MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression: Website Blocking Plan “Raises Serious Inconsistencies” With Canada’s Human Rights Obligations (Michael Geist)
- Conservative MP on Bell Site Blocking Plan: “Canadians Should be Concerned” (Michael Geist)
- Telus’ Website Blocking Submission: No Copyright Expertise Needed and No Net Neutrality Violation if Everyone is Doing It (Michael Geist)
- My CRTC Submission on the Bell Coalition Site Blocking Plan: Why it is Disproportionate, Harmful, and Inconsistent With Global Standards (Michael Geist)
- Aussie Rightsholders Look To Feature Creep Site-Blocking To Search-Blocking, Because Of Course They Are
- Canadian Ownership Rules in Telecom and Broadcasting
- Supreme Court to Hear Appeal on Interaction between Arbitration Clauses and Class Proceedings: TELUS Communications Inc. v. Avraham Wellman
- Sinclair forced TV anchors to criticize “fake” news – and Trump loved it: Sinclair echoes Trump’s “fake news” claims while seeking US approval of a merger.
- Ex-Fox News contributor: I was silenced on Russia because I didn’t back Trump
- Ex-Fox News contributor says he was kept off air because he wouldn’t ‘unswervingly support President Trump‘
- I was not allowed to be the voice of sanity on Russia at Fox News. I had to quit
- One of Rachael Ray’s Companies Has Pulled Its Ads From Laura Ingraham’s Show
- A day after Laura Ingraham faced boycotts over taunting a Parkland survivor, she’s apologizing
- Advertisers Continue Exodus After Parkland Survivor Rejects Laura Ingraham Apology: “#ShutUpAndBeObjective”
- Laura Ingraham’s advertisers aren’t buying her apology, either
- Fox News Host Laura Ingraham Is Going on ‘Vacation’ As Advertisers Bail
- How America’s Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump’s War On The Media
- This San Diego Radio Station Has Existed For A Month And Is Already A Disaster
- Federal Court Curbs FCC Robocall Restrictions
- FCC Continues War on Pirate Radio – Seizes Equipment of Boston Stations While New Legislative Tools May Be on the Way
- Ajit Pai faces heat over proposal to take away poor people’s broadband plans: Pai offered no evidence that plan will boost network investment, Democrats say.
- FCC Boss Under Fire For Facts-Optional Attack On Low-Income Broadband Programs
- Super-Local Broadband May Be The Best Way to Preserve Net Neutrality
- Telecom Lobbyists: We’ll Fight State Efforts To Protect Net Neutrality For A ‘United And Connected Future’
- Comcast supports ban on paid prioritization – with an exception: Instead of total ban, Comcast wants exception for specialized services.
- Comcast’s Top Lobbyist Is Pushing A Net Neutrality ‘Compromise’ That Isn’t
- FCC approves SpaceX plan to launch 4,425 broadband satellites
- Charter fails to prove that its employees purposely caused cable outages: Charter lawsuit against union dismissed by judge as strike enters second year.
- CenturyLink fights billing-fraud lawsuit by claiming that it has no customers: CenturyLink operates via subsidiaries that enforce mandatory arbitration clauses.
DIGITAL
- Trump admin wants to track 14 million US visitors’ social media history
- Republican governor forced to stop blocking Facebook users who criticize him: Maryland gov. settled free speech lawsuit – Trump is still fighting a similar suit.
- US Might Start A Nuclear War… Because Iranians Wanted Access To Academic Papers Locked Behind A Paywall?
- Facebook: It wasn’t 50M hit by Cambridge Analytica breach, but rather 87M – Also, Facebook will now delete all call and SMS logs older than one year.
- Facebook Exposed 87 Million Users To Cambridge Analytica
- Facebook executive defends memo saying connecting people online is good even if ‘someone dies in a terrorist attack’
- Facebook Executive Defends Leaked Memo saying Growth Is Good Even If ‘Domeone Dies In A Terror Attack’
- Influencers are getting long-term contracts that treat them more like traditional talent: In a 2016 memo, Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth wrote “Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies.” Thursday, he renounced the statements.
