News of the Week; November 1, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1.  New CASL Ruling: CRTC Provides Guidance on B2B Messaging and the Due Diligence Defence
2. Ajit Pai submits plan to allow more media consolidation: Rules that preserve media diversity in local markets will be eliminated.
3. FCC chair wants to impose a cap on broadband funding for poor families: Pai proposes Lifeline budget cap and new limits on which ISPs can get subsidies.
4. Another broadband merger: CenturyLink gets FCC approval to buy Level 3: CenturyLink gets bigger while it faces lawsuits alleging overcharges.
5. Dead People Mysteriously Support The FCC’s Attack On Net Neutrality
6. Sprint/T-Mobile merger is off, preserving wireless competition (for now): Sprint owner wants to maintain control and invest in its network, report says.
7. How Right-Wing Media Is Ignoring The Mueller Indictments: “Much ado about nothing.”
8. Charter CEO Tries To Blame Netflix Password ‘Piracy’ For Company’s Failure To Adapt To Cord Cutting
9. Portugal Shows The Internet Why Net Neutrality Is Important
10. Verizon-Funded Group Claims Killing Net Neutrality Would Really Help Puerto Rico Right Now
11. Verizon Will Graciously Now Let You Avoid Video Throttling For An Additional $10 Per Month
12. Verizon creates new $10 monthly charge to remove video throttling: $10 add-on charge removes limit that restricts mobile videos to 720p.
13. Verizon Lobbies FCC To Block States From Protecting Broadband Privacy, Net Neutrality
14. Verizon has a new strategy to undermine online privacy and net neutrality: FCC should declare state broadband laws invalid, Verizon tells commission.
15. San Francisco, Seattle Tire of Comcast, Mull Building Citywide Fiber Networks
16. AT&T admits defeat in lawsuit it filed to stall Google Fiber: Judge dismissed AT&T’s lawsuit against Louisville, and company won’t appeal.
17. Pirate TV services are taking a bite out of cable company revenue: Millions of North Americans are using illegal TV services, research finds.
18. Careful what you wish for – Bill O’Reilly version 
19. Brian Williams Opens Up About His Unexpected Re-Invention: “Second Acts Are Possible, With A Little Spiffing Up”: Most broadcasters would have been cooked if they had undergone the sort of scandal that Williams faced in 2015. But a slow-and-steady revival—a mixture of dutiful penance, clever planning, and a dramatic change in the media—has Williams turning 11 p.m. into the new primetime.

DIGITAL

1. Association Isn’t Liable for Its Members’ Message Board Postings–Inge v. Central Motorcycle     Roadracing Association (Eric Goldman)
2. European Court Rules On Internet Jurisdiction (Andres Guadamuz)
3. TripAdvisor removed warnings about rapes and injuries at Mexico resorts, tourists say
4. Appeals court keeps alive the never-ending Linux case, SCO v. IBM: SCO says IBM released a “sham” version of Monterey OS to prop up AIX for Power.
5. Here are the Kremlin-backed Facebook ads designed to foment discord in US: Ads bash Clinton before election and cap on Trump after he won the presidency.
6. What Congress Should Ask Tech Executives About Russia
7. These Are the Ads Russia Bought on Facebook in 2016
8. Congress Asks Tech To Face Hard Truths About Russian Meddling
9. Spinoff: Whatever The Reports About Russian Trolls Buying Ads Is Initially, It’s Way, Way Worse
10. Facebook, Google and Twitter grilled by Congress over Russian meddling – as it happened
11. Facebook, YouTube admit to wider-ranging campaigns by Russian “state actors”: Disclosure of even bigger numbers comes ahead of Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill.
12. Facebook, Google, Twitter tell Congress their platforms spread Russian-backed propaganda – Twitter: “We are committed to working every single day at solving this problem.”
