News of the Week; September 20, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1.  Why Canadian cell phone bills are among the most expensive on the planet: As tech analyst Michael Geist has noted, cell phone companies keep raising prices ‘because they can’ 
2. Toronto Star receives $65,000 fine for violating CRTC Do Not Call List rules
3. Yet Another Report Says The Rate Of TV Cord Cutting Is Worse Than Anybody Thought
4. “Fake” net neutrality comments at heart of lawsuit filed against FCC –  Lawsuit: FCC ignored public records request for data on mass comment uploads
5. ‘I Want to Explode’ — A Roger Ailes Protégé Bares His Soul: Joe Lindsley was as close to the late Fox News chairman as anybody. Now, for the first time, he’s giving his account of their dramatic split.
6. The transformation continues (Timothy Denton)
7. Verizon Is Booting 8,500 Rural Customers Over Data Use, Including Some on ‘Unlimited’ Plans
8. Verizon Hangs Up On Tens Of Thousands Of ‘Unlimited’ Wireless Customers For Using Too Much Data
9. Comcast looks forward to more mergers during Trump presidency: Comcast VP is glad Trump is “less hostile” to mergers than Obama.
10. Comcast said he used too much data—so he opted to live without home Internet: Man said he didn’t go over his data cap; Comcast told him to trust the meter.
11. FCC’s New ‘Diversity Chair’ Has Long History Of Undermining Minority Consumers At Comcast’s Behest
12. T-Mobile’s unlimited plan will soon let you use 50GB before slowdowns: T-Mobile leaps further ahead of Verizon and AT&T with more data before slowdowns.
13. T-Mobile backtracks from plan to throttle Apple Watch speeds to 512kbps: T-Mobile initially planned $20 charge for watch LTE, but now it’ll be $10.
14. Unlimited Data Customers Report Fewer Network Problems Than Capped Users
15. SpaceX’s worldwide satellite broadband network may have a name: Starlink – Low-latency, gigabit network inches closer to commercialization.
16. A telemarketer called my elevator: The emergency intercom started speaking to me in a voice I’ve heard a thousand times.

DIGITAL

1. Hollywood’s Use of “Stolen” Computer Technology Tests Ownership Theories: In a bid to dismiss a lawsuit, Disney, Fox, and Paramount distinguish between human and technological output.
2. Hulu Becomes First Streaming Service To Win Best Drama Emmy For ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
3. To Fix Its Toxic Ad Problem, Facebook Must Break Itself
4. Exclusive: Facebook Silences Rohingya Reports of Ethnic Cleansing – The social network says it’s committed to helping the world ‘share their stories.’ But when people from Burma’s oppressed minority post, their stories have a habit of disappearing.
5. Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’: After being contacted by ProPublica, Facebook removed several anti-Semitic ad categories and promised to improve monitoring.
6. Could Facebook Have Caught Its ‘Jew Hater’ Ad Targeting?: “Facebook can monitor the things it does that make it money.”
7. Facebook’s Offensive Ad Targeting Options Go Far Beyond “Jew Haters”
8. Trump Retweeted A Video From An Anti-Semitic Account Showing Him Hitting Hillary Clinton With A Golf Ball: The original poster had previously tweeted several anti-trans and racist statements.
9. The Real Trouble With Trump’s ‘Dark Post’ Facebook Ads
10. Google Allowed Advertisers To Target People Searching Racist Phrases: Google prompted BuzzFeed News to run ads targeted to keywords like “black people ruin neighborhoods,” then allowed the campaign to go live.
11. Facebook’s Reckoning Draws Nearer: Sooner or later, the company will be forced to take on the responsibilities that come with being the world’s dominant news distributor.
12. ­Facebook’s war on free will: How technology is making our minds redundant
13. Should Facebook Ads Be Regulated Like TV Commercials?: The company’s sales to a Russia-connected troll farm raise big questions about free speech in advertising and beyond.
14. Alt-Right Twitter App Developers Sue Google After Gab.Ai App Is Kicked Out Of The Play Store
15. Google Paid HTC $1.1 Billion To Turn Itself Into A Phone Maker
16. Google/HTC deal is official, Google to acquire part of HTC’s smartphone team: $1.1 billion deal means HTC will still exist, while Google beefs up its hardware team.