- With GDPR Decision, Zuckerberg Proves Yet Again He Has Learned Absolutely Nothing From the Cambridge Analytica Scandal
- The Case For A Zuck-Free Facebook
- Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress next week: Members of Congress want answers about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- Tim Cook Says Apple Would Never Have a Scandal Like Cambridge Analytica
- A Short History Of Facebook’s Privacy Gaffes
- Don’t Just Delete Facebook — Delete Well
- Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs
- CEO says Facebook will impose new EU privacy rules “everywhere”: “We have to ensure that everyone in our ecosystem protects people’s information.”
- Mark Zuckerberg Hints Most Facebook Users Won’t Benefit From New Privacy Rules
- Computer science faces an ethics crisis. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it.
- Cambridge Analytica’s processing of Facebook’s users’ data for predictive psychological profiling and voter micro targeting: The 2018 ICO investigation against Cambridge Analytica’s practices on Facebookc – An international wake-up call
- How Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook targeting model really worked
- Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (Bruce Schneier)
- Facebook’s New Data-Sharing Policies Are Crashing Tinder
- Can Social Media Be Saved?
- It Took All Of Three Hours To Code A Plugin That Makes News Comments More Civil
- Four problems for news and democracy: Here are some “buckets” for making sense of why: addiction, economics, bad actors and known bugs (Ethan Zuckerman)
- Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC
- Court Shows SESTA Is Not Needed: Says Backpage Can Lose Its CDA 230 Protections If It Helped Create Illegal Content
- Yet Another Court Says Victims Don’t Need SESTA/FOSTA To Go After Backpage
- Sex Workers Fighting Back Against SESTA/FOSTA With Their Own Social Network… And Plan To Expose Politicians
- Yet Another Case Highlights Yet Another Constitutional Infirmity With The DMCA
- Judge Blocks Iowa Town From Shutting Down Or Suing Resident Over His Critical Website
- Court Says PACER System Is Illegally Using Fees
- Lawyer Behind Failing Sham To Protect Sketchy Patents Sends Bogus Copyright Cease & Desist To Blogger
- Conservative Wingnuts Celebrate Easter by Complaining About Google Doodles, Like Jesus Would
- Google employees revolt, say company should shut down military drone project: Project applying Google’s image recognition to military drone footage causes uproar.
- Court Tosses Dennis Prager’s Silly Lawsuit Against YouTube, Refuses His Request For Preliminary Injunction
- Michigan State University Reportedly Spent $500k To Monitor The Social Media Accounts Of Larry Nassar’s Accusers And Journalists
- YouTube Shooting Spree Injures 4, Kills 1
- Police confirm one dead, three wounded after shooting at YouTube HQ
- 4 Wounded, Suspect Dead Following Shooting At YouTube’s San Bruno Headquarters
- YouTube Shooter Nasim Aghdam Complained The Company Ruined Her Life
- Police Say YouTube Policies Motivated Shooter
- YouTube shooter IDed as woman angry at site’s “age-restricted” policies
- Tragic YouTube shooting casts new light on creators’ “adpocalypse” complaints: Alleged shooter left a video behind with complaints about revenue. What’s going on?
- What We Know About YouTube Shooter Nasim Aghdam
- Livid over site’s policies, YouTube shooter trained for attack, shot randomly
- As YouTube Cracks Down On Firearm Videos, Niche Video Platforms Look To Seize An Opportunity
- Film Critic Chris Stuckmann Calls Out Universal For Abusing YouTube’s Copyright-Claiming System
- Jake Paul Planning Talk Show For YouTube Red
- Influencers are getting long-term contracts that treat them more like traditional talent
- Luis Fonsi And Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” Is The First YouTube Video To Receive Five Billion Views
- Fullscreen Acquires Influencer-Marketing Firm Reelio
- DramaFever Names Rena Liu GM, Acquires Select ‘Bachelorette’ Streaming Rights
- Quixotic Approaches To Circumventing Censorship, Using Books And Music
- The Inside Story Of Reddit’s Redesign: Goodbye, dystopian Craigslist. There’s a new Reddit, and it’s all grown up.
