DIGITAL
- China creates app to tell you if you are near someone in debt and encourages you to report them: The app will allow the public shaming of “deadbeat debtors”
- Russia tries to force Facebook and Twitter to relocate servers to Russia
- Pay for Trump’s border wall with $20 online porn fee, Ariz. lawmaker says
- Herrick V. Grindr – The Section 230 Case That’s Not What You’ve Heard
- Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Case That Threatened CDA 230
- There Was Heavy Tech Lobbying On Article 13… From The Company Hoping To Sell Everyone The Filters
- Disney is already losing over $1 billion in streaming, and its Netflix competitor has yet to launch
- Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music
- Facebook may be hit with “record-setting fine” by FTC, report says
- Facebook Just Removed Hundreds of Pages Linked to Russia
- President Trump Posts Altered Photos to Facebook and Instagram That Make Him Look Thinner
- Viral Is Still Copyrighted, Even to Learn Where Trump Is
- Parody Washington Post Leads To Bogus Legal Threat, And A Reminder Of An Old Internet Lawsuit
- Judge unseals trove of internal Facebook documents following our legal action
- Google, Facebook, and Amazon Spent Record Cash Lobbying Washington in 2018
- Google’s lobbying spending set new records in 2018
- Blocking Constituents from Facebook Page Violates First Amendment–Davison v. Randall
- Why Silicon Valley’s “growth at any cost” is the new “unsafe at any speed”: For years, Ashkan Soltani has warned of Facebook’s privacy-eroding tendencies.
- Fourth Amendment Limits NYC’s Demands for Airbnb Customer Records
- Pie Company Has A Rogue Twitter Impostor, But Decides To Be Totally Cool With It
- Lawmakers seek harsh penalties against ZTE and Huawei
- US asks Canada to turn over Huawei’s CFO on alleged sanctions violations
- Will Social Media Websites Become State Actors?
- Researchers discover state actor’s mobile malware efforts because of YOLO OPSEC
- BuzzFeed Set to Lay Off 15% of Its Employees
- Why Do People Fall for Fake News?
- Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War: The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics
- Social media can predict what you’ll say, even if you don’t participate
- “The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging
- Not all Opinions are Fit for Sharing
- Risky Business Just Got Riskier – DOJ Changes Stance on Internet Gambling
- DOJ Opinion Leaves Industry Hanging: If UIGEA Exclusions Don’t Modify the Wire Act What Does That Mean for Intrastate Gambling Transactions?
- Hulu Drops Price Of Ad-Supported Subscription Plan, Increases Price For Hulu With Live TV
- Hulu will make its basic plan cheaper as Netflix gets pricier
- US Media Companies Engaging In Proactive Censorship Of Content Ahead Of India’s New Hate Speech Laws
- Netflix Signs Indian Content Code Banning Offensive Material, Agrees To Self-Regulate
- Netflix Spent $12 Billion on Content in 2018. Analysts Expect That to Grow to $15 Billion This Year
- Netflix Joins the Motion Picture Association of America
- Why Does Everyone Else Want To Stop Netflix Password Sharing, When Netflix Is Fine With It?
- Netflix on streaming rivals: ‘We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO’
- The whirlwind success of Netflix’s ‘You’ and ‘Bird Box’ shows it’s become a well-oiled FOMO machine
- The Great Google Hangouts Shutdown begins October 2019
- YouTube TV Expanding to Cover Entire U.S., No International Launch Plans Right Now
- YouTube TV Rolls Out To Remaining U.S. Markets Ahead Of Super Bowl
- Netflix Says Viewership, Subscriptions Spiked During Brief YouTube Outage In October
- 2 Years After ‘Adpocalypse’, AT&T — The World’s Second Largest Advertiser — Returns To YouTube
- AT&T returns as a YouTube advertiser marking the end of the “adpocalypse”: January might be a slow month, but big ad spending is on the horizon
- YouTube Demonetizes Channel Belonging To Anti-Islam Political Advisor Tommy Robinson
- YouTube Cover Singer Lands Starring Role In Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Remake
- YouTube Trick Shot Stars ‘Dude Perfect’ Announce First Live Tour And Memberships, Ask Fans To Help Them Tie PewDiePie’s Subscriber Count
- After Stunning Australian Open Win, Stefanos Tsitsipas Urges Stadium to Subscribe To His YouTube Channel
- Vice Media, Hulu Japan Ink Original Content and Licensing Deal
- Vice Media sets up experience division: Ten-strong team will create experiences for youth media company’s own brands as well as for partners.
