News of the Week; December 13, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. On the Eve of the FCC’s Reclassification of Broadband Services, the FCC and FTC Release Memorandum of Understanding for Oversight of Broadband 
  2. No, The FTC Won’t Save You Once Net Neutrality Rules Are Killed
  3. It’s Super Hard To Find Humans In The Fcc’s Net Neutrality Comments
  4. FCC Must Investigate Fraud Before Voting On Net Neutrality 
  5. What to Expect from the FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order 
  6. Net Neutrality a Concern? Companies Are Already Denying You Access to Content
  7. Net Neutrality Protests Move Online, Yet Big Tech Is Quiet
  8. FCC Plan To Kill Net Neutrality Rules Could Hurt Students
  9. FCC Commissioner Blasts Her Own Agency for Withholding Evidence of Fraud
  10. A Republican lawmaker urges FCC to delay net neutrality repeal vote: FCC should wait for Congress to create net neutrality law, Republican says. 
  11. The FCC Says Net Neutrality Cripples Investment. That’s Not True
  12. Net Neutrality, Kanye, and Hot Dogs: Quantifying the Impact of the Day of Action Using Media Cloud and Google Trends
  13. Any lawful device: Revisiting Carterfone on the eve of the Net Neutrality vote – From the archives: An old FCC decision provides perspective for what the Commission is doing now.
  14. Leaked Video Shows FCC Chair Ajit Pai Roasting Himself With ‘Jokes’ About Being a Verizon Shill 
  15. Bomb threat temporarily disrupts FCC vote to kill net neutrality rules: Repeal vote was about to happen when Ajit Pai announced brief recess.
  16. FCC Boss Claims Net Neutrality Hurts Small ISPs, But The FCC’s Own Data Proves Otherwise
  17. Ajit Pai offers no data for latest claim that net neutrality hurt small ISPs: ISPs supposedly harmed by the rules expanded to new areas and installed fiber.
  18. FCC Boss Lies Again, Insists Net Neutrality Harms The Sick And Disabled 
  19. FCC Boss ‘Jokes’ About Being A ‘Verizon Puppet’ At Tone Deaf Industry Gala
  20. Ajit Pai jokes with Verizon exec about him being a “puppet” FCC chair: “We want to groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chair,” Verizon says in skit. 
  21. ISP disclosures about data caps and fees eliminated by net neutrality repeal: ISPs won’t have to reveal the full cost of service when you buy broadband.
  22. How Reddit and others “broke the Internet” to support net neutrality today: Major websites join last-ditch effort to save net neutrality rules.
  23. “Face reality! We need net neutrality!” Crowds chant across the country: Protests led by various activist groups manage to turn out crowds large and small.
  24. T-Mobile promises to end the “complete bulls—t” from TV companies in 2018: John Legere wants to give the cable companies a taste of the “Un-carrier” medicine.
  25. Why I Changed My Mind On Net Neutrality
  26. The Free Market Argument For Net Neutrality
  27. Net Neutrality Briefing: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (Michael Geist)
  28. Canada’s Lead Negotiator Confirms Government Seeking Net Neutrality Safeguards in NAFTA (Michael Geist)
  29. India Embraces Full Net Neutrality As The U.S. Turns Its Back On The Concept
  30. Shocker: Study Finds Cord Cutting Very Real, TV Execs Still Failing To Adapt

