MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Why Canadian cell phone bills are among the most expensive on the planet: As tech analyst Michael Geist has noted, cell phone companies keep raising prices ‘because they can’
- Toronto Star receives $65,000 fine for violating CRTC Do Not Call List rules
- Yet Another Report Says The Rate Of TV Cord Cutting Is Worse Than Anybody Thought
- “Fake” net neutrality comments at heart of lawsuit filed against FCC – Lawsuit: FCC ignored public records request for data on mass comment uploads
- ‘I Want to Explode’ — A Roger Ailes Protégé Bares His Soul: Joe Lindsley was as close to the late Fox News chairman as anybody. Now, for the first time, he’s giving his account of their dramatic split.
- The transformation continues (Timothy Denton)
- Verizon Is Booting 8,500 Rural Customers Over Data Use, Including Some on ‘Unlimited’ Plans
- Verizon Hangs Up On Tens Of Thousands Of ‘Unlimited’ Wireless Customers For Using Too Much Data
- Comcast looks forward to more mergers during Trump presidency: Comcast VP is glad Trump is “less hostile” to mergers than Obama.
- Comcast said he used too much data—so he opted to live without home Internet: Man said he didn’t go over his data cap; Comcast told him to trust the meter.
- FCC’s New ‘Diversity Chair’ Has Long History Of Undermining Minority Consumers At Comcast’s Behest
- T-Mobile’s unlimited plan will soon let you use 50GB before slowdowns: T-Mobile leaps further ahead of Verizon and AT&T with more data before slowdowns.
- T-Mobile backtracks from plan to throttle Apple Watch speeds to 512kbps: T-Mobile initially planned $20 charge for watch LTE, but now it’ll be $10.
- Unlimited Data Customers Report Fewer Network Problems Than Capped Users
- SpaceX’s worldwide satellite broadband network may have a name: Starlink – Low-latency, gigabit network inches closer to commercialization.
- A telemarketer called my elevator: The emergency intercom started speaking to me in a voice I’ve heard a thousand times.
DIGITAL
- Hollywood’s Use of “Stolen” Computer Technology Tests Ownership Theories: In a bid to dismiss a lawsuit, Disney, Fox, and Paramount distinguish between human and technological output.
- Hulu Becomes First Streaming Service To Win Best Drama Emmy For ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
- To Fix Its Toxic Ad Problem, Facebook Must Break Itself
- Exclusive: Facebook Silences Rohingya Reports of Ethnic Cleansing – The social network says it’s committed to helping the world ‘share their stories.’ But when people from Burma’s oppressed minority post, their stories have a habit of disappearing.
- Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’: After being contacted by ProPublica, Facebook removed several anti-Semitic ad categories and promised to improve monitoring.
- Could Facebook Have Caught Its ‘Jew Hater’ Ad Targeting?: “Facebook can monitor the things it does that make it money.”
- Facebook’s Offensive Ad Targeting Options Go Far Beyond “Jew Haters”
- Trump Retweeted A Video From An Anti-Semitic Account Showing Him Hitting Hillary Clinton With A Golf Ball: The original poster had previously tweeted several anti-trans and racist statements.
- The Real Trouble With Trump’s ‘Dark Post’ Facebook Ads
- Google Allowed Advertisers To Target People Searching Racist Phrases: Google prompted BuzzFeed News to run ads targeted to keywords like “black people ruin neighborhoods,” then allowed the campaign to go live.
- Facebook’s Reckoning Draws Nearer: Sooner or later, the company will be forced to take on the responsibilities that come with being the world’s dominant news distributor.
- Facebook’s war on free will: How technology is making our minds redundant
- Should Facebook Ads Be Regulated Like TV Commercials?: The company’s sales to a Russia-connected troll farm raise big questions about free speech in advertising and beyond.
- Alt-Right Twitter App Developers Sue Google After Gab.Ai App Is Kicked Out Of The Play Store
- Google Paid HTC $1.1 Billion To Turn Itself Into A Phone Maker
- Google/HTC deal is official, Google to acquire part of HTC’s smartphone team: $1.1 billion deal means HTC will still exist, while Google beefs up its hardware team.