13. Eight Revealing Moments From The Second Day Of Russia Hearings
14. Top Experts: Can Facebook Legally Disclose Russian Ads–What does the Stored Communications Act say?
15. Facebook Steps Up Efforts to Sway Lawmakers: Amid Russia probes and online ad scrutiny, social-media giant boosts lobbying spending and work on messaging
16. Lawsuit accuses Facebook of scheming to weasel out of paying overtime: Lawsuit says Facebook has a “systematic, companywide wrongful classification” system.
17. Collateral Damage Not Russian Site-Blocking’s Only Failure: Pirate Video Market Has Doubled As Well
18. Reddit conducts wide-ranging purge of offensive subreddits
19. NY Times Uncritically Says Fake News Debate Supports Chinese Style Censorship
20. Trump adviser Roger Stone has been booted off Twitter: Stone fired off a profanity-laced tirade against a CNN reporter.
21. Roger Stone, President Trump’s Attack Dog, Banned From Twitter For Harassing Journalists 
22. Roger Stone suing Twitter over suspension
23. The College Kids Doing What Twitter Won’t
24. Is Wikileaks Protected by Section 230? The Trump Campaign Thinks So (Eric Goldman)
25. Trump Campaign Tries To Defend Itself With Section 230, Manages To Potentially Make Things Worse For Itself
26. APNewsBreak: Georgia election server wiped after suit filed 
27. Craig Brittain’s Senate Race Page Reports Craig Brittain’s Personal Account As An ‘Imposter’
28. Days after activists sued, Georgia’s election server was wiped clean: Main server deleted in July, two backups were “degaussed three times” in August.
29. Georgia Election Server Mysteriously Wiped Clean After Lawsuit Highlights Major Vulnerabilities
30. Georgia insists server deletion was “not undertaken to delete evidence”: “Narrative asserted in the media that the data was nefariously deleted… is without merit.”
31. Russian Site-Blocking Operation Embroiled In Corruption Scandal
32. Forcing Internet Platforms To Police Content Will Never Work
33. Twitter drops hammer and sickle on RT, Sputnik ad buys over election shenanigans: No more sponsored Tweets, but Russia-funded media sites can still post “organic” Tweets.
34. Twitter adds 4 million users amid ongoing harassment problem
35. Ikea’s Ingenious Pre-Roll Ads Turn The Viewer Into A Voyeur
36. YouTube Says New Technology Will Result In 30% Fewer Videos Being Deemed Advertiser-Unfriendly
37. Google CEO: Viewers Accrue 100 Million Hours Of Daily YouTube Watch Time From Their Living Rooms
38. YouTube TV Arrives On More Smart Devices, Including Xbox One Consoles, Android TVs
39. Brands Beware: FTC Continues Campaign on Social Media Influencer Disclosures 
40. Florida Legislator Thinks First Amendment Should Be Trimmed Back A Bit To Deal With Social Media Threats
41. How Google Goggles Won, Then Lost, The Camera-First Future
42. Google Limits Access To Airfare Data, Risking Antitrust Concerns
43. Dennis Prager Sues YouTube For Filtering His Videos In A Way He Doesn’t Like 
44. YouTube Responds To Lawsuit From Conservative Outlet, Says Restricted Mode “Is Not Censorship”
45. Musician-Run Organization Runs Anti-YouTube Ad Campaign…On YouTube
46. Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing YouTube To Police Site Doesn’t Work Well
47. Marketing Guy: Google Image Search Is A Honeypot Set Up By Aggressive Copyright Litigants
48. Google’s AI Wizard Unveils A New Twist On Neural Networks
49. Copyright Law Makes Artificial Intelligence Bias Worse: But it could be used to help fix the problem too.
50. Artificial intelligence and copyright (Andres Guadamuz)
51. We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads (Zeynep Tufekci)
52. Universal Music Group Announces Strategic Alliance With Virtual Reality Company Within
53. Amazon Amassed 7.1 Million Streaming Views In Four NFL Games 
54. Website copying allegations allow potpourri of claims (Rebecca Tushnet)
55. Three female engineers sue Uber for sex and race discrimination: Plaintiffs claim that “stack ranking” was stacked against them.