DIGITAL

  1. Canadian ISPs And Hollywood Agree On Plan To Make Themselves Judge, Jury and Website Executioner
  2. “Suspicious” event routes traffic for big-name sites through Russia: Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft all affected by “intentional” BGP mishap.
  3. Russia Says Disconnecting From The Rest Of The Net ‘Out Of The Question’, But Wants Alternative DNS Servers For BRICS Nations
  4. Prince’s Estate Goes After Another YouTuber, This Time To Protect Copyrights Against Bootleg Concert Footage
  5. YouTube’s new music streaming service reportedly launching next March: It will combine YouTube Red with Google Play Music
  6. Very Dumb YouTuber Nearly Died In Very Dumb Head-In-Cement Microwave Stunt
  7. YouTube Exec Addresses Inappropriate Videos In Open Letter To Family Creators: “We Hear You And We Are Listening” 
  8. Gamer Dan “DanTDM” Middleton Leads Forbes List Of Top-Earning YouTube Stars With Estimated $16.5 Million Income In 2017
  9. After Investigation, Father Behind Terminated YouTube Channel Toy Freaks Won’t Face Criminal Charges
  10. YouTube TV’s Latest Territorial Expansion Adds 34 Markets, Includes College Football Hotbeds Ahead Of Postseason 
  11. NFL Inks Multi-Year Deal With Verizon To Expand Live Streaming 
  12. Verizon Pays Reported $2.25 Billion To Stream NFL Games (Including This Season’s Playoffs) On Go90, Yahoo, AOL
  13. ESPN+ Streaming To Bring ‘Netflix-Like Aggregation’ Of Sports Content 
  14. Twitch To Broadcast The NBA’s Second-Tier League With Its Streamers As Commentators
  15. Twitch, NBA G League Streaming Deal Elevates Hoops Fan Commentary
  16. Amazon Adds Twitch Compatibility For All Alexa-Enabled Devices
  17. Ahead of FCC vote, Twitch CEO speaks on importance of net neutrality
  18. The Amazon machine
  19. Apple TV App Now Makes It Easier For Fans To Discover, Follow Sports
  20. Apple confirms Shazam acquisition; Snap and Spotify also expressed interest
  21. Apple Acquires Music Identifying Service Shazam: Other potential suitors included Snapchat and Spotify.
  22. Instagram Removes Stories Ad With Hair Strand To Trick Users Into Swiping Up
  23. Netflix calls out the 53 people who can’t stop watching A Christmas Prince
  24. MPAA Wins: Australia To Carve Google And Facebook Out Of Its Expanded Safe Harbor Provisions
  25. Google Promised a Way to Jailbreak the iPhone and It Delivered
  26. Google Is Giving Away AI That Can Build Your Genome Sequence
  27. In Just 4 Hours, Google’s AI Mastered All The Chess Knowledge in History
  28. DeepMind AI needs mere 4 hours of self-training to become a chess overlord: AlphaGo Zero needed three days to train up in Go; AlphaZero needed just eight hours.
  29. Artificial Intelligence Seeks An Ethical Conscience
  30. Former Facebook Exec: ‘You Don’t Realize It But You Are Being Programmed’
  31. What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon?: It’s social media in the age of “patriotic trolling” in the Philippines, where the government is waging a campaign to destroy a critic—with a little help from Facebook itself.
  32. Rise of the Chatbots 
  33. The App That Reminds You You’re Going to Die: It helped me find inner peace. 
  34. Insights: High Tech, High Touch, & How To Keep The Human In An Algorithmic World 
  35. I used to be a bitcoin bull—here’s why that changed: With “buy bitcoin with credit card” trending on Google, investors should be wary. 
  36. Patreon to World: ‘We Messed Up’
  37. Patreon Calls Off Fee Change Following Widespread Creator Consternation
  38. Why Everyone Is Mad at Patreon Now
  39. Change To Patreon’s Fee Structure Has Many Creators Up In Arms
  40. Patreon senior engineer: “We don’t need” misbehaving CEOs: “Bad actors” have had their time. “They’re done. They can go.”
  41. Uber’s Not The Only One That Should Be Wary Of Disappearing Messaging Apps
  42. Uber settles second US lawsuit filed by India rape victim: Woman claimed that Uber execs accessed, shared her medical files.
  43. Twitter Will Finally Display View Counts On Video Tweets
  44. This Is How Steve Bannon And Breitbart Tried To Sabotage Twitter: For more than a year before he became Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon sought to wage war against Twitter, tasking Milo Yiannopoulos and other Breitbart News employees to look into editorial, financial, and legal ways they could harm the Jack Dorsey–led social network.
  45. LinkedIn Activity May Violate Non-Solicitation Agreements 
  46. Connected Devices and the Right-To-Repair Movement
  47. Cracking down on a bad coin offering
  48. SEC Chair Clayton issues statement on cryptocurrencies and ICOs: are all ICOs securities offerings? 
  49. Bank of America Wins Patent for Crypto Exchange System
  50. This startup uses body heat to mine crypto – for when robots take our jobs
  51. How Technology Tests Our Trust
  52. Silicon Valley’s Worst Apologies of 2017  

