News of the Week; July 6, 2016

GAMES

1. Blizzard ups the ante against Overwatchcheats by filing lawsuit: Hostilities reopen between Blizzard and longtime rivals Bossland.
2. Blizzard files suit for copyright infringement against Overwatch hack developer
3. YouTubers under fire for promoting their own CS:GO gambling site in videos: Syndicate and TmarTn promoted CSGO Lotto, but didn’t disclose that they own it.
4. Prominent YouTubers revealed as owners of controversial CS:GO gambling site: Pair had heavily promoted use of service without disclosure, alleges video
5. YouTube gamers caught in gambling row
6. Popular YouTubers scrutinized over Counter-Strike gambling scandal
7. Steam warns users against gambling site after YouTube stars discovered as owners
8. To get young people gambling, casinos embrace video games
9. Nintendo issues DMCA takedown against Kickstarter for NES photobook
10. Video game art swiped this week by Beijing hockey team, Ford dealership: Guild Wars 2, Firewatch are latest victims of “infinite free content” syndrome.
11. eSports Integrity Coalition launches
12. British eSports Association formed
13. Manchester City sign 18-year-old eSports player: Kieran ‘Kez’ Brown to play Fifa 16 for the team, live streaming on Twitch and making YouTube videos
14. Sources: Sporting Lisbon enters League of Legends and FIFA esports
15. ESPN partners with Evo to put Street Fighter V finals on live TV
16. PlayStation Plus now has 20.8m paying subscribers
17. GameStop sells out of PS VR pre-orders… again: Second allotment sells out in 4 minutes
18. Sony’s entire future now rests on PlayStation: As Kaz Hirai’s painful restructuring comes to a close, a new Sony emerges – one whose growth is almost entirely centered on the success of PlayStation
19. Sony Locks Up The PSN Account Of A Man Named ‘Jihad’ Because You’ll Never Guess Why
20. The Legend of Zelda fans decry lack of female lead as ‘lazy’ and ‘laughable’: Video game hero Link often interpreted as androgynous, but producers maintain that he will remain male
21. Microsoft aims to upgrade Xbox avatar program with wheelchairs
22. Nintendo May Skip VR for its Forthcoming NX Console, Report Suggests
23. With NX in the wings, Nintendo execs seek to reassure investors
24. Japanese LittleBigPlanet servers shutting down
25. Only 3.5% of gamers make in-app purchases – AppsFlyer
26. Ubisoft expands board of directors to combat Vivendi influence
27. Video games on Kickstarter raise just $8.2m in first half of 2016 – ICO: That’s down from more than $20m in the previous period, but the ratio of successfully funded projects has increased
28. Steam Spy: Steam summer sale revenues rise nearly 50% year-over-year
29. HTC Vive spearheads $10bn VR VC group: 27 firms have joined with HTC Vive in the VR Venture Capital Alliance
30. TIGA asks UK government to protect status of existing EU workers: Migrant workers fill vital gaps in country’s skillset, says body
31. How virtual racing is turning gamers into drivers
32. The ethical decisions and factional politics of Stellaris
33. Social Dynamics Within Sony’s PlayStation VR Social VR Experiments
34. Source code for Lucasfilm Games’ ’80s MMO Habitat released
35. Inside The Art Of Atari: Take a look at a book about console gaming’s earliest days
36. The Secret History of Donkey Kong 

