DIGITAL
- Microsoft exec: We stopped Russia from hacking 3 congressional campaigns
- Yes, Russians Hacked U.S. Electric Companies, Homeland Security Confirms
- Breaking With 30 Years Of Traditional Opacity, DOJ Releases FISA Warrant Applications For Surveillance Of Carter Page
- Wikileaks Refused To Publish Manafort Family Texts, So Someone Else Did
- Digital age reinforces the need for judiciary to act as a bulwark against tyranny
- The ‘Guerrilla’ Wikipedia Editors Who Combat Conspiracy Theories
- How Silicon Valley Turned Evil: What Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Elon Musk can learn from their predecessors – before they destroy the world.
- Is Any Press Really Good Press? California Supreme Court Rules on Fate of Defamatory Yelp Reviews
- Facebook stock dives nearly 20% on warning of slow revenue growth
- Facebook Just Learned The True Cost Of Fixing Its Problems
- Facebook Sets Up China Subsidiary to Build Local Innovation Hub
- After a single day, Facebook is pushed out of China again
- Facebook follows SpaceX and OneWeb into high-speed satellite broadband
- Senators Wyden & Rubio Ask Google And Amazon To Bring Back Domain Fronting
- Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter partner for ambitious new data project: An open-source collaboration for ‘the future of portability’
- Study: Analysis of top Facebook pages covering American political news – Study of 463 leading Facebook pages shows that partisan pages have roughly equal engagement, but right-wing pages drastically outnumber left-wing pages
- Facebook bows to WA state pressure to remove “discriminatory” ad filters
- Facebook’s Fight Against Fake News Keeps Raising Questions
- Departing Facebook Security Officer’s Memo: “We Need To Be Willing To Pick Sides”: In a brutally honest note about his departure, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos calls on his colleagues “to intentionally not collect data where possible”
- Listen To Stephen Fry Perfectly Analogize The Moral Panics Around Facebook To The Ones Over The Printing Press
- Should Your Family Be Able to Inherit Your Facebook Messages?
- Appeals Court Won’t Yet Review Awful District Court Decision That Says Embedding Could Be Infringement
- Does the Public Have a First Amendment Right to Post Comments on a Public Official’s Twitter Feed? First Amendment Challenges to Social Media Access in the 21st Century
- Twitter courted comedians, then the opposition: How jokes became ammo during the social media platform’s shift from distraction to political warzone
- Was It Ethical For Dropbox To Share Customer Data With Scientists?
- The Internet Apologizes …:Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong – from the architects who built it.
- Cyberbullying
- Leaders Who Pledged Not To Build Autonomous Killing Machines Are Ignoring The Real Problem
- U.S. Department of Defense Established A Center To Better Integrate AI
- ‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong
- We Need Transparency in Algorithms, But Too Much Can Backfire
- Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary
- Advertiser’s Suit Against Google Loses for Third (and Final) Time–Abid v. Google
- Google Wants You to Use Physical Security Keys So Bad It’s Willing to Sell You One
- Google launches “Shielded VMs” to protect cloud servers from rootkits, data theft
- Big News: Big Internet Platforms Making It Easy To Move Your Data Somewhere Else
- Science Fiction Is Not Social Reality: The tech industry is inspired to create our world from linear, scripted science fiction stories.
- Delete your account: It’s a “great shame,” says Silicon Valley insider Jaron Lanier, that so much of big tech’s AI has been aimed at manipulating you.
- Brainwashing your wife to want sex? Here is adtech at its worst
- Resale Price Maintenance, Pricing Algorithms and Monitoring Software: a Recipe for Disaster
- DARPA Is Funding Research Into AI That Can Explain What It’s “Thinking”
- Robots And Racism (Bartneck, C., Yogeeswaran, K., Ser, Q. M., Woodward, G., Sparrow, R., Wang, S., & Eyssel, F.)