- Snapchat Lays Off Roughly 100 Staffers For The Second Time This Month
- Snapchat Tries Explaining Itself To The Masses In First TV Commercial
- Snapchat Expands Video Chats To Include 16 People At Once
- Spotify And The Triumph Of The Subscription Model
- Disney To Launch $5 Monthly ESPN+ Streaming Service On April 12
- ESPN To Combat Cord-Cutting By Putting Once Kinda Free Content Behind A New Paywall
- Twitter to live stream weekly MLB games in renewed deal
- Twitter To Air Weekly MLB Games In Renewed Streaming Pact
- NBA To Experiment With Cheap 4th Quarter Only Streaming Options
- Uber Settles with Family of AV Crash Victim
- Amazon Lost $53 Billion in One Day Because Trump Has Opinions
- Here’s how President Trump could go after Amazon
- Photographing A Robot Isn’t Just Point And Shoot
- Russia Debuts Postal Drone, Which Immediately Crashes Into Wall
- Emmanuel Macron Talks To Wired About France’s AI Strategy
- Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain
- Artificial Intelligence Rules More of Your Life. Who Rules AI?: Tech companies are working on standards for the field, though critics see their efforts as attempts to stave off government oversight
- AI Engineers Must Open Their Designs To Democratic Control
- Mini Brains Just Got Creepier – They’re Growing Their Own Veins
- A Cruise self-driving car got a traffic ticket – GM says it did nothing wrong: Cruise says its car never came within 10 feet of a pedestrian.
- Uber settles with family of woman killed by self-driving car, avoids lawsuit: Uber and family settle out of court after self-driving car hit pedestrian.
- Tesla says Autopilot was active during fatal crash in Mountain View: Tesla argues the data still show Autopilot makes its cars safer.
- What Can The Law Do About `Deepfake’?
- How Grubhub Analyzed 4,000 Dishes To Predict Your Next Order
- Elon Musk’s April Fools’ Prank Totally Backfired
- JFK And The Right Of Publicity
- When You Can Make ‘JFK’ Say Anything, What’s Stopping Him From Selling Doritos?
- FTC Targets Cryptocurrency Pyramid Schemes
- Google Bans All Cryptomining Extensions From The Chrome Store
- Google bans cryptomining Chrome extensions because they refuse to play by the rules: Google continues to try to keep its browser running smoothly in spite of others’ efforts.
- Banning cryptocurrency ads is “short-sighted”
- Cryptocurrency Pays Price for Alleged Harm With Ad Ban
- Two founders of cryptocurrency offering arrested, charged with fraud – Centra Tech’s lawyer said last year: “It’s certainly not a scam.”
- Blockchain caught in regulatory crossfire: Without clearly defined regulations for products based on blockchain technology, the future of this industry remains uncertain
- Ethical Obligations and Blogging: ABA Opinion Serves as Reminder
- The Condom Snorting Challenge Is Tide Pods’ Final Revenge
- Witches, Frog-Gods, And The Deepening Schism Of Internet Religions
- Reporting Sexual Harassment In The Digital Age
- Apple Music update fills the void left by MTV with exclusive music videos
- Insights: Apple Just Launched Its MTV, So When Will It Launch Its Netflix?
- RIAA Reports Music Industry Is Making All The Money Just As New Study Says Piracy Has Never Been More Widespread
- Hated Science Publisher Elsevier To Help EU Monitor Open Science – Including Open Access
- The Wired Guide To Memes: Everything you ever wanted to know about Nyan Cat, Doge, and the art of the Rickroll.
- Canadian Internet Law Update – 2017
CREATIVITY
- Details announced for statutory review of Canada’s Copyright Act. Phased review projected to be completed in 2019.
