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  • The Cloud

    The “cloud” has come to mean the storing and accessing of data (including programs) over the internet rather than on on our device (computer, phone or otherwise). The official definition of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of […] Read More

News of the Week; April 12, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Paul, Weiss Investigating Bill O’Reilly
  2. Yochai Benkler: The Right-Wing Media Ecosystem
  3. FCC Kills Charter Merger Condition That Would Have Forced ISPs To Compete
  4. President Trump Nullifies FCC Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules 
  5. Yes, There Are Other Laws That Protect Privacy, But FCC’s Rules Were Still Helpful
  6. FCC chair wants to replace net neutrality with “voluntary” commitments: “Voluntary” net neutrality commitments may not be so easy to enforce.
  7. FCC Boss Wants ‘Voluntary’ ISP Net Neutrality Promises Instead Of Real Rules
  8. “Unenforceable”: How voluntary net neutrality lets ISPs call the shots – Pai’s plan would “tilt everything in favor of the incumbents,” regulator says.
  9. Ajit Pai can’t convince websites that killing net neutrality is a good idea: Reps for Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix lobby to keep net neutrality rules.
  10. Comcast to sell “unlimited” mobile plans that get throttled after 20GB: The good news is throttled speeds aren’t horrible at 1.5Mbps.
  11. 70% Support Letting Cities Build Their Own Broadband Networks, So Why Are We Still Passing State Laws Banning It?
  12. Murdoch’s multi-billion pound Sky/Fox merger bid gets thumbs up from EU – Brussels: Murdoch’s grab for full control of Sky isn’t a competition concern in Europe.

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Rules Website Moderators Can Potentially Undercut Copyright Defense
  2. DMCA “safe harbor” up in the air for online sites that use moderators: Etsy, Kickstarter, Pinterest, and Tumblr say site moderation hangs in the balance.
  3. Dangerous Ruling On DMCA Safe Harbors May Backfire On Hollywood
  4. DMCA, Moral Rights and Photography
  5. Narcissism, Social Media and Power
  6. Yahoo Is Sued Over $17 Million Fund for Chinese Dissidents
  7. Qualcomm loses legal battle with Blackberry, must pay $815M: Huge, non-appealable award makes BlackBerry stock jump 15%.
  8. Qualcomm accuses Apple of Intel chip foul play, egging on regulatory attacks: Chipmaker demands “fair value for our technological contributions to the industry.”
  9. Amazon to refund $70m in IAP after year of legal appeals: Both Amazon and the FTC appealed aspects of a ruling made by the federal court in April 2016
  10. If Facebook Becomes The Internet’s Authentication System, Can Citizen Scores Around The World Be Far Behind?
  11. We Need More Alternatives to Facebook: Chastened by the negative effects of social media, Mark Zuckerberg says he will tweak his service and upgrade society in the process. Should any company be that powerful?
  12. Google expands automatic “fact check” insertion into search results: You’ll want to phrase your searches very carefully to trigger it.
  13. Uber said to use “sophisticated” software to defraud drivers, passengers: Class action says Uber’s “methodical scheme” manipulates rider fares, driver pay.
  14. Burger King’s new ad forces Google Home to advertise the Whopper
  15. Burger King ‘O.K. Google’ Ad Doesn’t Seem O.K. With Google
  16. Google Brings Fake News Fact-Checking to Search Results: Search giant is letting partners and publishers decide what’s true, what’s false and what’s in between.
  17. New York Attorney General Enters Digital Health App and Privacy Enforcement Fray: Announces Three Settlements with Health and Fitness App Providers’ Due to Efficacy Claims and Privacy Practices
  18. MPA Gets Ireland To Crack Open The Site-Blocking Door It Plans To Bust Through
  19. Ubuntu Unity is dead: Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year – Ubuntu phones and tablets also dead, but the desktop, server, and cloud live on.
  20. YouTube nixes monetization until channels hit 10,000 views: Video giant says move is an effort to crack down on impersonating channels
  21. Technology is a marvel – now let’s make it moral: If Britain is bold after Brexit, we can lead the way in demanding more control over our digital destiny
  22. Utah to treat certain virtual currency as abandoned property 
  23. What Do the SEC’s Recent Bitcoin Disapproval Orders Really Mean for Investors?
  24. Portugal Pushes Law To Partially Ban DRM, Allow Circumvention
  25. India Learns The Hard Way That Equating Patents And Innovation Comes At A Price
  26. Italian Court Says Due Process Isn’t Necessary For Blocking Sites Over Copyright Infringement
  27. Who Owns the Copyright in an Instagram Image?
  28. Sketchy Copyright Takedown Kills Bad Lip Reading’s Force Awakens Remix
  29. Revenge Pornster Craig Brittain Issues DMCA Notices Demanding Google Delist Entire Websites, Including Wikipedia
  30. Why Jian Ghomeshi’s New Podcast Is Absolutely Guaranteed to Fail: A friend recently asked me if his firm should consider representing the former CBC Radio host’s media business. Here’s what I told him
  31. You Are Almost Definitely Sharing Memes Made By Nazis
  32. Is Instagram Killing The Graffiti Artist?
  33. Study Claims To Know What Was Going On With That Stupid Dress
  34. Emotional Chatting Machine Assesses Your Emotion and Copies It: Chatbots have never been able to empathize. That looks set to change, thanks to a Chinese team that has built a chatbot capable of conveying specific emotions.
  35. How Trolls Are Stifling Innovators, Gamers and Netflix Junkies: Copyright policy in the public interest
  36. Insurers Scramble to Put a Price on a Cyber Catastrophe: Trying to estimate the maximum cost of a devastating cyber event before one actually happens.
  37. How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing
  38. Adidas wants to sell 100,000 3-D printed sneakers: A personalized shoe that can “adjust the strength, durability, and the shape.”
  39. Disney files patent for “huggable and interactive” humanoid robots: Robots have already been tested, described as “robust to playful, physical interaction.”
  40. The legal issues of robotics
  41. Deciphering the U.S. NAFTA Digital Demands, Part Two: Digital Economy, Services and Transparency (Michael Geist)