DIGITAL

1. Internet piracy falls to record lows amid rise of Spotify and Netflix
2. American Copyright Trolls Continue To Abuse Canadian Courts In Search Of Easy Settlements
3. Google Asks to Punish Oracle Lawyer Who Spilled Apple Secrets
4. NRA Trademark Complaint Over Yes Men Parody Takes Down 38,000 Websites
5. ACLU Files Challenge To CFAA Over Blocking Research Into Discrimination Online
6. China restricts online news sites from sourcing stories on social media: News outlets forbidden from using “conjecture and imagination to distort the facts.”
7. Spotify says Apple won’t approve a new version of its app because it doesn’t want competition for Apple Music: “We cannot stand by as Apple uses the App Store approval process as a weapon.”
8. For The First Time In Olympic History, Virtual Reality Broadcast Programming Will Be Available
9. Internet Access Is Now A Basic Human Right
10. Facebook’s News Feed: Often Changed, Never Great
11. Spotify And Apple Are At Each Other’s Throats – With The Music Biz Caught In The Middle
12. The tick-tock story of how LinkedIn shopped itself to Microsoft, Salesforce and Google
13. The mad rush to own the rights to the blockchain
14. This chatbot appeals parking tickets and wins 60 percent of the time: Available in NYC and London for now; 160,000 tickets challenged so far.
15. The Good, the Bad and the Weirdest “Internet of Things” Things: Why haven’t all of our objects gone wireless? Because nobody’s buying this stuff
16. VidCon 2016: Innocence Lost?
17. Paid / Sponsored Content Disclosure: A Practical Legal Guide for YouTubers and Streamers (Jas Purewal & Pete Lewin)
18. IP for AIs?
19. A women’s History of Silicon Valley: Let’s lionize these seven technologists who kicked off the computer revolution and happen to be female.

CREATIVITY

1. Two Courts Throw Out Turkish President’s Bid To Obtain An Injunction Against German Media Boss
2. Peter Thiel Is Not an Enemy of Journalism (He Just Wants to Destroy It): And what may be one of the most significant First Amendment fights in history.
3. Thin-Skinned Chinese Govt. Declares Media War On Lady Gaga For Meeting With The Dalai Lama
4. Movie theater chain demands $700,000 from victims of the Aurora shooting to recoup legal fees
5. Ford Dealership Swipes Game Image For Ad, Thinks It’s Kosher Because It Came From A DMCA Compliant Site
6. Media coverage in politics: court draws line between critical political reporting and defamation
7. A $10 Billion Idea, without a Patent, is just an Idea
8. Happy Birthday: my campaign to liberate the people’s song – video
9. Dish Agrees To Make Ad-Skipping DVR Less Useful In Settlement With Comcast, NBC Universal
10. Licensed To Fail: How licensing ended ‘established and respected’ international document supply service
11. The FEC has no business judging Fox News’s debate
12. The AP’s New Baseball Reporter Is Not Human
13. Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing review – did tech change literary style?
14. A Philosophy of Intellectual Property (Peter Drahos)
15. New study could explain why we remake certain movies over and over again: Unfortunately, there is no method for eliminating bad reboots.
16. Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling: Scientists at the Computational Story Laboratory have analyzed novels to identify the building blocks of all stories.

COMMUNICATIONS & BROADCASTING

1. Reining in the Cable Killers: Federal Court Orders Crackdown on TV Set-top Boxes with Copyright-infringing Applications 
2. Canadian Battle over “Zero Rating” Places Net Neutrality Safeguards at Risk (Michael Geist)
3. Kickbacks And Legal Tricks Are Protecting Mega-ISPs From Apartment Broadband Competition
4. FCC Pressure Helps Bring Netflix To Comcast Cable Boxes
5. Comcast Incorrectly Bills Customer $1,775, Tells Him To Figure It Out With His Bank
6. Amazon offers smartphone discounts in exchange for baked-in ads: Amazon brings ad-supported hardware model from the Kindle to Android phones.
7. Dish Sues Tribune Because It Called The Company ‘Dishgusting’ 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Facebook wins privacy case, can now track any Belgian it wants: Facebook can go back to tracking Belgians who aren’t logged in or don’t have an account.
2. Illinois Court Says State’s Cyberstalking Law Is Unconstitutional
3. Man arrested for taking video of cops sues NYPD
4. I helped draft the Freedom of Information Act 50 years ago. Here’s what I learned about government secrecy.
5. Government Surveillance of Internet Traffic 
6. 2015 Wiretap Report Doesn’t Have Much To Say About Encryption, But Does Show Feds Run Into Zero Judicial Opposition

jon