- Canadian Copyright Law Review Takes Shape: Report Not Expected Until 2019 (Michael Geist)
- Storytellers and Artists May Continue To Rejoice – Feud: Bette and Joan Is Fully Protected By The First Amendment
- Malaysian Government Pushes ‘Fake News’ Bill Aimed At Curb-Stomping Reporting About Its Corruption
- Court Says Scraping Websites And Creating Fake Profiles Can Be Protected By The First Amendment
- School Sells Out Students’ First Amendment Rights, Apologizes And Deletes Article Containing Controversial Images
- Judge Tosses Charges Against Journalist Who Published Docs Leaked To Her By A Police Officer
- Report Alleges Ren & Stimpy Creator John Kricfalusi Took Advantage of Underage Girls Interested in Animation
- Me Too Is Changing Even The Smarmiest Advertisers
- Report: Dumb Beer Ad Phrase Banned From The Masters
- How Do You Know You Are Reading This?
- Levi v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
- De Becdelievre v. Anastasia Musical LLC
- Despite Podcast’s Popularity, “SERIAL” Trademark Registration Denied as Generic
- University Of Illinois Attempts To Trademark Bully An Alumnus After Failing To Stop His Trademark Registration
- Copyright – 2017 Year in Review
- Black Panther Has Beaten Titanic to Become the Third Highest Grossing US Theatrical Release of All Time
- 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted The Future – 50 Years Ago
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Yahoo! Cyber breach settlement gives shareholders cause for cheer
- DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Dump Microsoft Case, Let It Use New CLOUD Act To Demand Overseas Data
- If You Jaywalk in China, Facial Recognition Means You’ll Walk Away With A Fine
- Grindr won’t share users’ HIV status with app contractors after outcry
- It’s Grindr’s Turn In The Barrel As America Finally Decides To Care About Consumer Privacy
- Truckers Take On Trump Over Electronic Surveillance Rules
- Appeals Court Has No Problem With Cops Using E911 Services To Perform Warrantless, Real-Time Tracking
- Feds: There are hostile stingrays in DC, but we don’t know how to find them – There’s also “anomalous activity” – probably stingrays – in other US cities, too.
- Want to hack a voting machine? Hack the voting machine vendor first: How password reuse and third-party breaches leave voting machine vendors vulnerable to attack.
- The Billion-Dollar Hacking Group Behind A String Of Big Breaches
- Beware The Academic Vanity Honeypot: How a hacker weaponized flattery and took over my Twitter account.
- What Happens When You Track Your Boyfriend On Strava
- Hacking your brain(scan): security bugs in EEG software open hospitals to attack – Cisco Talos reveals “multiple vulnerabilities” in hardware common at hospitals.
- Finally extradited from Europe, suspected LinkedIn hacker faces US charges
- Coming Soon (or at least by November): Government Sets a Date for Data Breach Disclosure Rules To Take Effect (Michael Geist)
- Practical Approaches to Big Data Privacy Over Time (Micah Altman, Alexandra Wood, David R. O’Brien and Urs Gasser)
GAMES
- Lindsay Lohan loses Grand Theft Auto V lawsuit on appeal: It’s game over for the actress, as an appeals court finds a game character Lohan called her “unequivocal” likeness is rather a “generic … twentysomething woman.”
- Lindsay Lohan’s GTA 5 Lawsuit Rejected Again: “We conclude…that the subject images are not recognizable as plaintiff.”
- Court rejects Lindsay Lohan’s appeal in GTA V likeness lawsuit
- Loot box latest: Big Fish Casino decision reversed by US Court
- Big Fish Casino constitutes illegal gambling under Washington law
- Monolith removes loot boxes from Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Mechanic “risked undermining the heart of our game,” says developer
- Developer removes randomized loot boxes from Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – Monolith says paid market “compromises” the game “even if you don’t buy anything.”
- Shadow of War is being completely stripped of microtransactions
- Social Casino Game Found to Be Illegal Gambling
- Judge Refuses to Dismiss Copyright Lawsuit Over LeBron James Tattoo in ‘NBA 2K’: Take-Two attempted to argue that its use of LeBron James’ tattoo was de minimis or fair use.
