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  • Welcome Cohort 1, UBC Foundations of Digital Media

    Welcome to the website for the UBC flavour of Foundations of Digital Media. Am excited to meet you tomorrow and evolve this course together. The course has been taught in various forms at the Centre for Digital Media for a decade. Hardly an old dog, but nevertheless there are new tricks to be had. Let’s […] Read More

October 16 Presentation: Rosanna, Le Min, Hailey

By hailey mah on October 12, 2017

Outline for Oct. 16 Presentation by Rosanna Chung, Le Min Cheong, and Hailey Mah

Readings: 

Can Apple’s iPhone X Beat Facial Recognition’s Bias Problem? (Wired)

How Russia’s New Facial Recognition App Could End Anonymity (The Atlantic) 

Video:

How Does Facial Recognition Work? (7:26), BBC Earth Lab

 

 

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News of the Week; October 4, 2017

By Jon Festinger on October 10, 2017

DIGITAL

  1. Bad Info Follows Every Tragedy. Don’t Fall For It
  2. Google’s Top Stories Promoted Misinformation About the Las Vegas Shooting From 4Chan 
  3. Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news: 4chan was, for some reason, counted among Google News’ “authoritative” sources.
  4. The Death Loop
  5. This “Ghost Gun” Machine Now Makes Untraceable Metal Handguns
  6. Myanmar’s Internet Disrupted Society—And Fueled Extremists
  7. As US launches DDoS attacks, N. Korea gets more bandwidth—from Russia: Fast pipe from Vladivostok gives N. Korea more Internet in face of US cyber operations.
  8. Sirius XM Uses DMCA To Memory Hole Archive Of Howard Stern’s Interviews With Donald Trump
  9. Years of Howard Stern’s interviews with Trump now gone after DMCA takedown: “This is the only public version of a massive quarter century trove of interviews.”
  10. Former Revenge Porn Site Operator Readies For Senate Run By Issuing Bogus Takedown Requests To YouTube
  11. Copyright Troll Carl Crowell Ups The Ante: Now Demands Accused Pirates Hand Over Their Hard Drives
  12. Shouldn’t Federal Judges Understand That Congress Did Not Pass SOPA?
  13. ‘Six Strikes’ May Be Dead, But ISPs Keep Threatening To Disconnect Accused Pirates Anyway
  14. Supreme Court Won’t Review US Government Getting To Steal All Of Kim Dotcom’s Stuff
  15. Supreme Court won’t hear Kim Dotcom’s civil forfeiture case – Dotcom’s lawyer: “It is a bad day for due process and international treaties.”
  16. Supreme Court says live streaming would “adversely affect” oral arguments: Court wants transparency “while preserving the integrity of its proceedings.”
  17. Federal Court Rejects Absurd Attempt to Sue #BlackLivesMatter, the Hashtag
  18. Coffee Subscription Lawsuit Involving Negative Option Contracts a Wake-up Call for Online Sellers 
  19. Female ex-Oracle engineers sue for gender discrimination: Oracle, like Google, stands accused of paying women less than male equivalents.
  20. Why Tech Leadership Has A Bigger Race Than Gender Problem
  21. Oracle Tells The White House: Stop Hiring Silicon Valley People & Ditch Open Source
  22. Elsevier’s Latest Brilliant Idea: Adding Geoblocking To Open Access
  23. As ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Shows, The Streaming Exclusivity Wars Risk Driving Users Back To Piracy
  24. That Flag-Burning NFL Photo Isn’t Fake News. It’s A Meme
  25. Amazon’s First NFL Stream Posts Solid Numbers Despite Glitches, Paywall
  26. With 372,000 Average Viewers, Amazon Tops Twitter In First Stream Of NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football’
  27. Amazon’s Attribution Approach To Streaming NFL Games
  28. Couple Grifts Amazon Out of $1.2 Million in Electronics
  29. Facebook: Ten million people exposed to Russia-linked ads
  30. Why Trump Hate and Russian Ads Are Good for Facebook
  31. Russia’s Facebook Ads Will Remain Secret, For Now
  32. Russian Facebook ads featured anti-immigrant messages, puppies, women with rifles: See some of the ads used “to sow discord and chaos, and divide us from one another.”
  33. Facebook loses attention as publishers shift focus to other platforms
  34. Who Will Take Responsibility For Facebook?
  35. Google and Facebook Failed Us: The world’s most powerful information gatekeepers neglected their duties in Las Vegas. Again.
  36. Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?: The same company that gives you birthday reminders also helped ensure the integrity of the German elections.
  37. The U.S. Election System Remains Deeply Vulnerable, But States Would Rather Celebrate Fake Success
  38. Silicon Valley isn’t just disrupting democracy—it’s replacing it
  39. Trustworthy Networking
  40. How Vice reassures brand-safety conscious advertisers
  41. Uber Knew Its Self-Driving Guru Had Taken Google’s Trade Secrets, Report Says
  42. Waymo vs. Uber: unsealed court documents reveal damning evidence – Reports show lies, visits to shredder, and evasive texts 
  43. Google May Not Need A Smoking Gun To Win Its Case Against Uber
  44. Here’s the “due diligence” report Waymo hopes will win its case against Uber – Otto’s head of HR: “I’m gonna go get your stuff destroyed this afternoon btw.”
  45. Uber Charges Passenger Clueless About Surge Pricing $925 For Ride
  46. Uber expands board to 17 members, reduces Kalanick’s power: A month into new job, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is making his mark at Uber.
  47. Uber investors to former CEO: We’ll sue you if you don’t vote how we want: “Our clients have authorized us to pursue any and all legal recourse… ”
  48. Section 230’s Applicability to ‘Inconsistent’ State Laws 
  49. How Europe is going after big tech when no one else is
  50. Never Enough: EU Demands Social Media Companies Do The Impossible Even Faster
  51. Inmates Need Social Media. Take It From A Former Prisoner
  52. The Hardest Medium to Troll
  53. Microsoft Discontinues Groove Music, Partners With Spotify Instead
  54. Microsoft getting out of the music biz, moving Groove subs to Spotify: The app will stick around for local playback, but streaming is gone.
  55. Beauty for girls, pranks for boys – it’s the same old gender stereotypes for YouTube stars
  56. YouTube Adds iMessage Support To Make Sharing Videos Even Easier
  57. YouTube Restricts Externally-Linking End Cards (Include Those To Patreon) To Members Of Its Partner Program
  58. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Launches New Channel With Influencer-Packed Intro Video
  59. YouTube TV To Serve As Presenting Sponsor Of The 2017 World Series
  60. YouTube Grows Up: Inside the Plan to Take on Netflix and Hulu
  61. Stupid Patent Of The Month: Will Patents Slow Artificial Intelligence?
  62. EFF: Stupid patents are dragging down AI and machine learning – “The patent reads like the table of contents of an intro to AI textbook.”
  63. Sex Trafficking Experts Say SESTA Is the Wrong Solution
  64. Artificial Intelligence Is Our Future. But Will It Save Or Destroy Humanity?
  65. DeepMind wants to answer the big ethical questions posed by AI
  66. How To Build A Self-Conscious Machine
  67. The Myth Of A Superhuman AI
  68. In AI We Trust? (Urs Gasser)
  69. Mr. Know-It-All: Is It Ok For Me To Ask Customer Service Reps If They’re Robots?
  70. Google’s DeepMind Launches Ethics Group to Steer AI
  71. Google’s AI Still Isn’t Smarter Than a First Grader
  72. What Happened When I Wore Google And Levi’s “Smart” Jacket For A Night
  73. Google’s Gadget Vision: Same Stuff, Different Screens
  74. Google unveils a $249 smart camera that decides what’s worth photographing: You can leave it lying around or wear it.
  75. Google Pixel Buds are wireless earbuds that translate conversations in real time: Google Translate in your ears for $159.
  76. Chinese High-Tech Startups: Now More Copied Than Copying
  77. Showtime Won’t Explain Why Its Website Was Hijacking User Browsers To Covertly Mine Cryptocurrency
  78. South Korea joins China in banning coin offerings: Money has flooded in an “unproductive and speculative direction,” official says.
  79. Looking Through an IP Lens at Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
  80. Cryptocurrencies: securities law implications
  81. Cryptocurrency: A ‘Snap’ on Developments
  82. LG is releasing a mosquito-repellent phone, but it probably won’t work: It claims to repel mosquitoes with ultrasonic waves, but scientists are skeptical.
  83. How VR Saves Lives In The OR
  84. The 3 Biggest Challenges Facing Augmented Reality Today
  85. Where Are The Drones That Could Be Saving Puerto Rico?
  86. Stop The Endless Scroll. Delete Social Media From Your Phone
  87. The War on General-Purpose Computing Turns on the Streaming Media Box Community
  88. Spurs Pitched Austin As Tech Hub To Lure Iguodala From Warriors
  89. App Listening For Audio Beacons May Be Illegal Wiretapping–Rackemann v. Colts (Eric Goldman)

CREATIVITY

  1.  How The Supreme Court’s Continued Misunderstanding Of Copyright Ruined Halloween
  2. Crown copyright alive and well in new decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal (Teresa Scassa)
  3. The Eggshell Attorney General: Jeff Sessions wants a First Amendment that celebrates robust criticism of everyone but himself. 
  4. New York voters have no 1st Amendment right to snap ballot-booth selfies: “The State’s interest in the integrity of its elections is paramount,” court says.
  5. Kmart faces copyright lawsuit for selling the wrong banana costume: Copyright law has gone bananas after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.
  6. King’s College Football Coach Sued For Copyright Infringement For Retweeting A Book Page 2 Years Ago
  7. The Long Read: Confessions Of An English Music-Pirate
  8. Politics in the Workplace: Do NFL Players Have Freedom of Speech to Protest at Games?
  9. Police Chief Takes To Facebook To Complain About A Journalist Committing Journalism
  10. Judge: Barrett Brown donors can sue government over subpoenaed records – San Francisco activist led campaign to raise money for jailed journalist.
  11. The Trump Administration is Investigating the “Theft of IP” by China: What You Need to Know About Trademarks in China
  12. ASA cracking down on gender stereotypes in advertisements
  13. Unbalancing Act: How Conferences Perpetuate The Music Industry’s Gender Parity Crisis – Conferences have the opportunity to improve on reality’s mistakes. Unfortunately, the data shows otherwise.
  14. Lynda Carter to James Cameron: ‘Stop Dissing Wonder Woman, You Poor Soul’
  15. Remembering Tom Petty, Unlikely Video Pioneer