CREATIVITY

  1.  The Fight for Fair Copyright Returns: Canadian Government Launches Major Copyright Review (Michael Geist)
  2. Opening Statements In The Trademark Battle Of The Comic Cons, While Other Regional Cons Go Full Judas
  3. SLCC Rankles Judge With Social Media Posts As A Jury Prepares To Rule
  4. San Diego Comic-Con Wins Lawsuit Over ‘Comic Con’ Trademark
  5. Comic Con Verdict: Salt Lake Comic Con Loses The Battle, Now Seeks To Win The War 
  6. Indigenous activist heads back to court in fight against Cleveland Indians logo
  7. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. ComicMix LLC 
  8. Egyptian singer Shyma gets two years in jail – for suggestively eating a banana in a music video: She was arrested last month after authorities said her music video for ‘I Have Issues’ incited debauchery
  9. Saudis Will Be Able To Go To Movie Theaters For The First Time In Decades
  10. Reporter Says NFL Network Job Interviewer Asked If She “Planned On Getting Knocked Up” 
  11. Look, we all want to watch Avengers and X-Men fight, but this Disney-Fox merger still sucks
  12. Disney And Fox
  13. 11 Minor Star Wars Characters Who Got Absurdly Full Lives Beyond the Movies 
  14. Canadian Trade Committee Warns Against Unbalanced U.S. IP Demands in NAFTA (Michael Geist) 
  15. State Board That Fined Man For Criticizing The Government Without A License Admits It Was Wrong

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Supreme Court of Canada Rules Text Messages Can Attract a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
  2. SCC Recognizes Expectation of Privacy in Text Message Conversations
  3. The Supreme Court says your text messages could be considered private even after you send them: The court cautions that much depends on the facts of each case
  4. Texting and the Expectation of Privacy
  5. Supreme Court of Canada Rules Text Messages May Attract Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (Michael Geist)
  6. Canadian Supreme Court Says Privacy Protections Apply To Sent Text Messages Obtained From The Recipient
  7. Google Publishes Another Batch Of National Security Letters, Updates Its Transparency Report
  8. Top EU Data Protection Body Asks US To Fix Problems Of ‘Privacy Shield’ Or Expect A Referral To Region’s Highest Court
  9. UK Court Says Company Is Innocent In Massive Data Breach Caused By Vindictive Employee, But Must Nonetheless Pay Compensation
  10. Court Holds NYPD In Contempt For Refusing To Hand Over Documents Related To Black Live Matter Surveillance
  11. Court Says Google Must Unmask Person Who Left Wordless, One-Star Review Of Local Psychiatrist
  12. How to Track a Cellphone Without GPS—or Consent
  13. How Email Open Tracking Quietly Took Over The Web
  14. Kaspersky Closes DC Office, Says It Is ‘No Longer Viable’ to Work With Federal Government
  15. Exposed: Ethiopia’s nefarious, comically bungled spyware campaign – Publicly traded company helps country spy on critics, no questions asked.
  16. Iranian Hackers Have Been Infiltrating Critical Infrastructure Companies
  17. Game-changing attack on critical infrastructure site causes outage: Attack will serve as a blueprint for future attacks on other industrial systems.
  18. Quantum Computing Is The Next Big Security Risk
  19. Making Sense Of Apple’s Recent Security Stumbles