CREATIVITY

  1. Universal wins copyright case over sample in Justin Timberlake hit
  2. Andy Warhol Estate Sues over Image of Prince
  3. U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies Separability Analysis in its Ruling on Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc.
  4. Lombardo v. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P.
  5. No evidence of harm means no disgorgement in false advertising case (Rebecca Tushnet)
  6. Copyright preemption and the right of publicity in the 9th Circuit (Rebecca Tushnet)
  7. Statutory Damages Awarded in Copyright Infringement Case
  8. First judicial consideration of information location tool under the Copyright Act- Trader Corporation v. CarGurus Inc.
  9. Can a public domain artwork be registered as a trade mark or would that be contrary to public policy and morality?
  10. Irish Burger Chain Accuses McDonald’s of Trademarking Every Word That Starts With ‘Mc’
  11. Defamation Law Series: Melania Trump Settles Her Libel Lawsuit Against Daily Mail 
  12. Author of Wall Street Charging Bull is raging over Fearless Girl, but does he have a valid moral right claim?
  13. ‘Charging Bull’ sculptor says New York’s ‘Fearless Girl’ statue violates his rights: Arturo Di Modica says ‘advertising trick’ placed in Wall Street before international women’s day infringed artistic copyright
  14. The Bull Statue Copyright Claim Is Ridiculous… But Here’s Why It Just Might Work
  15. UK supreme court denies tobacco firms permission for plain packaging appeal: Final legal decision in UK means that all cigarettes sold after 20 May must come in standardised packaging
  16. Marvel Comics Responds To X-Men Gold Art Controversy
  17. How much dough are smells worth?: Hasbro files a scent mark in the US
  18. Copyright as Medium: Art and law might seem like polar opposites. But in the wake of Conceptual Art’s challenge to the traditional operations of the art market, the law—and copyright in particular—has become an increasingly popular subject, and even a medium, for artists. 
  19. Bigger Picture, Bigger Frame? Dr. Saptarishi Bandopadhyay’s Recast of Narrative in Copyright and Disaster Photography
  20. Copyright Protection of Street Art and Graffiti under UK Law (Enrico Bonadio)
  21. The Uncoordinated Public Domain (Robert Spoo)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. U.S. Gov Demanded Twitter Unmask Mean Anti-Trump Account: Twitter has filed a lawsuit to protect this user
  2. Twitter Sues Government Over Attempts to Unmask Anti-Trump Account
  3. Twitter Sues Homeland Security Over Attempt To Unmask ‘Alt’ Immigration Twitter Account: Twitter brings in Biglaw to sue government.
  4. Well, That Was Quick: Twitter Dismisses Lawsuit After Feds Drop Attempt To Unmask Rogue Tweeter
  5. Oh, Sure, Now Congress Is Serious About Asking NSA About Surveillance On Americans
  6. WikiLeaks just dropped the CIA’s secret how-to for infecting Windows: Latest batch of documents details how CIA infects targets’ Windows-based computers.
  7. New York Appeals Court Says Facebook Can’t Challenge The 381 Broad Warrants Handed To It By New York Prosecutors
  8. State Appeals Court Says There’s An Expectation Of Privacy In Vehicle Data Recorders
  9. Named Plaintiff Drops Claims Against Gannett as the Definition of “Personally Identifiable Information” Under the Video Privacy Protection Act Evolves
  10. Researcher: 90% Of ‘Smart’ TVs Can Be Compromised Remotely
  11. Booby-trapped Word documents in the wild exploit critical Microsoft 0-day: There’s currently no patch for the bug, which affects most or all versions of Word.
  12. Hacking Attack Woke Up Dallas With Emergency Sirens, Officials Say
  13. Canada’s National Police Force Officially Confirms Ownership, Use Of Stingray Devices
  14. Lenovo and Superfish: Proposed Class Action Proceeds on Privacy Tort and Statutes 
  15. Rash of in-the-wild attacks permanently destroys poorly secured IoT devices: Ongoing “BrickerBot” attacks might be trying to kill devices before they can join a botnet.
  16. The U.S. Congress Is Not the Leader in Privacy or Data Security Law (Daniel Solove)
  17. This Teen’s Story Is Your Worst ‘Predictive Policing’ Nightmare: Crime-prediction algorithms remain unproven and problematic — but that hasn’t stopped police departments across the country from using them
  18. The Ghost in the Algorithm: The necessary struggle to reject “technology first” and develop an ethical framework for the automated era

Jon

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News of the Week; April 5, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Net Neutrality Is Trump’s Next Target, Administration Says
  2. Ajit Pai says broadband market too competitive for strict privacy rules: FCC Chair ignores lack of home Internet competition in argument against privacy rules.
  3. FCC, FTC Bosses Pen Misleading Editorial Falsely Claiming The Best Way To Protect Your Privacy Moving Forward… Is To Gut Net Neutrality
  4. FCC Boss Takes Aim At Efforts To Bring Broadband To The Poor
  5. Fox serves up a fetid reminder that when you’re a star, you can still do anything
  6. Free Market Does What The Court System Could Not: Hurt Bill O’Reilly – This is the PR debacle that pulled the advertiser’s dollars.
  7. Understanding the Role of the BBC as a Provider of Public Infrastructure (Brett Frischmann)
  8. Tweeting #Justice: Audio-Visual Coverage Of Court Proceedings In A World Of Shifting Technology (Itay Ravid)

