News of the Week; July 10, 2019

DIGITAL

  1. Once Again, Russian Internet Propaganda Efforts Shown To Be Much Bigger Than Originally Believed
  2. Report: Russian intel started the Seth Rich rumor to cover for DNC hack – Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff claims SVR was the source of story in “ConspiracyLand” podcast.
  3. Appeals Court Affirms: Trump Can’t Block Followers On Social Media
  4. Pres. Trump Violates the Constitution By Blocking @RealDonaldTrump Followers–Knight First Amendment v. Trump
  5. Trump’s Twitter blocks violate First Amendment rights, appeals court affirms
  6. Prenda Law porn-troll saga ends with prison for founder
  7. Prenda’s John Steele Gets 5 Years In Prison; Insists He’s Really, Really, Really Sorry
  8. CBP Agents Flocked To Closed Facebook Groups To Post Bigoted Memes And Insult Detainees
  9. If You Want To Kill Google And Facebook, Leaving Section 230 Alone Is Your Best Hope
  10. France wants to fine Facebook over hate speech: The measure would force companies to remove content within 24 hours, and was approved by the lower house of the French Parliament Thursday
  11. Governor Cuomo Calls For Investigation Into Facebook’s Advertising Practices
  12. Wellness startup’s generic Viagra ads flout Facebook rules
  13. Facebook Unveils New Monetization Tools, Including More Creator Control Over ‘Ad Breaks’
  14. Facebook says it will launch experimental apps under NPE Team name: Facebook experiments… what could go wrong?
  15. Facebook Announces Libra Cryptocurrency and Calibra Wallet 
  16. Why Libra Needs A Humanitarian Fig Leaf
  17. SEC Sues Social Media Co. Over $100 Million ICO
  18. Computer from NASA’s Apollo program reprogrammed to mine bitcoin
  19. Web Scraping Decisions Consider Contract Cause of Action 
  20. Comments on Sen. Hawley’s “[Ending] Support for Internet Censorship Act” (Eric Goldman)
  21. Politicians Queue Up To Make France’s Proposed Law Against ‘Hateful Content’ Far, Far Worse
  22. Could ‘fake text’ be the next global political threat?: An AI fake text generator that can write paragraphs in a style based on just a sentence has raised concerns about its potential to spread false information
  23. Amazon Workers Plan Prime Day Strike at Minnesota Warehouse
  24. Court rules Amazon can be held responsible for defective third-party goods
  25. Amazon May Be Liable for Marketplace Items–Oberdorf v. Amazon (Eric Golman)
  26. “Close to 10%” of Autopilot software team reportedly departs after shakeup
  27. ‘Deep Fake’ Legislation Is On The Way, Threatening Free Speech Protections
  28. The UK’s Entire Approach To ‘Online Harms’ Is Backwards… And No One Cares
  29. UK ISPs Vilify Mozilla For Trying To Secure The Internet
  30. FTC Reportedly Considering Asking YouTubers To Turn Off Ads In The Name Of Child Privacy
  31. YouTube’s Cleanup Efforts Are Driving Business Opportunities for Creators, Says Product Chief Neal Mohan
  32. YouTube Updates Video Editing Tools, Allowing Creators To Automatically Release Manual Copyright Claims
  33. YouTube is making it much easier for creators to deal with copyright claims
  34. Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: The Case Of YouTube And ‘Hacking’ Videos
  35. Studio71 Signs Jacksepticeye, Joey Graceffa and Other YouTubers to Multichannel Network Roster
  36. Having 30,000 followers makes you a celebrity, UK advertising watchdog rules: The one time it might be ok to obsess over your follower count
  37. What Actually Counts As Good Engagement For Influencer Marketing?
  38. RTL Consolidates Digital Operations, Sets Ambitious Revenue Target
  39. Report: Struggling HQ Trivia developer cuts workforce by 20 percent 
  40. Layoffs at HQ Trivia as downloads continue to fall: Troubled mobile company streamlines as it shifts towards subscriptions
  41. Report: TikTok was installed 344m times in first half of 2019
  42. TikTok Is A Mostly Untapped Space For Western Ecommerce — But Chinese Companies Are Using It To Make Millions
  43. Russell Simmons-Founded All Def Digital Lays Off Staff in Reorg; CEO Claims Company Isn’t Shutting Down
  44. Mobile Content Vs. Short-Form – It’s Not the Same Thing 
  45. Beauty Brand Il Makiage Re-Launches Website With Micro Influencers To Solve Makeup’s Ecommerce Conundrum
  46. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Serena Williams to Create Shows for Snapchat
  47. Snapchat snaps up shows from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maddie Ziegler
  48. Snapchat Launches ‘Creator Shows’ From Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Serena Williams and Others – With Ad-Revenue Sharing Deals
  49. Snapchat Introduces New ‘Creator Shows’ Format With Emma Chamberlain, Rickey Thompson, FaZe Banks
  50. Snapchat is launching Creator Shows featuring stars and influencers: They’ll be five-minute shorts with around 10 episodes
  51. BuzzFeed Debuts First Snapchat Original, Weekday Trendy News Roundup ‘BTW’
  52. BBC Studios Invests in Short-Form Platform Quibi
  53. BBC Studios Invests In Quibi, Will Produce Original Nature Series ‘Fierce Queens’
  54. Why Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi Is Luring A-List Talent
  55. AT&T takes some Time Warner shows off Netflix, makes them exclusive to HBO Max
  56. Sony Pictures Buys Nurulize, a Virtual Production Software Startup
  57. IBM Patents a Watch That Unfolds Into a Full Tablet
  58. The computer conundrum: New technologies force the profession to deal with new ethical debates
  59. Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4
  60. Behold, the most (intentionally) poorly designed website ever created
  61. Penetration testing takes on new meaning when cyber meets Harlequin
  62. The DMCA bell did not toll for a beloved musician—thus, I could grieve him
  63. Third parties confirm AMD’s outstanding Ryzen 3000 numbers: AMD has pulled ahead of Intel for the first time in 20 years.
  64. Microsoft releases Windows 1.11 throwback app as a Stranger Things tie-in