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. Globe editorial: A bad idea for ‘fixing’ Canada’s internet rules
  2. Joly’s Digital Cancon Plan: Netflix May Be The Star, But No New Regulations, Taxes or Bailouts is the Story (Michael Geist)
  3. Cancon 2.0 and the Netflix deal: The 10 key takeaways – On Thursday, the Heritage Minister unveiled ‘Creative Canada,’ the first major overhaul of the cultural funding regime in more than 25 years. Here’s what you need to know
  4. Five reasons to like Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s Netflix deal
  5. Netflix commits to a $400 million investment in Canadian film and TV: It’s the company’s first permanent production outside the US
  6. Netflix Canada and the Misleading Claims About “Level Playing Fields” (Michael Geist)
  7. The Launch of ‘Creative Canada’: Some Brief Thoughts Following the Minister’s Speech
  8. Canada’s Cultural Funding Regime Receives Overhaul
    ‘Creative Canada’ – More Musings
  9. Fake Data on Fakes: Digging Into Bell’s Dubious Canadian Piracy Claims (Michael Geist)
  10. Bell MTS hikes most of its rates
  11. Secretary of State refers Fox/Sky merger to the CMA on public interest grounds
  12. FCC chair accused of ignoring investment data in push to end net neutrality: Pai ignores cyclical nature of wireless network investment, critics say.
  13. ISPs want Supreme Court to kill Title II net neutrality rules now and forever: FCC may soon revoke net neutrality rules, but ISPs want immunity from regulation.
  14. Hoping The Third Time’s The Charm, ISPs Urge Supreme Court To Kill Net Neutrality
  15. Net neutrality debate ‘controlled by bots’
  16. Trump’s FCC Boss Blasts Apple For Refusing To ‘Turn On’ FM iPhone Chipsets That Don’t Actually Exist
  17. FCC chief Ajit Pai wants Apple to stop disabling FM radio chips in iPhones: Pai cites public safety concerns; Apple says new iPhones have no FM chip at all.
  18. Ajit Pai gets new term on FCC despite protest of anti-net neutrality plan: Democrats objected to Pai’s re-nomination, but Republicans had his back.
  19. Why some Senate Democrats voted to give Ajit Pai another term on FCC: Pai’s support mostly came from GOP senators, but four Democrats broke ranks
  20. Broadband Lobbyists Gush Over Re-Appointment Of Trump’s FCC Boss
  21. AT&T’s wireless home Internet, with 160GB cap, is now in 18 states: AT&T got nearly $3 billion federal subsidy to connect 1.1 million rural customers.
  22. As Broadband Usage Caps Expand, Nobody Is Checking Whether Usage Meters Are Reliable
  23. T-Mobile agrees to stop claiming its network is faster than Verizon’s: Verizon wins ruling as T-Mobile’s use of crowdsourced speed tests is criticized.
  24. What’s Going on With the Rumored, Not Good T-Mobile and Sprint Merger

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. So, Uh, That Billion-Account Yahoo Breach Was Actually 3 Billion
  2. Every Yahoo account that existed—all 3 billion—was compromised in 2013 hack: It’s official. If you had a Yahoo account in 2013, it was compromised.
  3. Hacks Are Always Worse Than Reported: All Of Yahoo Email Was Hacked In 2013. All. Of. It.
  4. NSA warned White House against using personal email: In briefings to incoming Trump aides, security officials highlighted the dangers of unsecured email and phones.
  5. NSA Warned Trump Staffers Against Personal Email/Device Use; Were Ignored
  6. The NSA Warned Jared Kushner Not to Do the Dumb Email Thing That He Then Did
  7. After Kushner’s private e-mail became known, it moved to Trump Org servers: In late September, it changed from outlook.com to mailhost01.trumporg.com.
  8. Well-Known Email Prankster Ends Up With Sensitive Document From Jared Kushner’s Lawyer
  9. Congressman demands to know if DHS will collect his social media history, too – Rep. Ted Lieu, naturalized American: “Does your proposed rule apply to me?”
  10. Use of Search Warrants to Create Trump Enemies List Continues
  11. Justice Department Demands Names of Thousands Who Liked Anti-Trump Facebook Page
  12. DOJ’s Facebook Warrants Target Thousands Of Users For Protesting Inauguration
  13. FOIA’ed Documents Show NSA Abuse Of Pen Register Statutes To Collect Content
  14. FBI may keep secret the name of vendor that cracked terrorist’s iPhone: Judge agrees with FBI that national security trumps the public’s right to know.
  15. SEC hack came as internal security team begged for funding: Forensic investigative unit was forced to use equipment tagged for scrap.
  16. The new surveillance state
  17. Sounding the privacy alarm
  18. As Expected, EU Court Of Justice To Review If Internet Company’s Privacy Practices Are Acceptible
  19. An alarming number of patched Macs remain vulnerable to stealthy firmware hacks: At-risk EFI versions likely put Windows and Linux PCs at risk, too.
  20. New Equifax CEO offers “sincere and total apology” to consumers: Embattled company vows to give consumers more control over their credit data.
  21. Equifax, Which Said Executives Did Not Know of Hack Before Trades, Has Launched a ‘Thorough Review’
  22. Equifax Was Warned About Vulnerability But Failed To Patch It
  23. Can Equifax’s Offerings Actually Protect Your Identity?
  24. A series of delays and major errors led to massive Equifax breach: Former CEO’s testimony to Congress reveals a shocking lack of security rigor.
  25. 6 Fresh Horrors From The Equifax CEO’s Congressional Hearing
  26. IRS awards Equifax no-bid, $7.25 million contract after hack: “This is considered a critical service that cannot lapse.”
  27. Into the Breach: How Canada’s Security Breach Disclosure Regulations Fall Short (Michael Geist)
  28. Auto Location Tracking Company Leaves Customer Data Exposed Online
  29. “NSFW” doesn’t begin to describe Bluetooth security in sex toys: Poor security lets connected “wearables” be hijacked by attackers.
  30. Can Pseudonyms Make Better Online Citizens?

GAMES

  1. Nintendo Creators Program cuts off livestreamers: YouTube Live broadcasts no longer allowed under revenue share initiative
  2. Nintendo no longer welcoming YouTube livestreams of its games: Live gameplay no longer allowed for channels in Nintendo’s revenue sharing program.
  3. Nintendo Bars Its YouTube Partners From Monetizing Their Live Streams
  4. Community registered designs & the CJEU – Nintendo v Big Ben
  5. Another classic Nintendo console, another insane dump of instruction manuals: One year later, and now you’re playing with super instruction manuals.
  6. Nintendo closing Wii Shop Channel: Wii and Wii U users will lose access to online storefront in 2019, sale of Wii Points currency to stop in March
  7. Parents Sue “Subway Surfers” Game for Privacy Violations (or Why Gamedevs Need a COPPA Compliant Privacy Policy)
  8. Netflix hints at move into publishing with Stranger Things: The Game
  9. Netflix Gets Into Game Development With A Mobile Tie-In For ‘Stranger Things’
  10. Unity reacts to Switch development woes: “More than 30% of games on Switch are made with Unity”
  11. Settling the debate: What makes a “core” Mario game? – And what does the argument say about how we define and value games in general?
  12. Sonic 3D Blast’s secret level select was actually a certification-passing trick
  13. ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’s Live-Action Movie Speeds Forward With ‘Deadpool’ Director Tim Miller
  14. Sonic the Hedgehog movie lands at Paramount: Producer behind Fast and the Furious franchise and Blue Streak teams up with Blur Studio co-founder for live-action/CG movie
  15. Chinese dev sues Fox over allegedly bungled Planet of the Apes tie-in game
  16. Dev calls it quits after losing entire game catalog in Valve’s ‘fake games’ purge
  17. Silicon Echo’s reputation is “destroyed beyond repair” after Steam’s fake game crackdown: Studio “forced to give up game development” after its entire catalogue was removed from leading PC marketplace
  18. Valve Collaborates with Fans Through New Shapeways 3D Printing Licensing Agreement
  19. Idea v. Expression: Game Studio Bluehole Gets Its Fur Up Over Epic Games Putting 100 Vs. 100 Player Battle Royale Into Game
  20. Can Cloned Video Games Survive the Battle Royale? 
  21. Loot boxes have reached a new low with Forza 7’s “pay to earn” option – Rant: The scourge must be stopped.
  22. New casino game lets you bet real money on Pac-Man: Pac-Man Battle Casino part of a trend towards skill-based casino gambling.
  23. Overwatch director gets candid about the ‘scary’ side of game dev
  24. Overwatch director says it’s “scary” to be open with players: Amid threats and attacks, “It often feels like there is no winning.”
  25. Jeff Kaplan: ”It often feels like there is no winning” against toxic Overwatch users – Game director says forums don’t feel like a safe environment for his team
  26. Riot dev out after taking shots at oft-banned player: League of Legends studio apologizes to Tyler1 after lead experience designer speculates on his demise
  27. How to fight online hate in a GamerGate world, according to Zoe Quinn – Molly Sauter: Crash Override succeeds in conveying what it is like to be the target of a sustained, misogynistic harassment campaign
  28. Inbetween Games’ debut is a tribute to Berlin’s diversity: With All Walls Must Fall, a team of ex-Yager devs have captured the energy and inclusivity of the German capital
  29. Denuvo Game Cracked In Mere Hours
  30. FIFA 18 takes No.1, three out of five copies sold on PS4
  31. Why one Japanese entrepreneur is using an RPG to help fight depression
  32. PlayStation introduces credit card: The card promises rewards such as games, DLC, electronics and more
  33. Sony releasing updated PlayStation VR in Japan this month: Western release to follow, introduces stereo headphone cable support and new Processor Unit with HDR pass through
  34. Steam, Samsung and Halo all coming to Windows Mixed Reality: SteamVR preview now available to developers, Samsung Odyssey headset announced, and Halo Recruit VR experience will launch on October 17
  35. Microsoft acquires social VR platform AltspaceVR
  36. AltspaceVR is now part of Microsoft: Social VR company saved from going out of business by acquisition deal
  37. The inside story of the Xbox One X: Microsoft has created the world’s most powerful console. Could this next-generation machine lead to the rise of games as high art?
  38. World’s Largest Cinema Chain, AMC, Leads $30M Investment to Bring VR to Movie Theaters: Partnering with Dreamscape Immersive
  39. 35% of UK adults have heard of eSports, but only 7% are tuning in
  40. 35% of UK adults aware of esports – but only 7% watch it: YouGov study puts Britain at the bottom of the table when compared to China, the US, Germany and more
  41. Esports Leagues Set To Level Up With Permanent Franchises
  42. Immortals split threatens Counter-Strike team: Five-man squad sees one player fired, two more indefinitely suspended after missing tournament matches, making Twitter death threat
  43. Champions of the Shengha introduces moneyback guarantee: BfB Labs offers full refund after ten days for £40 heart-tracking mobile game
  44. Alibaba establishes games division to create titles in-house
  45. Alibaba planning to establish dedicated games business unit: Chinese e-commerce giant acquires online games firm EJoy, aims to “pursue excellence” in the industry
  46. The Strong’s latest windfall: Artifacts from the first coin-op game maker
  47. Ubisoft using machine learning to translate hieroglyphics: The Assassin’s Creed developer has put out a call for historians and researchers to aid in the project
  48. Can developers control streamers?: Reed Smith partner Carolyn Pepper walks through the options available if studios wish to stop influencers covering their games
  49. Bungie goes indie, BioWare gets bought – 10 Years Ago This Month: Halo studio gets its freedom from Microsoft as Electronic Arts acquires Mass Effect maker and Pandemic
  50. Microsoft alters Forza Motorsport 7 VIP pass store language following backlash
  51. Brain in a Jar 1: Two Systems
  52. How hitting a game cartridge unlocks gaming’s weirdest Easter egg: Sonic 3D Blast trick started as way to hide game-breaking bugs.
  53. Connecting educators with the unique teaching ability of gamesCan Pseudonyms Make Better Online Citizens?

Jon

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Slides Class #4

By Jon Festinger on October 2, 2017

Here they are. See you in two weeks.

