News of the Week; May 23, 2018

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Judge For Yourself: Bell Says It Didn’t Meet CRTC to Review the FairPlay Application, But Here’s the Slide Presentation (Michael Geist)
2. Rupert Murdoch Believes In The Free Market… Until His Company Is Struggling: Then He Wants To Regulate Competitors
3. Disney’s Plans to Buy Fox Just Hit a Major Snag and Its Name Is Comcast
4. Comcast confirms plan to buy 21st Century Fox and control of Hulu
5. Comcast bug made it shockingly easy to steal customers’ Wi-Fi passwords
6. Comcast Found To Be Charging $90 Installation Fees At Homes Where Comcast Is Already In Use
7. TV regulation in a digital age
8. Senators Demand FCC Answer for Fake Comments After Realizing Their Identities Were Stolen
9. Senators Ask FCC Why It Did Nothing To Stop Their Names From Being Fraudulently Used During Net Neutrality Repeal
10. FCC is hurting consumers to help corporations, Mignon Clyburn says on exit
11. Net Neutrality Is Just A Gateway To The Real Issue: Internet Freedom  (Susan Crawford)
12. Charter Uses Net Neutrality Repeal To Claim States Can’t Hold It Accountable For Shoddy Service, Failed Promises
13. ISPs and Ajit Pai are really sad about Senate’s vote for net neutrality
14. A preview of the FTC’s role in monitoring broadband markets following the FCC’s adoption of the Restoring Internet Freedom Order
15. FTC Commissioner calls for stricter penalties and structural remedies against recidivist companies that violate consent orders 
16. T-Mobile should stop claiming it has “Best Unlimited Network,” ad group says
17. Supreme Court Strikes Down Law against Sports Betting – But Broadcasters Need to Proceed with Caution 
18. Website leaked real-time location of most US cell phones to almost anyone
19. Nearly Everyone In The U.S. And Canada Just Had Their Private Cell Phone Location Data Exposed
20. FCC investigates site that let most US mobile phones’ location be exposed
21. Verizon Begins ‘Testing’ DSL Usage Caps It Refuses To Call Usage Caps
22. The ‘Race To 5G’ Is Largely Just Marketing Nonsense 