DIGITAL

  1. Use Of VPNs Banned Completely For Millions Of People By Chinese Authorities
  2. New Regulations Appear To Authorize Chinese Law Enforcement To Hack Into Computers Anywhere In The World
  3. A Pic Of Putin In Makeup Is Now ‘Extremist’ Material: Disseminating the image could lead to a fine and even jail time, but some Russians don’t care
  4. Where Speech Goes, Repression Follows: The Global Trend of Criminalizing Online Speech
  5. Social media firms faces huge hate speech fines in Germany
  6. How YouTube Can Fix Its White Nationalism and Anti-Semitism Problem: The Google-run video giant is losing advertisers due to its inability to police its own content. Here’s how it can turn things around.
  7. Netizen Report: India Had 31 Internet Shutdowns in 2016. How Many Did Your Country Have? – The quiet cost of regional Internet shutdowns in India, China and beyond.
  8. Here’s Why Facebook and Google Can’t Fix the Fake News Problem
  9. Study: Fake election news flooded Mich. Twitter feeds
  10. Lawyers win again in latest privacy class-action settlement: iOS address book deal, if split evenly among class members, pays 53 cents each.
  11. German Court Rules Parents Must Out Their Family Members For Copyright Trolls Or Pay Fines Themselves
  12. Microsoft sued for millions over Windows 10 upgrades: Class action accuses operating system of causing hard drive failures and other problems.
  13. 8,000 aspiring Uber and Lyft drivers fail state background check
  14. Uber exec accused of stealing IP from Google made $120M, but worked on the side: Google hammers on Levandowski, who remains in charge of Uber’s self-driving cars.
  15. Judge orders Uber to search servers, work harder to find Waymo’s 14,000 files: “In 42 years, I’ve never seen a record this strong. You are up against it.”
  16. YouTube TV goes live today in five US cities, gears up to add more networks: AMC, BBC World News, Sundance TV, and more to come at no extra cost.
  17. Top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide • February 2017
  18. ASA orders takedown of Instagrammer’s post for not having #ad: A promotional post by Instagrammer Sheikhbeauty for the brand Flat Tummy Tea failed to comply with CAP rulings as it lacked any disclosure that the post was an ad.
  19. IoT garage door opener maker bricks customer’s product after bad review: Startup tells customer “Your unit will be denied server connection.”
  20. You Can Now Beg for Money on Facebook
  21. Facebook plans a free version of its Slack competitor 
  22. Spotify finally lets artists restrict new albums to premium subscribers: Plus Kanye West is the first artist to have an album go Platinum on streams alone.
  23. Amazon – Not Twitter – To Stream Thursday Night NFL Games As League Is ‘Expanding Reach’
  24. Amazon outbids Twitter for rights to livestream Thursday Night Football games
  25. But you must be a Prime member to watch.
  26. Amazon agrees to refund up to $70 million worth of in-app purchases made by kids
  27. Amazon’s Kodi Box Ban And Copyright Liability For Device Distributors
  28. Kim Dotcom’s Canadian connection: Servers in Ontario could be key in case against alleged Internet pirate
  29. A kitten becomes Exhibit 41 in defamation suit against Buzzfeed over Trump dossier: “Six ways Buzzfeed has misled the court… and a picture of a kitten.”
  30. Bad Copyright Laws Are Creating Junky, Biased AI: Machine learning systems need lots of data to overcome bias — but copyright limits their menu
  31. Can AI Ever Be as Curious as Humans?
  32. A.I. Versus M.D.: What happens when diagnosis is automated?
  33. Hologram Calls Could Be The Future FaceTime: Verizon and Korean Telecom held the first international live 5G hologram chat
  34. Within the Next Decade, You Could Be Living in a Post-Smartphone World
  35. Golden State Warriors, Philips Lighting Bring Oracle Arena Experience Inside Fans’ Homes
  36. Brazil Proposes New Digital Copyright Rules for the WTO
  37. Attention Markets & the Law (Tim Wu)