A.I.

  1. Lennon or McCartney? Machine learning tries to crack disputed Beatles authorship: Researchers at Harvard analysed 8 songs to find out which Beatle wrote them
  2. AI made from a sheet of glass can recognise numbers just by looking
  3. Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes: Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint.
  4. Tiny robot leaps around carrying its own battery, electronics

COMMUNICATIONS

  1. What we Heard – The Report of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) Panel
  2. Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review: What We Heard Report   
  3. ‘Smoking gun’: Huawei staff employment records link them to Chinese military agencies
  4. “This is crazy”: FCC kills part of San Francisco’s broadband-competition law
  5. Killing Net Neutrality Rules Did Far More Harm Than You Probably Realize
  6. Amazon plans nationwide broadband—with both home and mobile service
  7. Amazon Jumps Into The Satellite Broadband Game
  8. AT&T’s robocall-blocking expansion won’t block spam calls unless you pay extra
  9. Coop Leader Testifies Regarding Inaccurate FCC Broadband Data 
  10. T-Mobile says it can’t be sued by users because of forced-arbitration clause
  11. Last Woman Standing: Belittled by Viacom and CBS executives and insulted by her own father, Shari Redstone now sits atop a $30 billion media empire.

PRIVACY

  1. Court: It’s Cool If The (Federal) Government Searches A Phone The (Local) Government Seized Illegally
  2. Breaching the GDPR won’t fly with the ICO
  3. British airways to be fined a record £183m for data breach
  4. British Airways faces record-breaking GDPR fine after data breach: The ICO wants to fine the airline £183 million
  5. New UK ICO guidance on cookies and similar technologies 
  6. GDPR: One Year On
  7. Can I buy a phone that doesn’t use anything from Google or Apple?: Steve does not like firms slurping up his data, so wants a device that respects his privacy
  8. Zoom for Mac made it too easy for hackers to access webcams. Here’s what to do [Updated]
  9. Silent Mac update nukes dangerous webserver installed by Zoom
  10. D-Link Settles With FTC, Agrees To Fix Its Shoddy Router Security
  11. Whitehats use DoS attack to score key victory against ransomware crooks
  12. Starter for five on Legislating the Internet of Things
  13. Months After The Law’s Enactment, California Law Enforcement Agencies Are Still Blowing Off Public Records Requests
  14. Voting Machine Makers Claim The Names Of The Entities That Own Them Are Trade Secrets
  15. Thinking Of Privacy As A Property Right Will End Badly