- Viacom Purchases Free Streaming Platform Pluto TV For $340 Million
- Font expert exposes phony trust documents
- Online Publishers Beware: An iPhone Snap May Go Viral, but Unauthorized Commercial Use is Still Not Fair Use
- NSA Puts Phone Charging Station at Hacker Conference in Plot to Go Viral
- Instagram Influencers Are Seeking The Services Of Ethical Hackers To Reclaim Their Stolen Accounts
- “A never-ending war”: top influencer on what brands should know about fakes in China
- Analysts Project Instagram Will Rake In $14 Billion In Revenues In 2019
- Patreon Gained 1 Million New Patrons In 2018, Will Pay Out Its Billionth Dollar This Year
- Blockchain justice: Crypto-currency and blockchain will increasingly be the subjects of litigation in Canada
- I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.
- Amazon begins testing deliveries with sidewalk drones
- The Prime Challenges For Amazon’s New Delivery Robot
- Microsoft: Switch to iOS or Android because Windows 10 Mobile is ending
- Google buys $40 million worth of smartwatch tech from Fossil Group
- Even with the Google/Fossil deal, Wear OS is doomed
- Google Play malware used phones’ motion sensors to conceal itself
- Google planning changes to Chrome that could break ad blockers
- Jake Paul Dropped By Legal Firm In Case Involving Prank That Damaged Man’s Hearing
- The 8 Signs That Machine Learning Will Automate Some or All of Your Job
- Globally, Most Workers Think Robots Couldn’t Handle Their Jobs
- Robots on the rise
- Sony Invests in Geolocation Startup Used to Shoot ‘Ready Player One’
- For teens, digital technology is good. Or bad. Or maybe neutral?
- Instagram Helped Me Bond With My Dentist Dad by Recommending I Watch Gross Teeth Videos
- How running websites has changed in the last two decades (for an Ars IT guru)
- Now That’s What I Call Ars Technica, Volume 1: Favorite stories from Ars’ 20 years
- Twenty legal battles that stand out across Ars’ 20 years of covering them
- Technology with limits: How can we tame technology to do what we need and then let it go so that we can be more connected to each other in real life?
- Deregulation is the New Buzz Word in Washington – Except in the Tech Industry
- Can a Server Be a Regular and Established Place of Business? Examining the SEVEN Networks Decision
CREATIVITY
- It’s Finally Happening – Major New Trademark Law Takes Effect in Canada on June 17, 2019
- Toronto DJ wins trademark registration despite association with Drake: Application was challenged by October’s Very Own
- McDonald’s loses Big Mac trademark after legal battle with Irish chain: Supermac strips US food giant of trademark across Europe after landmark EU ruling
- UK fashion label says it owns trademark on “collusion,” EFF says no way: Last year, a man bought Collusion.so, pointed it to Lawfare. ASOS didn’t like that.