CREATIVITY

  1. Jeff Koons Parody Defense Fails in French Copyright Infringement Case
  2. Horizon Comics Productions, Inc. v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC
  3. 5 Pointz Graffiti Artists’ Major Win in Suit against Developers, Explained
  4. If you publish Georgia’s state laws, you’ll get sued for copyright and lose: In some states, you can’t read the law without paying a corporation.
  5. Newly Leaked Documents Expose Stunning Waste And Incompetence At The Copyright Office
  6. Another Major Scandal At The Copyright Office: $25 Million ‘Fake Budget’ Line Item
  7. How to make Millennials hate you, The Pepsi Way.
  8. Pepsi Pulls Controversial Kendall Jenner Ad Following Twitter Uproar
  9. How Pepsi Got It So Wrong: Unpacking One of the Most Reviled Ads in Recent Memory: Experts weigh in on the soda-maker’s tone-deaf debacle
  10. Pepsi’s New Ad Is a Total Success: Every feature of the “Jump In” ad benefits the company—even the act of pulling it from the airwaves.
  11. Moral Rights in America: “the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself”
  12. Myths and Legends of Copyright Reform: A New Hope
  13. Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law (Barton Beebe)
  14. The Terminator Comes to Hollywood to Destroy Old Copyright Grants
  15. Canadian Copyright: Year in Review 2016
  16. Deciphering the U.S. NAFTA Digital Demands, Part One: Intellectual Property (Michael Geist)
  17. The Relative Virtues of Bottom-Up and TopDown Theories of Fair Use (Pamela Samuelson)
  18. Monster Energy Attempts To Run From Laughable Trademark Spat It Started With Thunder Beast Root Beer
  19. Brewery Looks To Reform Trademark Practices After Its Lawyers Bully A Pub Over Its Name
  20. Brexit: what might change Intellectual Property
  21. Law review article ‘Defining Hate Speech’ attempts the impossible
  22. Did Reddit’s April Fool’s gag solve the issue of online hate speech?: Nations battled, voids came and went, and one million pixels said a lot about humanity.
  23. The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism (Emily Bell & Taylor Owen) 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Canadian Appeals Court Says Vice Media Must Turn Over Communications With Source To Law Enforcement
  2. RCMP reveals use of secretive cellphone surveillance technology for the first time: After CBC investigation into suspicious signals in Ottawa, police offer new insight into their own tactics
  3. Taser stuns law enforcement world, offers free body cameras to all US police: Company also changes name to Axon to reflect its primary body-camera product.
  4. Why Warrantless Access to Internet Subscriber Information is Back on the Legislative Agenda (Michael Geist)
  5. Snoops may soon be able to buy your browsing history. Thank the US Congress: Not only did they vote to violate your privacy for their own profit – they are seeking to make it illegal for a key watchdog to protect your privacy online (Bruce Schneier)
  6. Want to Stop Your Internet Provider From Selling Your Browsing Data? It Ain’t Easy
  7. President Trump delivers final blow to Web browsing privacy rules: ISP privacy rules are dead as Trump signs repeal instead of issuing veto.
  8. Trump move to kill privacy rules opposed by 72% of Republicans, survey says: Privacy is partisan for lawmakers, but not necessarily for the rest of us.
  9. Trump’s Internet Brigades Shocked To Realize The Government Just Sold Them Out On Privacy
  10. After vote to kill privacy rules, users try to “pollute” their Web history: “ISP Data Pollution” fills browsing history with noise to protect your privacy.
  11. Tim Berners-Lee: selling private citizens’ browsing data is ‘disgusting’
  12. The NYPD Posed as Black Lives Matter Protesters and Spied on Their Text Messages
  13. Samsung’s Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written: Researcher calls it the “worst code [he’s] ever seen.”
  14. ISP privacy rules could be resurrected by states, starting in Minnesota: Minnesota could prevent ISPs from collecting personal data without consent.
  15. Comcast Paid Civil Rights Groups To Support Killing Broadband Privacy Rules
  16. AT&T, Comcast & Verizon Pretend They Didn’t Just Pay Congress To Sell You Out On Privacy
  17. Comcast: We won’t sell browser history, and you can opt out of targeted ads
  18. Congress’s vote to eviscerate Internet privacy could give the FBI massive power
  19. Russia’s hack of State Department was “hand-to-hand” combat: State-sponsored hackers are going increasingly brazen and confrontational.
  20. Wikileaks releases code that could unmask CIA hacking operations: “Marble” libraries include code used to obfuscate—and unscramble— CIA malware.
  21. DOJ Refuses FOIA Request On Emails, Claiming ‘Personal Privacy’
  22. Oversight Committee Finds FBI’s Facial Recognition Database Still Filled With Innocent People, Still Wrong 15% Of The Time
  23. FBI Arrests Creator Of Remote Access Tool, Rather Than Those Abusing It To Commit Crime
  24. How A Little Metadata Made It Possible To Find FBI Director James Comey’s Secret Twitter Account
  25. Smart TV hack embeds attack code into broadcast signal—no access required: Demo exploit is inexpensive, remote, scalable—and opens door to more advanced hacks.
  26. Pennsylvania Court Says Bloggers Protected By Journalist Shield Law; Don’t Have To Reveal Commenter IP Addresses
  27. If A Phone’s Facial Recognition Security Can Be Defeated By A Picture Of A Face, What Good Is It?
  28. Canadian Prosecutors Cut Loose 35 Mafia Suspects Rather Than Turn Over Info On Stingray Devices
  29. Microsoft opens up on Windows telemetry, tells us most of what data it collects: Windows telemetry is getting a lot more transparent.
  30. Privacy, Poverty And Big Data: A Matrix Of Vulnerabilities For Poor Americans (Mary Madden, Michele Gilman, Karen Levy & Alice Marwick)

Jon

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News of the Week; March 29, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Germany wants to regulate a 24-hour livestream as a broadcaster: Running a non-stop Twitch channel could be expensive.
  2. Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections Are Dead
  3. Senate votes to let ISPs sell your Web browsing history to advertisers: ISP now stands for “invading subscriber privacy,” Democratic senator says.
  4. U.S. Senate Approves Resolution to Repeal FCC’s Broadband Privacy Rules; Resolution Heads to U.S. House of Representatives for Consideration
  5. Congress Just Voted To Kill Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections
  6. How ISPs can sell your Web history—and how to stop them: How the Senate’s vote to kill privacy rules affects you.
  7. No, You Can’t Buy Congress’s Internet Data, Or Anyone Else’s
  8. With U.S. Retreat from Online Privacy, Canada Needs to Safeguard the Internet in NAFTA Talks (Michaele Geist)
  9. AT&T/DirecTV give in to government demands in collusion lawsuit settlement: Customers lost when pay-TV companies illegally shared information, DOJ says.
  10. AT&T Settles With DOJ Over LA Dodgers Channel Collusion Allegations
  11. In New CASL Case, CRTC Sends $15,000 Message 
  12. FCC to halt expansion of broadband subsidies for poor people: Pai won’t approve new applications, drops court defense of Lifeline broadband order.
  13. Netflix Is No Longer Worried About Net Neutrality Now That It’s Massive And Successful
  14. Does a sales tax on Uber pave way for a ‘Netflix tax’ in Canada? Probably
  15. Cable retransmission within reception area copyright free?!
  16. Alex Jones Apologizes For Pizzagate Coverage, Blames Other Media Outlets
  17. Charter promises Trump a broadband push, but no extra Internet connections: Charter’s $25 billion promise is vague and includes stuff it already planned.
  18. Warner Bros., Trademark Lawyers Target “Golden Ticket” Beer Brand

