News Of The Week

A really interesting article showing how the UK has now followed in the footsteps of the USA, banning most electronic devices from being taken into the cabin on flights from some Muslim majority countries, including Turkey and Dubai.

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. For the first time, more people subscribe to Netflix than have DVR: The streaming service has dramatically changed how Americans watch TV.
2. The Cord Cutting The Cable Industry Says Isn’t Happening, Keeps Happening
3. USAToday Latest News Outlet To Completely Miss The Point Of Cord Cutting
4. New York City Sues Verizon For Fiber Optic Bait And Switch
5. 1 million NYC homes can’t get Verizon FiOS, so the city just sued Verizon: Verizon wants another four years to cover remaining 1 million households.
6. Is There Any Rhyme or Reason for Which TV Networks are Included in Skinny Bundles?
7. Net neutrality hurts health care and helps porn, Republican senator claims: Does the senator’s argument make any sense? Let’s look at the facts.
8. Senate Democrats question FCC chair’s independence from Trump: Dems want promise that Pai won’t “penalize free speech” to punish Trump enemies.
9. Net neutrality DOA? Here’s what’s next for the internet
10. On Eve of Broadband Privacy Rule’s Effective Date, FCC Pauses Implementation 
11. AT&T allegedly “discriminated” against poor people in broadband upgrades: “Digital redlining” leaves poor people with the slowest Internet, report says.
12. In Dodging FCC Review, AT&T’s Time Warner Mega-Merger Just Got Much Easier Under Trump
13. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Interview: Media Ownership Rules ‘Quite Antiquated’
14. After escaping net neutrality probe, Verizon expands data cap exemptions: With net neutrality worries gone, FiOS TV goes “data-free” on Verizon Wireless.
15. DirecTV’s ‘Regional Sports Fees’ Make No Coherent Sense, Company Won’t Explain Why
16. Mayors slam AT&T for slow Internet, long phone outages: “AT&T has reneged on its responsibility to customers,” mayor says.
17. Will The Investigation Into Fox News Be Blunted Now That Preet Is Gone
18. Hannity pretends Crowley didn’t plagiarize: Are Monica Crowley and Sean Hannity in denial about Crowley’s plagiarism? Brian Stelter says Hannity hurts his viewers by ignoring real reporting.
19. Law School vs. TV Station: Showdown Over Racial Bias Questions
20. When times get tough, media consolidates. Tech? Not so much.: Code Advisors partner Quincy Smith talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the state of M&A on Recode Decode.
21. Compliance and Enforcement Decision CRTC 2017-65: William Rapanos – Violations of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation
22. Google Fiber Was Doomed From the Start: The internet access answer won’t come from private markets, but rather from policies that make for competitive networks. (Susan Crawford)
23. Amendments to the Films Act and the Broadcasting Act (Singapore)