Jon

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News of the Week; September 27, 2017

By Jon Festinger on October 1, 2017

DIGITAL

  1. Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter and Muslims
  2. Facebook’s Frankenstein Moment
  3. Facebook Can Absolutely Control Its Algorithm
  4. Facebook revamps political-ad rules after discovering Russian ad buys: Shadowy Russian group spent $100,000 on political ads during the 2016 election.
  5. Mark Zuckerberg Is Still Pissed That We Know About His Army of Handlers
  6. Shareholders force Zuckerberg to give up plan for non-voting shares: The plan would have further cemented Zuck’s total control over Facebook.
  7. Facebook will target ads to people based on store visits, offline purchases, calls to businesses: Facebook is using its online-to-offline ad measurement tools for offline-to-online ad targeting.
  8. Facebook’s Ad Scandal Isn’t a ‘Fail,’ It’s a Feature (Zeynep Tufekci)
  9. Could public pressure cause Facebook to regulate itself?
  10. Facebook’s Crackdown Ahead Of German Election Shows It’s Learning
  11. How Germany’s far right took over Twitter – and tilted the election: A sophisticated and tightly organised troll army has spent the last three months championing a ‘patriotic revolution’. Boosting the AfD’s power is just the start
  12. Iceland authorities weighing options after neo-Nazi site registers there: The racist site has been at a .is domain for more than a week.
  13. Reddit’s campaign against hate speech worked: Even when users stuck around, they started watching their words more carefully.
  14. Jared Kushner conducted White House business with personal e-mail: Kushner lawyer says it was “fewer than a hundred e-mails.”
  15. Members Of Trump’s Admin Team Using Private Email Accounts Because Of Course They Are
  16. How One Syrian Fought To The Death For A Free Internet
  17. Judge spanks Mugshots.com hard for charging for photo removal: Lawsuit claims one arrestee was told it would cost $15k to have profile removed.
  18. EU Buried Its Own $400,000 Study Showing Unauthorized Downloads Have Almost No Effect On Sales
  19. EU study finds piracy doesn’t hurt game sales, may actually help: Results suggest a positive effect, but there’s a huge margin of error.
  20. German Court: Thumbnail Images In Search Engines Not A Copyright Violation
  21. German Federal Court of Justice rules that GS Media presumption of knowledge does not apply to Google Images
  22. Twitter testing shift from 140 to 280 characters: Twitter thinks 140 characters might be too constraining for English writers.
  23. Framing It Another Way: Tweets, Copyright and the De Minimis Doctrine
  24. Google Pulls YouTube From Amazon Echo: All About Control Or Just More Corporation On Corporation Violence?
  25. Ninth Circuit Blesses Amazon’s Terms of Service
  26. British News Channel Touts Amazon Bomb Materials Moral Panic That Ends Up Being About Hobbyists And School Labs
  27. Eros Beats Investor Suit Over Statements About Streaming Platform: The company touted 30 million users for Eros Now. The judge rules it was never said they were “meaningful” users.
  28. In my opinion, this is an opinion
  29. Fordham University Named in Class Action Lawsuit by Blind Individuals, Alleging Fordham.edu Website is Inaccessible
  30. Contact Lens Seller Agrees To $7 Million Settlement Over Search Ads
  31. U.S. Floats Nafta Proposal That Could Erode Copyright-Liability Protection: Language in the trade talks could weaken internet companies’ liability protections for pirated content
  32. NAFTA 2.0 and Intellectual Property Rights: Insights on Developing Canada’s Knowledge Economy
  33. FTC serves health-app maker massive slice of humble pie—and $1.5M bill: The app was meant to motivate users to go to the gym, eat veggies. It went very wrong.
  34. FTC clarifies influencer guidelines: Federal Trade Commission warns that platforms’ built-in disclosure methods aren’t sufficient, reviews of products given for free must be marked as ads
  35. The FTC, Like, Revises Its Social Media Endorsement Guides, Bruh!
  36. Disney’s New, Influencer-Led Mickey Mouse Club Releases Music Video For First Original Song
  37. Another Student Athlete Facing Scrutiny From NCAA For Budding YouTube Presence
  38. Emojis Head to a Courthouse Near You
  39. Victory for YouTubers as New York District Court rules “reaction video” is fair use
  40. Fair use is never simple 
  41. Vimeo To Acquire Livestream, Launches ‘Vimeo Live’ Pro Broadcasting Product
  42. Verizon Reveals The Secrets Of Yahoo Search
  43. Facebook, NFL Back In Business Again With Programming Partnership
  44. Canon Virtual Camera System Enables Fans To Watch From Any 3D Angle
  45. Block The Pirate Bay Within 10 Days, Dutch Court Tells ISPs
  46. Company CEO Pleads Guilty After Forging Judge’s Signatures On Bogus Court Orders Sent To Google
  47. More Thoughts On The Senate’s SESTA Hearing
  48. My Senate Testimony on SESTA + SESTA Hearing Linkwrap (Eric Goldman)
  49. Google Will Survive SESTA. Your Startup Might Not.
  50. SESTA Is Being Pushed As The Answer To A Sex Trafficking ‘Epidemic’ That Simply Doesn’t Exist 
  51. New Essay: The Ten Most Important Section 230 Rulings (Eric Goldman)
  52. Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing (Once Again) Demonstrates Why Demanding Platforms Censor Bad Speech Creates Problems
  53. London regulator announces Uber ban: Uber has 21 days to appeal the ruling, which could affect 40,000 drivers.
  54. Uber CEO apologizes for “mistakes” in London: Uber has vowed to appeal a decision banning the company from London.
  55. Uber really doesn’t want its drivers to be considered employees: O’Connor v. Uber one of 11 cases heard together at 9th Circuit.
  56. Waymo to judge: We want Uber to pay “only” $1.86 billion: Waymo says big numbers are based on Uber’s own calculations.
  57. ISIS Launches The Spelling Teacher, A New App For Kids
  58. Dispute Between Roberto Escobar And Netflix Over ‘Narcos’ Gets Weird: Licensing Talks And A Dead Location Scout
  59. What Netflix’s Congenial Trademark ‘Threat Letter’ Says About Everyone’s Tolerance For Trademark Bullying
  60. Why Big Tech Is Clashing With Internet Freedom Advocates
  61. Mattress Startup Casper Sued a Mattress Review Site, Then Paid for Its Acquisition
  62. Machine-learning cloud platforms get to work: Analytic platforms as a service (PaaS) could shorten machine-learning learning curve.
  63. Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies?
  64. When Websites Design Themselves 
  65. Bill Gates Says We Shouldn’t Panic About Artificial Intelligence
  66. Robots have already taken over our work, but they’re made of flesh and bone: Many jobs in the modern economy have been sapped of their humanity. How should we resist the rise of ‘digital Taylorism’? (Brett Frischmann &Evan Selinger)
  67. BCSC Grants Bitcoin Investment Fund Manager Registration 
  68. If Bill Gates really thinks ctrl-alt-del was a mistake, he should have fixed it himself: You can’t pin the blame for this one on IBM.
  69. 4K titles on iTunes can only be streamed, not downloaded: You also can’t stream 4K videos from YouTube either.
  70. YouTube Revamps Analytics Reports To Help Creators Better Understand Subscription Traffic
  71. YouTube’s Technology Can Now Spit Out Thousands of Different Video Ads at Once: And target them based on apps that consumers have downloaded
  72. New French Law Orders Video Services Like YouTube, Netflix To Pay 2% Tax On Local Revenues
  73. Instagram now has 800 million monthly and 500 million daily active users
  74. Twitter explains why Trump can use site as venue for violence, hate: Announcement comes as social media is under pressure to remove hate-based accounts.
  75. Twitter sold enough ads to support all the live video shows it was pitching: Twitter is moving forward with 16 live video shows and features it said it wanted to stream.
  76. Vice Ramps Up Original French Content With Three New Shows
  77. Report recommends new legal approaches to online defamation
  78. Ivanka Trump: Computer science education a new “priority” – “We do have a major diversity problem in the tech industry,” president’s daughter adds.

CREATIVITY

  1. University Defeats Cyberbullying Lawsuit Related to Yik Yak–Feminist Majority v. UMW (Eric Goldman)
  2. What the Constitution says Berkeley can do when controversial speakers come knocking: The rules governing the right-wing “Free Speech Week” showdown.
  3. Italian Supreme Court confirms availability of copyright protection to TV formats
  4. The Grinch loses and protection of parody wins 
  5. Osaka Court’s Ruling Helps Destroy Tattoos In Japan 
  6. Turkish President Claims Jailed Journalists Are Actually Terrorists: From the wobbles-so-much-you-can’t-even-call-it-‘spin’ dept
  7. Kim Jong-Un Calling Trump A ‘Dotard’ Gave The Internet A Language Lesson 
  8. Furie-ous creator of Pepe the Frog determined to use copyright to get his green creation back
  9. Is the alt-right’s use of Pepe the Frog “fair use?”: Is Pepe like Luke Skywalker—or just super-chill frog anyone can use?
  10. Penguin Random House LLC v. Frederick Colting d/b/a Moppet Books: District court finds that child-focused literary guides infringed copyrights in four famous novels and that literary guides did not qualify as fair use, granting summary judgment in favor of owners and exclusive licensees of copyrights in novels.
  11. Saudi minister fired after textbook shows Yoda at UN signing ceremony: Begun, the textbook scandal has.
  12. How The RIAA Helped Pave The Way For Spain To Undermine Democracy
  13. Appeals Court Limits Ability of Patent Trolls to File Suit in Far-Flung Districts
  14. Appeals Court Tells Patent Trolls’ Favorite Judge He Can’t Just Ignore The Supreme Court To Keep Patent Cases In Texas
  15. Instagram rolls out comment-control, puts onus on user to filter trolls
  16. “Comic-Con” trademark may have to activate superpowers to survive attack – Epic intellectual property battle: San Diego Comic-Con versus Salt Lake Comic Con.
  17. Challenge on offensive trademarks could bring clarity
  18. Velcro’s Hilarious Trademark Lesson Video Actually A Good Lesson In Just How Stupid Trademark Law Has Become
  19. Velcro’s anti-genericide song is big, bold and brash – but critics question whether it will actually be effective
  20. Scientific Publishers Want Upload Filter To Stop Academics Sharing Their Own Papers Without Permission
  21. Burger King is Trying to Ban It In Russia For the Most Insane Reason
  22. The very dirty history of on-demand video technology: In the early 1970s, hotels experimented with new video delivery systems for X-rated movies.
  23. Netflix Pulls Cartoon Episode After Mom Spots Stealthy NSFW Drawing
  24. Netflix Sends Cease-and-Desist to “Stranger Things”-Themed Bar
  25. A Brief History of Hiding Dicks in Cartoons
  26. Police: Armed Robber Dressed As Coke Bottle – Costumed perp held up eatery manager at Kentucky Rally’s
  27. Project Jengo Strikes Its First Targets (and Looks for More)
  28. Copyright’s Framing Problem (Margot Kaminski & Guy Rub)
  29. Is the First Amendment Obsolete? (Tim Wu)
  30. Response to Tim Wu’s piece on First Amendment obsolescence (Rebecca Tushnet)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1. FCC Sued For Ignoring FOIA Request Investigating Fraudulent Net Neutrality Comments
  2. Ajit Pai’s plan to lower broadband standards is “crazy,” FCC Democrat says: “This is crazy. Lowering standards doesn’t solve our broadband problems.”
  3. Mission Accomplished: Ajit Pai’s FCC Declares Wireless Competition Issues Fixed: from the ignore-a-problem-and-it-goes-away,-right? dept
  4. Ajit Pai should be fired, petition says before Senate re-confirmation vote: Senate Democrats plan “very loud” debate on vote to give Pai a new term.
  5. To save net neutrality rules, senator tries to get Ajit Pai off FCC: Pai accused of ignoring “public interest” but will likely get new term on FCC.
  6. FCC declares that USA’s wireless competition problem has been solved: Ajit Pai’s FCC says mobile market is competitive, in change from Obama years.
  7. Joly’s Challenge: Digital Cancon Without New Digital Tax Dollars (Michael Geist)
  8. How to build an effective digital Cancon strategy on the cheap (Michel Geist)
  9. Not Just Netflix: Government Asks the CRTC To Conduct a Review of Changing Broadcast Models (Michael Geist)
  10. Bell Calls for CRTC-Backed Website Blocking System and Complete Criminalization of Copyright in NAFTA (Michael Geist)
  11. ‘Radical and overreaching’: Bell wants Canadians blocked from piracy websites – Company says a federal agency like the CRTC should create a blacklist of sites
  12. European Commission Backed Study Confirms Canada Among the Most Expensive for Broadband Internet Access (Michael Geist)
  13. Mysterious Apocalyptic Message Interrupts TV Broadcasts in California: ‘Violent Times Will Come’
  14. Report: T-Mobile, Sprint finally figuring out this merger thing – T-Mobile owner would take majority stake; US would be left with 3 big carriers.
  15. Prepare For An Epic BS Sales Pitch For The Competition-Killing Sprint, T-Mobile Merger
  16. Verizon backtracks—but only slightly—in plan to kick customers off network: Rural users with no other options can switch plans but can’t get unlimited data.
  17. Cox starts charging data cap overage fees in California: A new group of Cox customers gets a 1TB data cap and $10 overage fees.
  18. The Soaring Cost Of Sports Programming Is Simply Not Sustainable
  19. Global BC (CHAN-DT) re Global News Hour at 6 & Global News at 11 – Abbotsford school stabbing
  20. CTV Vancouver (CIVT-DT) re CTV News at 6 – Abbotsford school stabbing CBSC Decision 16/17-0554 2017 CBSC 9 September 26, 2017      