DIGITAL

  1. Supreme Court Says You Can Copyright Elements Of ‘Useful Articles’ — Which May Spell Disaster For 3D Printing & More
  2. Victory for Varsity! But Also for Fashion? Supreme Court Rules in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands
  3. Ruffled feathers or serious harm? Controversial UK personality sued for libellous tweets 
  4. Man sentenced to 3 years for Facebook threat to kill Obama loses appeal
  5. Judge: eBay can’t be sued over seller accused of patent infringement
  6. Will the Supreme Court end the East Texas patent scam?: Tech companies and interest groups seek to alter the geography of litigation.
  7. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case About Copyright Protection Of Pre-1972 Sound Recordings
  8. Supreme Court of Canada to address jurisdiction issues in online defamation case
  9. CD, DVD pirate sentenced to 5 years in prison: FBI investigated piracy ring with assistance from the RIAA and MPAA.
  10. In settlement, app makers change their tune on health benefits and privacy: NY Attorney General says three popular app makers over promised and misled.
  11. Consumer Law Group announces the filing of a Canadian class action against Amazon for the collection of undue sales tax
  12. Streaming Video Competition Slowly Begins Killing The Bloated, Pricey Cable Bundle
  13. Big US companies pull YouTube ads after extremist content sparks uncertainty: The ads might not have run over hateful videos, but they’re not taking any chances.
  14. YouTube’s Better-Than-TV Pitch Undermined by Offensive Video
  15. YouTube faces exodus of advertisers: Latest example highlights hidden perils of online ads.
  16. AT&T, Verizon Feign Ethical Outrage, Pile On Google’s ‘Extremist’ Ad Woes
  17. Google and Facebook Can’t Just Make Fake News Disappear: Fake news is too big and messy to solve with algorithms or editors — because the problem is….us.
  18. Trolling Scholars Debunk the Idea That the Alt-Right’s Sh**posters Have Magic Powers: Asserting that alt-right “trolls” were a deciding factor in Trump’s victory minimizes the broader trends that amplified their influence. (Whitney Phillips, Jessica Beyer & Gabriella Coleman)
  19. We’ve Heard All about Fake News—Now What?
  20. Tell California Assembly Not To Ignore The First Amendment As It Tries To Ban Fake News
  21. Real Talk About Fake News
  22. Facebook Officially Toying With Snap Stock Price Like A Sadistic Cat Playing With A Captured Mouse
  23. Elon Musk is setting up a company that will link brains and computers: The ultimate goal would be a “neural lace” to enhance people’s cognitive abilities.
  24. Germany’s Flawed Plan to Fight Hate Speech by Fining Tech Giants Millions
  25. Netflix: The Monster That’s Eating Hollywood: The streaming-video service is hogging talent and pushing up prices, spurring pushback from rival TV producers who once saw it as a partner; 70 new titles this year
  26. Tractor Owners Using Pirated Firmware To Dodge John Deere’s Ham-Fisted Attempt To Monopolize Repair
  27. Guy Who Wants Everyone To Believe He Created Bitcoin, Now Patenting Everything Bitcoin With An Online Gambling Fugitive
  28. How AI Can Aid Authoritarians—And How Humans Fight Back: Hidden algorithms reflect and amplify racism and other human biases, but researchers hope to fix them
  29. Google reportedly removing SMS texting from Hangouts on May 22: But Google Voice users won’t be affected as much.
  30. The Death of Advertising: And what will rise from its ashes.
  31. Creativity and the Internet
  32. In Support of Untargeted Ads
  33. Kerr: What if your ‘doctor’ were a robot? How Artificial Intelligence is challenging our ethics
  34. Australian Govt.: Just Kidding On That Whole Safe Harbors Reform Thing, Guys
  35. What Would a Digital Economy-Era NAFTA Mean for Canada? (Michael Geist)
  36. On computational ethics: Is it possible to imagine an AI that can compute ethics?
  37. Whack a Meme: Is It Possible to Contain (Let Alone Stop) the “Crying Jordan”?
  38. Man who claims he invented e-mail is now running for US Senate: Shiva Ayyadurai, who sued the Techdirt blog for libel, will run in Massachusetts.
  39. Intel is keeping Moore’s Law alive by making bigger improvements less often

CREATIVITY

  1. Supreme Court Clarifies Test For Determining Whether Designs On Useful Articles Are Eligible For Copyright Protection: Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc.
  2. Supreme Court Clarifies Copyright Eligibility for Useful Articles
  3. Supreme Court Seeks to Clarify Copyrightability of Design Features on Useful Articles in Cheerleading Uniform Case
  4. Supreme Court Resolves Split on Design Copyright Eligibility
  5. Supreme Court Finds Cheerleading Uniform Designs Copyrightable
  6. Cheering on the Fashion Industry: U.S Supreme Court Issues Landmark Copyright Decision That Will Have Deep Implications for Fashion and Sports Industries
  7. More Financial Scandals Involving A Collecting Society: Remind Me Again Why They Are Credible Representatives Of Artists?
  8. The Future of Copyright post Brexit
  9. GS Media and its implications for the construction of the right of communication to the public within EU copyright architecture: a new article
  10. Your Periodic Reminder That Initial Interest Confusion Lawsuits Are Stupid–Epic v. YourCareUniverse
  11. Archie Comics Is Trying to Trademark the Cute Couple Names for Betty and Jughead
  12. Broadway Play Changes Set Design Over Cafe Trademark Threat And, No, That Doesn’t Make Any Damned Sense
  13. Does “Raiders Fancast” Infringe the “Fancaster” Trademark? (Eric Goldman)
  14. Trademark Lawsuit Claiming Organic Search Results Create Initial Interest Confusion Falls Apart–Larsen v. Larson (Eric Goldman)
  15. Higher Costs Likely to be the Norm in Federal Court IP Cases
  16. Social Media Erupts as the Art World Splits in Two Over Dana Schutz Controversy: The art world is not a monolith, social media posts reveal.
  17. “Fearless Girl” Sculpture Near Wall Street Prompts Copyright Allegation That is More Bull than Bear 
  18. Hugo, Inc.: Les Misérables was born of one of the riskiest—and shrewdest—deals in publishing history.
  19. Why Hollywood As We Know It Is Already Over
  20. Bibliodiscotheque: Array of Events Planned to Celebrate Disco Culture (Library of Congress)
  21. Extremist Speech and Compelled Conformity (Danielle Keats Citron)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Key priorities of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in 2017
  2. Fixing PIPEDA: My Appearance Before the Access to Information, Privacy & Ethics Committee (Michael Geist)
  3. Appeal court says reporter must hand over material to RCMP
  4. Secretly recorded Planned Parenthood tapes barred from publication: Two activists criminally charged with allegedly violating privacy of people filmed.
  5. Oculus’ VR Privacy Policy Serves the Needs of Facebook, Not Users
  6. Whistleblower Says UK Police Worked With Hackers To Access Activists’ Email Accounts
  7. Someone is putting lots of work into hacking Github developers: Dimnie recon trojan has flown under the radar for three years… until now.
  8. Doxed by Microsoft’s Docs.com: Users unwittingly shared sensitive docs publicly: Thousands of docs with sensitive data still reachable from search engines, including health data.
  9. Vizio Must Face VPPA Suit Over Smart TVs, Court Rules
  10. Dish Network Seeks New Trial After $20 Million TCPA Jury Verdict
  11. US Senate votes to let internet providers share your web browsing history without permission: Just what no consumer asked for
  12. Encryption Workarounds Paper Shows Why ‘Going Dark’ Is Not A Problem, And In Fact Is As Old As Humanity Itself
  13. Google takes Symantec to the woodshed for mis-issuing 30,000 HTTPS certs 
  14. NY Senator Pulls Sponsorship From ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Bill, Effectively Killing It
  15. NSA Official Says It Might Have Been Nice If The Agency Had Handled The Public Disclosure Of The Section 215 Program
  16. Judge rules in favor of “Drone Slayer,” dismisses lawsuit filed by pilot: Is it trespassing if you fly over your neighbor’s land? The answer remains unclear.
  17. Cybersecurity and the Yahoo experience – Legal pays the price
  18. Goldilocks and the Interactive Bear: The Privacy Nightmare 
  19. “Samsung Connect” wrangles all the insecure Things in your Internet of Things: Controlling your home—or the security-nightmare “smart” parts of it—with your voice.