17. Female ex-Googlers sue, claiming sex discrimination: Three former Googlers say women were funneled into less lucrative “job ladders.”
18. The Pao Effect Is What Happens After Lean In
19. Lost Context: How Did We End Up Here?: Facebook and Google’s advertising platforms are out of control. That used to be a good thing. Now…not so much.
20. Twitter rival Gab sues Google over app store rejection: Gab, an app popular with the alt-right, says Google violated antitrust law.
21. Twitter rival Gab faces domain loss over extremist content: After anti-Semitic post, registrar gives Gab five days to find a new provider.
22. The Super-Aggregators And The Russians
23. Facebook’s Russia data: What Mueller may learn
24. A Fishy Wikileaks Dump Targets Russia For A Change
25. New Group Of Iranian Hackers Linked To Destructive Malware
26. Snopes And The Search For Facts In A Post-Fact World
27. Unwanted ads on Breitbart lead to massive click fraud revelations, Uber claims – Uber: We paid Fetch Media for “nonexistent, nonviewable, and/or fraudulent advertising.”
28. Here’s a real-life, slimy example of Uber’s regulator-evading software: “In using Greyball, Uber has sullied its own reputation,” Portland says.
29. Waymo wants Uber to pay $2.6 billion in damages—just for starters: It’s the first hint of what Waymo might want as compensation for alleged theft.
30. Appeals court rejects Uber’s attempt to dodge trial: No arbitration – And, Levandowski can’t stop Waymo lawyers from reading a report on his startup.
31. Faced with a trove of new evidence in Uber case, Waymo asks to delay trial 
32. Uber: We don’t have to pay drivers based on rider fares – Contracts allow rider fares to be higher than what is known and paid to drivers.
33. Drone delivery startup is about to begin commercial operations: Startup envisions hundreds of drone delivery stations across metro areas.
34. Digital transformation: How machine learning could help change business – ML has more than just a learning curve to overcome before it transforms business.
35. HTML5 DRM finally makes it as an official W3C Recommendation: 30.8% of W3C members disapproved of the decision.
36. EFF Resigns From W3C After DRM In HTML Is Approved In Secret Vote
37. HP Brings Back Obnoxious DRM That Cripples Competing Printer Cartridges
38. Adding clickbait title isn’t false advertising or fraud on author Dankovich v. Keller, 2017 WL 4081852, No. 16-13395 E.D. Mich. Sept. 15, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
39. 5 reasons why people share fake photos during disasters
40. Do the distracted boyfriend memes infringe copyright?
41. The Blacklock’s Perfectly Predictable Costs Appeal Dismissal & a Preview of Potential Problems (Howard Knopf)
42. The Senate Is Close To Undermining The Internet By Pretending To ‘Protect’ The Children
43. Why SESTA Is Such A Bad Bill
44. The Wrong Answer to a Serious Problem: Senator Wyden’s testimony to the Senate Committee on Commerce at the legislative hearing titled “S.1693, The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017”
45. The Top Ten Myths About SESTA’s (S. 1693) Impact On Startups
46. Senator Blumenthal Happy That SESTA Will Kill Small Internet Companies
47. Is There A Single Online Service Not Put At Risk By SESTA?
48. Free Software Foundation Europe Leads Call For Taxpayer-Funded Software To Be Licensed For Free Re-use
49. The Sex Trafficking Fight Could Take Down A Bedrock Tech Law
50. Music Industry Is Painting A Target On YouTube Ripping Sites, Despite Their Many Non-Infringing Uses
51. YouTube Apologizes To ‘Red’ Subscribers Who Were Served Ads, Says Fix Is In The Works
52. Yes, You Can Believe In Internet Freedom Without Being A Shill
53. Regulating Hate Speech?
54. The rise of AI is sparking an international arms race: Elon Musk thinks it’s the most likely cause of WWIII.
55. The AI Chatbot Will Hire You Now
56. AI: Scary for the Right Reasons
57. AI built profiles for every individual is a reality
58. AI Research Is In Desperate Need Of An Ethical Watchdog
59. Can Competition Act address Big Data cases?
60. Big data and Innovation: Implications for competition policy in Canada
61. Big data may become big antitrust concern
62. Google Chrome To Block Autoplay Videos With Sound Beginning In January
63. Google Chrome will block autoplay video starting January 2018: Only muted video and user “interest in the media” will be allowed by default.