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Bill C-58’s Order-Making Powers: A Huge Disappointment (Teresa Scassa)
  2. Justice Department goes nuclear on Google in search warrant fight: Google’s conduct is a “willful and contemptuous disregard of various court orders.”
  3. Report Details The NSA’s Decade-Long Abuse Of Its Surveillance Powers
  4. US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants October 18th
  5. DHS To Officially Require Immigrants’ Files To Contain Social Media Info
  6. WhatsApp Reportedly Rejected UK Government Demand For Encryption Backdoor
  7. UK Man Gets 12-Month Sentence For Refusing To Turn Over Passwords To Police
  8. Another court tells police: Want to use a stingray? Get a warrant – DC Court of Appeals: Even if you know the police can track you doesn’t mean they should.
  9. Judge overturns local law that effectively banned drones over small town: Newton, Mass. wanted drone pilots to get permission to fly at or below 400 feet.
  10. Deloitte Hit By Cyberattack That Compromised Client Information & Decided To Basically Tell Nobody At All
  11. Deloitte hit by cyber-attack revealing clients’ secret emails: Hackers may have accessed usernames, passwords and personal details of top accountancy firm’s blue-chip clients
  12. Password-theft 0day imperils users of High Sierra and earlier macOS versions: Rogue apps can exfiltrate all plaintext passwords, no master password required.
  13. CCleaner Hack May Have Been A State-Sponsored Attack On 18 Major Tech Companies
  14. CCleaner malware outbreak is much worse than it first appeared: Microsoft, Cisco, and VMWare among those targeted with additional mystery payload.
  15. CCleaner backdoor infecting millions delivered mystery payload to 40 PCs: Samsung, Asus, Fujitsu, Sony, and Intel among those infected.
  16. How Malware Keeps Sneaking Past Google Play’s Defenses
  17. SEC Chairman reveals financial reporting system was hacked: EDGAR system data may have been used for “illicit gain through trading.”
  18. Man held website hostage for $10,000, failed, redirected it to porn, got busted: After plea deal, DOJ says: “this appears to be a one-time lapse in judgment.”
  19. All The Ways Equifax Epically Bungled Its Breach Response
  20. After huge Equifax breach, CEO “retires”: Board is “deeply concerned about and totally focused on the cybersecurity incident.”
  21. New York Governor Cuomo Directs NYDFS to Make Credit Reporting Agencies Comply with the State’s Cybersecurity Regulation
  22. NSA-Developed Crypto Technology No Longer Trusted For Use In Global Standards
  23. More Government Agencies Filing Lawsuits Against Public Records Requesters
  24. Released Snowden Doc Shows NSA Thwarting Electronic Dead Drops By Using Email Metadata
  25. Internet Explorer bug leaks whatever you type in the address bar: All your private addresses and search queries are belong to us.
  26. In a first, Android apps abuse serious “Dirty Cow” bug to backdoor phones: The critical Linux vulnerability is exploited on Android 1 year after coming to light.
  27. In spectacular fail, Adobe security team posts private PGP key on blog: Since deleted, post gave public and private key for Adobe incident response team.
  28. Do Tech Companies Really Need All That User Data?
  29. Cross-Border Data Access Primer
  30. Don’t Rely On An Unlock Pattern To Secure Your Android Phone
  31. How Much Do Your Dating Apps Know About You?
  32. One Tinder user’s data request turned into 800 pages of probing info: Yet another reminder that when a service is free, you are the product.

GAMES

  1. Bluehole hits out at Epic for ‘replicating’ Battlegrounds in Fortnite
  2. PUBG devs call out Epic over Fortnite Battle Royale mode: “This was never discussed with us and we don’t feel that it’s right,” says head of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds dev Bluehole
  3. EU Commission: “No evidence that piracy affects video games sales” – Report suggests illegal consumption actually benefits legal sales, lowering prices will not affect piracy rates
  4. Yet Another Developer Sees That Free Can Work For Video Games As Both An Anti-Piracy Strategy And As Promotion
  5. Mod that adds online play to Super Mario 64 draws Nintendo’s ire: ROM hack is still available online despite YouTube and Patreon takedowns.
  6. Multiplayer madness: How F-Zero inadvertently inspired Super Mario Kart
  7. Super Mario Kart’s competitive scene is still going strong, 25 years on
  8. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle outsells all non-Nintendo Switch games – Ubisoft crossover dominates within just a month of its release, Nintendo publishing in Japan and South Korea
  9. How do you sell FIFA 18 on Switch?: Possibly the most important third-party title to come to Nintendo’s console has a difficult message to get right
  10. Unity issues slowing down Switch ports: Yooka-Laylee release date still TBC
  11. Unity issues leading to delayed Switch launches for some devs
  12. Everything you need to know about the Super NES Classic Edition: 22 lesser-known facts and observations from a weekend wallowing in nostalgia.
  13. The SNES Mini is wonderful and just what the market needs: A £70/$80 games console is an ideal family product, irrespective of 1990s nostalgia
  14. Ataribox aims high with $250-300 price point, Linux core, custom AMD chip: Currently has spring 2018 launch window, will work with “other content platforms.”
  15. Gatorade pays California $300K, settles anti-water complaint: Just because drought-ravaged California has spent years urging residents to conserve water doesn’t mean it wants people to actually stop drinking the stuff. – When a Gatorade cellphone game suggested doing just that state Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a complaint accusing the popular thirst-quenching drink’s maker of false advertising.
  16. Blizzard will start dishing out permanent Overwatch bans next week
  17. Blizzard knuckles down on community as Valve fiddles: A few graphs won’t fix review bombing and abuse; if Valve wants tips, it could look to the tough decisions and hard work Blizzard is doing on Overwatch
  18. Concept art shows Valve almost added women to Team Fortress 2
  19. Valve wiped nearly 200 ‘fake games’ from Steam
  20. Valve removes 173 ‘asset flipping games’ from Steam: Entire portfolio of Silicon Echo Studios pulled, as well as associated accounts
  21. Sea’s the advantage: Cruise company Carnival gets into mobile casino games
  22. Game Designer Says Developers Would Be More Candid If Gamer Culture Wasn’t So Toxic
  23. Video game voice-actor strike might finally be over: 11 month strike reaches “tentative” end with bonuses, not royalties.
  24. Voice actors reach tentative deal to end strike: New agreement includes better bonuses, greater transparency, and protection against fines
  25. Avoiding the avoidable: Why ‘optional’ queer content isn’t solving the diversity problem (and how to fix this)
  26. EA Says It’s Fixing Formation That Baffles Madden’s AI
  27. Assassin’s Creed Origins will offer a combat-free, educational mode
  28. Combat-free mode makes Assassin’s Creed: Origins incredibly easy to explore – Education-focused mode literally turns the difficulty level down to zero.
  29. Ubisoft management gets big support as Vivendi threat looms: “We are delighted with the massive support of shareholders, which strengthens our determination and ability to defend the interests of all shareholders”
  30. Vivendi unsure whether to drop Ubisoft stock or attempt a takeover, says exec
  31. Vivendi undecided on Ubisoft takeover bid: Yves Guillemot continues to prevent hostile takeover with shareholder growth
  32. A disappointing week for UK game sales. Maybe.: Project Cars 2 makes it to No.2 as it struggles to reach heights of the original… or at least that’s what we guess
  33. PlayStation once again plays down Vita 2 possibilities: The company sees ‘limited potential’ for handheld game, despite Switch success
  34. Sony wishes PlayStation VR had stronger competition: Andrew House says he’s not comfortable leading the pack by a wide margin, new category should have multiple platforms succeeding
  35. Sony ‘not comfortable’ leading the VR charge, wants more competition
  36. HTC promises more VR innovation following $1.1B Google deal
  37. HTC to further support Vive following $1.1 billion Google deal: Cash made from selling mobile staff to Google will partly be used to fund growth in VR and AR
  38. VRChat Raises $4 Million Round Led By HTC
  39. HTC Leads $4M Series A Investment in Social VR Platform ‘VRChat’
  40. VR is an effective tool for exposure therapy & phobia treatment
  41. How presence in VR is beneficial for human research
  42. How medical care benefits from VR/AR and virtual humans
  43. How neuroscience can pave the way for VR’s future
  44. “We’re in danger of talking ourselves out of VR and AR”: A GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit panel discussed the need for patience among UK investors, and the earning potential of serious VR games for developers
  45. Oculus introduces refund policy for Rift and Gear VR games: Virtual reality users now able to request their money back within two weeks of purchase
  46. Apple’s ARKit game development: a whole new world
  47. Square Enix targets games-as-a-service, esports and higher digital sales: One in five copies of Final Fantasy XV sold in North America were downloads, almost one in three for Nier Automata worldwide
  48. Hackers hijack Final Fantasy Brave Exivus dev Gumi’s website with ransom demand
  49. Razer developing gaming smartphone for release by the end of year: Device part of wider strategy to capture Chinese market as firm prepares to go public on Hong Kong Stock Exchange
  50. Welsh Government provides funding for new Doctor Who game series: Double Eleven also involved as Tiny Rebel Games reveals new PC and mobile project
  51. One Gamer Fund unites seven charities under one banner: “Seven charities combined into a Voltron of altruism,” including AbleGamers, Child’s Play and Take This
  52. “Crowdfunding is the single hardest way to raise money”: Altara Games’ Ella Romanos warns that while crowdfunding endures, the bubble has burst – and the potential for cryptocurrency fundraising is still uncertain
  53. Patreon confirms $60 million funding round: CEO Jack Conte lays out growth plans for the next two to five years
  54. Atlus wants to cut off a PS3 emulator because it runs Persona 5: Patreon defends the emulator’s non-infringing nature, leaves page up.
  55. Atlus US file DMCA takedown against Patreon-funded PS3 emulator: Team behind RPCS3 hold their ground with support from Patreon against pressure from Persona 5 developer
  56. How to avoid a bad investor: Financial experts discuss the warning signs developers should look out for during the GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit
  57. Everything you missed at the GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit: Expert advice from investors on securing the best deal, the dangers of crowdfunding and the earning potential for VR developers
  58. Video: An indie dev crash course in business and leadership
  59. PUBG helps drive digital game sales up 11% in August – SuperData: Hearthstone, Overwatch, and Madden NFL 18 also contributed to the rise in digital sales for the month
  60. Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode goes free, despite PUBG complaints: Mode emerge from paid Early Access with latest update, indicating development has not been stalled by Bluehole
  61. Shadow of War DLC in honour of deceased developer is now free: Warner Bros. will make donation directly to the family of Michael Forgey who is immortalised as a character in the game
  62. WB Games clears up confusion surrounding charity ‘Forthog Orc-Slayer’ DLC
  63. “I want it just like LoL”: How do you monetize in-game skins?
  64. “Don’t Crunch” – Advice from the Best Places To Work: The winners of last week’s awards reveal their tips for start-ups
  65. Applying game design principles to be a better leader
  66. Astronauts Could Use TV, Video Games to Combat Isolation in Space
  67. Flappy Bird will die with iOS11: Developer of the wildly successful app confirms he will not update the game to run on a 64-bit system
  68. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice

Jon

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Jonathan Zittrain on Memes & Society

By Jon Festinger on September 26, 2017

Promised yesterday as we were discussing how memes fit into normative and legal frameworks to post this awesome talk by Prof. Jonathan Zittrain of HLS on the subject. Enjoy. You will (I promise)….