- UK clothing company: Oops, our trademark doesn’t cover collusion.so
- Oh Na Na What’s My Name?: Rihanna Sues Father for Trademark Misuse of “Fenty” Surname
- Proposed Update To Singapore’s Copyright Laws Surprisingly Sensible
- The Updated Canada Food Guide: New Advice, Old Restrictive Copyright Rules
- Port Talbot Banksy sells for six-figure sum
- The King of Wakanda Holds the Oscars’ First Best Picture Nod for a Superhero Film
- Viceland Will Relaunch Primetime With Nightly Live Two-Hour Variety Show
- Leslie Jones Is No Fan of the New GhostbustersMovie
- Key IP Takeaways from the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
- Copyright Act amendments to unveil our hidden history
- An Analysis of Title I and Title III of The Music Modernization Act, Part 1 of 2 (Tyler Ochoa)
- An Analysis of Title I and Title III of The Music Modernization Act, Part 1 of 2 (Tyler Ochoa)
- Duty of loyalty: A limit to freedom of expression
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- The Canadian Wireless Story: Comparative Data Shows World’s Highest Carrier Revenues Per SIM
- Sunlight on the Submissions: Why the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel Should Reverse Its Secretive Approach (Michael Geist)
- Woman sues T-Mobile after employees allegedly snoop on racy private video
- Verizon blames school text provider in dispute over “spam” fee
- Verizon offers free robocall blocking, two years after AT&T and T-Mobile
- Trump Hotel Fracas Highlights How T-Mobile’s Consumer-Friendly Brand Schtick Is Wearing A Little Thin
- Sorry, Ajit: Comcast lowered cable investment despite net neutrality repeal
- Remember When Ajit Pai Said Killing Net Neutrality Would Boost Network Investment? About That…
- Terabyte-using cable customers double, increasing risk of data cap fees
- Government Shutdown May Cause FCC to Cancel January 30 Public Meeting
- FCC Wants Delay In Net Neutrality Trial Due To Government Shutdown, But Isn’t Likely To Get It
- Statements by third parties – What are the liabilities of publishers and broadcasters?
- Brexit and broadcasting: Luxembourg as the ideal gateway to provide audiovisual media services throughout the EU (without a major impact on operations in the UK!)
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Max Schrems Files New Privacy Complaints That Seem To Show The Impossibility Of Complying With The GDPR
- How The GDPR Is Still Ruining Christmas
- GDPR Enforcement Actions, Fines Pile Up
- Google must pay €50 million for GDPR violations, France says
- Attorney General Nominee Seems Willing To Let The DOJ Jail Journalists Over Published Leaks
- YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, And More Accused Of Violating E.U. Data Privacy Legislation Per Article 15
- Yahoo! Derivative Data Breach Suit Yields Unprecedented $29 Million Settlement
- Mother of All Breaches Exposes 773 Million Emails, 21 Million Passwords
- Monster 773 million-record breach list contains plaintext passwords
- How to Stop Worrying About Every ‘Mega’ Password Breach That Comes Along
- GoDaddy weakness let bomb threat scammers hijack thousands of big-name domains
- Hackers Hijacked A Family’s Smart Home, Spammed Nuclear Missile Alerts
- Exploring the EU’s new rules for the free flow of non-personal data
- Seattle Newspaper Wins Federal Court Case, Opens Up Reporting On Secret Law Enforcement Surveillance
- NY Court Tells NYPD It Can’t Hide Surveillance Of Protesters Behind A Glomar Response
- The creepy rule
- 41 California Privacy Experts Urge Major Changes to the California Consumer Privacy Act (Eric Goldman)
- Fourth Amendment Limits NYC’s Demands for Airbnb Customer Records (Eric Goldman)
- Privacy and Data Security 2018 Year in Review
- 2018 Privacy Year in Review
- ‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
- 41 California Privacy Experts Urge Major Changes to the California Consumer Privacy Act
- Is Privacy a Right? (Doc Searls)
GAMES
- Westworld Mobile shuts down following Bethesda lawsuit
- Bethesda bans Fallout 76 players who accessed secret developer room
- Bethesda confirms bans for visiting hidden Fallout 76“developer room”
- Star Control: Origins restored to Steam amid legal battle with series’ creators
- Eximius developer uses DMCA to reclaim Steam page from publisher: Ammobox claims publisher TheGameWall Studios “disappeared completely,” after launch, and lost revenue worth six months of operating expenses
- Emulator project aims to resurrect classic Mac apps and games without the OS