64. Chrome Will Soon Block Autoplay Videos With Sound—Here’s Why You Should Be Worried
65. YouTube TV, Now Available In Eight More Areas, Nears Completion Of US Rollout
66. These Are The Types Of Influencers Who Get Paid Most Per Sponsored Post (Study)
67. Snapchat Is Pulling Out All The Stops For This Year’s Emmy Awards
68. Crowdfunding platform Patreon secures $60M investment
69. Are We Asking Too Much From Defamation Law? Reputation Systems, Adr, Industry Regulation And Other Extra-Judicial Possibilities For Protecting Reputation In The Internet Age: Proposal For Reform (Emily Laidlaw)
70. The Political Awakening of Silicon Valley: What happens when tech leaders, like Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, believe our system is broken? They treat it like a startup. 
71. “Skip intro”: Netflix could’ve saved TV title sequences, but now it’s killing them
72. Netflix Has Narcos Actors Threaten To Shoot The Families Of French People For Pirating The Show
73. Vancouver Canucks, Perspective Films Offer Virtual Reality Views
74. Baltimore Ravens Debut NFL’s First Augmented Reality Face Painting
75. Mizuno Introduces Smart Baseball With Internal Pitch-Tracking Tech
76. China’s Largest Messaging App ‘WeChat’ is Creating its Own AR Platform
77. It looks like China is shutting down its blockchain economy: Leaked regulation orders Chinese Bitcoin exchanges to shut down.
78. Bitcoin and Ethereum plunge on Chinese crackdown
79. The Pirate Bay Added a CPU-Hijacking Bitcoin Miner to Some Pages
80. Feds in California are aggressively going after Silk Road, AlphaBay vendors: Federal courthouse in Fresno is set to see a lot of action in coming months.
81. Your Digital Millennium Copyright Registration May Be About To Expire
82. Bored With Your Fitbit? These Cancer Researchers Aren’t
83. About FaceID
84. After 23 years, the Apple II gets another OS update: On 30th anniversary of Apple II GS, devoted developer releases ProDOS 2.4.
85. The Pluralist Model of Speech Regulation: Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society (Jack Balkin)
86. Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation (Jack Balkin)

CREATIVITY

1. Quebec Superior Court Rules on the Concept of Fair Dealing in Relation to the Substantial Reproduction of Journalistic Works
2. Off-Broadway ‘Grinch’ Parody Defeats Copyright Claims
3. Joy in Who-Ville? Playwright Wins Fair Use Copyright Dispute in Parody of “Grinch” 
4. Maradona sues Dolce&Gabbana over 2016 ‘MARADONA’ jersey 
5. Monkey Selfie Case Settled Out Of Court, Questions Remain (Andres Guadamuz)
6. Lawyer: Without The Monkey’s Approval, PETA Can’t Settle Monkey Selfie Case
7. Monkey See, Monkey Do… Monkey Own? The Curious Case of Naruto v. Slater 
8. Man who made “Pepe” wants his frog back, and he’ll use copyright to get it: Mike Cernovich won’t pay, threatens “to embarrass the f***” out of Pepe creator.
9. With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
10. Structural engineers score big as Federal Court recognizes and enforces copyright on structure of soccer complex
11. Canadian Government Publications Still Don’t Belong To The People As Ottawa Maintains Its Iron Grip On Crown Copyright
12. Melania Trump billboard removed in Croatia after legal action threatened
13. ‘Racist’ Paddy Power Floyd Mayweather ad dealt knockout blow by ASA
14. New patent review process has saved billions—so why is it under attack?: “Inter partes review” let a patent’s opponents be heard, without spending millions.