CREATIVITY

  1. In Canada and elsewhere, freedom of speech is on the endangered list
  2. Cameras should be welcomed in Canadian courtrooms: Forstner
  3. Health Canada’s new draft Guidance on Advertising versus Other Activities is now available
  4. New rules banning harmful gender stereotyping in advertising 
  5. Indonesian Court Convicts Woman Of Criminal Defamation For Recording Her Boss Trying To Harass Her Into An Affair With Him
  6. Big Fair Use Win Concerning Andy Warhol’s Paintings Of Prince
  7. Whose Game is on? Carrie Underwood and NBC sued over SNF song 
  8. Pirates of the Caribbean Copyright Suit Must Walk The Plank 
  9. Copyright Infringement Claims Precluded by Plaintiff’s Own Patent Lawsuit
  10. Supreme Court to consider Abrogation of Sovereign Immunity under Copyright Law
  11. Supreme Court to address Whether Copyright Protection available for Annotated State Code
  12. Breach of confidence, copyright and database rights: live sports data
  13. International trademarks: Is the Madrid System right for you?
  14. Vegan Food Manufacturers Sue State Over Unconstitutional Law Banning Them From Using Meat Words
  15. Sound, Noise, Distinguish? The relationship between sound and intellectual property law (Shane Burke)
  16. 1H 2019 Quick Links, Part 2 (Keyword Advertising) (Eric Goldman)
  17. 1H 2019 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trademarks) (Eric Goldman)