DIGITAL

1. Media can’t be an arm of the police, Vice lawyer tells Supreme Court hearing: Reporter Ben Makuch challenging ruling he must hand over info on terrorists to RCMP
2. Trump’s Twitter blocking violates First Amendment, court rules: The “interactive space” around Trump tweets is a public forum, judge rules.
3. Trump feels presidential smartphone security is “too inconvenient”
4. President Trump Thinks Basic Phone Security Is Simply Too Inconvenient
5. New Malaysian Prime Minister Who Promised To Kill ‘Fake News’ Law Decides It Might Be Useful Now That He’s In Power
6. Turkish President Visits UK To Remind Everyone He Still Wants To Punish Critical Speech
7. FBI seizes domain Russia allegedly used to infect 500,000 consumer routers
8. Hackers infect 500,000 consumer routers all over the world with malware: VPNFilter can survive reboots and contains destructive “kill” function.
9. All of Mugshots.com’s alleged co-owners arrested on extortion charges: Mugshots.com is a “business permeated with fraud,” California AG says.
10. Mugshots.com Operators Arrested For Letting Money Influence Editorial Decisions
11. North Korea-tied hackers used Google Play and Facebook to infect defectors
12. Cambridge Analytica files for bankruptcy amidst “siege” of negative attention
13. What Happened To Facebook’s Grand Plan To Wire The World?: Five years ago Mark Zuckerberg debuted a bold, humanitarian vision of global internet. It didn’t go as planned – forcing Facebook to reckon with the limits of its own ambition.
14. Mark Zuckerberg Played Parliament for Fools and They’re Pissed
15. Facebook Is Testing Its Own Influencer Marketing Platform
16. Facebook Moderation Ramps Up In Germany And Everything Keeps Getting Worse For Its Users
17. Instagram Finally Rolls Out ‘Mute’ Button, 3 Years After Twitter Unveiled Feature
18. There Is No Magic Bullet For Moderating A Social Media Platform
19. Fed Up With Apple’s Policies, App Developers Form A ‘Union’
20. Small group of iOS devs form “The Developers Union” to request App Store changes: There’s little in the way of organization, but some notable names are attached.
21. Apple cracks down on CallKit-enabled apps in China’s App Store
22. Apple, VW sign driverless car deal for Apple campus shuttles, NY Times sources say
23. An Overview of Political Advertising Policies for Google, Twitter, and Snapchat
24. Snapchat’s Parent Launches ‘Yellow’ Incubator Program for Mobile-Content Creators
25. How Google-happy jurors are derailing Ontario trials
26. Does Google’s Duplex violate two-party consent laws?
27. Google Removes ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause From Its Code of Conduct
28. Pretty Much All Tech Demos Are Fake as Hell
29. Morgan Stanley Pegs YouTube’s Valuation At $160 Billion, Above Disney, Comcast, And Netflix
30. Netflix and other online video are killing cable in customer satisfaction
31. YouTube Red Renamed ‘YouTube Premium’, Price Upped From $10 To $12 Monthly
32. New YouTube Music Premium costs $9.99 monthly, add $2 to get all Red perks
33. Google announces YouTube Music and YouTube Premium: Goodbye, YouTube Red; hello, new premium services
34. The Long, Checkered History Of YouTube’s Attempt To Launch A Music Service
35. YouTube TV Channels For The Young Turks, Tastemade Now Live With 9 New Shows
36. Rising NBA Star Jayson Tatum Learned Some Of His Best Moves From YouTube
37. Lilly Singh Launches Inaugural Campaign As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador To End Child Violence
38. 89 Years After Popeye’s Introduction, The Sailor Man Is Coming To YouTube
39. Twitch’s Longest TV Marathon So Far Will Include More Than 500 Episodes Of ‘Doctor Who’
40. In New Video, Elle Mills Talks Mental Health, A Break From Social Media, And Being “Burnt Out At 19”
41. Here’s How You Can Turn On The New YouTube Feature That Reminds You To Take A Break
42. Magazine publishers with video ambitions see YouTube as safer bet than Facebook
43. New Version Of YouTube Music Ready To Launch, Will Feature Smart Recommendations, Context-Based Search
44. Barack And Michelle Obama Ink Multi-Year Content Partnership With Netflix
45. How The Record Labels Screwed Up The Music Industry, And The Tech Industry Saved Them
46. How The Recording Industry Hid Its Latest Attempt To Expand Copyright
47. Minimize harmfulness of bots but don’t ban them
48. Cross-sector code of conduct for AI – a solution with substance? 
49. New Requirements for Legal Analytics & Artificial Intelligence Under the GDPR
50. Many Of Those Desperate GDPR Emails You’ve Been Getting Are Violating A Different EU Regulation
51. Buyer Beware: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud – A Wall Street Journal analysis of 1,450 cryptocurrency offerings reveals rampant plagiarism, identity theft and promises of improbable returns
52. Bitcoin Is Going To Use As Much Electricity As Austria By The Year’s End
53. New study quantifies bitcoin’s ludicrous energy consumption
54. “We have built the world that they told us existed”: Did the rise of young, white “Internet reporting” bolster the alt-right?
55. Who Is Arthur Chu?: When Jeopardy ended, the real puzzles of online life began – Airing on PBS, new doc explores ups and downs of growing up – and growing in stature – online.
56. The Balkanization Of The Internet (Andres Guadamuz) 

