News of the Week; August 2, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Inconsistent Arguments and Questionable Claims: Bell Launches Yet Another Action Over CRTC’s Super Bowl Simsub Ruling (Michael Geist)
  2. TVAddons Returns, But in Ugly War With Canadian Telcos Over Kodi Addons
  3. Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna – Cord-cutters accustomed to watching shows online are often shocked that $20 ‘rabbit ears’ pluck signals from the air; is this legal?
  4. Republicans try to take cheap phones and broadband away from poor people: $9.25 monthly subsidy for mobile service would be eliminated by Republican bill.
  5. Sprint seeks merger with Charter to create wireless and cable giant: Comcast could have veto power over deal because of agreement with Charter.
  6. Sprint still seeks merger partner after being rejected by Charter: Sprint wanted to merge with Charter—or T-Mobile.
  7. Comcast fails to get hidden fee class-action suit thrown out of court: Comcast claims it can tack on Broadcast and Sports fees after order is submitted.
  8. FCC Extends TCPA Liability to Technology Platform Provider 
  9. FCC says its specific plan to stop DDoS attacks must remain secret: Revealing technical details would “undermine our system security,” FCC says.
  10. Over 190 Engineers & Tech Experts Tell The FCC It’s Dead Wrong On Net Neutrality
  11. The Worst Internet In America
  12. Fox v. Aereokiller: Another Nail in the Internet “Cable” Coffin
  13. West Virginia Tries To Improve Broadband Competition, Incumbent ISPs Immediately Sue
  14. Cable lobby claims US is totally overflowing in broadband competition: NCTA touts data based on outdated broadband speed benchmark of 3Mbps.
  15. What Does Net Neutrality Mean for the Future of Cryptocurrency?

DIGITAL

  1. Online newspaper articles and libel do not toll notice and limitation periods
  2. Courts Keep Shredding Online Contract Formation Processes–McGhee v. NAB; Applebaum v. Lyft (Eric Goldman)
  3. Federal Court: Public Officials Cannot Block Social Media Users Because of Their Criticism
  4. Politicians’ social media pages can be 1st Amendment forums, judge says: Officials retain right to moderate comments to combat online trolls, judge says.
  5. Court Rules Temporary Ban Of Facebook Commenter By Gov’t Official Violates The First Amendment
  6. Politician Can’t Ban Constituent From Her Official Facebook Page–Davison v. Loudoun County Supervisors (Eric Goldman)
  7. Judge Tosses Vexatious Litigant Brett Kimberlin’s Lawsuit Against Conservative Blogger
  8. How an Ontario mom fended off a $120K libel lawsuit over her Facebook posts
  9. Stouffville woman awarded damages in SLAPP case
  10. Internet Censorship Bill Would Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation
  11. Going to California—Google Asks U.S. Court to Declare Supreme Court of Canada’s Global Injunction Unenforceable
  12. Google’s US Challenge To The Canadian Global Delisting Order
  13. Google Asks US Court To Block Terrible Canadian Supreme Court Ruling On Global Censorship
  14. What Google’s New Autoplay Experiment Means For The Future Of Search
  15. U.S. Court Declares GPL Is A Contract (Andres Guadamuz)
  16. France: 13 million in damages awarded for linking to downloadable copyright works
  17. LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission – A legal scholar calls LinkedIn’s position “hugely problematic.”
  18. New Web tool tracks Russian “influence ops” on Twitter: Hamilton 68 tracks Russian state news and Twitter trolls, shows propaganda trends.
  19. What They’ve Said About Russian Election Interference
  20. Russia Has Banned VPNs
  21. Putin bans VPNs to stop Russians accessing prohibited websites
  22. Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object: Iranian Resilience in a Censored Society
  23. How May 35th Freedoms Have Blossomed With China’s Martian Language
  24. Meet Mia Ash, The Fake Woman Iranian Hackers Used To Lure Victims
  25. Maybe the A.I. dystopia is already here
  26. Artificial Intelligence Develops Its Own Language
  27. The Internet Will Not Break: Denying Bad Samaritans Section 230 Immunity (Danielle Citron, Benjamin Wittes)
  28. Pointing at the Wrong Villain: Cass Sunstein and Echo Chambers
  29. Senate’s “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017”–and Section 230’s Imminent Evisceration (Eric Goldman)
  30. A ‘potentially deadly’ mushroom-identifying app highlights the dangers of bad AI: The app’s creator says it’s just a guide, but experts aren’t happy
  31. State attorneys general team up to scare you from “content theft sites”: PSA is titled “Be safe on the Internet to Protect Your Family.”