15. Doubling (& Tripling) Down on Trademark Protection For Secret Menu Items–In-N-Out v. Smashburger 
16. Yoko Ono halts sale of John Lemon lemonade: Polish company agrees to change its name to On Lemon after legal letters saying drink infringed trademark 
17. Kim Kardashian West’s trade mark woes and the love-hate relationship between celebrities and IP
18. New study claims Slender Man is in the commons, argues assertion of trademark rights “chills creativity”
19. Charles Harder Loses Again: You Can’t Just File Defamation Lawsuits In A Random State Because You Like Its Statute Of Limitations
20. Model Behaviour – Copyright infringement action brought against model Gigi Hadid
21. Why Copyright Term Matters: Publisher Study Highlights Crucial Role of the Public Domain in Ontario Schools (Michael Geist)
22. Buyer Beware: Make Sure Your Copyright Assignment Is Valid
23. The Business of Fandom: How Teenage Girls Predict the Future of Culture
24. 20 years in, Kid Rock, Eminem and ICP are politically relevant — and culturally divided
25. How Amazon is becoming the third force in advertising, making the duopoly an oligopoly
26. The Battle for Blade Runner
27. Vermont State Police Rewrite Press Rules To Withhold As Much Information As Possible
28. Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law (Barton Beebe)
29. First application of the Canadian parody exception (Sabine Jacques)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. EFF, ACLU Sue Government Over Warrantless Electronic Searches At The Border
2. ISPs claim a privacy law would weaken online security and increase pop-ups: California to vote on privacy law opposed by AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon.
3. Closely watched California Internet privacy bill dies in final minutes of legislative session
4. California Sides With Comcast, Votes To Kill Broadband Privacy Law Favored By EFF
5. ISPs can keep sharing your browsing history after California no-vote: Lawmakers fail to vote on opt-in rule that would protect your browsing history.
6. Face Scanning Lawsuit Against Shutterfly Survives Motion to Dismiss
7. Trump Administration Says It’s Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans
8. Equifax Officially Has No Excuse
9. Oh Man, You’re Gonna Hate What Equifax Just Admitted About That Security Breach
10. Equifax’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Security Are ‘Retiring’
11. Equifax CIO, CSO “retire” in wake of huge security breach: Press release – “The company’s review of the facts is still ongoing.”
12. DoNotPay chatbot adds feature allowing users to sue Equifax over data breach
13. Scammers keep trying to sell fake Equifax facts: Site offers “proof” of access to Equifax data, but it all appears to be fake.
14. FTC launches Equifax breach probe, warns consumers about credit scammers: Posing as Equifax employees, crooks are calling to verify your account information.
15. Equifax sends breach victims to fake notification site
16. Google stops challenging most US warrants for data on overseas servers: Microsoft keeps up the challenges while Supreme Court remains silent.
17. Secret Algorithms Are Deciding Criminal Trials and We’re Not Even Allowed to Test Their Accuracy (ACLU)
18. EFF Asks Court: Can Prosecutors Hide Behind Trade Secret Privilege to Convict You? (EFF)
19. Biased Algorithms Are Everywhere, and No One Seems to Care: The big companies developing them show no interest in fixing the problem.
20. Ad industry “deeply concerned” about Safari’s new ad-tracking restrictions: Apple’s limits on tracking will “sabotage the economic model for the Internet.”
21. How One Of Apple’s Key Privacy Safeguards Falls Short
22. Infrared signals in surveillance cameras let malware jump network air gaps: aIR-Jumper weaves passwords and crypto keys into infrared signals.
23. The CCleaner Malware Fiasco Targeted At Least 18 Specific Tech Firms
24. NSA Employees Routinely Undermined ‘Non-Attributable’ Web Access With Personal Web Use
25. How The NSA Built A Secret Surveillance Network For Ethiopia
26. Trudeau needs to deliver on his access-to-information promises
27. New law firm seeks would-be gov’t whistleblowers, requires Tor and SecureDrop: “We want to earn the trust of people who have been 20-year veterans at the NSA.”
28. Most-wanted criminal arrested after posting Instagram video of himself: Officials obtained fugitive’s GPS coordinates after he took to social media.
29. Apple’s FaceID Could Be A Powerful Tool For Mass Spying
30. Software Has A Serious Supply-Chain Security Problem
31. For $200 you can buy an NBA smart jersey and be a marketing pawn: Once activated, Nike knows where you live, and when and where jersey is scanned.
32. Internet-Connected Toys: Cute, Cuddly and Inherently Insecure
33. The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing (Elizabeth Joh)

Jon