CREATIVITY

1. District Court in California recognizes plausible trademark rights over fictional Star Wars board game 
2. Congress’ Latest Move To Extend Copyright Protection Is Misguided (Lawrence Lessig)
3. Who Needs a Copyright Small Claims Court? Evidence from the U.K.’s IP Enterprise Court
4. Copyright fair use – “transformative” revisited: has the Second Circuit gone too far?
5. Copyright Being Used To Prevent Actress From Showing Her Own Demo Reel
6. Copyright Once Again Hiding Important Cultural Artifacts
7. HBO Wins Stupid Copyright, Trademark Lawsuit Brought By Graffiti Artist Over 2 Seconds Of Background Scenery
8. EPA boots reporters from meeting on chemicals called a PR disaster
9. EPA’s War On Journalists Is Not A Good Look
10. Fox News Staffers Reportedly Freaking Out Over New Workplace Rules 
11. And then, they took her cellphone
12. This Video Explores the Experimental History of Scifi Book Covers
13. Canadian Copyright, Fair Dealing and Education, Part Two: The Declining Value of the Access Copyright Licence (Michael Geist)
14. Canadian Copyright, Fair Dealing and Education, Part One: Making Sense of the Spending (Michael Geist)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. ICE Abandons Efforts for Social Media Vetting Algorithm
2. ICE Drops Extreme Vetting Software Plan After Discovering No One Could Possibly Deliver What It Wants
3. Judge Allows Fourth Amendment Challenge Of Warrantless Device Searches At The Border To Continue
4. Michigan Takes On The NSA With New Law, But Probably Won’t Have Much Of An Impact
5. Senators to DOJ: Reveal your secret paragraph-long explanation of stingrays
6. Not Paying Attention in Class?: China’s “Smart Eye” Will Snitch on You
7. Illinois Users’ Face-Scanning Privacy Lawsuit Against Facebook Headed to Trial
8. Police Surveillance Is Getting a Helping Hand from…Amazon!
9. ACLU Obtains Documents Showing Amazon Is Handing Out Cheap Facial Recognition Tech To Law Enforcement
10. Police use of Amazon’s face-recognition service draws privacy warnings
11. Report Confirms Deep Flaws Of Automated Facial Recognition Software In The UK, Warns Its Use In The US Is Spreading
12. FBI exaggerated the number of phones it can’t unlock by up to 550 percent
13. FBI Admits It’s Been Using A Highly-Inflated Number Of Locked Devices To Push Its ‘Going Dark’ Narrative
14. EFF Asks FBI, DOJ To Turn Over Details On Thousands Of Locked Phones The FBI Seems Uninterested In Cracking
15. Blunder burns unicorn attack that exploited Windows and Reader 
16. Warning: the Federal Trade Commission will prosecute companies over consumer data breaches – its recommendations should be heeded
17. As the Web moves toward HTTPS by default, Chrome will remove “secure” indicator