- Influence and responsibility: New Canadian influencer marketing guidelines emerge
- The Database: A Look At The Growing World Of Streaming And Over-The-Top Video
- Mozilla Exec Says YouTube Runs Five Times Slower Than Chrome On Firefox, Offers Solution
- YouTube Streams Over 180 Million Hours to TV Screens Every Day
- YouTube Deletes Videos Posted by Infowars, Suspends Alt-Right Channel From Live-Streaming
- YouTube Issues Another Strike Against InfoWars For Hate Speech, Child Endangerment
- Documentary Series ‘Best Shot,’ Co-Produced By Lebron James, Tips Off On NBA YouTube Channel
- YouTube Will Distribute Grants To Education-Focused Channels Via ‘YouTube Learning’ Fund
- YouTube shuts down FamilyOFive channel over ‘child endangerment’ concerns
- YouTube Finally Terminates Channels Belonging To Notorious ‘DaddyOFive’ Parents
- YouTube Blocks ‘FamilyOFive’ Account of Parents Convicted of Child Neglect
- Carrie Hope Fletcher Urges Boycott Of Fellow YouTuber Alex Day’s Upcoming Book
- Ahead Of Boxing Match, Deji Olatunji Says He’s Being Sued For Greg Paul Press Conference Assault
- Logan Paul And KSI Have Launched A Pay-Per-View YouTube Channel Dedicated To Their Upcoming Boxing Match
- YouTube Is Reportedly Combatting Instagram’s IGTV By Cutting Six-Figure Checks To Creators
- YouTube Experimenting With ‘Explore’ Tab To Expose Viewers To Broader Video Variety
- What would you do if your teenager became an overnight Instagram sensation?
- Mac ’n Cheese bubbles over in Instagram copyright dispute
- GoDaddy & Instagram Avoid Liability for Users’ Photos of Knockoff Goods–Franklin v. X Gear 101
- Insights: As Subscriptions Drain Wallets, Ad-Supported Online Services Find New Fans
- Netflix Launches Its First European Production Hub in Madrid
- Shonda Rhimes’ Eight-Show Netflix Slate Has A Some Romance, Some History, Some Intrigue
- Petition To Halt Release Of Netflix Series ‘Insatiable’ Garners 123,000 Signatures
- Netflix Will Enable Subscribers To Use Its Popular Characters As Their Profile Icons
- Sony Looking To Sell Stake In Crackle And Onboard Strategic Partner (Report)
- Musical.ly Reportedly Shut Down Live.ly Because Its Owner Didn’t Want A LiveMe Competitor
- How radio found new life on the internet and changed music discovery forever
- Twitch Launches Creator Camp Channel To Help Its Users Become Better Streamers
- Snapchat Opens A Private Marketplace For Brands To Buy Ads In Discover Shows
- Snapchat and Nielsen Partner to Integrate Offline Data For Audience Targeting
- Snapchat is shutting down Snapcash
- Snapchat starts to syndicate video shows on Discover
- Snapchat Is Launching A Show Where Parents Look At Their Kids’ Dating App Profiles
- Sony’s Monstrous New Smartphone Camera Sensor Could Make Us Care About Megapixels Again
- Research Confirms The Anecdotal Evidence: Internet Content Filters Are A Waste Of Money
- ‘Piracy Audiences Are Untapped Pools of Wealth’
- Chinese Citizens Are Using Blockchain to Warn Each Other of Unsafe Vaccines
- CSA reinforces position that securities laws apply to cryptocurrency offerings, confirms regulatory scrutiny for industry participants
- Hacker Exposes Security Vulnerability in Popular Cryptocurrency Site Etherscan
- The Role of IP in the Crypto Bubble
- Declining cryptocurrency prices are making graphics cards affordable again
- Behold This Disastrously Bad Op-Ed Calling for Amazon to Replace Libraries
- Amazon Studios’ Top Film Executive Is Departing Amid Strategic Shift
- Best Buy Should Be Dead, But It’s Thriving in the Age of Amazon: The big-box retailer doesn’t just want to sell you electronics. It wants its in-home consultants to be “personal chief technology officers.”
- Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress With Mugshots
- Can We Make Non-Racist Face Recognition?
- For One Last Night, Make It a Blockbuster Night: Everything is 10 years behind in Alaska—including the way people see movies.But now, the late fees are finally coming due, and the end of the Blockbuster era is upon us.
- Click-wraps the way of the future ‒ but make sure they’re legal
- A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
CREATIVITY
- The value of a copyrighted photograph is not necessarily in the eye of the beholder
- When Does “All” Mean All?
- Tesla clears the air with “farting unicorn” artist after copyright stink
- Au Revoir, Droit de Suite—9th Circuit Narrows California Resale Royalty Act to a Single Year’s Sales
- South Africa’s Proposed Fair Use Right In Copyright Bill Is Surprisingly Good — At The Moment
- False Advertising in a Movie Trailer?
- Who owns the Roger Federer RF monogram trade mark?
- Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next?
- The View From Somewhere: The Press Needs To Be Anti-Partisan, Not Bi-Partisan
- Cambodian Government Latest To Stifle Press With ‘Fake News’ Legislation
- The Daily News Was Superman’s Paper – Tronc Fed It Kryptonite: The owners fired half the paper’s staff Monday in a savage move that not only guts the newspaper, but also drastically diminishes the reporting of New York City.