  32. Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship
  33. Apple Removes All VPN Apps From Its Chinese App Store
  34. Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent
  35. Apple Caved To China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant
  36. Apple paid Nokia $2 billion to escape fight over old patents: It’s on the hook for more payments down the line, too
  37. Apple must pay $506M for infringing university’s patent: University of Wisconsin may collect $4.35 apiece for millions of iPads and iPhones.
  38. Apple can’t end lawsuit over “breaking” FaceTime on iPhone 4, judge rules: “FaceTime is a ‘feature’ of the iPhone and thus a component of the iPhone’s cost.”
  39. Company: Apple TV’s “what did she say” feature infringes our patent – Patent claims the concept of skipping back and enabling subtitles.
  40. Apple Sales Exceed Expectations as Buyers Wait for New iPhones
  41. A Super-Expensive iPhone Is Good News, Even If You Can’t Afford It
  42. After three years, iPad sales are up again for Apple
  43. Apple discontinues iPod Nano and Shuffle, updates iPod Touch models: Say goodbye to the tiny music makers of 2005.
  44. Goodbye iPod, And Thanks For All The Tunes
  45. Apple Glasses Are Inevitable
  46. Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors
  47. How An IOS Developer Just Uncovered The Next iPhone
  48. UK WiFi Company Uses Overlong TOS To Trick Hotspot Users Into Cleaning Toilets, Hugging Stray Cats
  49. Kim Dotcom set to receive seized funds, “4 containers full of seized property”: Megupload founder adds he plans to move his family to Queenstown, New Zealand.
  50. AG Wahl says that, at certain conditions, suppliers of luxury goods may prohibit retailers from selling on third-party online platforms
  51. How Threats Against Domain Names Are Used to Censor Content (EFF)
  52. Fact Checking Snopes On Its Own Claims Of Being ‘Held Hostage’ By ‘A Vendor’: Well, It’s Complicated
  53. Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says
  54. How Arby’s Dealt With Their Greatest Twitter Troll By Being Awesome; Also Sandwiches And Puppies
  55. Frank Ocean T-Shirt at Center of Debate Over Tweet Copyright: After singer’s Panorama Fest tee goes viral, creator of shirt and teen who first tweeted the quote wrestle over compensation and credit
  56. This U.S. Company Is Offering to Put Microchips in Their Employees
  57. A New Way for Therapists to Get Inside Heads: Virtual Reality
  58. Models of Consciousness Transformation & Unlocking Latent Human Potentials with VR
  59. No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program That Was Getting Dangerously Smart
  60. Science Says 13 Reasons Why may Be The Public Health Scare People Thought
  61. Sex History Educational Site Wants To Know If It’s Going To Be Bricked Up Behind UK’s Porn Wall
  62. We need to take a vacation from social media: Various platforms – and Facebook especially – are, weirdly, both a kind of diary and a public performance.
  63. Facebook’s Complicity in the Silencing of Black Women
  64. ‘It’s digital colonialism’: how Facebook’s free internet service has failed its users – Free Basics, built for developing markets, focuses on ‘western corporate content’ and violates net neutrality principles, researchers say
  65. Lionsgate Launches Spanish-Language Streaming Service ‘Pantaya’ For U.S. Viewers
  66. Reddit Has $1.8 Billion Valuation After Chat-Room Site Banks $200 Million in Funding
  67. Reddit Raised $200 Million And Is Redesigning to Look More Like Facebook
  68. Spotify Surpasses 60 Million Subscribers
  69. Twitter Finds Meaning (and Madness) Under Donald Trump: The social platform was in bad shape last year, but it found an unlikely support system in an antihero
  70. Trump’s Radical Immigration Crackdown Won’t Help Tech
  71. A Gop Staffer Crowdsourced A Resolution From A Conspiracy Subreddit
  72. Bitcoin Exchange and Operator Charged With Money Laundering
  73. Feds say they caught a key figure in the massive Mt. Gox Bitcoin hack: Feds say a Russian man laundered criminal proceeds through the BTC-e exchange.