Jon

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Slides Class #3

By Jon Festinger on September 25, 2017

Here they are…

Jon

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News of the Week; September 20, 2017

By Jon Festinger on September 24, 2017

DIGITAL

  1. 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.
  2. Hulu Becomes First Streaming Service To Win Best Drama Emmy For ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
  3. To Fix Its Toxic Ad Problem, Facebook Must Break Itself
  4. 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.
  5. Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’: After being contacted by ProPublica, Facebook removed several anti-Semitic ad categories and promised to improve monitoring.
  6. Could Facebook Have Caught Its ‘Jew Hater’ Ad Targeting?: “Facebook can monitor the things it does that make it money.”
  7. Facebook’s Offensive Ad Targeting Options Go Far Beyond “Jew Haters”
  8. 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.
  9. The Real Trouble With Trump’s ‘Dark Post’ Facebook Ads
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. ­Facebook’s war on free will: How technology is making our minds redundant
  13. 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.
  14. Alt-Right Twitter App Developers Sue Google After Gab.Ai App Is Kicked Out Of The Play Store
  15. Google Paid HTC $1.1 Billion To Turn Itself Into A Phone Maker
  16. 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.
  17. Female ex-Googlers sue, claiming sex discrimination: Three former Googlers say women were funneled into less lucrative “job ladders.”
  18. The Pao Effect Is What Happens After Lean In
  19. 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.
  20. Twitter rival Gab sues Google over app store rejection: Gab, an app popular with the alt-right, says Google violated antitrust law.
  21. Twitter rival Gab faces domain loss over extremist content: After anti-Semitic post, registrar gives Gab five days to find a new provider.
  22. The Super-Aggregators And The Russians
  23. Facebook’s Russia data: What Mueller may learn
  24. A Fishy Wikileaks Dump Targets Russia For A Change
  25. New Group Of Iranian Hackers Linked To Destructive Malware
  26. Snopes And The Search For Facts In A Post-Fact World
  27. Unwanted ads on Breitbart lead to massive click fraud revelations, Uber claims – Uber: We paid Fetch Media for “nonexistent, nonviewable, and/or fraudulent advertising.”
  28. Here’s a real-life, slimy example of Uber’s regulator-evading software: “In using Greyball, Uber has sullied its own reputation,” Portland says.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. Faced with a trove of new evidence in Uber case, Waymo asks to delay trial 
  32. 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.
  33. Drone delivery startup is about to begin commercial operations: Startup envisions hundreds of drone delivery stations across metro areas.
  34. Digital transformation: How machine learning could help change business – ML has more than just a learning curve to overcome before it transforms business.
  35. HTML5 DRM finally makes it as an official W3C Recommendation: 30.8% of W3C members disapproved of the decision.
  36. EFF Resigns From W3C After DRM In HTML Is Approved In Secret Vote
  37. HP Brings Back Obnoxious DRM That Cripples Competing Printer Cartridges
  38. 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)
  39. 5 reasons why people share fake photos during disasters
  40. Do the distracted boyfriend memes infringe copyright?
  41. The Blacklock’s Perfectly Predictable Costs Appeal Dismissal & a Preview of Potential Problems (Howard Knopf)
  42. The Senate Is Close To Undermining The Internet By Pretending To ‘Protect’ The Children
  43. Why SESTA Is Such A Bad Bill
  44. 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”
  45. The Top Ten Myths About SESTA’s (S. 1693) Impact On Startups
  46. Senator Blumenthal Happy That SESTA Will Kill Small Internet Companies
  47. Is There A Single Online Service Not Put At Risk By SESTA?
  48. Free Software Foundation Europe Leads Call For Taxpayer-Funded Software To Be Licensed For Free Re-use
  49. The Sex Trafficking Fight Could Take Down A Bedrock Tech Law
  50. Music Industry Is Painting A Target On YouTube Ripping Sites, Despite Their Many Non-Infringing Uses
  51. YouTube Apologizes To ‘Red’ Subscribers Who Were Served Ads, Says Fix Is In The Works
  52. Yes, You Can Believe In Internet Freedom Without Being A Shill
  53. Regulating Hate Speech?
  54. The rise of AI is sparking an international arms race: Elon Musk thinks it’s the most likely cause of WWIII.
  55. The AI Chatbot Will Hire You Now
  56. AI: Scary for the Right Reasons
  57. AI built profiles for every individual is a reality
  58. AI Research Is In Desperate Need Of An Ethical Watchdog
  59. Can Competition Act address Big Data cases?
  60. Big data and Innovation: Implications for competition policy in Canada
  61. Big data may become big antitrust concern
  62. Google Chrome To Block Autoplay Videos With Sound Beginning In January
  63. Google Chrome will block autoplay video starting January 2018: Only muted video and user “interest in the media” will be allowed by default.
  64. Chrome Will Soon Block Autoplay Videos With Sound—Here’s Why You Should Be Worried
  65. YouTube TV, Now Available In Eight More Areas, Nears Completion Of US Rollout
  66. These Are The Types Of Influencers Who Get Paid Most Per Sponsored Post (Study)
  67. Snapchat Is Pulling Out All The Stops For This Year’s Emmy Awards
  68. Crowdfunding platform Patreon secures $60M investment
  69. 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)
  70. 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. 
  71. “Skip intro”: Netflix could’ve saved TV title sequences, but now it’s killing them
  72. Netflix Has Narcos Actors Threaten To Shoot The Families Of French People For Pirating The Show
  73. Vancouver Canucks, Perspective Films Offer Virtual Reality Views
  74. Baltimore Ravens Debut NFL’s First Augmented Reality Face Painting
  75. Mizuno Introduces Smart Baseball With Internal Pitch-Tracking Tech
  76. China’s Largest Messaging App ‘WeChat’ is Creating its Own AR Platform
  77. It looks like China is shutting down its blockchain economy: Leaked regulation orders Chinese Bitcoin exchanges to shut down.
  78. Bitcoin and Ethereum plunge on Chinese crackdown
  79. The Pirate Bay Added a CPU-Hijacking Bitcoin Miner to Some Pages
  80. 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.
  81. Your Digital Millennium Copyright Registration May Be About To Expire
  82. Bored With Your Fitbit? These Cancer Researchers Aren’t
  83. About FaceID
  84. After 23 years, the Apple II gets another OS update: On 30th anniversary of Apple II GS, devoted developer releases ProDOS 2.4.
  85. The Pluralist Model of Speech Regulation: Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society (Jack Balkin)
  86. Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation (Jack Balkin)

CREATIVITY

  1. Quebec Superior Court Rules on the Concept of Fair Dealing in Relation to the Substantial Reproduction of Journalistic Works
  2. Off-Broadway ‘Grinch’ Parody Defeats Copyright Claims
  3. Joy in Who-Ville? Playwright Wins Fair Use Copyright Dispute in Parody of “Grinch” 
  4. Maradona sues Dolce&Gabbana over 2016 ‘MARADONA’ jersey 
  5. Monkey Selfie Case Settled Out Of Court, Questions Remain (Andres Guadamuz)
  6. Lawyer: Without The Monkey’s Approval, PETA Can’t Settle Monkey Selfie Case
  7. Monkey See, Monkey Do… Monkey Own? The Curious Case of Naruto v. Slater 
  8. 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.
  9. With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
  10. Structural engineers score big as Federal Court recognizes and enforces copyright on structure of soccer complex
  11. Canadian Government Publications Still Don’t Belong To The People As Ottawa Maintains Its Iron Grip On Crown Copyright
  12. Melania Trump billboard removed in Croatia after legal action threatened
  13. ‘Racist’ Paddy Power Floyd Mayweather ad dealt knockout blow by ASA
  14. 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.
  15. Doubling (& Tripling) Down on Trademark Protection For Secret Menu Items–In-N-Out v. Smashburger 
  16. 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 
  17. Kim Kardashian West’s trade mark woes and the love-hate relationship between celebrities and IP
  18. New study claims Slender Man is in the commons, argues assertion of trademark rights “chills creativity”
  19. Charles Harder Loses Again: You Can’t Just File Defamation Lawsuits In A Random State Because You Like Its Statute Of Limitations
  20. Model Behaviour – Copyright infringement action brought against model Gigi Hadid
  21. Why Copyright Term Matters: Publisher Study Highlights Crucial Role of the Public Domain in Ontario Schools (Michael Geist)
  22. Buyer Beware: Make Sure Your Copyright Assignment Is Valid
  23. The Business of Fandom: How Teenage Girls Predict the Future of Culture
  24. 20 years in, Kid Rock, Eminem and ICP are politically relevant — and culturally divided
  25. How Amazon is becoming the third force in advertising, making the duopoly an oligopoly
  26. The Battle for Blade Runner
  27. Vermont State Police Rewrite Press Rules To Withhold As Much Information As Possible
  28. Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law (Barton Beebe)
  29. First application of the Canadian parody exception (Sabine Jacques)

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1.  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’ 
  2. Toronto Star receives $65,000 fine for violating CRTC Do Not Call List rules
  3. Yet Another Report Says The Rate Of TV Cord Cutting Is Worse Than Anybody Thought
  4. “Fake” net neutrality comments at heart of lawsuit filed against FCC –  Lawsuit: FCC ignored public records request for data on mass comment uploads
  5. ‘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.
  6. The transformation continues (Timothy Denton)
  7. Verizon Is Booting 8,500 Rural Customers Over Data Use, Including Some on ‘Unlimited’ Plans
  8. Verizon Hangs Up On Tens Of Thousands Of ‘Unlimited’ Wireless Customers For Using Too Much Data
  9. Comcast looks forward to more mergers during Trump presidency: Comcast VP is glad Trump is “less hostile” to mergers than Obama.
  10. 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.
  11. FCC’s New ‘Diversity Chair’ Has Long History Of Undermining Minority Consumers At Comcast’s Behest
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. Unlimited Data Customers Report Fewer Network Problems Than Capped Users
  15. SpaceX’s worldwide satellite broadband network may have a name: Starlink – Low-latency, gigabit network inches closer to commercialization.
  16. A telemarketer called my elevator: The emergency intercom started speaking to me in a voice I’ve heard a thousand times.