Jon

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Class 12 Slides

Todays slides….

And in the sometimes “life imitates school” category, we have the podcast in the article below which arrived in my inbox just around halfway through class.

Jon

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US House Votes in Favor of Letting ISPs Sell Users’ Browsing History

Today, the US House of Representatives voted to repeal a set of rules passed by the FCC last year which required ISPs to get a user’s explicit consent before selling their personal data (including browsing history).  The legislation still needs presidential approval, although the White House has stated that it “strongly supports” the repeal.

Critics of the repeal argue that ISPs will now have “free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements” [EFF]. Those in favour of the repeal argue that the FCC rules were “additional and duplicative regulation[s]” that undermined the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC), and that technology companies like Google aren’t subject to the same restraints in collecting user data, putting ISPs at a competitive disadvantage.

Here’s a selection of news sources of varying political orientations – pick your poison, or try them all:

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/house-set-vote-whether-isps-can-sell-your-data-without-n739166
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-sides-cable-and-telephone-industry
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/03/28/house-votes-to-block-obama-era-online-privacy-rule.html
http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/03/28/rep-marsha-blackburn-fcc-rule-change-vote-eliminates-obama-admin-internet-tax-regulatory-power-grab/

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How Yahoo Was Hacked

Hi everyone,

This article explains how Russian hackers were able to compromise Yahoo e-mails. Thought it was an interesting read.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/russian-yahoo-hackers-indictment-500-million-emails-how-1.4029532

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Course Evaluations

To the extent possible, please bring your laptops to class tomorrow as course evaluations will take up the first 15 minutes of the class. If you want to do the evaluations in advance they are available at: https://eval.ctlt.ubc.ca/law

You will be able to complete evaluations until 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 9.

Thanks,

Jon

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News of the Week; March 22, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. The Netflix Effect?: Foreign Sources Outspend Canadian Broadcasters and Distributors for English TV Production (Michael Geist)
  2. Court of Appeals Rules that Over-the-Top Video Service is Not a Cable System Entitled to Statutory License to Retransmit TV Station Programming
  3. Hope fades for cheap TV-over-Internet as FilmOn loses copyright fight: TV networks’ expert witness: “The Internet is not a communications channel.”
  4. Federal Court of Appeal upholds interlocutory injunction directed at retailers of set-top boxes loaded with copyright-infringing applications
  5. Let’s Talk Broadband Fund: The CRTC’s New Initiative
  6. Bell and Rogers offer sports bars unpleasant choice: Give us more money or lose TSN and Sportsnet
  7. Despite Gigabit Hype, Comcast Is Facing Less Broadband Competition Than Ever
  8. FCC Approves First 100% Foreign Owner of US Broadcast Stations
  9. ISPs say your Web browsing and app usage history isn’t “sensitive”: ISP lobby groups make case against the FCC’s broadband privacy rules.
  10. The Ad Industry Is Really Excited About Plans To Gut Broadband Privacy Protections
  11. DirecTV admits screwing up regional sports fees, starts issuing credits: Customers get credits after being charged different prices for the same network.
  12. Donald Trump’s presidency is shaped by Fox News.
  13. Google Fiber’s About-Face Provides Useful Lessons For A Broken Broadband Industry
  14. How Netflix Wants to Rule the World: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Global TV Network
  15. A timeline of Netflix’s conflicting stances on net neutrality
  16. TV’s Dead Zone: How the Cable Sector Is Killing Off Struggling Networks
  17. Charter’s Trying To Kill Recent Merger Conditions Banning Usage Caps, Net Neutrality Violations
  18. Charter Tries To Tap Dance Out Of Lawsuit Over Substandard Broadband
  19. The President’s Regulatory Agenda and the FTC
  20. Senators Fighting Online Privacy Rules Take Money From Industry: Analysis shows the 22 Republican senators behind a controversial resolution have received more than $1.7 million from the industry in recent years

