MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Comments about Indigenous Women Breached Broadcast Codes, Says Canadian Broadcast Standards Council
- Talk Show’s Sexual Discussions Not Too Explicit, Says Canadian Broadcast Standards Council
- The Consequences of High Wireless Costs: OECD Data Confirms Canadians Lag Behind in Data Usage (Michael Geist)
- Effort To Save Net Neutrality Via Congressional Review Act Appears Stuck In Neutral
- Verizon Finally Puts Its Sad, Unloved Streaming TV Service to Rest
- Verizon To Shut Down Mobile-Friendly Video Platform Go90
- Verizon is shutting down its original video app Go90: Go90 died so Oath can live
- How Verizon Could Fix Its Streaming Video Strategy After Shutting Down Go90
- Comcast starts throttling mobile video, will charge extra for HD streams
- Fresh Off Its Merger, AT&T Jacks Up Price Of Streaming Video Service
- AT&T Begins Testing Its Power In The Wake Of Merger Mania & The Death Of Net Neutrality
- AT&T’s low-cost TV streaming service WatchTV goes live
- AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger—it’s raising them instead
- Internet TV packages are getting pricier — including AT&T’s
- How AT&T could use Time Warner shows and movies to compete with Disney and Netflix
- AT&T removed HBO from an unlimited data plan after buying Time Warner: AT&T alters unlimited plans and makes the cheapest one $5 more expensive.
DIGITAL
- “Dancing Baby” lawsuit finally settles, baby is now a middle-school student: Universal says it now has a “fair and tempered process for… potential takedowns.”
- The Monkey Selfie Case Continues, But The Dancing Baby One Does Not
- California Court Not Yet Ready To Undermine The Entire Internet; Rules Yelp Can’t Be Forced To Delete A Review
- EFF Launches Lawsuit To Stop FOSTA/SESTA
- EFF sues to kill FOSTA, calling it “unconstitutional Internet censorship law”
- The “CREEPER Act” Would Be Yet Another Unconstitutional Law from Congress
- Facebook reveals it gave 61 companies access to widely blocked user data: Company tells Congress it provided Nike, Spotify, a dating app and other services with special rights to information
- Facebook Stock Drops on Report of Wider U.S. Probe of Cambridge Analytica Scandal
- How Facebook Punked and then Gut Punched the News Biz
- Facebook patent would turn your mic on to analyze how you watch ads: Application hints to proximity to a “broadcasting device” before your mic turns on.
- You Can Now See All The Ads Facebook Is Running Globally
- Facebook Creates a Process of Review for Previously-Banned Cryptocurrency Ads
- Facebook Will Once Again Allow Ads Promoting Cryptocurrencies
- Fig: Digital currency won’t be what makes blockchain go mainstream – Crowdfunding site’s head of blockchain strategy discusses the pitfalls and potential of decentralisation
- Digital token ruled a security under the Howey Test, for now
- Really dumb malware targets cryptocurrency fans using Macs
- The California Supreme Court Didn’t Ruin Section 230 (Today)–Hassell v. Bird (Eric Goldman)
- First Amendment Doesn’t Prevent Probationer Condition Restricting the Display of Illegal Activity on Social Media–In re Jawan S. (Eric Goldman)
- The Digest: Uganda Is Now Forcing Citizens to Pay a Tax to Use Social Media
- Copyright Industries Reveal Their Ultimate Goal: An Internet Where Everything Online Requires A License From Them
- Snapchat Partners With Kylie Jenner To Launch Ecommerce Capabilities For Influencers
- Snapchat Launches Augmented Reality Experiences in Disneyland, Universal Studios
- The Rise of CGI Influencers
- Instagram Stories Hits 400 Million Daily Users — More Than Twice As Many As Snapchat
- Instagram is reportedly testing a ‘questions’ feature for Stories
- Netflix Is No. 1 Choice for TV Viewing, Beating Broadcast, Cable and YouTube (Study)
- Sony tries to upload movie trailer to YouTube, posts entire movie instead
- Goofballs at Sony Accidentally Upload Entire Film to YouTube Instead of the Trailer
- Creators are making longer videos to cater to the YouTube algorithm
- Studio71 Brings YouTube Creators Into Podcasting World
- Michelle Phan’s Latest Startup Helps Creators Find Free Music For Their YouTube Videos
- YouTube Is Conducting ‘A Small Experiment’ With Auto-Generated Thumbnails, And Creators Aren’t Happy
- YouTube thumbnail experiment may impact millions of users, frustrating creators
- You Can Watch The Last 2018 World Cup Games On YouTube, Hulu, DirecTV
- YouTube Apologizes To LGBTQ+ Creators On Last Day Of Pride Month
- Google Is Investing in the Not-Quite-So-Smart Smartphone Market
- Defamation Update: Google under fire again
- Google researchers created an amazing scene-rendering AI: A neural network from Google’s DeepMind has impressive spatial reasoning skills.