GAMES

  1. Sensor Tower: Gaming accounted for 75% of total mobile revenue so far in 2019 – Game spending reaches nearly $30 billion this year
  2. Developers and G2A clash over the impact of grey market keys on indies
  3. No More Robots petition demands G2A drop all indie games: Mike Rose claims retailer is “lying” about his lack of contact, and low sales of Descenders via its marketplace “isn’t the fucking point”
  4. G2A: “We want to finally stop the accusations” – Divisive marketplace addresses developer complaints after indies called for players to pirate games rather than purchase from G2A
  5. G2A: “It’s a good thing that people can re-sell keys” – Marketplace says it aims to present a solution to current controversy later this week
  6. G2A image rehabilitation effort backfires: Platform says employee approached 10 sites to run undisclosed sponsored post, says it was unauthorized, “absolutely unacceptable”
  7. Indie Publishers Tell Gamers To Pirate Instead Of Buying Keys Through Reseller G2A
  8. GameStop: “As new subscription services evolve, we’ll evolve along with them” – US retail giant talks about surviving the digital transition by turning stores into experiences
  9. Take This rounds up data on crunch and mental health in the game industry
  10. For Warframe, live support means seeing development as a marathon, not a sprint
  11. New executive directors named for both the IGDA and the IGDA Foundation
  12. China’s biggest game devs join forces to create new age rating system
  13. Microsoft and Sony reportedly scaling back console production in China: President Trump’s trade war causing further disruption in tech sector manufacturing
  14. Report: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo consider moving manufacturing out of China
  15. Nintendo will move parts of Switch production from China to Vietnam
  16. Nintendo moves some Switch production to Vietnam: Japanese publisher confirms the move is to diversify its manufacturing locations, and is unrelated to proposed tariffs
  17. “Xbox Game Pass is the first time subscription is fair for developers”: At Gamelab 2019, a panel of developers debated the breakthrough Microsoft has made with its subscription service
  18. Research lessons from the making (and near-breaking) ofHalo 2
  19. French government launches ‘Join the Game’ campaign to recruit game devs
  20. French government launches campaign to attract UK talent post-Brexit: UKIE CEO responds to Join the Game, which boasts tax breaks and funding for studios that relocate
  21. UK trade association asks government to counter France’s seduction of game devs
  22. TIGA calls for Video Game Investment Fund for UK devs to prevent post-Brexit exodus: “Governments in other jurisdictions will continue to seek to attract our successful studios and talented development staff”
  23. Yogscast cuts ties with Matthew ‘Caff’ Meredith after sexual harassment allegations: Meredith’s entire mod team abandons him as eight victims come forward in three days
  24. Obsidian has been “very careful” not to “lecture” players with politics in Outer Worlds: “I don’t want people to think this is a really hard, politically-charged game,” says co-director Leonard Boyarsky
  25. Google speaks to fuzzy game-ownership question in new Stadia FAQ
  26. tinyBuild CEO clears confusion on DRM stance after one rep says it’s “not smart business”: Alex Nichiporchik claims comments were result of not properly training community managers on the issue
  27. Hello Games: Positive No Man’s Sky stories “don’t do as well — and that’s a problem” – Sean Murray discussed his decision to stop talking to the press after the launch of No Man’s Sky
  28. League of Legends leads Fortnite as Twitch’s most viewed game of 2019
  29. League of Legends reclaims top spot on Twitch: Riot’s MOBA on track to exceed one billion hours viewed in 2019, as Fortnite begins to flag
  30. Former Riot and EA devs form new multiplayer studio, Vela Games
  31. Konami PES rebrand will help the series in Europe: “Talking about Pro Evolution Soccer — in Europe, it was always a tricky one”
  32. Former Paradox CEO defends studio’s continuous DLC model as ‘fair and balanced’
  33. Paradox’s Fredrik Wester defends company’s DLC policy:
  34. Former CEO says business model isn’t flawless but funds ongoing development and allows for experimentation
  35. The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast: Why people see EA as the “bad guys”
  36. Tencent, Chinese gaming companies push new age rating system: Proposed system would have four categories, spearheaded by publishers and developers
  37. Official StarCraft mod makes the game look like a Saturday morning cartoon
  38. Don’t Miss: Devs measure the enduring influence ofStarCraft
  39. When will Disney get back into video games? | Opinion: Suggesting Disney should buy Activision Blizzard is half correct; its gaming strategy needs re-evaluation, but that’s the wrong acquisition
  40. Artifact designer says game is salvageable, but isn’t interested in damage control: “Valve is a smart company with lots of smart people working there, I think that it’s possible they can do that,” says Richard Garfield
  41. Layoffs at Endless Entertainment: Mobile studios behind Series Your Story Universe dismisses seven staff due to slowdown in development cycle
  42. RuneScape dev Jagex sold by parent company for $530 million
  43. Glass Bottom Games on taking “the biggest possible swing” with Skatebird
  44. How Zachtronics makes its games so GIFable: Studio founder Zach Barth discusses why screenshots are more important for indies than trailers
  45. Zachtronics offers free educational licenses for all of its games: SpaceChem and Opus Magnum dev advises educators to “understand” the games before showing them to students
  46. Blog: Why Academia: School Simulator hasn’t done as well as similar games
  47. Nintendo is ‘investigating’ 5G and streaming tech, but refuses to ‘chase trends’
  48. Shigeru Miyamoto: Games will still be fun without streaming: Legendary Nintendo designer says “it may look like we’re falling behind” but platform holder is still keeping up with new tech like VR
  49. Nintendo Switch Online now has over 10 million subscribers
  50. Bethesda: “We are bringing some people to Nintendo Switch” – Pete Hines discusses building new IP, the potential of streaming, and its recent love for Nintendo
  51. Super Mario Maker 2 holds UK No.1 in strong week for Nintendo Switch: Handheld game sales rise as summer months roll on
  52. The compact Switch Lite is Nintendo’s newest dedicated handheld
  53. Nintendo confirms portable-only, $200 “Switch Lite” for September [Updated]
  54. Nintendo: The 3DS isn’t about to be replaced by the Switch Lite
  55. Crash Team Racing nitro-boosts to stay at the top of EMEAA charts
  56. Beat Saber dev Beat Games shuffles leadership as CEO steps down
  57. Report: Facebook Signs Deal for ‘Assassin’s Creed’ & ‘Splinter Cell’ VR Games
  58. Grab the new XRDC Healthcare Report and see how AR/VR is changing medicine!
  59. Play as Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand in Metal Gear Solid 5
  60. Gaming Luminary DanTDM Concludes Arena-Only U.K. Tour Dubbed ‘The Contest’
  61. DrLupo, Who Raised $920,000 In 4 Hours For St. Jude, Honored As Hospital’s First ‘Creator Of The Year’
  62. Cuphead has sold 4 million copies and has a Netflix adaptation on the way
  63. Cuphead the game is becoming Cuphead the animated Netflix series
  64. Cuphead getting Netflix series: Syndication company behind Betty Boop and Popeye helping adapt vintage cartoon-styled game that has now sold more than 4 million
  65. U.S. Patent No. 8,858,328: Storage medium having game program stored therein, hand-held game apparatus, game system, and game method 
  66. Shovel Knight has surpassed 2.5 million sales
  67. Mobile dev Million Victories raises $1.4 million
  68. Smite and Paladins developer Hi-Rez has opened its first UK studio
  69. Former Panic Button development director opens new studio Enduring Games
  70. My Friend Pedro’s journey from Flash cult hit to indie success
  71. Fall Guys developer Mediatonic cuts the ribbon on new Madrid studio
  72. Don’t Miss: How to design for coziness
  73. Don’t Miss: 50 common game camera mistakes — and how to fix them
  74. Don’t Miss: Monsters from the id: The making of the original Doom
  75. Blog: Generating world maps for Unexplored 2
  76. Watch Children of Morta’s lead dev explain its family-focused game design
  77. Video: Game design tools beyond spreadsheets and flowcharts 
  78. Exploring special game modes in a roguelike context
  79. Keywords Studios opens recording studio for game localization in Brazil
  80. Behind the 12-year-old Wii Sports hoax that briefly fooled the Internet
  81. Fixing the past: The art of collecting pinball machines

Jon