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Rules TV Streamers Don’t Get Compulsory License to Broadcast Networks
  2. YouTube’s Restricted Mode Is Hiding Some LGBT Content
  3. How YouTube’s Block Of LGBTQ Videos Could Hurt Kids: The platform has helped many teens come to terms with their sexuality, but lately videos are harder to access
  4. YouTube faces social media storm over LGBT-blocking ‘restricted mode’
  5. LGBT community anger over YouTube restrictions which make their verideos invisible: #YouTubeIsOverParty trends on Twitter after users say videos referencing same-sex relationships are being filtered out
  6. Unless online giants stop the abuse of free speech, democracy and innovation is threatened
  7. A Tweet to Kurt Eichenwald, a Strobe and a Seizure. Now, an Arrest.
  8. Man accused of sending a seizure-inducing tweet charged with cyberstalking: Allegations are a first for an online attack with an epileptogenic image.
  9. Internet warriors: inside the dark world of online haters – Why do people vent such toxic opinions online? Filmmaker Kyrre Lien spent three years travelling the world to find out who these anonymous ‘internet warriors’ are and why they do it
  10. How online hate infiltrates social media and politics: For hate groups, there’s unprecedented opportunity to finally plug their fringe movements into a mainstream circuit
  11. Dissecting Trump’s Most rabid Online Following
  12. Twitter uses software to ban 377,000 accounts advocating violence
  13. Fake News and Fake Solutions: How Do We Build a Civics of Trust?
  14. ‘Who shared it?’: How Americans decide what news to trust on social media – This research was conducted by the Media Insight Project — an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
  15. UK government halts its YouTube ads after some appear on extremist videos: Doesn’t like taxpayer-funded ads showing up before David Duke videos.
  16. Danger in the internet echo chamber: To combat endless feeds of one-sided data, Sunstein suggests an ‘architecture of serendipity’
  17. Platforms, Networks, and Information Literacy
  18. It’s Time to Stop Blaming Social Media for Political Polarization: New research shows that spending less time online is just as bad.
  19. The Like Button Ruined the Internet: How “engagement” made the web a less engaging place
  20. Pope cautions youths about social media’s “false image of reality”: “Don’t let yourselves be led astray,” Francis says.
  21. Convicting cybercriminals no easy task, UBC prof says: Amanda Todd case shines light on how Canadian justice system deals with cybercrime
  22. Facebook Sued In Israel For Blocking All Links To Site Critical Of Facebook & Suggesting Site Was ‘Unsafe’
  23. Google, Facebook, Twitter must amend ToS for EU users or face fines: Trio given one month to clean up fraud, scams, and make other fixes.
  24. This Won’t Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank ‘Offensive’ Search Results
  25. Big Hollywood Studios Win Injunction Against Streamer VidAngel in Copyright Infringement Case 
  26. Hey That’s Me Drinking That Beer! UGC Rights at Issue in Beer/Photo Lawsuit 
  27. eBook Pirates Tend To Be Older And Well Off, Which Means They Pirate Because Of Human Intuition On Economics
  28. University Puts 20,000 Lectures Behind A Registration Wall In Response To DOJ Pressure On Website Accessibility Compliance
  29. Judge Balks At Section 230 Protection For Email Forwarding–Samsel v. DeSoto County School District (Eric Goldman)
  30. Chinese Website Operator Dismissed from Copyright Infringement Suit in United States
  31. Australia’s Prime Minister Supports Expanded Safe Harbor Protections Down Under
  32. Bill Gates And Other Major Investors Put $52.6 Million Into Site Sharing Unauthorized Copies Of Academic Papers
  33. Ed Sheeran Vs. The CopyBots: Artist Goes To Bat For Musician That Covered His Song On Facebook
  34. How Drones Help Transparency Activists To See Things The Hungarian Government Wants To Hide
  35. Class-action lawsuit targets LG over legendary G4, V10 bootloop issues – Suit: LG replaced phones with faulty ones—didn’t replace out-of-warranty devices.
  36. Keyword ads — Only infringing if they’re confusing
  37. Apple illegally fixed prices of iPhones in Russia, investigation finds: Apple contacted retailers who were selling the iPhone at “inappropriate” prices.
  38. Apple sold $4.2 billion of product in New Zealand, paid $0 local taxes: “Their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers.”
  39. 10 media trends for 2017 and beyond
  40. I used YouTube Red for months—here’s why I cancelled my subscription: Another $10-per-month service that isn’t totally worth it yet.
  41. Insights: The Great SVOD Land Rush – British Invasions And The OTT Channel Grab
  42. Researchers Just Unveiled a New Li-Fi System That’s 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi
  43. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Movie Theaters Haven’t Innovated Beyond Popcorn
  44. Tim League Refutes Netflix’s Reed Hastings On Movie Theater Innovation
  45. The Corrupt Personalization of Netflix: The company embodies one of the most seductive myths of the algorithmic age.
  46. Tech and Entertainment in the ‘Era of Mass Customization’
  47. Microsoft and Sony set sights on the Netflix model: A subscription service providing ongoing revenue could be a win-win for creators and platform holders; can MS or Sony make this model work?
  48. MLB Network Launches On PlayStation Vue With Exclusive World Baseball Classic Coverage
  49. Microsoft’s silence over unprecedented patch delay doesn’t smell right: Canceling Patch Tuesday at the last minute warrants an explanation, not platitudes.
  50. Red Flag Windows: Microsoft modifies Windows OS for Chinese government – Chinese government blocked Microsoft product purchases after NSA leaks.
  51. NFL ‘Intent On Staying Contemporary’ With Technology After Streaming Games On Twitter
  52. What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know: Big Data has transformed everything from sports to politics to education. It could transform mental-health treatment, too—if only psychologists would stop ignoring it.
  53. The Long, Weird History Of Companies That Put Your Life Online
  54. In 2010, The Social Network was searing — now it looks quaint
  55. Software used to predict crime can now be scoured for bias
  56. Which lawyers will win or lose in front of which judges? There’s now an app to predict that
  57. Transhumanism Is the Next Step in Human Evolution
  58. Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity Will Happen by 2045
  59. What Rights Should We Give to Sentient Robots?
  60. When beauty is in the eye of the (robo)beholder: Beauty.AI saw a lucrative problem and tried solving via algorithms. It ended poorly.
  61. IP for AI: can we patent an artificial human expert?
  62. SEC Issues Guidance on Robo-Advisers
  63. How Aristotle Created the Computer: The philosophers he influenced set the stage for the technological revolution that remade our world.
  64. Budget 2017: Why Canada’s Digital Policy Future Is Up For Grabs (Michael Geist)
  65. How Navdeep Bains Can Get His #Innovation Groove Back (Michael Geist)
  66. Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality (Mark A. Lemley & Eugene Volokh)