- Google reveals how DeepMind AI learned to play Quake III Arena like a pro
- StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski Exits RTL-Owned Company: CFO Jeremiah Bates also leaving the fashion, beauty and lifestyle digital media company
- StyleHaul’s CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski And CFO Jeremiah Bates Have Left The Company
- Dwayne Johnson Teams With Fine Brothers Entertainment To Show Off His Action Movie Knowledge
- Social media follies: watch your step
- Philo, A Skinny Bundle For Non-Sports Viewers, Raises $40 Million From AMC, Discovery, Viacom
- A Twitter Leak Scuttled An NBA Draft Day Trade This Year
- Twitter gets a re-org and new product head
- Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend
- Amazon Needs More Delivery Companies and Wants You to Start Them
- Amazon Makes $1 Billion Splash in Health Care, Buying PillPack
- Amazon buying online pharmacy with nationwide reach; drug store stocks dive
- IPG Confirms $2.3 Billion Deal to Acquire Data Marketing Company Acxiom
- The New DC Universe Streaming Service Will Bundle Superhero Comics and TV Shows All in One Place
- Why Adult Content Creators Are Mad at Patreon
- How The Startup Mentality Failed Kids In San Francisco: Huge contributions from tech titans, a STEM-packed curriculum, gadgets everywhere: Willie Brown Middle School was supposed to set the bar. Then it opened.
- The Delicate Art Of Creating New Emoji
- Hey New York Times, Welcome to Writing About Pop Culture on the Internet
- It Just Wasn’t Meant to Be, Batman
- New York Times Writer Regrets Spoiling Batman’s Wedding in Headline
- A Vows Feature Spoiled a Comic Book Ending, and You Weren’t Happy
- Mandatory Internet filtering and The War on Memes (Andres Guadamuz)
- EU Copyright Proposal That Would Destroy Internet Memes Being Protested With Internet Memes
- EU Parliament’s Legislative Affairs Committee Is Now Misleading Members Of Parliament In Effort To Fundamentally Alter The Internet
- Would you pay $700, plus a monthly fee, for a digital license plate?
- “Inventor of email” appeals ruling that tossed his libel suit against Techdirt
- 1990, meet 2018: How far does 20MHz of Macintosh IIsi power go today?
