News of the Week; March 8, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda (Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts & Ethan Zuckerman)
2. I Tried Trump’s Media Diet. Now Nothing Surprises Me Anymore
3. Trump’s FCC chairman says he won’t just do what Trump tells him to: Ajit Pai met with Trump Monday but won’t say what they discussed.
4. Trump renominates FCC Chair Ajit Pai for another five-year term: Cable lobby hails Pai for pushing “pro-consumer agenda” and “Internet freedom.”
5. The FCC Helped Make the Internet Great: Now, It’s Walking Away
6. Op-ed: The Internet belongs to the people, not powerful corporate interests – Senator Chuck Schumer writes for Ars – Keep net neutrality rules in place.
7. Op-ed: Protect the Open Internet with a bipartisan law – Senator John Thune writes for Ars – Time for a new approach on net neutrality.
8. Charter CEO Touts Pro-Industry Cable Deregulation Under Trump
9. FCC Boss Calls Net Neutrality A ‘Mistake,’ Repeats Debunked Claim It Stifled Broadband Investment
10. FCC Partially Kills Rules Requiring ISPs Be Clear About Usage Caps, Hidden Fees
11. Broadband lobbyists celebrate as FCC halts data security requirements: Data security rule would have confused Internet users, FCC chair claims.
12. FCC Broadband Privacy Rule On Hold, Likely Dead
13. Sprint’s long VoIP patent war leads to $140M verdict against Time Warner Cable: Can Sprint’s patent lawyers force competitors to pay up for VoIP?
14. CRTC says No to “backdoor MVNO” Sugar Mobile
15. Why proper MVNOs, unlimited data won’t happen in Canada
16. Brad Wall says people have spoken and they don’t want SaskTel sold
17. CRTC releases data on device unlock revenue made by Canadian carriers
18. YouTube TV Improves Outlook For AT&T Time Warner Merger
19. Report: Sprint “betting big on Trump,” could merge with T-Mobile or Comcast – Sprint owner weighs a few possible mergers, makes case to Trump administration.

DIGITAL

1. Snap explodes another 14% on second day of trading
2. NBCUniversal invests $500 million in Snapchat maker’s IPO
3. Snapchat says 42 million people are watching its NFL content
4. Shares of Snapchat Are Way Higher Than Expected
5. How Mobile Dominates YouTube Viewership
6. Uber and Airbnb are not the future of capitalism
7. Uber Maybe Not Taking Its COO Search Very Seriously
8. Important Ruling On Perennially-Problematic Creative Commons Non-Commercial License
9. Italian firm thinks Facebook’s “Nearby Places” is a copycat, gets feature shut down: Court ordered Facebook to suspend the feature or pay 5,000 euros per day.
10. Zuckerberg World President: From a Harvard dormitory at the ripe age of 20, Mark Zuckerberg created one of the most successful companies of the Internet Age. He is liked and respected by his employees and leads what is probably the Valley’s best run organization. Today, Facebook has become so powerful that it challenges established political structures and threatens to undemocratically twist the will of The People.
11. Massive Internet Outage Had A Pretty Dumb Cause: A Typo – Pity the poor Amazon programmer and their errant finger
12. Terms and Conditions (Rebecca Tushnet)
13. Industry, and Apple, opposing “right to repair” laws: Apple claimed jailbreaking would embolden hackers—says same about right to repair.
14. A right to repair: why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple – Farmers like fixing their own equipment, but rules imposed by big corporations are making it impossible. Now this small showdown could have a big impact
15. The Art Of Manipulating Algorithms:
16. Joy Buolamwini: How I’m fighting bias in algorithms
17. Patent-holding company’s $533M verdict against Apple is dust on appeal: Massive verdict would have been largest ever for a non-practicing entity.
18. Copyright Troll Sues Tor Exit Node, Gets Partial Win
19. Why Canada is Now Home to Some of the Toughest Anti-Piracy Rules in the World…And What Should Come Next (Michael Geist)
20. UK: Search engines agree to demote pirate sites in search result listings 
21. German Judge Fines Father Because He Didn’t Tell His Kid Not To Engage In Piracy
22. UK government publishes digital strategy to create and support a secure and thriving data economy 
23. The UK Government Digital Strategy is out, and it’s rubbish
24. “Save The Meme” Campaign Protests EU’s Proposed Piracy Filters
25. Politico publishes (part of) draft copyright report by MEP Comodini Cachia
26. Electronic marketing and internet use in Canada
27. 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump – Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him.
28. The Golden State of Hate: How the Internet Made Hate Respectable
29. South Africa Introduces Revised Cybercrime Legislation, Acknowledging Criticism
30. PR-Stupid JetSmarter Will Charge Journalists $2000 If They Don’t Write Positive Reviews
31. Soundcloud Tells Guy It Needs To Kill His Account Of 8 Years Because Someone Else Trademarked His Name
32. Silicon Valley Needs To Get Its Act Together On Sexual Harassment & Discrimination
33. Google’s Artificial Brain Learns to Find Cat Videos
34. Robots’ Legal Personality (Horst Eidenmuller)
35. Going for Gold: 3D Printing, Jewellery and the Future of Intellectual Property Law
36. Why the biggest challenge facing AI is an ethical one
37. How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything: Baidu’s Andrew Ng and Singularity’s Neil Jacobstein say this time, the hype about artificial intelligence is real
38. Why Netflix Lets You Subtitle All Your Shows In Comic Sans
39. Alcatel A5 LED: Because someone, somewhere wants a phone that doubles up as a mobile disco. Maybe.
40. Virtual Reality: How to protect your IP rights in a virtual world
41. Blockchain applications may be caught by Ontario’s securities law 
42. Blockchain and Secured Lending in Canada
43. Bitcoin Is A Chaotic Bedlam Of Manipulation And Deceit And That’s Just The Way We Like It
44. A Single Bitcoin Transaction Takes Thousands of Times More Energy Than a Credit Card Swipe
45. Mossberg: Tech’s ruling class casts a big shadow 

