March 2014

News of the Week; March 26, 2014

1. Rovio Wins Counterfeit Toy Lawsuit, Awarded $700K in Damages

2. Facebook acquiring Oculus for $2 billion

3. Minecraft dev halts talks with Oculus following Facebook acquisition

4. Security and Privacy for Augmented Reality Systems

5. Candy Crush Maker Falls in Trading Debut

6. At GDC Shindig, Don Mattrick Says Zynga Turnaround Is Halfway There

7. EA out of Worst Company in America poll

8. Australian Man Charged With Hacking Unnamed U.S. Video Game Company

9. Playing as black: Avatar race affects white video game players

10. We must reject stereotypes in games – Manveer Heir

11. What it means to be a woman in games

12. Watch out trolls: Microsoft begins sending Xbox One reputation warnings

13. How Virtual Gaming Worlds Are Revealing the Nature of Human Hierarchies

14. Abraham game makers believe they are in a fight with Satan

15. The First National Bank of GameStop

16. The Pilots in the Basement

17. This University Cares About What Truly Matters: Being Good At Gaming

18. Norwegian Teen Learns That Call of Duty Marathons and Energy Drinks Can Put You in a Coma

19. Texas Juvenile Probation Dept. Head Blames Video Games, Music for Evil Influence

20. Researchers Disagree on New Study Correlating Violent Games With Aggressive Behavior in Children

21. Researchers Use Tetris To Reduce Cravings

22. The 10 best esports documentaries of all time

23. ‘Monopoly’ is crowdsourcing new rules on Facebook

24. Landmark judgment on intellectual property and online links

25. Supreme Court Changes False Advertising Law Across the Country

26. Judge: IP-Address Is Not a Person and Can’t Identify a BitTorrent Pirate

27. Show me how you do that trick: magic  performance copyrightable, infringed

28. The big steal: rise of the plagiarist in the digital age

29. BSA Caught Using Infringing Image For Its ‘Snitch’ On Your Colleagues Anti-Piracy Campaign

30. How do you DRM a coffee pod?

31. Netflix Says It Really Didn’t Want to Cut That Traffic Deal With Comcast

32. Internet Tolls And The Case For Strong Net Neutrality

33. In Turkey, Twitter Roars After Effort to Block It

34. Elephant Trails: How Old Technologies & Business Practices Continue to Influence Us

35. NSA hacker in residence dishes on how to “hunt” system admins

36. Forget the NSA. Tech Companies May Be Reading Your Email Too

37. Arrest of secret-leaking ex-Microsoftie raises Hotmail privacy concerns (Updated)

38. Microsoft Software Leak Inquiry Raises Privacy Issues

39. How Microsoft Scroogled Itself As The Defender Of Email Privacy Over Google

40. Taken in phishing attack, Microsoft’s unmentionables aired by hacktivists

41. Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies

42. Who Needs Lawful Access?: Cdn Telcos Hand Over Data on Thousands of Subscribers Without a Warrant

43. When gov’t spies fake your company’s website, what can be done?

44. Mt. Gox suddenly finds 200,000 missing bitcoins, worth over $115M

45. IRS Says Bitcoin Will Be Taxed as Property, Not Currency

46. 9th Circuit oral arguments in Garcia v. Google

jon

News of the Week; March 12, 2014

1. Video game addiction? Court dings dad’s claim

2. South Park delayed in Germany, Austria over use of swastikas

3. DRAM makers reach $310 million settlement in price fixing suit

4. Female Representation in Desktop Dungeons

5. Tomb Raider finally beats profit expectations

6. Hard Empirical Evidence That Games Are Better Than Music

7. The Disappointment Of Video Game Guns

8. Playing games with violence

9. What today’s console makers can learn from the ’90s Sega vs. Nintendo battle

10. When A Successful Game Is A Failure

11. Kabam Acquires Role-Playing Game Studio Phoenix Age

12. King targets $7.6 billion valuation

13. The Flight of the Birdman: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

14. Nigeria seeks to conquer African video games market

15. Copyright v. privacy: Voltage Pictures LLC v. John DOE and Jane DOE

16. Court Blesses Instagram’s Right to Unilaterally Amend Its User Agreement–Rodriguez v. Instagram

17. Google States Unequivocally It Was ‘Attacked’ By The Chinese… And By The United States

18. Government Sues Sprint For Overcharging For Wiretaps Under CALEA

19. Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It

20. The Future of Internet Freedom

21. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee calls for digital “Magna Carta”

22. Machinima raises $18m in Warner Bros funding round

23. Getty Images Decides It’s Mostly Better To Compete Than Sue, Frees Up Millions Of Images

24. A First Amendment defense to a right of publicity claim? No longer “a shoe in”

25. Danah Boyd Has a Message for Adults About Teen Behavior Online: It’s All Your Fault

jon

News of the Week; March 5, 2014

1. Delaware Court Rules That Vivendi Can’t Invoke French Law in Activision Shareholders Lawsuit

2. Federal Judge Dismisses Shareholder Lawsuit Against Zynga

3. Judge Denies RI Advisor Request to Be Shielded in 38 Studios Lawsuit

4. Court Documents Reveal EA Was Keen to Use Athletes’ Names and Likenesses in its NCAA Video Games

5. Chinese Government Bans Video Game Advertising on TV, and in Other Mediums

6. Report: UK Spy Agency Evaluated the Potential of Using Kinect, PlayStation Eye for Bulk Surveillance

7. PEGI: We Didn’t Censor South Park: Stick of Truth

8. European Commission consultation on free to play games and ‘free’ mobile apps: an initial analysis

9. House Offers Proposal for Tax Credits for Business… Except ‘Violent Video Game Makers’

10. Ubi writer: Sales fears make gay protagonists unlikely

11. The day the Mario Kart died: Nintendo’s kill switch and the future of online consoles

12. Nintendo Kills Online Functionality For Wii, DS Titles, Highlighting Need For Greater User Control Over Content They Supposedly Own

13. This Is Your Brain on Candy Crush (Video)

14. Nintendo Investor Wants Us To Pay $0.99 For Higher Mario Jumps

15. 6 million PlayStation 4s sold

(And a 3 item  GTA 5 bonus)…

16. Mob Wives star sues Rockstar (Feb. 27, 2014)

17. Lindsay Lohan sets lawyers on Grand Theft Auto 5 (Dec. 2, 2013)

18. Rapper sends cease and desist to Rockstar 

19. Board Games and Intellectual Property

20. Copyright Users’ Rights in Canada Hits Ten: The Tenth Anniversary of the CCH Decision

21. Will 3D Printing Upend Fashion Like Napster Crippled the Music Industry?

22. Facebook exempt from Quebec’s French language law, lawyer says

23. Garcia v. Google, Inc.: Does An Actor Have A Copyright Interest In His Or Her Performance In A Film?

24. Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Files for Bankruptcy Protection

25. The Doomsday Cult of Bitcoin

26. California Court Rules Looking at Maps Apps Okay — But What About Everything Else?

27. This Video Is No Longer Available

28. Verizon Reveals More About Federal Spying on Customers

29. The technical aspects of privacy

30. “A Rape in Cyberspace” Gets Remade for the IRL Era

31. Lawrence Lessig sees compensation after rights holder’s YouTube takedown

32. British Spies Said to Intercept Yahoo Webcam Images

33. The digital anthropologist: Danah Boyd interview

34. Kickstarter reaches $1 billion in pledges — Games are the biggest category overall

jon