- Female ex-Googlers sue, claiming sex discrimination: Three former Googlers say women were funneled into less lucrative “job ladders.”
- The Pao Effect Is What Happens After Lean In
- Lost Context: How Did We End Up Here?: Facebook and Google’s advertising platforms are out of control. That used to be a good thing. Now…not so much.
- Twitter rival Gab sues Google over app store rejection: Gab, an app popular with the alt-right, says Google violated antitrust law.
- Twitter rival Gab faces domain loss over extremist content: After anti-Semitic post, registrar gives Gab five days to find a new provider.
- The Super-Aggregators And The Russians
- Facebook’s Russia data: What Mueller may learn
- A Fishy Wikileaks Dump Targets Russia For A Change
- New Group Of Iranian Hackers Linked To Destructive Malware
- Snopes And The Search For Facts In A Post-Fact World
- Unwanted ads on Breitbart lead to massive click fraud revelations, Uber claims – Uber: We paid Fetch Media for “nonexistent, nonviewable, and/or fraudulent advertising.”
- Here’s a real-life, slimy example of Uber’s regulator-evading software: “In using Greyball, Uber has sullied its own reputation,” Portland says.
- Waymo wants Uber to pay $2.6 billion in damages—just for starters: It’s the first hint of what Waymo might want as compensation for alleged theft.
- Appeals court rejects Uber’s attempt to dodge trial: No arbitration – And, Levandowski can’t stop Waymo lawyers from reading a report on his startup.
- Faced with a trove of new evidence in Uber case, Waymo asks to delay trial
- Uber: We don’t have to pay drivers based on rider fares – Contracts allow rider fares to be higher than what is known and paid to drivers.
- Drone delivery startup is about to begin commercial operations: Startup envisions hundreds of drone delivery stations across metro areas.
- Digital transformation: How machine learning could help change business – ML has more than just a learning curve to overcome before it transforms business.
- HTML5 DRM finally makes it as an official W3C Recommendation: 30.8% of W3C members disapproved of the decision.
- EFF Resigns From W3C After DRM In HTML Is Approved In Secret Vote
- HP Brings Back Obnoxious DRM That Cripples Competing Printer Cartridges
- Adding clickbait title isn’t false advertising or fraud on author Dankovich v. Keller, 2017 WL 4081852, No. 16-13395 E.D. Mich. Sept. 15, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
- 5 reasons why people share fake photos during disasters
- Do the distracted boyfriend memes infringe copyright?
- The Blacklock’s Perfectly Predictable Costs Appeal Dismissal & a Preview of Potential Problems (Howard Knopf)
- The Senate Is Close To Undermining The Internet By Pretending To ‘Protect’ The Children
- Why SESTA Is Such A Bad Bill
- The Wrong Answer to a Serious Problem: Senator Wyden’s testimony to the Senate Committee on Commerce at the legislative hearing titled “S.1693, The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017”
- The Top Ten Myths About SESTA’s (S. 1693) Impact On Startups
- Senator Blumenthal Happy That SESTA Will Kill Small Internet Companies
- Is There A Single Online Service Not Put At Risk By SESTA?
- Free Software Foundation Europe Leads Call For Taxpayer-Funded Software To Be Licensed For Free Re-use
- The Sex Trafficking Fight Could Take Down A Bedrock Tech Law
- Music Industry Is Painting A Target On YouTube Ripping Sites, Despite Their Many Non-Infringing Uses
- YouTube Apologizes To ‘Red’ Subscribers Who Were Served Ads, Says Fix Is In The Works
- Yes, You Can Believe In Internet Freedom Without Being A Shill
- Regulating Hate Speech?
- The rise of AI is sparking an international arms race: Elon Musk thinks it’s the most likely cause of WWIII.
- The AI Chatbot Will Hire You Now
- AI: Scary for the Right Reasons
- AI built profiles for every individual is a reality
- AI Research Is In Desperate Need Of An Ethical Watchdog
- Can Competition Act address Big Data cases?