DIGITAL

1. How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It (Farhad Manjoo)
2. Kodi crackdown: Premier League wins High Court order to block illegal streams – Sky, TalkTalk, BT, and Virgin will block servers that host pirated footie games.
3. UK ISPs to block set-top boxes that illegally live-stream soccer matches: Premier League wins court injunction requiring server-level blocking.
4. UK Court Grants First Live Blocking Order To Stop New Infringing Streams As Soon As They Start
5. First live blocking order granted in the UK
6. UK Local Government Confirms Surprising EU Position That Viewing Pirated Streams Probably Isn’t Illegal
7. Political Polarization On Twitter Rose Up To 20 Percent In Obama Era: An analysis of 679,000 users over last year 8 years shows how we’re becoming more divided online
8. The social media “echo chamber” is real
9. Active social media users are self-segregated and polarized in news consumption.
10. Facebook—in hate-crime clash with MPs—claims it’s “fixed” abuse review tool: Lawmaker accuses Twitter, Google, and Facebook of “commercial prostitution.”
11. Technology To Blame For Nearly All Serious Crimes: Europol – The main police agency of the EU says its officers need to get more tech-savvy, too
12. Tech’s political impact? “14 people watch me on C-SPAN… 1M on Facebook” – Senator: Social media sites aren’t bad or good—ceding them to hate is the problem.
13. How To Improve Online Comments: Test Whether People Have Read The Article Before Allowing Them To Respond
14. Tim Berners-Lee: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it – It has taken all of us to build the web we have, and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want – for everyone
15. We didn’t lose control – it was stolen: The Web we have is not broken for Google and Facebook. People farmers are reaping the rewards of their violations into our lives to the tune of tens of billions in revenue every year. How can they possibly be our allies?
16. Biotyranny and its Resistance: Who Owns Your Body?: Inspired by Foucault, Chelsea Manning and techniques like gene editing, artists and activists are taking back power over our bodies from governments and corporations.
17. AI’s PR Problem: Had artificial intelligence been named something less spooky, we’d probably worry about it less.
18. Germany May Fine Social Media Companies For Allowing Hate Speech: New bill could make Facebook and Twitter pay for not policing their platforms
19. Facebook and Twitter Could Face Fines in Germany Over Hate Speech Posts
20. Watch what you tweet! ‘Serious harm’ test clarified
21. Prenda May Be Dead, But Copyright Trolling Still Going Strong
22. The Kim Dotcom film: How to avoid a trial for 5 years and counting: Dotcom’s showmanship throws a small democracy for a loop.
23. Ed Sheeran: Piracy Is What Made Me
24. Ed Sheeran intervenes for fan, saying he will sort out Facebook copyright ban
25. ‘I Don’t See A YouTube Value Gap. Over 45% Of Our Revenue From The Platform Is From UGC’
26. Google’s Uptime App Promotes Collaborative YouTube Viewing
27. How YouTube TV stacks up against DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV: Google entered TV streaming with a feature-rich service at an aggressive price.
28. Bad Libel Law Strikes Again: Silly UK Twitter Spat Results In Six Figure Payout
29. Oil Company Files Bogus Libel Lawsuit Over ‘Substantially True’ Facebook Comment By Local Activist
30. Man behind GemCoin, a fake cryptocurrency, settles lawsuit for $71M – Judge: “Defendant has shown no sign of recognition of wrongdoing.”
31. Study: U.S. Ad-Supported Internet Generated $1.21 Trillion, 10.4 Million Jobs In 2016
32. Insights: How Snapchat Is Changing The Way The Web Works And Looks
33. Samsung Shut Out Of Arbitration In Recent Consumer Class Actions
34. EU Parliament Report Recommends Throwing Out Something Even Worse Than The Link Tax: Upload Filtering
35. Uber an avatar of innovation and progress? The economic evidence says otherwise.
36. Uber says it will stop using Greyball to evade authorities: Uber’s chief security officer says the changes won’t be immediate but gradual.
37. Uber’s Going To Follow The Rules Now, Uber Says: The company, bombarded with bad press, has stopped digging in its heels about certain high-profile issues
38. Sharing Economy Giants Are Using Data To Build “The Taking Economy,” Study Warns: Information imbalances benefitting Uber and other services might need new solutions.
39. Google tops Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For: Tech giant tops list that also features NVIDIA at 39 and Activision Blizzard at 66
40. Report: Lack of Mentors, Female Role Models Top List of Barriers Facing Women in Tech
41. Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?: Tech companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions for female employees. Here’s why not much has changed—and what might actually work.
42. Yahoo to give Marissa Mayer $23 million parting gift after sale to Verizon: Mayer will leave as what remains of Yahoo becomes Altaba holding company.
43. Marissa Mayer Getting $23 Million For Running Yahoo Into The Ground
44. S.E.C. Rejects Winklevoss Brothers’ Bid to Create Bitcoin E.T.F.
45. US Regulator Makes Important Decision About Bitcoin Derivatives
46. Vice Media Will Produce Original, Exclusive Programming for Snapchat
47. Hologram Sports Broadcasts Of Olympics Competition Being Considered By IT Provider Atos
48. Facebook Scores Major League Soccer Streaming Deal, Continuing Push Into Premium TV Content
49. Facebook signs deal with MLS, Univision to stream live soccer games: Games that were previously Spanish-only will be streamed in English on Facebook.
50. The optimist’s guide to the robot apocalypse
51. A Robot Lawyer Is Officially Assisting With Refugee Applications
52. Canadian firms can’t use social media to report key information, CSA rules
53. Software results in mistaken arrests, jail time? No fix needed, says judge: “Clerical errors… will occur regardless of the case management system used by the court.”
54. One Day You Might Choose The Ending To A Netflix Show: The company experiments with interactive storytelling technology
55. Wowing and washable: Google’s smart jacket wears and works well at first glance: “Blinking on your jacket is uncool”—luckily this looks the part while having its brains.
56. Common Ethical Issues To Consider When Researching Jurors And Witnesses On Social Media
57. Why China’s internet use has overtaken the West
58. Advertising in Windows has reached an exasperating new low
59. ICANN’s Special Privileges for Trademark Owners are The.Worst
60. Trademarks and Digital Goods (Mark P. McKenna & Lucas Osborn)
61. Are Algorithms In Tune With Music?: What impact do algorithms have for music curation and creation? 