  74. Why the Bitcoin network just split in half and why it matters
  75. Bitcoin Is Splitting In Two. Now What?
  76. Here’s What CEOs Around the World Are Saying About the Bitcoin Fork
  77. Is the Party Over? SEC Concludes Cryptocurrency Offering Required Registration
  78. PewDiePie, YouTube’s biggest star, is leaning into his new, far-right following
  79. Here’s Why It Looks Like PewDiePie Has Lost 90% Of His Income: An annual report from his company suggests Pewdiepie’s income has dropped dramatically.
  80. NCAA Rules Football-Playing YouTuber Ineligible Due To Ad Revenue
  81. NCAA Strips UCF Kicker Of Eligibility After He Refuses To Stop Being An Athlete That Posts YouTube Videos
  82. UCF kicker ruled ineligible, loses scholarship after monetizing YouTube videos: Athletes can make YouTube videos, but they can’t make money off sports videos.
  83. Singing With Saquon? Current Stars Should Take NCAA at Its Word and Cash in Now on YouTube
  84. Amazon To Self-Distribute First Film In Theaters, Woody Allen’s ‘Wonder Wheel’
  85. Move Over, Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos Gets a Turn as World’s Richest Person.
  86. Streisand Effect Helps Sci-Hub To Acquire Almost All Scholarly Literature, Dooms Traditional Academic Publishing
  87. Jewish woman sues Andrew Anglin over ‘troll storm’: Suit against Daily Stormer’s neo-Nazi blogger raises questions about free speech and online harassment.
  88. YouTube Will Place Flagged “Supremacist” Videos That Don’t Violate Its Guidelines In A “Limited State”
  89. Following 10-Market Expansion, YouTube TV App Clocks 2 Million Downloads
  90. ‘Offline-First’ YouTube Go App To Launch In Nigeria
  91. YouTube Kids Lands “Eight-Figure” Upfront Commitment From Toy Brand Mattel
  92. Ars picks the top YouTube video of all time: We top off our look at the 10th anniversary of YouTube with the best video ever.
  93. YouTube Unveils First Country-Specific ‘Spotlight’ Channel In Canada
  94. YouTube throws more support behind Canadian creators with spotlight channel
  95. ViaSport, Microsoft Canada Team Up On Tech For More Inclusive Sports
  96. Redfin set out to disrupt real estate—it was harder than it looked: CEO once called real estate “by far the most screwed up industry in America.”
  97. America’s Competitors Angle for Silicon Valley’s Business
  98. Deceptive Online Marketing Practices: Intermediaries, what is your legal exposure?
  99. The complete history of the IBM PC, part one: The deal of the century: Bill Gates, mysterious deaths, and the business machine that sparked a home revolution.
  100. The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes: The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS.

CREATIVITY

  1. York University to appeal recent copyright decision
  2. Why Fair Dealing is Not Destroying Canadian Publishing (Michael Geist)
  3. When life gives you Lemonade: court preserves copyright complaint against Beyoncé (Rebecca Tushnet)
  4. Photographer’s Copyright Suit Gets Mixed Results:  A New York federal court judge handed a photographer a mixed result when it dismissed her copyright infringement claim but allowed her Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allegations to move forward in a dispute that began on Instagram.
  5. Premier League scores second ‘live’ blocking injunction 
  6. Cabin Fever: Is Reconstructing a Work to Preserve It Copyright Infringement?
  7. When can publishing newspaper articles amount to harassment?: The High Court has struck out part of a harassment claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail Online. Unless the Judge’s order is successfully appealed, the remaining harassment claim will proceed to trial.
  8. Cigar City Brewing Sues Cigar City Salsa Over Trademark Despite Being In Different Marketplaces
  9. E And J Gallo Sends Cease And Desist Trademark Notice To E And B Beer
  10. Would You Confuse ‘Pierogi Fest’ With ‘Edwardsville Pierogi Festival’? Neither Would We
  11. Titleist Tees Up Lawsuit Against Parody Clothier Because Golf Doesn’t Have A Sense Of Humor
  12. Michelin Bursts Continental’s Trade Mark Application
  13. Seen around town(s), TM and right of publicity issues (Rebecca Tushnet)
  14. Copyright. Act of State Doctrine. Fifth Circuit holds that the act of state doctrine does not forbid U.S. courts from considering the applicability of copyright’s first sale doctrine to foreign-made copies when the foreign copier was a government agency
  15. EU’s draconian new copyright law puts an expiration date on startups
  16. NAFTA and a made-in-Canada IP framework
  17. Regulating the Internet of Toys 
  18. Copyright Licences for Television and Film Content in Hotels
  19. Sony Pictures TV Networks to Acquire Funimation, Valuing Anime Distributor at $150 Million
  20. The ACLU filed a comical brief in defense of free speech and John Oliver’s satire
  21. Marshall County Coal Company v. John Oliver (Amicus Curiae Brief of ACLU to U.S. Dist. Ct., Northern District of West Virginia)
  22. 1H 2017 Quick Links, Part 5 – Advertising, Contracts (Eric Goldman)
  23. 1H 2017 Quick Links, Part 6 – Defamation, Section 230, Consumer Reviews (Eric Goldman)
  24. 1H 2017 Quick Links Part 7 – Fake News, RTBF, Censorship, Extremist Content (Eric Goldman)
  25. Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development: A Better Set of Approaches For The 21st Century. (Dean Baker, Arjun Jayadev and Joseph Stiglitz)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Privacy rights on the NAFTA agenda: Will the new NAFTA allow Canadian governments to ensure that private data collected from Canadians will not be stored outside this country?