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. EFF, ACLU Sue Government Over Warrantless Electronic Searches At The Border
  2. 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.
  3. Closely watched California Internet privacy bill dies in final minutes of legislative session
  4. California Sides With Comcast, Votes To Kill Broadband Privacy Law Favored By EFF
  5. 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.
  6. Face Scanning Lawsuit Against Shutterfly Survives Motion to Dismiss
  7. Trump Administration Says It’s Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans
  8. Equifax Officially Has No Excuse
  9. Oh Man, You’re Gonna Hate What Equifax Just Admitted About That Security Breach
  10. Equifax’s Chief Information Officer and Head of Security Are ‘Retiring’
  11. Equifax CIO, CSO “retire” in wake of huge security breach: Press release – “The company’s review of the facts is still ongoing.”
  12. DoNotPay chatbot adds feature allowing users to sue Equifax over data breach
  13. Scammers keep trying to sell fake Equifax facts: Site offers “proof” of access to Equifax data, but it all appears to be fake.
  14. FTC launches Equifax breach probe, warns consumers about credit scammers: Posing as Equifax employees, crooks are calling to verify your account information.
  15. Equifax sends breach victims to fake notification site
  16. Google stops challenging most US warrants for data on overseas servers: Microsoft keeps up the challenges while Supreme Court remains silent.
  17. Secret Algorithms Are Deciding Criminal Trials and We’re Not Even Allowed to Test Their Accuracy (ACLU)
  18. EFF Asks Court: Can Prosecutors Hide Behind Trade Secret Privilege to Convict You? (EFF)
  19. Biased Algorithms Are Everywhere, and No One Seems to Care: The big companies developing them show no interest in fixing the problem.
  20. Ad industry “deeply concerned” about Safari’s new ad-tracking restrictions: Apple’s limits on tracking will “sabotage the economic model for the Internet.”
  21. How One Of Apple’s Key Privacy Safeguards Falls Short
  22. Infrared signals in surveillance cameras let malware jump network air gaps: aIR-Jumper weaves passwords and crypto keys into infrared signals.
  23. The CCleaner Malware Fiasco Targeted At Least 18 Specific Tech Firms
  24. NSA Employees Routinely Undermined ‘Non-Attributable’ Web Access With Personal Web Use
  25. How The NSA Built A Secret Surveillance Network For Ethiopia
  26. Trudeau needs to deliver on his access-to-information promises
  27. 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.”
  28. Most-wanted criminal arrested after posting Instagram video of himself: Officials obtained fugitive’s GPS coordinates after he took to social media.
  29. Apple’s FaceID Could Be A Powerful Tool For Mass Spying
  30. Software Has A Serious Supply-Chain Security Problem
  31. 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.
  32. Internet-Connected Toys: Cute, Cuddly and Inherently Insecure
  33. The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing (Elizabeth Joh)

GAMES

  1. To tackle toxicity, Overwatch now mutes Xbox One players with bad Live rep
  2. Blizzard has taken disciplinary action against 480,000 Overwatch accounts: Jeff Kaplan’s team devotes “a tremendous amount of time and resources to punishing people,” and it’s slowing progress of the game
  3. Campo Santo’s DMCA strike against PewDiePie accepted by YouTube: Felix Kjellberg believes Campo Santo’s position wouldn’t “hold up in court” and amounts to abuse of the DMCA system
  4. Gaming YouTube must get its house in order: The risk posed by PewDiePie’s outbursts isn’t confined to his career; Google won’t tolerate a sector that keeps dragging down YouTube’s commercial prospects
  5. YouTube Gaming ups community-building tools with paid ‘sponsorships’
  6. Bungie Explains How Offensive Symbol Made Its Way Into Destiny 2: Vetting process didn’t catch image’s “vile derivation that has been repurposed by hate groups.”
  7. Bungie explains how a hate symbol ended up in Destiny 2
  8. Bungie promises deeper content vetting over Destiny 2 symbol: Bungie will conduct a process review after completely “scrubbing” the symbol from the game and promotional materials
  9. YouTube Launches Moneymaking Sponsorships For All “Eligible” Gaming Creators
  10. YouTube introduces Twitch-style sponsorship service for streamers: Trials of the $4.99 per month model have proven successful as platform abandons paid channel service
  11. In the wake of CSGO Lotto, FTC takes to Twitter to clarify its disclosure policy
  12. Russian Antifa Developed SharpShooter3D, A Nazi-Hunting Video Game
  13. Playing with politics: How real-world politics could improve your game
  14. “There will be hate you cannot control. In all honesty, it’s defeating”: Square Enix’s Amy Graves discusses the pressures community managers face ahead of her UKIE Careers Bar talk next week
  15. Why I deleted my Steam account: Valve’s dominance in the PC gaming space is made more harmful by its tolerance for toxic users
  16. Steam considers preventing review bombs, adds graphs instead: “In the end, we decided not to change the ways that players can review games, and instead focused on how potential purchasers can explore the review data.”
  17. Steam has a “review bomb” problem—but will today’s new feature fix it?: Follows a September 2016 overhaul which aimed to remove fraudulent reviews.
  18. Overwatch development hampered by toxic players, says director
  19. Overwatch now mutes Xbox One players with bad reputation: Further efforts to stem toxicity after revelation that abusive players hold back development
  20. Blizzard: Toxic Overwatch players are hurting the game’s development – This is why we can’t have nice things, apparently.
  21. Game: Interrupted – How a teenage gamer in the hottest new esport, Overwatch, became a reluctant icon for South Korea’s feminist movement.
  22. Video: How game communities build eSports scenes from the ground up
  23. As NFL ratings drop, a new internet study says young men like watching eSports more than traditional sports
  24. How Misfits went from League of Legends minnows to the World Championship: Team manager Joe Elouassi on managing burnout, the Overwatch League, and esports becoming an Olympic event
  25. Unity debuts open-source beta of a new machine learning AI toolkit
  26. Unity introduces Machine Learning Agents to help AI advancement: New feature goes into beta, primarily for researchers but engine firm keen to see what developers can do
  27. Battleborn is Battledead: Updates halted after ~16 months – Servers will stay up, but Gearbox seems to be transitioning to Borderlands 3.
  28. There’s Seemingly A NES Emulator And Game Hidden On Every Nintendo Switch
  29. Every Nintendo Switch appears to contain a hidden copy of NES Golf: What’s more, it might have a first for an emulated NES game – motion control.
  30. Hidden Switch game is actually a tribute to former Nintendo president: Unlock method seems designed to work only on July 11, the day Satoru Iwata died.
  31. How to (Maybe) Play the Super Secret Copy of NESGolf Hidden on Your Nintendo Switch
  32. Hackers Say Nintendo Switch Contains A Game That Unlocks On The Date Of Satoru Iwata’s Death
  33. The coming game cartridge renaissance?: Street Fighter II’s SNES rerelease could be the start of a trend.
  34. Nintendo Switch lands Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus – Plus, Nintendo’s Arcade Archives retro classics, red JoyCon, and a Pokemon-themed 2DS.
  35. Doom, Wolfenstein II and Honor of Kings boost Switch third-party line-up: Bethesda shows its commitment, while Tencent is bringing China’s most popular game to the platform as Arena of Valor
  36. Nintendo Switch, Madden can’t stop August sales dip – NPD: Despite Madden topping the charts and Switch continuing to sell, total US game sales fell 2%
  37. Nintendo spent an estimated $4.5m on TV ads in August – Report: According to iSpot.tv Nintendo outspent other video game brands during the month to promote the new-look 2DS XL
  38. Nintendo shares riding nine-year high: Stock price closes the day up 7% as Switch maker tests heights not seen since the Wii’s heyday, considers Chinese expansion
  39. How Planet of the Apes is using console gamers to reach its real audience: The Imaginati’s Martin Alltimes talks us through the unusual business model behind narrative adventure spin-off Last Frontier
  40. Nintendo investors seem pumped about Tencent bringing its MOBA to Switch
  41. How much does it cost to develop a videogame?
  42. EA CEO Andrew Wilson joins Intel’s board of directors
  43. Hilarious, spectacular EVE betrayal destroys player group, costs trillions: Infighting and Cold War-style espionage led to largest theft in game’s history.
  44. ‘Star Wars: Battlefront II’ Won’t Be Supporting PSVR Headsets After All
  45. No VR for Star Wars Battlefront II but still “very important” for Criterion: UK studio says Rogue One demo “informed” Starfighter Assault mode, but sequel will not support virtual reality
  46. Someone has created a VR headset for the Commodore 64
  47. Developer gets a Game Boy emulator running on the Apple Watch, because he can: “Giovanni” emulator doesn’t quite fit full speed or compatibility on Series 2.
  48. Report: Magic Leap Could Reach $6B Valuation, First Device Shipping in 6 Months to “small group of users”
  49. Niantic: “AR is not just visual” – Pokémon Go developer suggests that audio will play a vital role in the design of its next game
  50. Mind the gap: Fortnite error briefly allowed cross-platform PS4/XB1 play
  51. Error leads to Fortnite cross-platform play between Xbox and Playstation: Issue fixed but Xbox head “would have liked to see them leave it on”
  52. The iPhone X’s ‘notch’ is powered by the same tech as the Kinect
  53. Disruptor Beam: Big name IP is about player retention, not acquisition – CEO Jon Radoff shares takeaways from making mobile games for Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead
  54. How to launch a mobile game in multiple countries: Tappx CMO Ignasi Prat offers advice to developers hoping to release their app in as many markets as possible
  55. How has the flood of Steam games affected the average indie dev?
  56. Steam Direct fails to prevent revenue drop for indies: Average first month sales down by 39% since 2015, average naive revenue down by almost 50%
  57. Battlegrounds breaks the all-time Steam concurrent player record
  58. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds smashes Steam records for concurrent users: Surpasses Dota 2’s player peak by less than 50,000
  59. Steam adds histograms to address review bombing: Ability to see how user reviews change over time one step on the way toward prediction-based review scores
  60. Rovio values itself at $1bn ahead of IPO
  61. Developers say a Star Citizen guild did not get $45,000 refund: Cloud Imperium says refund was actually for just $330
  62. McLaren builds a virtual hypercar for the next Gran Turismo game
  63. Blizzard chief explains how he raised money to start the company
  64. Classic Postmortem: How Maxis avoided sequel-itis on The Sims 2
  65. The Life and Merciful Death of the Fad Controller
  66. “There’s no better environment than AAA to develop your skills”: Playground Games’ Nick Duncombe discusses the benefits of working at an established studio rather than forming your own ahead of his UKIE Careers Bar talk
  67. Build, gather, brawl, repeat: The history of real-time strategy games: As we wait on a new Age of Empires this fall, let’s revisit the RTS genre’s highs and lows.
  68. Wireless PC Gaming At Lightspeed: Wireless mice that are now faster than wired
  69. How playing games can advance science
  70. How one man turns Garry’s Mod scenes into art
  71. The Most Popular Mod For Fallout 4 Is The One That Removes The Title Screen Crawl For Bethesda’s ‘Creation Club’
  72. Tracing the path an Israeli folk song took to end up in Japanese video games
  73. Humble has now raised over $100M for charity
  74. 15 practical pieces of advice, stuff that I learned the hard way
  75. 2 Games in 2 Months with a Stranger from Reddit
  76. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite isn’t the same without arcade-era pixel art – A look back at the Marvel vs Capcom series and the evolution of pixel art to 3D.
  77. Richard Garriott remembers calling his parents to settle a fight over Ultima IV’s design
  78. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wants sports on television to look more like video games