CREATIVITY

  1. Supreme Court Says Decorative Fashion Design Elements Protected By Copyright Law
  2. Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. (Supreme Court Of The United States)
  3. Cheerleading company can get copyrights, pursue competitors, Supreme Court says: The high court ponders copyrighted uniforms, Van Gogh, and cat-shaped lamps.
  4. Supreme Court Says Patent Trolls Can Wait A While Before Suing
  5. Protect Fair Dealing – Canada’s Upcoming Copyright Act Review
  6. Filmmaker challenges court injunction on Vancouver Aquarium documentary: BC Civil Liberties says the injunction could endanger free speech
  7. The Media Scores a “Win” at the Texas Supreme Court
  8. Judge Decides Free Speech Is Still A Right; Dumps Prior Restraint Order Against Mattress Review Site
  9. Appeals Court Says Prior Restraint Is Perfectly Fine, Refuses To Rehear 3D-Printed Guns Case
  10. Released Russian Putin Critic Recalls Prison Torture: Ildar Dadin says he was transferred to a penal colony where prison guards tortured inmates while accompanied to music of Putin’s favorite rock group
  11. Garry Kasparov on the press and propaganda in Trump’s America
  12. China Clamps Down On Another Serious Threat To The Middle Kingdom: Western Animal Cartoon Books For Children
  13. Iconic movie scene allows copyright but not TM claim against multimedia installation: Harold Lloyd Entertainment, Inc. v. Moment Factory One, Inc., No. LA CV15-01556, 2015 WL 12765142 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 29, 2015) (Rebecca Tushnet)
  14. Disney Hit With Lawsuit Claiming ‘Zootopia’ Ripped Off ‘Total Recall’ Writer
  15. Jeff Koons LLC and the Centre Pompidou are both found liable for copyright infringement in Paris court case: The lawsuit concerns the reproduction of a sculpture by Koons that resembles a picture by the French photographer Jean-François Bauret
  16. Spain: The battle around the “Kukuxumusu Universe” and the right of transformation, can the artist’s personal style be limited?
  17. Copyright case against U2 latest to test boundary of originality and creativity
  18. Scare Tactics Down Under: The Ongoing Global Effort to Mislead on Canadian Copyright (Michael Geist)
  19. Marrakesh Treaty For Blind Readers Jeopardised By EU Publishing Industry Lobbying, Group Says
  20. Mormon Church Tries To Censor MormonLeaks Using Copyright, Streisand Effect Takes Over
  21. Sports Photographer: Don’t Mess with My Copyright
  22. Photographer hits retailer over photo of player hitting Joey Bats
  23. How The Grateful Dead Revolutionized Rock and Created Modern Jam Bands
  24. How News Organizations Inadvertently Spread “Alternative Facts”: The way they construct stories makes it likely that readers will believe things that aren’t true
  25. How the New York Times’ mobile-first strategy has turned millennials into its biggest audience
  26. How TiVo Confronted the Disruptor’s Dilemma
  27. SXSW has been s____ing over artists since way before the visa controversy
  28. Creating in an Age of Anxiety, Depression, and Dread: Anxiety can lead to better art, but do the two have to be so mutually intertwined?A Transactional Theory of the Reader in Copyright Law (Zahr K. Said)
  29. Reading the Readers (Andrew Gilden)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal: “Our client has now been in custody for almost 18 months,” defense attorney says.
  2. Third Circuit Appeals Court Says All Writs Orders Can Be Used To Compel Passwords For Decryption
  3. California court declines request to unmask author of anonymous post
  4. Just Prior To Hearing Over NSL Gag Orders, Court Allows Cloudflare & CREDO Mobile To Be Named As Plaintiffs
  5. TSA explains why it won’t allow electronics on some USA-bound flights
  6. McDonald’s Says Twitter Account Compromised After Anti-Trump Post
  7. Rep. Devin Nunes’ Hypocrisy On Display In ‘Concerns’ Over NSA Surveillance
  8. Court Says FBI Doesn’t Have To Hand Over Its Rules For Surveilling Domestic Journalists
  9. The New Handbook For Cyberwar Is Being Written By Russia: “It’s not that the Russians are doing something others can’t do,” a US intelligence officer said. “It’s that Russian hackers are willing to go there, to experiment and carry out attacks that others countries would back away from.”
  10. Hackers Stole My Website…And I Pulled Off A $30,000 Sting Operation To Get It Back1
  11. Smart Vibrator Company To Pay $3.75 Million For Private Data Collection
  12. Is New York Poised to Adopt a Right to be Forgotten?
  13. Privacy in VR Is Complicated and It’ll Take the Entire VR Community to Figure It Out
  14. 6 Great TV Series About Privacy and Security

Jon

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Class 11 Slides

For the first time ever my slides maxed over the upload limit even when “Reduce File Size…” was applied maximally. So they had to be split into two parts. First “Logistics & News of the Week” and then the main piece. Here they are…

Jon

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Ontario Court of Appeal upheld Vice production order ruling

The Ontario Court of Appeal released a decision today, in which they upheld the lower Court’s ruling that forced a Vice reporter to hand over some materials to the RCMP. Interesting to see if it does end up going to the SCC.

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