GAMES

1. Judge Rules Copyright Lawsuit Over Tattoo Use in Video Game Can Proceed: What Might This Mean for the Video Game Industry and Virtual Sports Betting? 
2. Opinion: Illuminating the shadowy group celebrating Valve’s latest censorship drive
3. Valve threatens to pull games now deemed ‘sexually explicit’ from Steam
4. Valve advises sexualized anime-themed titles to censor content or be removed from Steam: HuniePop, Mutiny!!, Tropical Liquor and more received warnings today for “pornographic content”
5. Steam games warned for “pornographic content” have warnings dismissed, subject to re-review
6. Crunch can put devs at odds with their own mental health, warns Blizzard dev
7. With Steam Link app, your smartphone can be an imperfect gaming monitor
8. We Happy Few refused classification by Australian ratings board
9. We Happy Few denied classification in Australia
10. ADL partners with Global Game Jam, NYU’s Game Center to reduce hate in games
11. UK government takes aim at online games in Internet Safety Strategy response
12. Lack of oversight led to use of Overwatch art in Paladins Strike ad, says dev
13. Overwatch art used in Paladins Strike ad due to “not much oversight”
14. Overwatch to get Lego sets and Nerf merch: Activision Blizzard Consumer Products Group reveals new projects as it pursues more partners at Licensing Expo
15. Chinese Overwatch League team practices for twelve hours, six days a week: Team with the “most intensive training scheme” in the league has so far not won a single game
16. ‘We can launch games whenever we’re ready and whenever we want,’ says Guillemot
17. Less AAA competition makes delays easier – Ubisoft: CEO Yves Guillemot says “we can launch games whenever we are ready,” with digital content, live services, new markets offsetting any loss in revenue from smaller slate
18. Far Cry 5 and Assassin’s Creed Origins lead to record profit and sales for Ubisoft
19. Capcom bringing Resident Evil 7 to Switch with experimental pricing
20. Capcom experiements with streaming and new pricing in Resident Evil 7 for Switch: Cloud version of acclaimed horror title will be streamed via wifi, costs just £13 / $18 for six-month ‘play ticket’
21. Capcom requires high-speed streaming to play Resident Evil 7 on Switch
22. Owlboy turned profit on Nintendo Switch within 24 hours of release: Switch success “bodes really well for funding our future projects” says D-Pad CEO Jo-Remi Madsen
23. Nintendo is selling a dock-free ‘Second Set’ Switch bundle in Japan
24. Hearts of Iron IV sells one million copies
25. GTA V has sold over 95 million copies worldwide
26. Gameloft revenues fell 13% in Q1
27. Ubisoft posts record sales, delays Skull & Bones: Original IP pushed to next fiscal year as publisher sees pace of digital shift picking up, eyes expansion in PC, mobile, and China
28. iOS gamers are more loyal than Android, suggests Priori Data
29. Rovio sees profits rise amid strong revenues from Angry Birds 2
30. Rovio doubles down on Angry Birds with new content roadmap: Multimedia strategy includes stage shows, location-based events, and long form animated series
31. Paradox Q1 profits up 270% – despite only one new game release: Outgoing CEO Fred Wester says quarter shows the value of retaining loyal players with expansions and more
32. Paradox: “People were coming to us in droves asking if we could make board games” – And the Swedish publisher is now licensing its biggest IPs to do just that
33. Less management, more success: Inside Supercell’s ‘upside-down’ organization
34. Tencent acquires majority stake in Path of Exile dev Grinding Gear
35. EA acquires talent, tech from GameFly’s cloud gaming service 
36. EA acquires GameFly subsidiary for cloud gaming: Israel-based team and technology will expand EA’s ability to offer its games across multiple devices
37. FIFA and Call of Duty driving viewer growth in console esports: 20 million hours of console events watched in 2018 so far, but still only a fraction of esports’ overall viewership
38. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 won’t have a single-player campaign but will offer battle royale
39. Black Ops 4 ditches single-player campaign, adds battle royale mode
40. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 ditches Steam in favor of Battle.net
41. Analysis: Player interest in Call of Duty’s campaigns is cratering
42. Gamelynx raises $1.2 million to develop esports games on mobile
43. Gamelynx raises $1.2 million for mobile esports development: Investors include Riot Games, Y Combinator, and Skycatcher Fund
44. NBA 2K League announces State Farm sponsorship
45. Microsoft partnership brings video game event to Special Olympics USA Games
46. One hundred meeeeellion dollars: Epic dumps serious cash into Fortnite esports
47. Epic Games to provide $100 million prize pool for Fortnite esports this year
48. Epic Games puts up $100M for Fortnite esports prize pool
49. Fortnite Developer’s $100,000,000 Prize Pool Is Great News For Streamers
50. ‘Fortnite’-Branded Products In The Works Following Pact Between Epic Games, IMG
51. Battlegrounds mobile attracting over 10 million daily active users
52. Oculus & ESL Partner on eSports VR League with $220,000 in Prizes, Including ‘Echo Combat’
53. HTC Says Watching ‘Ready Player One’ Boosts VR Purchase Intent in China
54. Oculus adds DLC support for mobile VR apps: Beta test opens up a new revenue stream, with Rift DLC support still to come
55. Crowdfunded 3D Headphone Startup OSSIC is Shutting Down, 99% of Orders Go Undelivered
56. Microsoft launches Xbox Adaptive Controller to make games more accessible 
57. Microsoft’s next Halo game is an arcade cabinet 
58. Minecraft surpasses 100M users in China on PC and mobile 
59. Eurogamer scoops multiple awards at first-ever Games Media Brit List
60. ESRB points devs toward IARC ratings as it looks to phase out short-form option 
61. ESRB dropping short form ratings for digital games in June: Developers will still be able to get rated at no cost via IARC
62. God of War helps PlayStation smash records in April NPD stats: Kratos’ return was best ever launch for a PlayStation exclusive, PS4 game sales reaches new high for the month
63. Sony: PlayStation 4 is entering ‘final phase’ of its lifecycle
64. Sony prepares for the “final phase” of PlayStation 4’s life-cycle
65. Sony: Next PlayStation is at least three years off
66. Sony: The next PlayStation is another three years away
67. Reassessing the legacy of PlayStation Vita: As software production ends, it’s a good moment to reassess Sony’s handheld – its commercial failure looms large, but its innovations remain hugely influential
68. PlayStation Vita game production will continue in Japan: Sony confirms physical games will still be released in home market beyond March 2019
69. Sony: PS4 Enters “final phase of life cycle,” Next PlayStation to Come in 3 Years
70. Sony takes a page from Microsoft by licensing customizable PS4 gamepad
71. The future of PlayStation may be portable, says Sony exec
72. Portable gaming shouldn’t be separate from consoles – PlayStation head: Newly appointed John Kodera says company is considering portable gaming options, signalling a change from previous management’s thinking
73. Jagex shutting down RuneScape Classic after 17 years
74. Jagex shutting down RuneScape Classic: Problems with community safety, botting, and bugs led to the decision to shut down the 17-year-old game
75. Wargaming Seattle is shutting down
76. Cultural approaches to horror game design

Jon