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Slides Class #2

By Jon Festinger on September 18, 2017

Here they are…

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News of the Week; September 13, 2017

By Jon Festinger on September 14, 2017

DIGITAL

  1. Why Has the Government Failed to Act on Copyright Notice-and-Notice When Internal Docs Raise Abuse and Fraud Concerns? (Michael Geist)
  2. RT, Sputnik and Russia’s New Theory of War: How the Kremlin built one of the most powerful information weapons of the 21st century — and why it may be impossible to stop.
  3. The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election
  4. Russia’s Facebook Fake News Could Have Reached 70 Million Americans: Facebook acknowledged that Russian propagandists spent $100,000 on election ads. It neglected to mention how many millions of people those ads reached.
  5. Russian-made Facebook page invited Americans to protest “upsurge of violence”: Effort to unmask the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign takes a dark turn.
  6. I Bought a Russian Bot Army for Under $100
  7. Facebook May Have More Russian Troll Farms To Worry About
  8. Russia Piracy Blocking: Four Thousand ‘Pirate’ Sites Blocked… Along With Forty Thousand Sites Worth Of Collateral Damage
  9. Kaspersky software banned from US government agencies: Kaspersky: We have “never helped, nor will help, any government with cyberespionage.”
  10. Social influence and political mobilization: Further evidence from a randomized experiment in the 2012 U.S. presidential election (Jason J. Jones, Robert M. Bond, Eytan Bakshy, Dean Eckles & James H. Fowler)
  11. How Facebook Changed the Spy Game: I fought foreign propaganda for the FBI. But the tools we had won’t work anymore.
  12. Facebook Wins, Democracy Loses
  13. Why it’s so hard to trust Facebook
  14. Facebook will ban monetizing on violence and tragedy, even for news and awareness
  15. Facebook Sets Guidelines To Dictate What Types Of Content It Won’t Monetize
  16. The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors
  17. Facebook’s Failed $608 Million Bid For Cricket Rights Sends Strong Signal
  18. Facebook To Spend $1 Billion On Original Content For ‘Watch’ Through 2018 
  19. Make Mark Zuckerberg Testify
  20. Facebook Wins Appeal Over Allegedly Discriminatory Content Removal–Sikhs for Justice v. Facebook (Eric Goldman)
  21. The Fake News Pipeline: How A Small-Time Clickbait Farmer Is Spreading the Gospel of Big Oil
  22. America Is a Cyberpunk Dystopia
  23. Adding a “disputed” label to fake news seems to work, a little. But for some groups, it actually backfires: Labeling only some fake news stories as fake can make some people more likely to believe other fake news that aren’t labeled.
  24. China’s Social-Media Smoke Screen
  25. 1st Amendment wins in self-proclaimed e-mail inventor’s Techdirt libel suit: The truth, whatever that may be, is the best defense to defamation.
  26. Texas AG’s office accuses ‘reputation management company’ of procuring fraudulent libel takedown lawsuits
  27. Texas Attorney General Issues Complaint Against Reputation Management Company For Bogus Lawsuits
  28. Blacklock’s Loses Appeal of Justice Barnes’ Costs Order: Dismissed from the Bench
  29. Patent Trolls’ Favorite Judge Comes Up With Test To Keep Patent Cases In East Texas, No Matter What SCOTUS Said
  30. The Latest Scam To Protect Sketchy Patents From Patent Office Review: Sell To Native Americans
  31. YouTube stream-ripping site for the masses dead in wake of RIAA suit: Youtube-mp3.org facilitated 40% of illegal stream-ripping from YouTube globally.
  32. Digital Network Collab Launches New Rights Management Tool
  33. Facebook Testing ‘Instant Videos’ Feature That Enables Offline Viewing
  34. The no-sports streaming bundle is coming soon from Viacom, Discovery, and others: The entertainment-focused service could cost less than $20 per month.
  35. Verizon customers can sue ad company over “zombie” cookies, judges rule: Judges say ad company can’t use Verizon’s arbitration clause to avoid lawsuit.
  36. Uber is apparently facing a third federal criminal investigation: Uber allegedly created fake Lyft accounts to gather data on drivers and prices.
  37. The first man at trial over a “gig economy” job got dismantled on cross-examination
  38. Amazon’s 1-Click Patent Is About To Expire. What’s The Big Deal?
  39. Canadian cities jump at chance to play host to massive Amazon HQ
  40. Amazon’s New Headquarters Should Be in Hell
  41. White Supremacist Threatens to Sue News Outlet Over Photoshopped Gun (That He Tweeted a Month Earlier)
  42. PewDiePie Draws More Ire By Using N-Word During Live Stream
  43. PewDiePie Uses Racial Slur In Livestream, Game Dev Says He’s “Worse Than A Closeted Racist”: The super-popular streamer has found himself in hot water, again.
  44. PewDiePie Is Inexcusable but DMCA Takedowns Are Not the Way to Fight Him
  45. PewDiePie racial slur sparks backlash from Campo Santo, Simogo: Prominent YouTube streamers brace for fallout from “liability” PewDiePie’s actions
  46. Why was it so easy to weaponize copyright against PewDiePie?
  47. Let’s Play Copyright Threat Raises Questions About The Law And How To Use It
  48. Campo Santo legally able to file DMCA against PewDiePie over racial slur: But court costs to enforce could be “well over six figures” so dangerous defence for indies and smaller studios
  49. Here’s what the law says about PewDiePie’s fight with Campo Santo: Game company wants to take down YouTube star’s livestreams after n-word incident.
  50. As PewDiePie Offers Apology For Racial Slur, YouTube’s ‘Let’s Play’ Gamers Worry About Financial Fallout
  51. Ted Cruz Liked a Porn Tweet and I Can’t Even Decide Which Joke to Say 
  52. Cruz blames ‘staffing issue’ for porn video ‘liked’ on his Twitter account
  53. No “Contract By Tweet” for Plaintiff Who Pitches Movie Idea via Social Media (Eric Goldman)
  54. Congress Is About To Eviscerate Its Greatest Online Free Speech Achievement (Eric Goldman)
  55. Why Has the Government Failed to Act on Copyright Notice-and-Notice When Internal Docs Raise Abuse and Fraud Concerns?
  56. LinkedIn’s efforts to stop the bots
  57. Bitcoin investors could lose all their money, FCA warns: UK financial watchdog spells out risk for those participating in initial coin offerings using cryptocurrencie
  58. CSA Staff Narrow the Path for Cryptocurrency Offerings
  59. A Debate about Google and Its Critics: Recent allegations stoke growing ‘antitrust sentiment’ about Google.
  60. Can You Get Addicted to Trolling?: It’s becoming increasingly evident that, for some people, trolling isn’t just playing an a—-le on the internet.
  61. News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017 (Pew Research Center)
  62. A tech critic on the sham populism of Silicon Valley: Ex-New Republic editor Franklin Foer on the expansive power of big tech.
  63. There’s Blood In The Water In Silicon Valley: The bad new politics of big tech.
  64. Conservatives, liberals unite against Silicon Valley: The fading of the tech industry’s bipartisan glow in Washington puts it at risk for tighter regulations.
  65. Tech Is Public Enemy #1. So Now What?: If tech wants to reverse the crushing tide of negative public opinion, it must start creating public good commensurate with its extraction of private profit.
  66. Teen Girls With Smartphones Flirt Most With Depression and Suicide: A spike in the teen suicide rate parallels almost exactly the rise of smartphone use, especially among teen girls, who are the most vulnerable to cyberbullying and alienation.
  67. Searching For Help: She turned to Google for help getting sober. Then she had to escape a nightmare.
  68. Terms Of Service Aren’t Just Annoying—They’re A Failure
  69. Phones Are Changing How People Shoot And Watch Video
  70. Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes
  71. Hollywood’s Movies Suck, and It Doesn’t Want You to Know
  72. Lawyer who sued Gawker and Techdirt has a new target: Jezebel – “Whatever he says, goes,” former Superstar Machine member “Poppy” told Jezebel.
  73. AG Szpunar advises CJEU on cloud-based recording and private copying exception
  74. iPhone X: Software leak appears to confirm name, features, and specs – Meanwhile, iPhone 8 is an updated iPhone 7 with a glass back, and wireless charging.
  75. The Biggest IPhone Leak Yet Won’t Bruise Apple
  76. How Apple Finally Made Siri Sound More Human
  77. Apple, Facebook And Disney To Shake Up Video Streaming With Original Content
  78. Apple strikes deal with Warner Music, looks to pay labels lower rates: More paid subscribers means less money directly out of Apple’s pocket.
  79. Should Spotify Try to Become the ‘Netflix Of Music’? Not So Fast
  80. Disney To Move Marvel, ‘Star Wars’ Films From Netflix To Its Own Streaming Service
  81. Disney is pulling Star Wars and Marvel films from Netflix: In 2019, you’ll have to subscribe to Disney’s service to stream these movies.
  82. H3h3productions Raises Over $100,000 With Twitch Live Stream To Support Hurricane Harvey Relief
  83. Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis (Benjamin L. W. Sobel)
  84. For Superpowers, Artificial Intelligence Fuels New Global Arms Race
  85. Putin says the nation that leads in AI ‘will be the ruler of the world’: The Russian president warned that artificial intelligence offers ‘colossal opportunities’ as well as dangers
  86. Elon Musk: Competition for AI Superiority at National Level Will Be the “Most Likely Cause of WW3”
  87. Following Elon Musk Letter, UK Government Plans to Ban Fully Autonomous Weapons
  88. Elon Musk auto-magically extended the battery life of Teslas in Florida to help drivers evacuate
  89. MIT, IBM team up on $240 million effort to rule the AI world: The open-ended research will explore consumer tech, health, and security applications
  90. Apple’s ‘Neural Engine’ Infuses The Iphone With AI Smarts
  91. Brain-Machine Interface Isn’t Sci-Fi Anymore
  92. How Seoul Is Reinventing Itself As A Techno-Utopia
  93. Every NFL Football Will Have A Data Tracking Chip This Season
  94. Are Your Jokes Always Bombing? This App Crowdsources Them
  95. It Took A Natural Disaster For Me To Understand Snap Map
  96. The Music Industry Bands Together To Finally Get Paid Online
  97. Inside Juicero’s Demise, From Prized Startup to Fire Sale: The shuttering of the much-ridiculed Silicon Valley startup was the culmination of unsustainable costs, slow sales and unflattering media reports.
  98. Before trying robot judges, let’s learn from robot referees: Automated rulings in sports can help inform the development of criminal justice tech.
  99. How Indian Smartphone Makers Lost the War Against Chinese Companies
  100. In Irma prep, GasBuddy downloads increased 10x, nuclear reactors stayed online
  101. Tesla remotely extends the range of some cars to help with Irma: An over-the-air software update temporarily unlocks spare battery capacity.
  102. Hurricane Irma took 7 million cable and wireline subscribers offline: Comcast, AT&T, other ISPs try to get customers online as power outages persist.
  103. How Silicon Valley is erasing your individuality
  104. Whose record is it anyway? Musical ‘crate digging’ across Africa
  105. Are nonprofit news sites just creating more content for elites who already read a lot of news?
  106. Internet Archaeology
  107. The History Of The Music Industry’s First-Ever Digital Single, 20 Years After Its Release 