- Tronc Is Incompetent, but Gutting Newsrooms Is Just Normal Capitalism
- If You’re A Journalist Hiring Lawyers To Intimidate Publishers Into Killing Stories About Your Misdeeds, You’re A Hypocrite
- Disney confirms Guardians director fired over years-old tweets
- James Gunn Will No Longer Direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in the Wake of Appalling Tweets
- Hollywood’s Zero-Tolerance on Racism, Sexism Is the New Normal
- The US Army Gets Armistice With NHL Team Over ‘Golden Knights’ Trademark
- Four ways President Trump is changing prime time TV
- The Propaganda Films That Saved Walt Disney’s Cartoon Empire
- Marvel Offers Grief Counseling at Comic-Con for Fans Traumatized by the End of Infinity War
- Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?
- The Standard Consent Agreement That Protects Sacha Baron Cohen
- The death of Don Draper: Advertising, once a creative industry, is now a data-driven business reliant on algorithms. The implications are deeply sinister – not only for the consumer but for democracy itself.
- How The Global Music Copyright Business Grew By $1.5bn In 2016 (And Why That’s Amazing News Today)
- Blurred Lines Between Inspiration and Infringement: Ninth Circuit Holds “Blurred Lines” Infringes Copyright
- You Don’t Need to Be a Musician to Get a Record Deal in 2018: Streaming has upturned music’s status quo – and labels are looking farther afield for truly fresh talent
- Trying to protect – and expand – Cuba’s undiscovered musical legacy
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Court Rules Quebec Plan for Mandated ISP Blocking of Online Gambling Sites is Unconstitutional
- A $250,000 Reminder that “CASL” is Not Just an AntiSpam Law
- CRTC Issues Penalties to Middle Men Under CASL to Combat Malware Installation
- Audio Bulletin – CRTC Issues Penalties to Middle Men Under CASL to Combat Malware Installation
- How far will the FCC pursue Sinclair Broadcasting’s “misrepresentations” now that Trump has intervened?
- FCC votes against Sinclair/Tribune merger, likely dooming deal
- FCC Confirms Sinclair Misled Agency To Try And Get Its Megamerger Approved
- Trump tweets anger at FCC after Pai blocks Sinclair/Tribune merger
- Comcast Drops Its Bid to Buy Fox, Meaning There’s Nothing Stopping the Disney Deal Now
- Comcast admits defeat in bidding war for Fox, clearing path for Disney
- Ajit Pai gets message from his hometown ISP: Don’t hurt us small ISPs
- Viacom in Talks to Buy AwesomenessTV
- Viacom In Advanced Talks To Acquire AwesomenessTV (Report)
- Verizon Took A $658 Million Hit “Mainly Related To The Discontinuation” Of Go90
- FCC will now take your comments on whether to allow T-Mobile/Sprint merger
- Wireless Carriers Have A SIM Hijacking Problem They Don’t Want To Talk About
- Massachusetts Just The Latest State To Embrace Net Neutrality
- India Embraces Full Net Neutrality As The U.S. Runs The Opposite Direction
- NYC Will Stop Gouging Incarcerated New Yorkers For Calling Home
- Personal liability for directors over nuisance calls
- Sen. Ron Wyden On Breaking Up Facebook, Net Neutrality, And The Law That Built The Internet
- Survey: 5.4 Million Americans Will Cut The Cable TV Cord In 2018
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Canadian Court Affirms Citizens Still Have An Expectation Of Privacy In Devices Being Repaired By Third Parties
- Toronto Approves Gunshot-Detecting Surveillance Tech Days After Mass Shooting: Rattled by a string of gun violence this year, Toronto just approved ShotSpotter, a US-based audio surveillance system that purports to detect the sound of gunshots.