GAMES

  1. Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for breach of contract
  2. The Force Is Weak With EA’s ‘Star Wars Battlefront II’ Game
  3. Loot boxes may not return to Star Wars: Battlefront II: Amid pushback, exec floats possibility that microtransactions could be gone for good.
  4. Opinion: This is the game industry’s last chance for lootbox self-regulation
  5. New Zealand says lootboxes ‘do not meet the legal definition for gambling’
  6. Survey: 11% of British children have taken part in game-related gambling
  7. Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst predicts Battlefront 2 will miss its sales target by 2.5m copies
  8. NPD Shows Dismal ‘Battlefront 2’ Sales At 20% Of ‘Call of Duty: WWII’ Sales
  9. NPD Reveals Star Wars Battlefront II’s Physical Sales in the US Were “Disappointing” During November
  10. You Must be 18 or Older to Enter cut from Steam over pornography concerns
  11. How A Dorm Room Minecraft Scam Brought Down The Internet
  12. Time for games to get cultured on culture: Far Cry 4 writer CJ Kershner says developers are getting better about depicting other groups, still have room to improve
  13. Former employee sues Crytek Istanbul: Head of game operations laid off in October, still waiting on severance pay
  14. Crytek partners with new startup to launch cryptocurrency for games
  15. Make games inspired by the public domain
  16. Apple’s evolving rules make iOS a hard platform for small devs, says Year Walk dev
  17. PlayStation 4 has sold over 70 million units worldwide: Current generation console approaches lifetime sales of PlayStation 3
  18. PlayStation 4 surpasses 70M sales as PSVR gains traction
  19. Sony Has Sold Over 2 Million PSVR Units Worldwide Since Launch
  20. ‘Ready Player One’ Movie Gets First Full Trailer, Book Sequel in the Works
  21. Steam now lets devs know what platform users are wishlisting on
  22. Accounting co-developer Squanchtendo rebrands to avoid Nintendo confusion
  23. Squanchtendo rebrands to avoid Nintendo clash: Justin Roilland’s VR studio now called Squanch Games, teases first title announcement at this week’s Game Awards
  24. Zelda: Breath of the Wild takes top honor at The Game Awards
  25. Nintendo Switch worldwide sales top 10M units
  26. Putting Nintendo Switch’s 10 million sales in context: How does Nintendo’s hot console compare, historically?
  27. Is Nintendo Switch really as successful as we think it is? – Review of the Year: We look at a landmark 12 months for Nintendo
  28. Call of Duty: World War II longest-running UK No.1 since 2015 – Activision Blizzard’s latest shooter rack up sixth consecutive week in the top spot
  29. The Uncharted franchise has surpassed 41M sales
  30. Global esports revenue to hit $2.3 billion in 2022 – SuperData: “Advertisers and investors are finally taking notice of esports’ access to key audiences”
  31. CrossCut Venture to invest in games and esports after raising $125 million fund: Gaming an esports represent “growing area of importance”
  32. Sacramento Kings Unveil Esports Facility Inside Golden 1 Center
  33. Investors sink $25M into mobile eSports platform Skillz
  34. Playkey raises $10.5m through cryptocurrency sale: Russian streaming platform attracts new investors through Initial Coin Offering
  35. LMFAO Xur Is Selling Prometheus Lens
  36. People of the Year 2017: SpecialEffect – This year has been the video game charity’s biggest and most important on record
  37. People of the Year 2017: Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene – The driving force behind the biggest game of 2017 was “a photographer, a DJ, a designer” for most of his life – the remarkable rise of Brendan Greene
  38. ‘PlayerUnknown’ argues for better protection against copycat games: “I want other developers to put their own spin on the genre… not just lift things from our game. I want this genre of games to grow. “
  39. It’s Not That Videogames Don’t Need Big Award Shows. It’s That They Don’t Need Any

Jon

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