56. In shift to content distribution, Roku may stream to third-party devices: Roku’s mobile app could become a new hub for ad-supported channels.
57. GoFundMe Jumps into Original Content, Launches New Studio
58. Spotify Cancels Its Current Crop Of Original Video Series As It Looks To Design A New Format
59. Apple Taking Family-Friendly Approach To $1 Billion Original Content Push 
60. Apple’s $1 billion TV lineup will be family-friendly, not Game of Thrones: Hollywood insiders paint a picture of a conservative company testing the waters.
61. Is X > 8? Solving Apple’s iPhone sales equation: The iPhone 8 saw slow sales, while iPhone X demand quickly outstripped supply.
62. Apple Reportedly Fires Engineer After Daughter’s iPhone X Video Goes Viral
63. Apple Let YouTubers Review The iPhone X Ahead Of Traditional Tech Outlets
64. Don’t drop that iPhone X—a screen repair will cost you $279
65. Apple reportedly building iPhones, iPads without Qualcomm chips: Qualcomm has reportedly withheld software needed for testing its chips in Apple devices
66. Microsoft Partners With NFL Stars For ‘Create Change’ Campaign
67. AMD, which lost over $2.8B in 5 years, takes a hit after new report – Morgan Stanley: Demand for graphics chips, video game consoles will slow in 2018.
68. GrubHub “gig economy” trial ends with judge calling out plaintiff’s lies: Small details of a part-time actor’s delivery job have become a federal case.
69. The Little Black Box That Took Over Piracy 
70. The Rights of Synthetic Lifeforms is the Next Great Civil Rights Controversy
71. DARPA’s New Brain Device Increases Learning Speed by 40%
72. Prepping Self-Driving Cars For The World’s Most Chaotic Cities
73. Future of Invasive Neural Interfaces & Uploading Consciousness with Ramez Naam
74. Machine Learning Is Aiding in the Fight Against Mental Illness
75. The Robot Tank Designed To Fight Russians
76. Do Robots Have More Rights Than Women In Saudi Arabia?
77. Sony’s Aibo robot dog is back, gives us OLED puppy dog eyes: You can adopt Sony’s newest robo dog today for $1,700 down and a mandatory monthly fee
78. CAA Unveils Digital-Incubator Venture Creative Labs With $12.5 Million in Funding
79. CAA Launches Startup Studio To Found New Tech And Media Companies
80. Canadian Copyright, OA, and OER: Why the Open Access Road Still Leads Back to Copyright (Michael Geist)
81. Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking
82. This stupid patent was going to be used to sue hundreds of small businesses: A patent litigation factory was stopped from suing hundreds of small printers.
83. Whois? No, Whowas: Incoming Euro privacy rules torpedo domain registration system: Internet policy wonks scramble over GDPR
84. ‘I Forgot My Pin’: An Epic Tale Of Losing $30,000 In Bitcoin
85. Samsung’s Mining Rig Lets You Collect Cryptocurrency Using 40 Old Galaxy Smartphones
86. How Netflix works: the (hugely simplified) complex stuff that happens every time you hit Play
87. Netflix Cancels ‘House Of Cards’ In Response To Sexual Misconduct Claims Against Kevin Spacey
88. The Government’s Role in E-commerce: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on International Trade (Michael Geist)
89. Prepping Self-Driving Cars For The World’s Most Chaotic Cities
90. Best-Ever Algorithm Found For Huge Streams Of Data
91. Rethinking Data Ownership in the Age of the IOT
92. Inside The Downfall Of Doppler Labs
93. The underground story of Cobra, the 1980s’ illicit handmade computer: In their poor, Communist country, Romania’s computer curious built an underground industry.
94. Google, others showcase emoji cheeseburger construction faux pas: Emoji fragmentation of a small stakes, culinary variety. 

CREATIVITY

1.  Gag order silencing Comic-Con producers declared unconstitutional: Appeals court says silencing online speech over trademark suit is unconstitutional.
2. Florida’s top court stops 1960s band from earning pre-1972 copyright royalties: Do states want copyright to sprawl even further? Two have said “no.”