- Judge Swain: Discovery Necessary to Determine “Fair Use” of NBA Tattoos in Video Game
- Take-Two Fails To Get NBA2K Tattoo Copyright Lawsuit Dismissed
- Niantic settles Pokemon Go class action lawsuit for $1.5M
- Niantic pays $1.6 million settlement over failed Pokemon Go event: Attendees can get reimbursed for incurred travel expenses.
- Niantic settling Pokemon Go Fest lawsuit for $1.6 million – Report: Resolution will see developer reimburse travel costs for attendees of last year’s disastrous Chicago event
- “Patent troll” doubles down, now accuses Clicker Heroes maker of libel – Lawyer for Playsaurus: “Stop sending baseless letters with draconian demands.”
- IGF Award-winning Baba Is You cloned before it was even released
- Eugen Systems devs hit out at management after six weeks on strike
- Eugen Systems striking devs going to labour court: Employees initiating proceedings against Steel Division – Normandy 44 studio after six weeks with no progress in negotiations
- Ageism: The issue never gets old – Veteran game developers share thoughts on how big a problem age discrimination actually is, and how to get around it
- 69% of large UK games firms have bigger gender pay gap than national average: King and Rockstar added to database, based on businesses with 250 or more employees
- Ubisoft’s plans to tackle toxicity in Rainbow Six: Siege – Permanent bans, mute text chat, chat filtering and team kill detection all in the works
- To prevent toxicity, design games with community management in mind
- Blog: It’s not me. It’s you – surviving a toxic workplace
- Blizzard experiments with machine learning to fight Overwatch toxicity
- Blog: Working on controversial shooter Six Days in Fallujah
- China’s Tencent Proves You Can Make A Decent Profit From Online Publishing — If You Have A Platform With A Billion Users
- Twitch Streamer Ninja Draws Backlash For Using N-Word During ‘Fortnite’ Stream
- Citing “Adjustments,” Twitch Lays Off Approximately 25 Employees
- Twitch undergoes layoffs: Streaming site confirms “team adjustments in some departments,” plans to increase headcount by 30% this year
- Research reveals most popular esports on Twitch: Nearly three times as many MOBA streamers than any other genre
- Superdata: Fortnite has more monthly active users than GTA Online – Battle Royale game earned more additional content revenue than any other console title in February – except Call of Duty
- Fortnite is taking over the sports world
- World’s largest esports organisations sign up for Clash Royale League: 36 teams from North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America to compete in $1 million World Final
- Gearing up for e-sport: Seizing opportunities and tackling legal issues
- Competitive sniping game SpyPartyfinally hitting Steam after eight years: Could an indie game about psychological stare-downs truly emerge as an esports star?
- It’s more than luck: what devs should keep in mind when creating an ‘indie hit’
- Blog: Some notes on indie publishing
- The Rise Of Vsports: A New Category Of Sport Powered By Video Technology
- A look at EA Sports’ push for more accessible sports games
- Premium mobile game Hitman Sniper passes 10M players
- Hitman Sniper passes 10m players: Mobile spin-off likely the best-selling entry in the series to date
- The Nintendo Switch has surpassed 4M sales in Japan
- Nintendo Switch reaches four million sold in Japan – report: Famitsu numbers put Nintendo’s console two weeks behind the Wii in hitting the milestone
- Ni No Kuni developer Level-5 bringing all future main titles to Switch
- Blog: How Breath of the Wild brings maturity to Nintendo’s game design
- Ubisoft Extends IBM Watson Support for ‘Bridge Crew’ Through 2018
- Far Cry 5 UK launch is the biggest in Far Cry history: Strong Easter sales all round for the boxed games market as Ubisoft ends March on a high
- Anime Streaming Service Crunchyroll Releases Its First Game
- Amazon officially benches Breakaway: Fantasy sports game no longer in active development as team focuses on other projects
- Apple’s clones crackdown leads to App Store shrinking: Number of new iOS releases drops for the first time since marketplace launched in 2008
- Steam Spy: $20 games took biggest share of Steam’s total revenue in 2017 – Sergey Galyonkin questions the power of $10 “sweet spot” for Steam prices
- Valve: ‘Steam Machines aren’t exactly flying off shelves’
- Valve says it’s “still working hard” on Linux gaming: SteamOS maker admits that “Steam machines aren’t exactly flying off the shelves.”