- How machine learning is helping fans remaster retro classics
- Ubisoft issues apology for controversial Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC
- Ubisoft Apologizes To Players For Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC Controversy
- Ubisoft apologises for forcing heterosexual romance in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC: Publisher explains story-based decision behind relationship but admits it was “poorly executed”
- Challenging the inevitability of online harassment | Opinion: Tackling harassment will be a long and bitter march, but understanding it is the first step
- Tencent still absent from third round of Chinese game approvals
- Tencent and NetEase absent from third wave of Chinese game approvals: No games from China’s two key publishers have been included in the 257 cleared so far
- My Time at Portia devs compensate voice actors for unpaid wages
- Atlas Player Gets Into Admin’s Account, Summons Swarm Of Whales And Other Mayhem
- Former Heroes of the Storm team files suit against ex-owner for unpaid wages
- Square Enix has trademarked the name of Octopath Traveler’s art style
- Square Enix trademarks terms for Octopath Traveler’s visual style: The publisher now has trademarks for “HD2D” and “HD-2D” in Europe
- Unity CEO clarifies Improbable violations, future plans in AMA: John Riccitiello emphasizes platform’s “developer-first” focus as driving TOS changes
- NBA extends partnership with NBA 2K publisher 2K
- Don’t Miss: How working on gross, violent games can affect developers
- Netflix: “We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO” – TV and film streaming service points to Epic’s battle royale title as a major competitor
- Netflix thinks ‘Fortnite’ is a bigger threat than HBO
- Netflix claims Fortnite is now a bigger competitor than HBO
- Insights: The Real Competition for Netflix Is…A Single Videogame? Yup.
- Cybersecurity firm exposes Fortnite vulnerability: If exploited, hackers could have viewed personal information, purchased items, and overheard chat through affected accounts
- Fortnite Dances Its Way Into More Lawsuits
- Blog: Why the Epic Games Store could be huge for influencers
- Epic Games acquires digital character specialist 3Lateral
- Analyst: PUBG out-earned every other premium PC and console game in 2018
- Digital Extremes and PUBG company Krafton looking for developers at PAX East
- UK Charts: Ace Combat 7 breaks franchise records, but Mario holds No.1: Bandai Namco’s flight game debuts at No.2
- Microsoft says its game streaming service has an advantage thanks to Xbox
- Microsoft CEO states “Netflix for games” ambitions: Satya Nadella points to game catalogue and PC business as key advantages over competitors
- As Twitch Subscriber Race Heats Up, Ninja Is Annoyed That “Everyone’s Just Out To Look For The Next Guy”
- U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Helps Twitch Streamer ‘Hbomberguy’ Raise $340,000+ For Transgender Nonprofit
- Streamer raises $340,000 for trans charity by playingDonkey Kong 64
- Games industry names help YouTuber raise $340,000 for trans charity in Donkey Kong 64 marathon: Grant Kirkhope, Jon Romero and Jim Sterling join the challenge
- Machinima has been wiped clean: The end of an era
- Otter Media blocks all Machinima content on YouTube: Parent company says new Machinima content will be “distributed on new channels” to be announced later this year
- Changing industry economics let Bungie forge a new destiny | Opinion – The idea of a developer operating an expensive online game would once have seemed ludicrous – Bungie’s new independence shows how much has changed
- Capcom Really Loves Remaking Resident Evil 2
- Resident Evil 2 Review
- Resident Evil 2 remake review: Beautiful, terrifying, and annoying
- Resident Evil 2’s time-restricted demo has been downloaded over 3 million times
- Blog: Overcoming genre in Ni No Kuni 2
- Starbreeze delays console release of Overkill’s The Walking Dead
- Starbreeze delays Overkill’s The Walking Dead on console: Troubled publisher pushes game beyond its planned February release, more information “at a later date”
- How to build a Bandersnatch: Developers shares advice on how to create interactive movie games that can stand toe-to-toe with Black Mirror’s latest
- The Bandersnatch effect: Netflix’s Black Mirror outing has everyone talking about interactive fiction — but what does this mean for the game developers who got there first?
