsuit Targeting ‘American Hustle’ Microwave Scene
12. Tribune Publishing, now ‘tronc,’ issues worst press release in the history of journalism
13. EU-Funded Study On The Cost Of Copyright Infringement Dismisses Key Real-World Factor As ‘Outside Its Scope’
14. Our public institutions need fair use laws: We need reform to free libraries, archives and universities from unnecessary red tape.
15. Why we’re terrified of fanfiction
16. The ineffectiveness of publication bans
17. Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it? – We paid for the research with taxes, and Internet sharing is easy. What’s the hold-up?

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Manitoba Consumers Fear Price Hikes, Data Caps If BCE Buys MTS: Poll
2. The TPP’s Impact on Canadian Culture Emerging as Political Issue (Michael Geist)
3. Federal Court issues interlocutory injunction directed at retailers of set-top boxes loaded with copyright infringing applications
4. Tom Wheeler accuses cable companies of shutting out minority TV channels
5. Broadband CEOs Admit Usage Caps Are Nothing More Than A Toll On Uncompetitive Markets
6. Time Warner Cable Internet speeds are “abysmal,” NY AG claims
7. Using Text Messages in Promotions and Contests? – $8,500,000 Settlement Provides Reminder to Make Sure You are Aware of TCPA Obligations 
8. ‘Just can’t get enough’: Half of Canadian TV subscribers use streaming services like Netflix too, survey says
9. Netflix, Inc: A Growing Threat For Cable Companies
10. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner clamps down on spam and the automated harvesting of electronic addresses 
11. Fantasy-League Media: If you could draft an all-star team of entertainment and media assets and capabilities, who would you pick?

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Exclusive: Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal
2. Yahoo First Company To Publicly Acknowledge It Has Received National Security Letters
3. Forty-One Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing Congressman’s Private Data In Hopes Of Discrediting Him
4. Appeals Court: As Long As The Government Has ‘Good Faith,’ It Can Root Around In Your Digital Files As Much As It Wants
5. Turkish Constitutional Court: Monitoring Employee E-mail Accounts Does Not Breach Privacy Rights
6. Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter, Pinterest accounts compromised: Facebook denies hack of Zuck’s Instagram; LinkedIn 2012 password dump fingered.
7. In 1971, Muhammad Ali Helped Undermine The FBI’s Illegal Spying On Americans

jon