CREATIVITY 

  1.  Judge throws out 57-year-old copyright on “We Shall Overcome”: Pete Seeger asked for his name to be removed from the copyright in 1994.
  2. Monkey selfie case settles out of court 
  3. Lawsuit settled over rights to monkey’s selfie photo
  4. PETA drops lawsuit arguing animals have right to own property: Naruto can beat his chest: Monkey’s habitat wins 25% stake in the selfies.
  5. Monkey Selfie Case Reaches Settlement — But The Parties Want To Delete Ruling Saying Monkeys Can’t Hold Copyright
  6. 9th Circuit’s VidAngel decision vindicates lawful video filtering service
  7. Federal Court Says Utah Theater Can Serve Up Beer And R-Rated Movies Simultaneously
  8. Another Craft Beer Brand Gets Bullied To Death Over Shaky Trademark Claims
  9. Why Is This Peppa Pig Cartoon Banned In Australia?
  10. Can a tattoo on human flesh be copyrighted? We’ll soon find out: Is the human body a protectable medium of expression for purposes of copyright?
  11. Is Moviegoing Dead? Lessons Learned From The Worst Summer At The B.O. In Over A Decade
  12. America’s local newspapers might be broke – but they’re more vital than ever: Local journalism is doing great work across the country while fighting cutbacks and tight budgets.
  13. Intellectual Property and Architecture
  14. Boats Are Art; Is Fashion?
  15. Who Cares Whether Cake-Baking Is “Expressive”? The Doctrinal Costs of Focusing on Private Burdens Rather Than Governmental Purpose
  16. UGC Uncertainty Consternation Continues 
  17. Pop Stars or Porn Stars? ‘Blurred Lines’ Book Examines Music’s Role In Sexual Assault on Campus
  18. Dr. Phil Misuses Copyright In A False Imprisonment Claim
  19. Police Chief Says He’ll Decide Who Is Or Isn’t A Real Journalist
  20. Effectively Regulating E-Cigarettes and Their Advertising—and the First Amendment (Eric Lindblom)
  21. How Don Hewitt Invented 60 Minutes And Changed Journalism Forever
  22. Why the Fall TV Season is Like Your Junk Drawer
  23. Nicolas Cage Believes His Scrapped Superman Movie Is Better Than Man of Steel, Because It Exists Only in Our Minds
  24. Imagination is ancient: Our imaginative life today has access to the pre-linguistic, ancestral mind: rich in imagery, emotions and associations

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1.  TV Ad Spend To Remain Flat Through 2021 As Cord-Cutting Surpasses Projections (Report)
  2. More on Media Deregulation – Chairman Pai Speaks to NAB Radio Show and Promises to Propose the Repeal of a Rule Each Month 
  3. Comcast Whines That The Net Neutrality Debate It Keeps Rekindling Is A Lot Like ‘Groundhog Day’
  4. Comcast Continues To Insist Its Sneaky, Misleading Fees Are Just The Company’s Way Of Being ‘Transparent’
  5. Comcast Sues Vermont, Insists Having To Expand Broadband Violates Its First Amendment Rights
  6. Comcast raises sports and TV fees again, says it’s about “transparency”: Charges fees even in areas where Comcast owns local sports networks.
  7. Comcast puts YouTube in its TV boxes to entice would-be cord-cutters: YouTube follows Netflix to a prime spot on Comcast’s X1 set-top boxes. 
  8. Senators Blast The FCC For Weakening The Definition Of Broadband To Try And Hide The Industry’s Lack Of Real Competition
  9. AT&T’s John Stankey hopes to avoid a disconnect in merger with Time Warner
  10. This Sinclair-Tribune merger is a rotten deal for America: What’s to be done about “the most dangerous company most Americans haven’t heard of?”
  11. New analysis suggests Fox News is working, shifting votes to R column: Research relies on Americans being too lazy to keep channel surfing.
  12. Dirty, big secrets: Why won’t CNN and Fox account for their mistakes? 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. Judge won’t release man jailed 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives: Kid-porn suspect to remain jailed pending 5th Amendment appeal to Supreme Court.
  2. Remember the artist whose iPhone was searched at border? He’s suing the feds: “The border doctrine does not say that the Constitution doesn’t exist at the border.”
  3. MA SJC Ruling on Bail Instructive Re: Algorithms and Criminal Justice
  4. NSA Broke The Encryption On File-Sharing Apps KAZAA And EDONKEY
  5. What you should know about privacy and Apple’s FaceID on iOS 11: Your rights may differ if phone is locked via biometrics compared to a passcode.
  6. New AI can guess whether you’re gay or straight from a photograph: An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions
  7. So, Equifax says your data was hacked—now what?: 143 million now face identity theft threat, so here’s what to do if you’re one of them.
  8. Why the Equifax breach is very possibly the worst leak of personal info ever: Consumers’ most sensitive data is now in the open and will remain so for years to come.
  9. Equifax Breach Response Turns Dumpster Fire
  10. Equifax Security Breach Is A Complete Disaster… And Will Almost Certainly Get Worse
  11. Why Some Are Recommending ‘Credit Freezes’ in the Wake of the Gigantic Equifax Data Breach
  12. Are you an Equifax breach victim? You could give up right to sue to find out: Visiting Equifax site to see if you’re a victim can require you to waive lawsuit rights.
  13. Failure to patch two-month-old bug led to massive Equifax breach: Critical Apache Struts bug was fixed in March. In May, it bit ~143 million US consumers.
  14. Don’t waste your breath complaining to Equifax about data breach (Bruce Schneier)
  15. Apple’s IOS 11 Will Make It Even Harder For Cops To Extract Your Data
  16. It’s about to get tougher for cops, border agents to get at your iPhone’s data
  17. The DNC’s Technology Chief Is Phishing His Staff. Good.
  18. Mandatory Data Breach Reporting One Step Closer with Publication of Proposed Regulations

GAMES

  1. FTC Settles Complaint Against ‘Let’s Play’ YouTube Stars, Sends Warning Letters To Other Influencers And Demands Responses
  2. FTC demands disclosure from influencers following TmarTn CS:GO scandal – Commission rules that influencers must “clearly and conspicuously” identify links to products and services
  3. YouTubers escape fines for promoting their own CS:GO gambling site – FTC settlement extracts a promise not to do it again and not much else.
  4. Individual Influencers Settle With The FTC Over Undisclosed Endorsements
  5. Bungie pulls Destiny 2 item resembling white supremacist symbol
  6. Bungie removes hate symbol from Destiny 2: Developer says legendary gauntlets’ similarity to “Kekistan” flag was unintentional, doesn’t reflect its values
  7. Religious fighting game gets Steam banned in Malaysia: Valve pulls Fight of Gods after local ISPs were ordered by government to block access to digital storefront
  8. Funcom: Steam user reviews should be region gated – With “review bombs” now a common occurrence, CEO Rui Casais believes Steam should follow other stores and ditch “global” user ratings
  9. Blizzard brings forward annual charity drive to provide disaster relief
  10. Rovio IPO: A stark lesson in timing – Once the biggest company in mobile gaming, the Angry Birds creator now plans an IPO far more modest than its past ambitions
  11. Nintendo: Switch demand might outweigh supply during the holidays
  12. Nintendo wary of potential Switch shortages this holiday: Reggie Fils-Aime says “supply chain is there” but is cagey about whether platform holder will meet demand
  13. Switch version of Wonder Boyoutsells all other platforms combined
  14. Nintendo Switch versions of indie games outselling others: Wonder Boy, Forma.8 and Oceanhorn proving more successful than on other platforms, say devs
  15. For No More Heroes dev Goichi Suda, ‘the Switch is a punk console’
  16. For the first time in 15 years, Doom is coming to a Nintendo console
  17. Nintendo Urges Public: Don’t Pay More Than $80 for SNES Classic
  18. Nintendo bringing back NES Classic Edition in 2018: Super NES Classic Edition manufacturing to continue through next year as well
  19. Behind the effort to archive Nintendo’s disappearing social network: Scraping and saving millions of posts before Nintendo deletes them all on Nov. 7.
  20. Bandai Namco on the hunt for mobile mergers and acquisitions: Japanese publisher hopes to expand mobile business as it pursues global growth strategy
  21. Nintendo Still Not Ready For VR, Not Enough “Truly Fun” Experiences
  22. Niantic: Focus on visuals makes AR look like “a gimmick that lacks utility” – CEO John Hanke posts cool response to Apple’s reveal of the iPhone X’s capabilities
  23. Nazara’s $550m plans for India’s first games industry IPO: Mumbai-based mobile games publisher preparing for public listing
  24. Animal Farm developer: “I wish more games made a statement”: Imre Jele on why a team of highly experienced creators are revisiting Orwell’s 1940s classic
  25. Breaking the outrage cycle: Anger and abuse from fan communities have become a routine part of the games industry, but they don’t have to be
  26. Zoë Quinn: What Happened After GamerGate Hacked Me
  27. Women In Games Mobile Awards winners revealed: Plus Anita Sarkeesian given honourary Hall of Fame prize
  28. PAX Report: Rep. Jayapal speaks on players and political consciousness
  29. Video: A game dev guide to fostering a positive community
  30. Crunch mentality is ‘misguided and old-fashioned,’ says Tim Schafer
  31. Facebook: “We’re going all in with esports”: The leading social network explains why it is partnering with so many developers and their professional gaming leagues
  32. Facebook Pushes Further Into Esports With Paladins Partnership
  33. Blizzard is opening its own eSports venue in California
  34. Blizzard opening dedicated esports production facility: Blizzard Arena Los Angeles will include soundstages, practice facilities, merch store, seating for about 450 fans
  35. Lambton College announces plans for academic Esports program, officially opens campus gaming arena
  36. How can Riot Games fix League of Legends esports in Europe?: A prominent team has accused the European League Championship Series of being “neither rational nor fair,”, and Riot’s big changes have yet to arrive
  37. Two new Overwatch League teams point to strong US emphasis – report: Houston and Philadelphia teams would give the US 8 out of 11 spots in Activision Blizzard’s new competition
  38. Iron Galaxy’s Adam Boyes breaks down the pros and cons of game funding deals
  39. How to avoid getting sc—ed in a game publishing deal: Indies, don’t be afraid to negotiate and realize your value, says games lawyer Zachary Strebeck
  40. BIG List of Incubators, Accelerators and Funding Opportunities
  41. Gaming’s move away from ownership model is inevitable – EA: Publisher’s VP of investor relations says the technology is already in place for a shift to an access model like Spotify or Netflix
  42. Battlegrounds has surpassed 1M concurrent players on Steam
  43. 1,300 new games have been released since Steam Direct launched: The total number of games for this year has already exceeded 2015, says Niko Partners
  44. Raptr shutting down as optimization services become obsolete
  45. 14 Racing Games That Want To Win Over Your Wallet: It’s a good year to be a gearhead.
  46. Path of Exile Economy: Currency Trading
  47. Games writers now eligible for Nebula Award: Writers also able to apply for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America membership
  48. The Secret Power of Play
  49. Games aren’t always fair, the magic lies in making you think they are: Behind the scenes with the neuroscience of game design
  50. Custom Xbox One S That Lights Up Revealed By Microsoft, Made In Collaboration With Chainsmokers: DJ duo behind “Closer” worked with Microsoft on this system.
  51. How the longest-running web series, Rooster Teeth’s ‘Red vs. Blue,’ makes money

Jon

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Slides Class #1

By Jon Festinger on September 12, 2017

Here they are. Thanks for a fun morning.

Jon

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