- Public Facebook Profiles Not Equivalent to Public Information Under PIPEDA
- Texas Judges Continue To Turn Expungement Orders Into ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Requests
- Snoopware installed by 11 million+ iOS, Android, Chrome, and Firefox users
- Decade-old Bluetooth flaw lets hackers steal data passing between devices
- Today’s the day that Chrome brands plain old HTTP “not secure”
- In the Internet of Things, Opportunities Abound for Class Action Litigation
- UK Court Rules a Suspect in a Criminal Investigation has Reasonable Expectation it will be Kept Private
- UK Judge Says Accurate Journalism Is An Invasion Of Privacy In Cliff Richard Case
- Congratulations and Celebrations to Sir Cliff Richards in High Court Privacy Success
- Sir Cliff Richard wins landmark privacy battle against the BBC
- Privacy Cliff’s courageous battle with the BBC brings the right outcome
- Federal Judge Blasts FBI, Agent For Breaking The Law When Seeking Stingray Warrants
- 24 people have now been sentenced in India-based phone-scam case
- This school scans classrooms every 30 seconds through facial recognition technology
- Uber, Lyft driver booted after newspaper reveals he was livestreaming passengers
- Venmo’s terrible idea
- British Airways asked customers to post personal information on Twitter ‘to comply with GDPR’
- Irish Lawmakers Realizing The GDPR’s Consent Requirements Seem A Bit Onerous, Want To ‘Infer’ Consent
- Demonstrating Compliance with both GDPR and CCPA
- Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Protection Alert: California Consumer Privacy Act
- Once Again…California Sets the Tone for U.S. Data Privacy
- California Passes Groundbreaking Data Privacy Law with an Expansion of Consumers’ Privacy Rights
- A First (But Very Incomplete) Crack at Inventorying the California Consumer Privacy Act’s Problems
- The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan: The small satellite network, which keeps global computer systems from freaking out, is shockingly vulnerable to all kinds of interference.
- Ars on your lunch break: The consequences of a government genetic database
GAMES
- Two Researchers Challenged a Scientific Study About Violent Video Games – and Took a Hit for Being Right: How two researchers paid a price for challenging a retracted study about violent video games.
- Nintendo files lawsuit against two popular ROM websites
- Nintendo to ROM sites: Forget cease-and-desist, now we’re suing
- Nintendo files copyright infringement lawsuit against two console ROM websites: LoveROMs and LoveRETRO are “among the most open and notorious online hubs for pirated video games” says platform holder
- Roblox: “Our work on safety is never-ending” – Developer behind popular kids game responds to recent gang rape incident, reiterates that hacker behind it has been banned
- Roblox on track to pay in-game devs $70M in 2018, more than double 2017’s payout
- Blind Mind Studios releases source code for Star Ruler 2
- PUBG Corp apologizes, removes offensive Japanese mask from game
- PUBG developer apologies after controversial World War II references found in game: Purchasable mask and AI bot caused offence across Korea and China with allusions to Imperial Japan
- Video chat with PUBG creator: “We could put battle royale in everything”
- PUBG Mobile reaches $30M in revenue 4 months after launch
- How Landfall accidentally struck a vein with a joke battle royale game
- Valve bans over 90,000 Steam accounts in one week
- 90,000 Steam accounts banned in Valve’s biggest anti-cheat purge to date: Just under 30,000 cheaters dealt with on Wednesday, followed by a record-breaking 60,000 yesterday
- Psyonix shares Rocket League loot box drop rates ahead of progression overhaul
- Dota 2 loot boxes now reveal contents ahead of purchase for Dutch players
- Niantic introduces three-strike policy for cheaters inPokémon Go
- Niantic outlines Pokemon Go cheating policy: Developer offers clarity on three-strike disciplinary system as ban waves ramp up
- Guiding children towards healthy gaming: “We have amazing materials for parents, we need to shout about them much more,” says Andy Robertson
- For the record: Report on Saudi Arabia ban of 47 games inaccurate
- Rebuilding MidBoss – Interim CEO and creative director discuss trying to save the 2064: Read Only Memories studio after sexual harassment and employee mistreatment scandal
- Gaming’s toxic men, explained: Experts tackle the phenomenon of angry men, trolls, racists and misogynists who hover around the video game industry
- The GamesIndustry.biz Careers Survey 2018: Lower pay but less crunch
- Studio Pixel Punk: Getting diversity right means going beyond “good intentions”
- 2K’s light slate belies bigger ambitions: President David Ismailer discusses publisher’s plans to grow, how it evaluates development partners, and thoughts on esports betting
- International Olympic Committee hosts forum to discuss esports: Riots Games CEO hopes forum might lead to esports “being more legitimised the world over”
- Esports Could Enter The Olympics Fray By The 2024 Summer Games In Paris (Report)
- James Ohlen: Anthem failure won’t mean the end of BioWare – Long-serving designer also disputes “conspiracy theories” that EA is driving studio away from story-driven RPGs