CREATIVITY
- USPS Ordered to Pay $3.5 Million After Putting Artist’s Weird ‘Sexier’ Lady Liberty on Stamps
- Appeals Court Says You Can Copyright A Collection Of Facts… If You Leave Out A Few
- Owner of “Let’s Get It On” Copyright Sues Ed Sheeran for $100 Million
- DJ Khaled Files Suit to Protect Son’s Name
- Judge Dismisses Plagiarism Lawsuit Against The Girls Author Emma Cline
- Music Industry’s Nonsense ‘Myth Busting’ About EU’s Censorship Machines Is Basically Saying ‘Nuh-uh’ Repeatedly
- Latest Text Of EU Copyright Directive Shows It’s Even Worse Than Expected: Must Be Stopped
- NY Times, Winner Of A Key 1st Amendment Case, Suddenly Seems Upset That 1st Amendment Protects Conservatives Too
- Modernizing Canada’s Industrial Design Regime: Top 10 Changes
- Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 1: Trademarks and Other IP (Eric Goldman)
- Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 2: Copyright (Eric Goldman)
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Facebook patents ’emotion detecting’ selfie filters
- Facial recognition found Capital Gazette suspect among 10M photos
- Facial Recognition Company Says It Won’t Sell To Law Enforcement, Knowing It’ll Be Abused
- Judge slams Tacoma for not releasing stingray records
- NSA Extends Its Streak Of Surveillance Violations To Fourteen Years With Its Latest Announcement
- NSA: Sorry, Sorry, Trying to Delete
- California approves privacy rules opposed by ISPs and tech companies: Law will give people some control over collection and sale of private data.
- California Enacts Sweeping Consumer Privacy Law
- California Enacts Sweeping Privacy Law; Will Other States Follow?
- The Digest: California Cracks Down on the Companies Harvesting Your Data
- California Consumer Privacy Act Of 2018 – GDPR Lite?
- Over 60 Organizations Want Sanctions For EU Nations’ Failure To Repeal ‘Invalid’ Data Retention Laws
- A Bug in Samsung’s Default Texting App Is Sending Random Pics to Other People
- LTE wireless connections used by billions aren’t as secure as we thought
GAMES
- Bethesda Suing Warner Bros. For ‘Blatant Rip-Off’ Of Fallout Shelter
- Warner Bros. calls Bethesda lawsuit against Westworld game ‘baseless’
- Warner Bros is READY TO FIGHT over “Baseless Accusations”
- Warner Bros surprised by Bethesda’s “baseless accusation” in Westworld lawsuit: Publisher claims developer Behaviour Interactive has confirmed allegations are untrue
- Blog: The Westworld fallout – A discussion on work-for-hire
- In Contrast To PUBG’s Silliness, Bethesda’s Copyright Suit Against Warner Bros. Is All About Copyrightable Source Code
- We Hardly Knew Ye: PUBG Drops Lawsuit Against Epic Over Fortnite Similarities
- Ex-hatemonger confirms white supremacists recruit in Minecraft, Fortnite
- After initial refusal, We Happy Few granted R 18+ rating in Australia
- We Happy Few wins appeal for reclassification in Australia: After initial denial, game will see Australian release with a rating of R18+
- Roblox bans players who ‘gang raped’ a seven-year-old’s avatar: Developer stresses it has a “zero tolerance” policy for this behaviour as US mother complains about in-game assault
- Judge halves ZeniMax’s $500M Oculus payout, declines to block Rift sales
- Penalty in ZeniMax v. Oculus Reduced to $250M, Motion to Halt Headset Sales Rejected
- US Judge halves ZeniMax’s $500m win in Facebook Oculus legal battle: Also denies Bethesda parent’s request for sales ban on Rift headsets
- Bethesda implies Sony is preventing cross-play in Fallout 76
- Bethesda: “Sony is not as helpful as everyone would like” on cross-play – There will be no cross-play in Fallout 76, Todd Howard says – and Microsoft is not the problem
- EA Sports VP Daryl Holt on loot boxes: “Our model is sustainable” – Publisher’s sports division reacts to loot box controversy with disclosure of pack odds in FIFA Ultimate Team
- Amy Hennig, who was hired to make an EA Star Wars game, has left EA: Timeline of Hennig’s departure, full Star Wars game pivot is fleshed out in interview.