  2. First Playpen FBI Spyware Warrant Hits The Appeals Court Level; Is Upheld On ‘Good Faith’
  3. Second body cam video of Baltimore cops manufacturing evidence discovered: Second video prompts another dropped case—bringing it to nearly three dozen so far.
  4. Police body cam footage of man tased in back prompts $110K settlement: However, police board said tasing was “reasonable, appropriate, and within policy.”
  5. Baltimore police commissioner orders cops not to stage body cam footage: Prosecutors dropping 41 cases, and more on the way, because of body cam scandal.
  6. Another Federal Court Says No Warrants Needed To Obtain Historic Cell Site Location Info
  7. Georgia To Roll Out Tens Of Thousands Of CCTV Cameras With Real-Time Facial Recognition Capabilities
  8. Viacom Faces Children’s Privacy Class Claims Over Gaming App
  9. Federal Court Holds Noodles & Co. Has No Independent Duty of Care to Card Issuers For Data Breach
  10. New Nevada Law Requires Notice for Online Collection and Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information
  11. Google’s new scheme to connect online to offline shopping scrutinized: “Consumers cannot easily avoid Google’s tracking of their in-store purchase behavior.”
  12. Australian Prosecutors Want To Make It Illegal To Refuse To Turn Over Passwords To Law Enforcement
  13. UK Home Secretary Doesn’t Want Backdoors; She Just Wants Companies To Stop Offering Encryption Because No One Wants It
  14. Privacy Isn’t Dead. It’s More Popular Than Ever
  15. How A Bug In An Obscure Chip Exposed A Billion Smartphones To Hackers
  16. Broadcom chip bug opened 1 billion phones to a Wi-Fi-hopping worm attack: Wi-Fi chips used in iPhones and Android may revive worm attacks of old.
  17. Your Own Pacemaker Can Now Testify Against You In Court
  18. Stealthy Google Play apps recorded calls and stole e-mails and texts: Company expels 20 advanced surveillance apps installed on ~100 devices.
  19. When sextortion suspect refused to unlock her iPhone, the FBI stepped in
  20. Released Documents Show More Section 702 Violations By The NSA
  21. Someone Hacked Into HBO and Is Now Releasing Game of Thrones Info
  22. Hackers Threaten ‘Game of Thrones,’ as HBO Confirms Cyberattack
  23. Hack Brief: HBO Shows And A Game Of Thrones Script Land Online
  24. HBO confirms hack that reportedly included script to upcoming GoT episode: Video for episodes of Ballers and Room 104 also reportedly stolen.
  25. How Netflix DDOS’d Itself To Help Protect The Entire Internet
  26. Hackers descend on Las Vegas to expose voting machine flaws
  27. Every Voting Machine at This Hacking Conference Got Totally Pwned
  28. “E-mail prankster” phishes White House officials; hilarity ensues: Tom Bossert gave up personal e-mail in response to fake Kushner dinner invite.
  29. Privacy warnings spell trouble for millions of low-cost Android phone owners: Blu says the data its phones collect is standard. Experts disagree.
  30. Using a fitness app taught me the scary truth about why privacy settings are a feminist issue
  31. How a hacked Amazon Echo could secretly capture your most intimate moments: Hack isn’t simple and doesn’t work on all devices, but it’s definitely doable.
  32. How a podcaster managed to confront his tech support scammer, in person: “Alex, we have seen that your IP address has been compromised.”

Jon