3. Eight Mile Style v New Zealand National Party: National ‘Loses itself’ to Eminem in copyright case
4. New Zealand political party infringed Eminem copyright, must pay $412k: “Sound alike” track used by ad firm was too close to Eminem hit “Lose Yourself.”
5. CBS sues man for copyright over screenshots of 59-year-old TV show: Asked about the lawsuit, CBS says only that plaintiff will “end up on boot hill.”
6. Regulators crack down on gambling ads appealing to children
7. Australian Lawmakers Propose Outlawing Parody, Having A Sense Of Humor
8. There’s no free speech right to refuse wedding cakes to gay couples
9. Standing to Sue for Copyright Infringement: No Bright Line Rule for Stock Photo Agencies
10. Not every pattern is protected by copyright, even if creating it involved many choices
11. Evidence Continues To Show Benefit Of “Openness” In Copyright Regimes
12. The #MeToo moment
13. Against Allegedly
14. Reporter Arrested, Thrown To The Ground For Cursing
15. What future for UK copyright after Brexit? Report on IPKat-BLACA panel discussion
16. The Prehistory of Music: A conversation on the deep history of humans and music with Gary Tomlinson, author of A Million Years of Music.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. What Did Cambridge Analytica Really Do For Trump’s Campaign?
2. China Tests The Limits Of Its Us Hacking Truce
3. BlackBerry CEO Promises To Try To Break Customers’ Encryption If The US Gov’t Asks Him To
4. Rumors That Facebook Is Secretly Recording You Refuse to Die
5. A surge of sites and apps are exhausting your CPU to mine cryptocurrency: Coinhive harnesses the resources of 500 million people with no questions asked.
6. New Evidence Shows Defense Dep’t Abusing Surveillance Procedures To Spy On Americans
7. Video dooms cop who arrested nurse for not letting him take patient’s blood: Nurse told officer to get a warrant. Cop grabs her and arrests her for no reason.
8. Judge Doesn’t Care Much For DOJ’s Boilerplate, Refuses To Grant One Year Gag Order
9. FBI Says It Can’t Get Into 6,900 Encrypted Phones. So What?
10. Declassified Docs Show NSA Trying To Prosecute A Journalist For His Successful FOIA Requests
11. A new, virulent ransomware epidemic is fuelled by yet another leaked NSA cyberweapon
12. Assessing the threat the Reaper botnet poses to the Internet – what we know now: Whatever the threat posed by the new IoT botnet, a worse one has lurked for months.
13. Apple’s Machine Learning Engine Could Surface Your iPhone’s Secrets
14. Facing privacy suits about facial recognition
15. Back Down The Rabbit Hole About Encryption On Smartphones
16. Researcher Still Being Pursued By Russian Bank Over Last Year’s Mistaken Trump Connection Story
17. European Parliament Agrees Text For Key ePrivacy Regulation; Online Advertising Industry Hates It
18. Kim Dotcom settles case he filed against NZ police over “military-style raid”: Cops could have “knocked at our door at a reasonable hour and advised me of my arrest.”
19. Wyden’s Reform Bill Would Also Deter Misuse Of NSA Powers To Compel Tech Company Assistance
20. Members of Congress want you to hack the US election voting system: Bug-bounty program would exempt participants from federal hacking laws.
21. CIA releases 321 gigabytes of Bin Laden’s digital library, Web cache crap: “There is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed.”
22. Man finds USB stick with Heathrow security plans, Queen’s travel details: Secrets discovered when USB was plugged into library computer; data unencrypted.

GAMES

1. Dev draws flak for making a game about resisting oil pipelines
2. Energy Group Labels Creators Of Video Game As ‘Eco-Terrorists’
3. Oil lobbyists accuse game of promoting “eco-terrorism”: Thunderbird Strike “an eco-terrorist version of Angry Birds,” says Republican senator
4. Opinion: When Big Oil attacks your game
5. EA shuts down community-led classic Battlefield revival project
6. EA shuts down fan-run servers for older Battlefield games: Modified game clients were being used to get around defunct GameSpy servers.