- French gambling regulator criticizes loot boxes, stops short of regulation: ARJEL refrains from fully defining loot boxes as gambling but will continue to investigate effect on consumers
- Leaks, riots, and monocles: How a $60 in-game item almost destroyed EVE Online
- International Olympic Committee to host esports forum: Representatives from the worlds of esports, gaming, and the Olympic movement will meet to discuss future collaboration
- Kotaku Compete shuts down: Esports coverage hub closes due to Univision budget cuts
- OpenAI teaching neural networks to compete with Dota 2 professionals: Team of five neural networks has already beaten multiple amateur human teams
- AI achieves “human-level performance” in Quake III Arena: Google’s DeepMind teaches AI to play competitively both with and against human players
- OpenAI to level up Dota 2 neural networks with live Twitch demo
- Twitch Prime’s “free game every day” for half of July adds up to a ton
- Forza Horizon 4’s stream-to-earn function is Microsoft’s latest attempt to push Mixer: Players will earn in-game currency purely by streaming their gameplay session to platform holder’s Twitch rival
- Microsoft is working on AI-driven, platform-level Xbox Live cheat detection
- Google reportedly planning streaming platform, gaming hardware: Rumored gaming initiatives could include developer partnerships or outright acquisitions
- Report: Google courting developers for coming game-streaming service – “Project Yeti” would also include game-focused hardware component.
- Blog: Changes to the Google Play Store are putting thousands of indie devs at risk
- Vlambeer’s Ismail sees promise in the hybrid of triple-A and indie dev
- Failbetter Games spearheads ‘Love Indies Week’ for elevating devs and communities
- 15 indie games highlighted in Smithsonian SAAM Arcade event
- Blog: 10 lessons from making 100 games in five years
- French startup Oh BiBi nets $21M to build out mobile shooter
- Fortnite mobile has half the downloads of PUBG, but five times the revenue: PUBG gains ground but can’t compete with Fortnite’s $92 million gross lifetime revenue
- Rash of Fortnite cheaters infected by malware that breaks HTTPS encryption
- Streaming platform devs take down Fortnite adware, chide Epic for not doing it itself
- Clash of Clans iOS players have spent over $4 billion: Popular mobile strategy game is the highest grossing iOS title over last nine years
- Our Uncertain Streaming Future: The idea of streaming games from the cloud was a hot topic again at E3 – but no matter how close to that ideal the tech is coming, the business case remains a mess
- 2K Games banks on Carnival Games to recreate Wii success on Switch: Multi-million selling mini-game franchise returns as efforts to attract a mainstream audience to Nintendo’s new console continue
- Super Mario Run surpasses $60m revenue after two years: Remains the lowest-earning Nintendo mobile game by a considerable margin
- Hollow Knight has sold over 250,000 copies on Switch
- Hollow Knight sold 250,000 in two weeks on Nintendo Switch: Lifetime sales of Team Cherry’s game now far exceed 750,000
- Switch version of Fox N Forests outsells PlayStation 4 by 4:1 – Director Rupert Ochsner – “[The] Switch is our best platform to date”
- Nintendo says the Switch is played as much docked as it is portably
- Nintendo: Docked and undocked play time for Switch is “about even” – Online telemetry data varies heavily by individual game and player, though.
- Switch pirates don’t want you to pirate their piracy-enabling firmware: But anti-piracy hackers are hacking the piracy hack for themselves.