- Valve hasn’t given up on Steam Machines: Company admits sales are slow, but says ‘store delisting’ is nothing more than routine cleanup
- Valve quietly dials back Steam Machine presence on Steam
- SteamSpy: $20 and $60 were the top-earning Steam game prices last year
- Surviving a decade in indie dev: What’s kept Mommy’s Best Games going for 11 years? Nathan Fouts details 21 things that helped the Pig Eat Ball outfit get by, and might help others as well
- Why is early stage funding tough to find for game start-ups?: Makers Fund founding partner Jay Chi wants to solve a shortage of Series A support in the market; portfolio includes Bossa, Typhoon, Tiny Build, Superdata, and more
- “I’m not sure that games like this one can continue to be made…”: Where the Water Tastes Like Wine developer Johnnemann Nordhagen reflects on his game’s surprising commercial struggles
- Asymmetric smashed West of Loathing sales target by halving launch price: Original $20 price tag would have discouraged impulse buys, says founder Zack Johnson
- Indie comics platform Tapas Media embarks on major games push: Digital publisher keen to share its IP and fictional universes with developers across all platforms.
- Assassin’s Creed’s New Discovery Mode Is What Museums Will Look Like In The Future
- Everything you missed from GDC 2018: #1ReasonToBe, artificial intelligence, and the latest from Unreal and Unity were the hot topics in San Francisco this year
- Despite faltering profits, hardware and software sales rise at GameStop
- GameStop annual income down by $300m due to fourth quarter “asset impairment”: Sales up 7.2 per cent to $9.2 billion with net income of $34.7 million
- 10 Years Ago This Month: A swath of studio closures suggests how significantly the HD era upended the status quo
- Record-breaking VR/AR start-ups raised over $3.6bn in last 12 months: Video games one of only two sectors to secure more than 10% of investment deals
- Virtual reality could encourage pro-social behaviour and empathy in children: Parents aren’t convinced however, and just 38 per cent agree
- HTC launching $1,100 starter kit to trim $150 off Vive Pro buy-in
- New Vive Pro bundle cuts headset price by $100: HTC marks VR device’s second anniversary with new offer to clarify upgrade confusion
- HTC Vive Pro review: Eye-popping VR, with a price that’s a little too real: Is a $799 upgrade price (or $1,099 brand-new) justified for this jump in quality?
- Blockchain is games’ new tech obsession: Early tech adoption is part of the essence of the games industry – but proposals to integrate blockchain into companies’ businesses, not just their games, should give us pause
- GDPR-K: How the kids data privacy law affects games publishers everywhere – SuperAwesome MD Max Bleyleben explains why it’s not enough to look for GDPR compliance – in the kids’ space, you also need GDPR-K compliance
- PC Building Simulator is (most of) the fun of building a PC—without pricey GPUs: It’s not very challenging, but it nails the basics of building gaming PCs.
- Experimental Controllers Could Change Gaming For Good
- Warner Bros. steps up as Hitman publisher
- Don’t Miss: How Slime Rancher succeeds through emergent storytelling
- An actual gaming Easter egg was unlocked on an Atari Jaguar cartridge today: Modern-day publisher AtariAge confirmed secret has been hidden on carts for a year.
- More than ‘Orcs in Space’: Devs measure the enduring influence of StarCraft
- Ready Player One’s film adaptation isn’t even good enough as a kids movie: Everything here – character development, CGI, geek-cred references – disappoints.
- Ready Player One Is A Virtually Empty Good Time
- Blog: A postmortem on my game design degree
Jon