7. Kotaku’s scum-and-villainy story of why EA shuttered a Star Wars game: The ripple effects of LucasArts’ closure apparently set Visceral’s demise into motion.
8. EA kicking a studio when it’s downsizing: 10 Years Ago This Month: EA Chicago’s closure makes the announcement of Visceral Games’ demise seem like a lesson in tact
9. Visceral devs share the story of the studio’s closure
10. EA CEO on Visceral closure: “It wasn’t about single-player vs live service” – But publisher says live services continue to be “the bedrock of our business”
11. EA CEO Comments On Closing Visceral And Why Its Star Wars Game Was Refocused: “It does happen from time to time as part of the creative process.”
12. EA tweaks Star Wars Battlefront II’s loot box drops following beta feedback
13. EA execs address Battlefront II loot box concerns: Publisher insists Star Wars shooter will offer good value to players, won’t be pay-to-win
14. Star Wars: Battlefront II changes its loot box plans… but is it enough?: Worst damage is fixed, but is this still too much Dark Side in a Star Wars game?
15. How the ESRB is Promoting Children’s Gambling
16. EA takes a loss in Q2 as digital sales continue to outshine physical
17. EA Sports helps EA grow revenue, narrow losses: Digital growth more than offsets 19% year-over-year decline of packaged goods revenues
18. PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds could face ban in China: Game deviates from values of socialism, according to China’s content watchdog
19. Football Manager to include gay players for first time in series’ history: “I just think it’s crazy that in 2017 we are in a world where people can’t be themselves,” says game director
20. So 52.45% of People Playing my Indie Game Have Pirated it…
21. Ubisoft says DRM isn’t the reason Assassin’s Creed: Origins pushes CPUs: VMProtect has “no perceptible effect,” game uses “full extent” of CPU by design.
22. With Denuvo Broken, Ubisoft Doubles Up On DRM for Assasin’s Creed Origin, Tanking Everyone’s Computers
23. Ubisoft has made its Sharpmake game dev tool open-source
24. U.S. gov’t stands by DMCA exemption for museums preserving online games
25. Amazon opens dedicated ‘Retro Zone’ for selling ‘retro’ games and gear
26. Wolfenstein II: a good argument for games to get political
27. Does Wolfenstein II’s brutal opening have design value?
28. Wolfenstein 2 Collectible Mocks Progressive Magazine Over Its Coverage Of White Nationalists 
29. The New Colossus: Building Wolfenstein II atop a million small decisions
30. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus Review – If the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, I just made a whole pile of good Nazis.
31. Ethics 101: Designing Morality in Games
32. Dev Q&A: A Mortician’s Tale challenges how games depict death
33. The economics of single-player games: As many top studios focus on multiplayer, service-based games, does the business case for narrative-driven single-player titles still add up?
34. Reclaiming Assassin’s Creed’s lost identity
35. Sales and profits up at Nintendo as the Switch continues to shine
36. Nintendo Switch closing in on 8M sales worldwide
37. SNES Classic and Super Mario Odyssey hit 2M sales
38. Super Mario Odyssey hits 2 million sales: With Switch sales “tracking those of the Wii,” latest Mario game reached almost a third of the console’s audience
39. Odyssey breaks 3D Mario week one sales record in Japan
40. Super Mario Odyssey Review: Mario’s new romp joyously fuses old with new.
41. Switch shipments will near 17 million units by the end of March: Six-month results show big increases in revenue and profit, with 50 million units of software expected to ship this fiscal year
42. Nintendo survey reveals who’s purchasing the Switch
43. Data shows versatility of the Switch is more than just a gimmick: Nintendo still has a knack for designing unique hardware
44. Nintendo promises improved Switch availability for holiday season: Company bumps planned production by 4 million units to meet unexpected demand.