CREATIVITY

1. Audiences no longer care about platforms. The content creator is ‘king.’: Sweet Paul, Cheddar and Axios are proof that media consumers will change their behavior and go where a creator has produced interesting content.
2. Andrews v Sony ATV Music Publishing
3. SXSW Faces Heavy Criticism For Immigration Clause In Artist Contract: Downtown Boys, PWR BTTM, Priests, and more have signed an open letter demanding that SXSW retract the clause.
4. Downtown Boys, Priests, Sheer Mag, More Sign Open Letter Demanding SXSW Rescind Deportation Clause: “We are calling on SXSW to immediately drop this clause from their contract, and cease any collusion with immigration officials that puts performers in danger”
5. State Rep Diego Bernal pulls out of SXSW panel amid immigration controversy: “I will not in good conscience participate in a festival that uses the threat of deportation as part of it’s business practices.”
6. Federal Law Now Prohibits Censoring of Unfavorable Reviews
7. Careful clearing photos from social media for news reporting
8. Focus: Appropriation of personality after death issue in estates
9. Canadian Government on U.S. Special 301: We Don’t Recognize Validity of Flawed Report (Michael Geist)
10. Text Protecting Indigenous Cultural Expressions Streamlined At WIPO, But Divergence Persists
11. Why newspaper subscriptions are on the rise
12. How Disaster Science Explains the Oscars Mix-Up: Major errors don’t cause disasters. Banal mistakes and human nature do.
13. Why does anybody own CRISPR? An argument against academic IP
14. The Racist Legacy of NYC’s Anti-Dancing Law
15. The Defend Trade Secrets Act Isn’t An “Intellectual Property” Law (Eric Goldman)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools
2. Helpful(?) coding tips from the CIA’s school of hacks: WikiLeaks dump includes a best (and worst) practices guide for exploit developers.
3. How the CIA Can Hack Your Phone, PC, and TV (Says WikiLeaks)
4. CIA Leak Shows Mobile Phones Vulnerable, Not Encryption
5. Trump Administration Wants A Clean Reauthorization For NSA Surveillance
6. Selfie With Merkel by Refugee Became a Legal Case, but Facebook Won in German Court
7. Court Tells Cops They Can’t Use GPS Data Gathered After Suspect They Were Tracking Sold The Vehicle
8. DARPA’s Brain Chip Implants Could Be the Next Big Mental Health Breakthrough—Or a Total Disaster
9. Master spy behind Snoopers’ Charter wants to gag leakers, journalists: Cabinet office refuses to deny that ex-MI6 man Charles Farr is behind espionage law review.
10. To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case
11. Yahoo’s data breach costs general counsel his job
12. The cost of Yahoo’s data breach
13. BBC screenshots child abuse images on Facebook—Facebook reports it to cops: “Probe shouldn’t involve making more images,” say CPS rules. Did BBC follow them?
14. Prenda’s John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits To Basically Everything
15. VP Who Thought Clinton Private Emails Were Bad Also Had Private Emails: Mike Pence used an AOL account to conduct official business, which was hacked
16. The Vatican Announces Plan To Protect Pope Francis’ Publicity Rights
17. India Opening Up World’s Largest Biometric Database For Commercial Applications, Despite Inadequate Privacy Protection
18. Court Refuses to Dismiss Biometric Privacy Action over Facial Recognition Technology Used by Google Photos 
19. EFF: Data Collected From Utility Smart Meters Should Be Protected By The Fourth Amendment
20. CIA Leaks Unsurprisingly Show The Internet Of Broken Things Is A Spy’s Best Friend
21. GOP senators’ new bill would let ISPs sell your Web browsing data: Senate resolution would throw out FCC’s entire privacy rulemaking.
22. Body Cameras Used By UK Local Government To Catch People Dropping Litter And Walking Dogs
23. The Validity of EU-U.S. Personal Data Export Tools: A Pending Issue 
24. Hacker George Hotz cancels Model S order after Tesla reminds him about IP theft: Was set to receive a car last week, then came a last-minute call from Tesla legal.
25. Vizio Fails To Dodge Class Action Over Its Spying ‘Smart’ Televisions
26. Uber’s “Greyball” tool helped company evade authorities in Portland, Paris
27. Here’s A Tip: If You’re Desiging Special Apps To Hide From Regulators, You’re Going To Get In Trouble

Jon