News of the Week; June 7, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Canadian Government on Wireless Services: High Prices, Low Adoption, and Unaffordable For Too Many (Michael Geist)
  2. CASL Private Right of Action Delayed Indefinitely
  3. FCC security denies that guards pinned journalist against a wall: Chairman Pai promises security changes as reporter stands by allegations.
  4. Report Falsely Blames The EFF For Fraudulent Net Neutrality Comments
  5. To kill net neutrality rules, FCC says broadband isn’t “telecommunications”
  6. Vimeo, Amazon Among Companies Joining Upcoming Protest To Defend Net Neutrality
  7. Net Neutrality and the First Amendment
  8. The End Of Net Neutrality Could Shackle The Internet Of Things
  9. Comcast Pinky Swears That The Death Of Net Neutrality Won’t Hurt In The Slightest
  10. Is Antitrust Law a Viable Substitute for Net Neutrality? 
  11. Canada to launch subsidized low-income broadband program
  12. Focus: CRTC decision a blow to the industry?
  13. ISPs denied entry into apartment buildings could get help from FCC: FCC looks at expanding competition rules, but it could preempt local regulations.
  14. Sky scolded over shadowy small print in LEGO Batman broadband ad: Superhero claim about “lowest price fibre” turns into caped capped caper.
  15. Fox News Gets Mad That Wonder Woman Isn’t in Her American Apparel Underwear
  16. YES Network Streams Production Meetings Through Facebook
  17. Going gray: Sports TV viewers skew older – Study – Nearly all sports see quick rise in average age of TV viewers as younger fans shift to digital platforms
  18. FTC and DOJ Case Results in Historic Decision Awarding $280 Million in Civil Penalties against Dish Network and Strong Injunctive Relief for Do Not Call Violations
  19. Radio spectrum, the 5G auction, and the future of mobile computing: Here’s why the UK’s upcoming 5G radio spectrum auction is important.
  20. Cable TV “failing” as a business, cable industry lobbyist says: Broadband is the future as TV faces rising costs and online video competition.
  21. Transnational over-the-top video distribution as a business and policy disruptor: The case of Netflix in Canada (Emilia Zboralska & Charles Davis)