- Big data and Innovation: Implications for competition policy in Canada
- Big data may become big antitrust concern
- Google Chrome To Block Autoplay Videos With Sound Beginning In January
- Google Chrome will block autoplay video starting January 2018: Only muted video and user “interest in the media” will be allowed by default.
- Chrome Will Soon Block Autoplay Videos With Sound—Here’s Why You Should Be Worried
- YouTube TV, Now Available In Eight More Areas, Nears Completion Of US Rollout
- These Are The Types Of Influencers Who Get Paid Most Per Sponsored Post (Study)
- Snapchat Is Pulling Out All The Stops For This Year’s Emmy Awards
- Crowdfunding platform Patreon secures $60M investment
- Are We Asking Too Much From Defamation Law? Reputation Systems, Adr, Industry Regulation And Other Extra-Judicial Possibilities For Protecting Reputation In The Internet Age: Proposal For Reform (Emily Laidlaw)
- The Political Awakening of Silicon Valley: What happens when tech leaders, like Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, believe our system is broken? They treat it like a startup.
- “Skip intro”: Netflix could’ve saved TV title sequences, but now it’s killing them
- Netflix Has Narcos Actors Threaten To Shoot The Families Of French People For Pirating The Show
- Vancouver Canucks, Perspective Films Offer Virtual Reality Views
- Baltimore Ravens Debut NFL’s First Augmented Reality Face Painting
- Mizuno Introduces Smart Baseball With Internal Pitch-Tracking Tech
- China’s Largest Messaging App ‘WeChat’ is Creating its Own AR Platform
- It looks like China is shutting down its blockchain economy: Leaked regulation orders Chinese Bitcoin exchanges to shut down.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum plunge on Chinese crackdown
- The Pirate Bay Added a CPU-Hijacking Bitcoin Miner to Some Pages
- Feds in California are aggressively going after Silk Road, AlphaBay vendors: Federal courthouse in Fresno is set to see a lot of action in coming months.
- Your Digital Millennium Copyright Registration May Be About To Expire
- Bored With Your Fitbit? These Cancer Researchers Aren’t
- About FaceID
- After 23 years, the Apple II gets another OS update: On 30th anniversary of Apple II GS, devoted developer releases ProDOS 2.4.
- The Pluralist Model of Speech Regulation: Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society (Jack Balkin)
- Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation (Jack Balkin)
CREATIVITY
- Quebec Superior Court Rules on the Concept of Fair Dealing in Relation to the Substantial Reproduction of Journalistic Works
- Off-Broadway ‘Grinch’ Parody Defeats Copyright Claims
- Joy in Who-Ville? Playwright Wins Fair Use Copyright Dispute in Parody of “Grinch”
- Maradona sues Dolce&Gabbana over 2016 ‘MARADONA’ jersey
- Monkey Selfie Case Settled Out Of Court, Questions Remain (Andres Guadamuz)
- Lawyer: Without The Monkey’s Approval, PETA Can’t Settle Monkey Selfie Case
- Monkey See, Monkey Do… Monkey Own? The Curious Case of Naruto v. Slater
- Man who made “Pepe” wants his frog back, and he’ll use copyright to get it: Mike Cernovich won’t pay, threatens “to embarrass the f***” out of Pepe creator.
- With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
- Structural engineers score big as Federal Court recognizes and enforces copyright on structure of soccer complex
- Canadian Government Publications Still Don’t Belong To The People As Ottawa Maintains Its Iron Grip On Crown Copyright
- Melania Trump billboard removed in Croatia after legal action threatened
- ‘Racist’ Paddy Power Floyd Mayweather ad dealt knockout blow by ASA
- New patent review process has saved billions—so why is it under attack?: “Inter partes review” let a patent’s opponents be heard, without spending millions.