- Bandai Namco: “We want 50% of our games to be new IP” – Digital and marketing VP Hervé Hoerdt details how the Japanese publisher plans to create new brands that yield movies, toys and more
- Bandai Namco Amusement Lab Inc. established for VR arcade development
- Bandai Namco establishes new development team for VR, AR, MR: Bandai Namco Amusement Lab Inc. will focus on XR experiences primarily for arcades
- This VR Horror Game Is Exactly as Scary as Your Body Can Handle
- The Magic Hustle: Magic Leap not so Magical – Silicon Valley Global News SVGN.io
- Unity: “Games wouldn’t see the light of day” without asset stores – Asset Store boss Peter O’Reilly on the misconception around “asset flips”, and why Unity won’t match the Unreal Marketplace’s 88/12 revenue split
- Minecraft most downloaded Switch game in Japan so far this year: Retail version beats out all other packaged software for 2018 after less than one month on store shelves
- Blog: Breath of the Wild and the Montessori method
- Octopath Traveler impresses in European charts
- Square Enix bets on game streaming with Blacknut partnership
- Square Enix partners with Blacknut for cloud gaming: Partnership will bring Lara Croft Go, Hitman Go, more to Blacknut-supported devices
- UK Charts: Crash Bandicoot holds No.1 as Xbox exclusives dominate Top Ten
- Microsoft’s streaming Xbox will split up games to keep latency low
- Forward-box: Xbox Adaptive Controller’s packaging is a good Microsoft move
- Designing accessible packaging for the Xbox One Adaptive Controller
- Candy Crush Saga revenue spikes 18% in Q2 to over $200m: King’s six-year-old game ranked No. 7 for global app spending and No. 6 for games
- Next Games looks to The Walking Dead for growth after €7m H1 loss
- Layoffs at OnRush developer after racer fails to gain traction
- Onrush struggles lead to Evolution layoffs: Driveclub director Paul Pustchynsky among those who have been made redundant as Codemasters “decapitates” studio
- Raiders of the Broken Planet going free-to-play less than a year after launch: MercurySteam’s online shooter also rebranding as Spacelords as of August 23rd, director says episodic model “didn’t work as planned”
- Apple promotes iPhone gaming performance with new ad
- Analyst: Fortnite now rakes in $2 million per day on iOS alone
- Fortnite daily mobile revenue reaches $2m: Launch of Season 5 sets new record of $3 million revenue in a single day
- Why the world loves “Fortnite” and I don’t
- Epic releases postmortem for Fortnite’s playground mode
- How Fortnite Captured Teens’ Hearts and Minds: The craze for the third-person shooter game has elements of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and eating Tide Pods.
- Video: The unconventional launch of Fortnite
- Report: Epic’s net worth could rise to $8B thanks toFortnite
- Breaking down Azeroth’s gates: Nostalgia is a powerful force for millions of former WoW players; but to convince them that they can re-engage without facing a time-sink, Blizzard needs to innovate once more
- In A New Game Available On YouTube, Video URLs Are Hidden Inside Puzzles
- YouTube Stars Kristopher London, Jesser Play ‘NBA 2k19’ With The Lakers, Get Scanned Into The Game
- Matthew Patrick Announces The Passing Of Game Theorists Editor Ronnie “Oni” Edwards
- Halo devs not working on battle royale mode for Infinite
- Rockfish: Live Steam broadcasting will change the game for indie marketing – Valve’s store page streaming beta helped Everspace to its highest ever single-day revenue, says CEO Michael Schade
- Blog: Being a solo indie in a post-Steam Greenlight world
- Oculus Go supporting otherwise faltering VR headset market: Q2 shipments show waning interest in VR as Pokemon Go continues to popularize AR
- No Man’s Sky Next update attracts over 40,000 players on Steam
- Bethesda unlikely to use external developers in future
- Bethesda’s growth makes it ‘less likely’ it’ll let external devs tackle its IP
- Google Play continues to widen global download gap with iOS: Android storefront saw over 20 billion app downloads in Q2, iOS downloads around 8 billion
- Microsoft ends fiscal year with $10 billion in games revenue, more Xbox Live users
- Microsoft annual gaming revenue tops $10 billion: Xbox maker’s full-year results show year-over-year growth in sales, Xbox Live active users
- Jurassic World Evolution hits one million sales
- Jurassic World Evolution has sold over 1 million copies
- Defiance 2050 developer Trion Worlds lays off 15 staff
- Trion Worlds eliminates 15 positions post-Defiance 2050 launch: MMO studio says round of layoffs necessary to enable continued development on upcoming projects
- UK tax breaks have helped finance 480 video games: In fact, more games have benefitted from tax relief than TV productions
- How piracy led to GOG encouraging DRM-free releases
- Muriel Tramis becomes second-ever game designer awarded the Legion of Honour
- Understanding the human cost of creating No Man’s Sky
- Writers discuss the evolving role narrative has in game development
- Former BioWare dev James Ohlen discusses creative freedom and burnout
- A quick word on which versions of Mega Man X Legacy Collection to get—or avoid
- The Game Outcomes Project: How teamwork, leadership and culture drive results
Jon