DIGITAL

  1. The U.S. Supreme Court Is Reining in Patent Trolls, Which Is a Win for Innovation
  2. How one patent troll is desperately trying to stay in East Texas: Uniloc finds plenty of reasons why Google should still be sued in East Texas.
  3. Click fraud claim against Google fails:
  4. Singh v. Google Inc., 2017 WL 2404986, No. 16-cv-03734 – N.D. Cal. Jun. 2, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  5. Ariana Grande’s ‘One Love Manchester’ Concert To Be Streamed Live On YouTube, Facebook, And Twitter
  6. YouTube Takes Down Ariana Grande’s Manchester Benefit Concert On Copyright Grounds
  7. Copyright Law In Europe Could Be About To Get Ridiculously Stupidly Bad In Ways That Will Undermine The Internet
  8. The Music Licensing Swamp: Spotify Settles Over Failure To Obtain Mechanical Licenses
  9. Uber fires 20 employees as fallout from sexual harassment investigation: A law firm is reviewing 215 sexual harassment claims. Uber has about 12,000 workers.
  10. Oculus Founder Plots a Comeback With a Virtual Border Wall
  11. Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election
  12. Leaked NSA report says Russians tried to hack state election officials: Alleged source of leak arrested by FBI after Intercept provided copy to NSA.
  13. Russia’s attempt to hack voting systems shows that our elections need better security
  14. Feds Charge NSA Contractor Accused of Exposing Russian Hacking
  15. How a few yellow dots burned the Intercept’s NSA leaker: By providing copy of leak, Intercept likely accelerated ID of contractor.
  16. How Document-Tracking Dots Helped The FBI Track Down Russian Hacking Doc Leaker
  17. Intercept Posts NSA Docs On Russian Election Hacking, DOJ Announces Arrest Of Leaker Hours Later
  18. The Mysterious Printer Code That Could Have Led the FBI to Reality Winner: Many color printers embed grids of dots that allow law enforcement to track every document they output.
  19. Snowden Explains How The Espionage Act Unfairly Stacks The Deck Against Reality Winner
  20. Putin: “Patriotic” Russian hackers may have interfered in US election – Comparing hackers to artists, Putin says they may have been inspired by patriotism.
  21. How Russian Propaganda Spread From a Parody Website to Fox News
  22. You’ll never guess where Russian spies are hiding their control servers: Turla uses social media and clever programming techniques to cover its tracks.
  23. Can you commit manslaughter by sending texts? We’re about to find out
  24. Wikipedia Seems to Be Winning Its Battle Against Government Censorship
  25. 5 Searches That Show Bing Resists Alternative Facts Better Than Google: Breitbart readers really engage with Katy Perry
  26. YouTube Spearheads #PowerToDecide Campaign Ahead Of U.K. General Election
  27. YouTube Updates Its Guidelines For Advertiser-Friendly Content To Offer More Thorough Info To Creators
  28. Philip DeFranco Calls Out What He Sees As YouTube’s Ad Double Standard, Vows To Take Next Show Elsewhere
  29. YouTube’s Gossip Vloggers Have Created Their Own Tabloid Industry: There are YouTube celebrities, so of course there are YouTube tabloids
  30. Dessert Blogger Files Suit Against Food Network For Copying Recipe Video
  31. Confessions of an influencer marketing exec: ‘Micro-influencers are the biggest scam’
  32. Late-Night Tweeting Linked To Weaker NBA Performance
  33. Covfefe aside, late-night tweets are bad news: Nocturnal Twitter use links to poor performance, according to basketball-player study.
  34. Trump Defends Twitter Use as Aides Urge Him to Cut Back
  35. President’s Twitter account should not block users, First Amendment lawyers argue
  36. Is @RealDonaldTrump violating the First Amendment by blocking some Twitter users?
  37. Trump’s Twitter Blocking May Violate First Amendment
  38. Twitter users threaten legal action if Trump doesn’t unblock them: Mayors can’t eject city hall critics, so Trump can’t block Twitter critics, either.
  39. The Twitter presidency is getting old, according to a new voter survey: “They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out,” Trump tweets.
  40. That Lawsuit About A Tweet… Is Both A Publicity Stunt And An Attack On Free Speech
  41. Twitter Will Live-Stream James Comey Testimony in Exclusive Bloomberg TV Pact
  42. Blaming the Internet for Terrorism Misses the Point
  43. Hacking Online Hate Means Talking to the Humans Behind It
  44. Google’s Plan to Use Ads to Sway ISIS Recruits
  45. Forget far-right populism – crypto-anarchists are the new masters: Many are concerned about the internet’s role in politics. But more worrying is the digital tsunami poised to engulf us, as machine intelligence and a rising tech elite radically restructure life as we know it
  46. A Hardware Update for the Human Brain: From Silicon Valley startups to the U.S. Department of Defense, scientists and engineers are hard at work on a brain-computer interface that could turn us into programmable, debuggable machines
  47. YouTube clarifies “hate speech” definition and which videos won’t be monetized: h7M bv m,  ore details for creators on what they can and cannot say if they want to make money.
  48. An Ad Network That Helps Fake News Sites Earn Money Is Now Asking Users To Report Fake News: In response to queries from BuzzFeed News, Revcontent removed four fake news publishers from its network.
  49. Theresa May Calls for International Regulation of Cyberspace in Wake of Attacks
  50. Theresa May Blames The Internet For London Bridge Attack; Repeats Demands To Censor It
  51. London attack: Internet firms provide safe space for terrorists, claims PM – Home secretary again demands “limit to the amount of end-to-end encryption.”
  52. London attack: Tech firms dispute PM’s grandstanding on Internet regulation – Facebook, Twitter, and Google say they’re trying to make sites “hostile” to terrorists.
  53. Why not ban cars, Amber Rudd? It’d be more effective than banning encryption – Op-ed: Another terrorist attack, another government attempt at backdooring WhatsApp.
  54. Leaving Social Media Taught Me How Broken The News Cycle Is
  55. Court Says Facebook Can Block Parents From Deceased Teen’s Account: The page had already been made a “memorial” — blocking them from investigating her death
  56. Photographer Sues News Agency For Embedding A Tweet Containing His Photo
  57. Social media defamation still a cause for concern
  58. The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
  59. Apple adds ad tracker blocker to desktop Safari
  60. Intel & Major League Baseball Partnership Will Bring Free Weekly Games Streamed in VR
  61. The Internet Is Where We Share — and Steal — the Best Ideas
  62. Can’t Take a Joke? That’s Just Poe’s Law, 2017’s Most Important Internet Phenomenon
  63. Women Engineers On The Rampant Sexism Of Silicon Valley
  64. Warner Bros and Google using Wonder Woman to get girls into coding: New Made With Code project will use latest superhero firm to introduce skills to young women
  65. Google prepares publishers for the release of Chrome ad-blocking: The biggest online advertiser will now block ads; the Web won’t look the same.
  66. Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox (Lina Khan)
  67. Internet Framing is a Valid Ground for Copyright Infringement in Canada
  68. Voltage Pictures Canadian Reverse Class Action – An Update to June 6, 2017 (Howard Knopf)
  69. Hanging by a thread: How the online nerdy T-shirt economy exists in an IP world: If big media has legal muscle, why can you buy Link racing Harley Quinn on a shirt?
  70. Why Netflix Isn’t Getting Involved In Live Sports Streaming Like Amazon
  71. Netflix CEO Offers Eyebrow-Raising Justification As Cancellations Increase
  72. App Store revenue breaks $70bn: Downloads have grown by 70% in the last 12 months alone
  73. The Rate Of TV Cord Cutting Is Actually Worse Than You Think
  74. What Has the Internet Done to Media?
  75. Online Marketing to Children – New UK Guidance
  76. Toward a Canadian Knowledge Transfer Strategy: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (Michael Geist)
  77. Rise of the machines: who is the ‘internet of things’ good for?: Interconnected technology is now an inescapable reality – ordering our groceries, monitoring our cities and sucking up vast amounts of data along the way. The promise is that it will benefit us all – but how can it?
  78. The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What Are the Implications?: Despite wide concern about cyberattacks, outages and privacy violations, most experts believe the Internet of Things will continue to expand successfully the next few years, tying machines to machines and linking people to valuable resources, services and opportunities
  79. IBM unveils world’s first 5nm chip: Built with a new type of gate-all-around transistor, plus extreme ultraviolet lithography.
  80. The Robot Dog Fetches for Whom?
  81. The Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now
  82. Is language as we know it still relevant for the digital age?
  83. Whatever Happened To Our Dream Of An Empowering Internet (And How To Get It Back) (Andres Guadamuz)