- Reggie Fils-Aime: ‘Vibrant’ 3DS remains a key part of Nintendo armory
- Reggie Fils-Aimé: The 3DS “continues to be a vibrant system” – Handheld console “absolutely” remains a focus of Nintendo, serving as a “gateway” to the Switch
- Shuntaro Furukawa has been officially appointed Nintendo president
- New Intellivision console will have all new games, all exclusives, disc controller: Company president Tommy Tallarico says console will cost “way under $200,” but release date is still far off
- Take-Two: “We don’t believe in Red Dead Redemption 2 success until we deliver it” – CEO Strauss Zelnick discusses expectations for Rockstar’s next epic and the publisher’s muted E3 presence
- NeverEnding Story: Ubisoft keen to move away from ‘finite’ experiences
- Ubisoft VP says company moving away from “finite experiences”: For games like Assassin’s Creed, line between content updates and sequels grows “fuzzier and fuzzier”
- Frontier: “We want to become a third-party publisher” – CEO David Braben and CCO Jonny Watts on publishing, Tencent and the return of the British games industry
- Incoming Paradox CEO wants more acquisitions and mobile expansion
- Paradox turns its eye to M&A and mobile development: Incoming chief executive Ebba Ljungerud wants ten per cent of game sales to come form mobile by 2020
- Valve is working on its own ‘more accurate and more useful’ Steam Spy-like tools
- Valve working on “more accurate” replacement for Steam Spy’s sales data
- Steam Direct sees 180 game releases per week, over twice as many as Greenlight did
- Blog: The surprising effect of Steam Sales on non-discounted games
- Blog: Using achievement stats to estimate sales on Steam
- Amy Hennig: Atomised development, not crunch, will lead to games industry unions – The outspoken critic of crunch culture says it’s driven by passion, and it’s up the management to protect developers
- The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast: Fighting Ageism, with Kate Edwards – Ex-IGDA director discusses how the industry is neglecting experienced professionals and ignoring new perspectives
- Pokemon Quest nets $3M in revenue during first week on mobile
- Pokémon Quest generates $3m in first week on mobile: Becomes No. 1 most downloaded free game on Japanese App Store
- Niantic acquires machine learning company Matrix Mill
- Niantic acquires Matrix Mill: Pokemon Go creator picks up computer vision start-up building neural networks to infer 3D models of surroundings from cameras
- Niantic previews AR tech designed to create ‘meaningful’ interactions
- Niantic Offers Tantalizing Peek at Upcoming AR Tech, Announces New Platform for Third-party Devs
- ISS Astronaut Uses Oculus Rift in Experiment to Understand How Space Effects Hand-eye Coordination
- Snapchat Is Reportedly Planning to Follow WeChat by Launching an In-App Gaming Platform
- Snapchat reportedly launching a gaming platform: Photo messaging app may already have one game publisher on board
- Second Life creator’s VR platform High Fidelity secures $35M investment
- High Fidelity Raises $35M Series D Financing to Further Develop Social Platform & Blockchain Tech
- Jonathan Blow: “C++ is a weird mess” – The Witness developer on his new programming language that could increase productivity by 50 to 80 per cent
- Will Wright’s Proxi Art Challenge Winners
- Breadcrumbs Interactive embraced Slavic folklore to find Yaga’s unique voice: The Romanian studio drew from the country’s culture for its debut, and won the Nordic Discovery Contest in the process
- Summer Games Done Quick raises record-breaking $2.1M for charity
- For The First Time, The Video Game Speedrunners Of Summer Games Done Quick Raise Over $2 Million
- Summer Games Done Quick raises $2.1m for Doctors Without Borders: Week-long charity speedrunning marathon brings organisation’s cumulative fundraising to over $16 million
- Making the most of voice talent: Voice actors talk about the challenges of working in games and share tips for getting the best possible performances out of them
- E3 2018 has GameStop “looking forward to an incredible Q4”: Leading retailer shares pre-order reactions to the biggest announcements, and how publishers will benefit from a wider spread of releases
- Resident Evil 2 Remake wins Best of Show at the E3 2018 Game Critic Awards: BioWare and Insomniac receive two awards apiece for Anthem and Spider-Man
- Remake of Resident Evil 2 wins ‘Best of E3’ from Game Critics Awards
- Life is Strange: Before The Storm wins big at Games for Change Awards
- The best, craziest speedruns from this year’s Summer Games Done Quick
- Blog: A brief history of murder in Ultima Online
- 343 and Showtime team up to produce 10-episode Halo TV series
- Halo TV show going into production in early 2019: There were plans to make a Halo TV show as long ago as 2013.
- Halo TV series gets green light at Showtime: Cable network orders 10 episodes for series; Mind Games creator Kyle Killen named showrunner
- Immersion cited as top motivator for playing games
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