- Blog: How to make the marriage between cinema and games last
- Get a job: Crystal Dynamics is hiring a Camera Designer
- Hothead Games opens new publishing division
- Metro Exodus publisher confident over showdown with Crackdown and Far Cry: Deep Silver on how it has readied a marketing assault ahead of crowded February 15 launch
- Switch dominates a great year for game consoles in 2018
- NPD: The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console of 2018 in the U.S.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 5 million globally in first week: Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa says Nintendo Switch seeing fastest software sales in Nintendo history
- Media Create: New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe sells through over half of first-week shipment
- Don’t Miss: The secret history of Donkey Kong 9
- Former PlayStation, Take-Two, Nintendo execs launch blockchain publisher: Planet Digital Partners will use $38m blockchain token sale to secure investment for up to ten new games
- Blog: Games and crowdfunding in 2018
- Nexon reportedly up for sale: Tencent, EA, Activision, and Disney listed as interested parties in Korean publisher of MapleStory
- Layoffs hit NCSoft’s Iron Tiger Studios: Publisher confirms an undisclosed number of layoffs at San Mateo developer
- Supergiant’s fourth outing Hades introduces a more mature, organized dev process
- Splash Damage has released the full game design document for Dirty Bomb
- Cloud Imperium Games spent $4M a month in 2017 developing Star Citizen
- Blog: The mysteries of studying game design
- Blog: Why nobody cares about your indie game
- CI Games establishes United Label, a new publishing label dedicated to indies
- IndieDB, ModDB founder launches mod-focused publishing arm: Modularity to use mod.io to offer a “fully cross-platform and store-agnostic modding solution”
- With CryEngine’s SpatialOS GDK in the works, Crytek reaffirms open-platform goals
- US, Canada mobile gaming brought in $9.37 billion in 2018: Candy Crush games topped revenue charts for the year as puzzle, strategy, and casino genres dominated
- Chad Wild Clay, Vy Qwaint Launch Mobile Game Inspired By Their Kids’ YouTube Spy Series
- FIFA 19 trumped Red Dead and COD as Europe’s highest selling game in 2018: Gfk Entertainment data shows EA Sports’ football title as the most popular across 15 countries
- Sony is rolling out PlayStation Now to new European territories
- Fast Travel Games sold more on PSVR than Steam, Oculus and Viveport combined: PSVR accounts for 58% of Apex Construct sales, said CEO Oskar Burman, and Sony’s lead is getting wider
- ‘Apex Construct’ Studio: Big Boost in PSVR Installs Thanks to Recent Increase in Headset Sales
- VR headsets, augmented windshields, and multiscreen infotainment at CES
- VR Train Simulator ‘Derail Valley’ to Launch into Early Access This Week
- The Digital Revolution: Fundamentals of virtual, mixed and augmented reality
- Mortal Kombat 11 gameplay as seen by a ‘90s arcade rat
- How European expansion bolstered Bulkhead against Brexit: Setting up a German subsidiary enabled recruitment of new talent amid political turmoil in the UK, says Bulkhead Interactive CEO Joe Brammer
- New esports league crops up around Farming Simulator 19
- GAME’s shares improve following “solid” Christmas results: UK dips offset by Spanish growth over festive period
- Kingdom Hearts III Is An Unreviewable Video Game
- 9 Video Game Secrets That Took Years to Find: In the olden days, programmers could hide something in the code of a video game and be confident that it would never be revealed.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, video games, and the new online town square
- Video: How I got my mom to play through Plants vs. Zombies
Jon