45. Nintendo: The least popular way to play Switch games is primarily on a TV
46. Super Mario Run is still short of Nintendo’s profit expectations: Despite reaching 200 million downloads, Nintendo tells investors that Mario’s mobile debut has “not yet reached an acceptable profit point”
47. Sony’s games division drives strong growth in profits
48. PlayStation drives Sony’s Q2 2017 revenues up to $18.25bn: Game and Network Services division saw sales more than double on 2016, PS4 shipments up to 67.5m units
49. Sony focus moving from hardware sales to active user base: PS4 maker the latest to underscore the increasing importance of engagement metrics over unit sales
50. Resident Evil 7 doubled PlayStation VR session time, says Sony
51. Daybreak gives PS3 version of DC Universe Online 3 months to live
52. Gartner’s Brian Blau on the State of the VR & AR Industries
53. Oculus’ Bernard Yee: “Everything we’ve done to date is the warm-up for VR” – Executive producer posits that VR is about ‘the fantasy of the small space’ during View Conference talk
54. Rob Pardo: VR MMOs not happening any time soon – World of Warcraft designer also offers advice to aspiring developers during his View Conference keynote
55. “VR’s potential is literally infinite” – Oculus: Jason Rubin on the VR road-map and why analogies to failed tech from analysts and critics “all fall flat for me”
56. CCP closes 2 studios as it backs away from VR development
57. CCP exits the VR business: EVE Online studio has shuttered its Atlanta studio and is selling its Newcastle studio – the strategy shift impacts about 100 staff
58. Google launches VR and AR object library called ‘Poly’
59. Free-to-play Fortnite: Battle Royale surpasses 811k concurrent players
60. Profits and revenue on the rise for Konami’s video game branch
61. Profits up at Konami thanks to strong performance in mobile market: Konami enjoys 24.5% year-on-year profit growth in games industry
62. Doubt cast on future of Amazon Game Studios’ first major development: Breakaway on “indefinite hiatus” according to report
63. Steam beta tests Curator changes: Valve adds tools to help devs deal with influencers, hopes to roll them out wider in coming weeks
64. Valve’s big Steam Curator overhaul aims to streamline key distribution
65. Xbox software and services Q1 revenue offsets hardware decline: CEO Satya Nadella positions revenue balance as “leading indicator” of Microsoft’s ambitions in the gaming sector
66. How Microsoft Delayed A Wildly Popular Xbox Feature To Clean Up Its Wildly Unpopular Always Online Plans
67. Microsoft has stopped making the Kinect, and that makes me sad: Robbing the Xbox of its eyes and ears makes it a lesser platform.
68. Microsoft could bring first-party titles to rival platforms
69. HoloLens availability expanded as Microsoft continues pushing it to industry: Redmond insists that Mixed Reality isn’t just for gaming.
70. Warner Bros. Interactive takes over Rocket League retail distribution
71. Firefly Games partners with Dreamworks for franchise-laden RPG
72. Riot Games introduces revenue sharing in EU LCS overhaul: Developer rethinks Challenger Series and looks to reward teams that “positively contribute to the success of the LCS”
73. A New Cornerstone of Human Culture is Transforming Our Oldest Institutions: The future of eSports is in the hands of the players. Can they take it?
74. Esports Execs Discuss Barriers, Advantages To Olympic Inclusion
75. Olympic Committee agrees eSports ‘could be considered’ legitimate sport
76. International Olympic Committee takes steps to recognise esports: IOC and international sports federation “in a dialogue with the games industry” on esports
77. Olympic committee lays out expectations for esports’ inclusion: They will need an international governing organization
78. Applying entrepreneurial skills to be a better game dev
79. Juggling the chainsaws of work-for-hire vs. original projects
80. Video Game Mini-Maps Might Finally Be Going Away
81. The untapped potential of games to shape the future: “The popular imagination of games hasn’t quite caught up to the reality,” says Near Future Society co-founder Oliver Lewis
82. Razer partners with devs to debut $700 game-focused Android phone
83. Razer Debuts Its First Phone, And It’s Built For Games
84. Essential Facts (Entertainment Software Association of Canada)

Jon