CREATIVITY

  1. Fair use blocks out copyright claim over LeBron’s tattoo 
  2. Drake Winning Sampling Case Over Fair Use Is Big News… But Still Demonstrates The Madness Of Music Licensing
  3. In breach of EU copyright law, Paris Court refuses to protect Mankowitz’s photo of Jimi Hendrix
  4. Harsh Consequences for Dale Chihuly After Failing to Document IP Rights with Independent Contractor
  5. Could Donald Trump Make America Great Again In Canada?
  6. The Charging Bull and the Fearless Girl: Moral Rights Protections in Australia and the U.S.
  7. The Politics of Political Design: In the UK General Election, support for progressive politics is far more visible in the creative community than pro-Conservative messages are. Yet surveys reveal that not all creative people are left-leaning. Hannah Ellis goes in search of designers on the right and examines the contradiction inherent in an industry predominantly ‘of the left’ that spends much of its time enabling an economic system that is at odds with many leftist ideals.
  8. Can America’s moviegoing habit be saved? The past, present and uncertain future of the multiplex
  9. Are patents effective brand assets anymore?
  10. The Top Hits: Fashion Cases with a Big Impact
  11. Top Ten Urban Legends of Intellectual Property
  12. How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself: The revival of Lego has been hailed as the greatest turnaround in corporate history, ousting Ferrari as the world’s most powerful brand. 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Court Says Password Protection Doesn’t Restore An Abandoned Phone’s Privacy Expectations
  2. Supreme Court To Consider Fourth Amendment Implications Of Cell Site Location Info
  3. Sixth Circuit Appeals Court Latest To Say Real-Time Cellphone Location Tracking Not A Fourth Amendment Issue
  4. OneLogin Data Breach May Have Revealed Encrypted Data
  5. OneLogin breach: Hacker stole AWS keys, rifled through customer data for 7 hours – Customer info potentially decrypted by “threat actor” who accessed database tables.
  6. Internet cameras have hard-coded password that can’t be changed: Cameras with multiple brand names are wide open to remote hacking.
  7. How to Create an Anonymous Email Account
  8. Trump administration rolls out social media vetting of visa applicants: The new travel screening is for those deemed a national security threat.
  9. Trump’s Tougher Visa Vetting Now Asks For Social Media Handles: It also asks for emails addresses and biographical information
  10. DHS Steps Up Demands For Visa Applicants’ Social Media Account Info
  11. EFF Sues FBI For Refusing To Turn Over Documents About Its Geek Squad Informants
  12. WikiLeaks says CIA’s “Pandemic” turns servers into infectious Patient Zero: Latest Vault 7 release exposes operation that infects PCs inside targeted networks.
  13. UK police arrest man via automatic face-recognition tech: Camera-equipped van in South Wales apparently spotted man whose face was in database.
  14. Got a face-recognition algorithm? Uncle Sam wants to review it: “Face recognition is hard.”
  15. The premature quest for AI-powered facial recognition to simplify screening: “This technology at the airport… is premature. It’s not the right way to go.”
  16. Digital Privacy Is Making Antitrust Exciting Again

Jon