- Doubling (& Tripling) Down on Trademark Protection For Secret Menu Items–In-N-Out v. Smashburger
- Yoko Ono halts sale of John Lemon lemonade: Polish company agrees to change its name to On Lemon after legal letters saying drink infringed trademark
- Kim Kardashian West’s trade mark woes and the love-hate relationship between celebrities and IP
- New study claims Slender Man is in the commons, argues assertion of trademark rights “chills creativity”
- Charles Harder Loses Again: You Can’t Just File Defamation Lawsuits In A Random State Because You Like Its Statute Of Limitations
- Model Behaviour – Copyright infringement action brought against model Gigi Hadid
- Why Copyright Term Matters: Publisher Study Highlights Crucial Role of the Public Domain in Ontario Schools (Michael Geist)
- Buyer Beware: Make Sure Your Copyright Assignment Is Valid
- The Business of Fandom: How Teenage Girls Predict the Future of Culture
- 20 years in, Kid Rock, Eminem and ICP are politically relevant — and culturally divided
- How Amazon is becoming the third force in advertising, making the duopoly an oligopoly
- The Battle for Blade Runner
- Vermont State Police Rewrite Press Rules To Withhold As Much Information As Possible
- Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law (Barton Beebe)
- First application of the Canadian parody exception (Sabine Jacques)
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- EFF, ACLU Sue Government Over Warrantless Electronic Searches At The Border
- ISPs claim a privacy law would weaken online security and increase pop-ups: California to vote on privacy law opposed by AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon.
- Closely watched California Internet privacy bill dies in final minutes of legislative session
- California Sides With Comcast, Votes To Kill Broadband Privacy Law Favored By EFF
- ISPs can keep sharing your browsing history after California no-vote: Lawmakers fail to vote on opt-in rule that would protect your browsing history.
- Face Scanning Lawsuit Against Shutterfly Survives Motion to Dismiss
- Trump Administration Says It’s Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans
- Equifax Officially Has No Excuse
- Oh Man, You’re Gonna Hate What Equifax Just Admitted About That Security Breach
- Equifax’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Security Are ‘Retiring’
- Equifax CIO, CSO “retire” in wake of huge security breach: Press release – “The company’s review of the facts is still ongoing.”
- DoNotPay chatbot adds feature allowing users to sue Equifax over data breach
- Scammers keep trying to sell fake Equifax facts: Site offers “proof” of access to Equifax data, but it all appears to be fake.
- FTC launches Equifax breach probe, warns consumers about credit scammers: Posing as Equifax employees, crooks are calling to verify your account information.
- Equifax sends breach victims to fake notification site
- Google stops challenging most US warrants for data on overseas servers: Microsoft keeps up the challenges while Supreme Court remains silent.
- Secret Algorithms Are Deciding Criminal Trials and We’re Not Even Allowed to Test Their Accuracy (ACLU)
- EFF Asks Court: Can Prosecutors Hide Behind Trade Secret Privilege to Convict You? (EFF)
- Biased Algorithms Are Everywhere, and No One Seems to Care: The big companies developing them show no interest in fixing the problem.
- Ad industry “deeply concerned” about Safari’s new ad-tracking restrictions: Apple’s limits on tracking will “sabotage the economic model for the Internet.”
- How One Of Apple’s Key Privacy Safeguards Falls Short
- Infrared signals in surveillance cameras let malware jump network air gaps: aIR-Jumper weaves passwords and crypto keys into infrared signals.
- The CCleaner Malware Fiasco Targeted At Least 18 Specific Tech Firms
- NSA Employees Routinely Undermined ‘Non-Attributable’ Web Access With Personal Web Use
- How The NSA Built A Secret Surveillance Network For Ethiopia
- Trudeau needs to deliver on his access-to-information promises
- New law firm seeks would-be gov’t whistleblowers, requires Tor and SecureDrop: “We want to earn the trust of people who have been 20-year veterans at the NSA.”
- Most-wanted criminal arrested after posting Instagram video of himself: Officials obtained fugitive’s GPS coordinates after he took to social media.
- Apple’s FaceID Could Be A Powerful Tool For Mass Spying
- Software Has A Serious Supply-Chain Security Problem
- For $200 you can buy an NBA smart jersey and be a marketing pawn: Once activated, Nike knows where you live, and when and where jersey is scanned.
- Internet-Connected Toys: Cute, Cuddly and Inherently Insecure
- The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing (Elizabeth Joh)
Jon