CREATIVITY

1. Canada Says It Won’t Attend Special 301 Hearing Because USTR Prefers Industry Allegations To Facts And Data
2. Is Blacklock’s Now Engaging in a Strategy of Start, Stay and Delay? (Howard Knopf)
3. French court finds Jeff Koons guilty of copyright infringement
4. When Morality and Copyright Collide
5. Copyright: the right to exploit vs the right not to exploit
6. Concordia University caught on the wrong side of copyright
7. Who is on the Wrong Side?: Why the Copyright Mistake at Concordia Highlights the Problems with Collective Licensing (Michael Geist)
8. Yes We Scan: Why Concordia Should Not Shelve Its Book Scanner (Michael Geist)
9. Breaking News: OUP and other Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University and Photocopier
10. Photocopying Textbooks Is Fair Use In India: Western Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University
11. UC Berkley To Remove More Than 20,000 Online Videos From Public Access In Response To DOJ Captioning Demand 
12. Get back to whom you once belonged: Paul McCartney seeks to reclaim ownership of music catalog through interesting provision of copyright act 
13. ‘Fake news’: the best thing that’s happened to journalism – Fake News has upset a lot of people and caused real damage but it’s been good news for journalism analysts like me. I’ve never had more interest in a media issue than this. I’ve never been busier talking and researching a topic and it’s consequences. Here are some notes that I use when I give talks about fake news.
14. How South Korea’s Fake News Hijacked a Democratic Crisis
15. Trump ‘Fake News’ Story Punished In Tanzania: A Tanzanian news outlet suspended nine people after airing a false story claiming that Trump thought its president was an “African hero.”
16. Fixing Fake News Won’t Fix Journalism: Scammers have become a scapegoat for the ailing press. What we really need is a deeper fix.
17. This Article Won’t Change Your Mind: The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs
18. SXSW has rescinded its incendiary immigration policy after a huge backlash
19. When Art Meets Power
20. Ad Agencies And Accountability
21. China Busily Approving ‘Trump’ Trademarks With Stunning Speed
22. Judge Allows for Possibility “Marilyn Monroe” Is Too Generic for Trademark
23. No Photographs, Please, We Are French
24. The Role Insurance Can Play in Your IP Strategy
25. In liberal Hollywood, a conservative minority faces backlash in the age of Trump
26. Are Black Brits Black Enough to Play Black Americans?: Samuel L. Jackson questioned the casting of black British actors in American roles on Hot 97 earlier this week, but his comments neglect both shared history and the reality of Britain’s entertainment industry
27. The Fate Of The Critic In The Clickbait Age
28. Pi(e) Is Not Protected By Copyright Laws
29. Music as a Matter of Law (Joseph Fishman) 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. US charges two Russian agents with ordering hack of 500m Yahoo accounts: Russian law enforcement agency that works with FBI hired Yahoo hackers.
2. Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says
3. Are White House Officials Breaking the Law by Using Secret Messaging Apps
4. Secretary of State Tillerson used e-mail alias as Exxon CEO: Climate change investigation leads New York AG to request “Wayne Tracker” e-mails.
5. Privacy commissioner investigating Canada Border Services Agency over electronic media searches
6. High Court reserves judgment in Facebook case: Data watchdog wants EU court to decide on European Commission data-transfer rulings
7. Constitution Protects Publication of Politicians’ Home Address/Phone Number–Publius v. Boyer-Vine (Eric Goldman)
8. Advertisers look forward to buying your Web browsing history from ISPs: Ad groups thank Republican lawmakers for move to kill ISP privacy rules.
9. NY Legislators Looking At Installing A Free Speech-Stomping ‘Right To Be Forgotten’
10. French Government Adopts Long-Awaited Decree Compensating ISPs for HADOPI-relatedTasks
11. the internet of (very private) things (Brenda Pritchard)
12. Maker of ‘Smart’ Vibrators Settles Data Collection Lawsuit for $3.75 Million
13. Vibrator maker ordered to pay out C$4m for tracking users’ sexual activity: Canadian manufacturer We-Vibe collected data about temperature and vibration intensity, revealing intimate information without customers’ knowledge
14. Judge Rules For Golden State Warriors, Dismisses Eavesdropping App Lawsuit
15. FBI’s methods to spy on journalists should remain classified, judge rules – Reaction: “It is antithetical to a democracy that supposedly values a free press.”
16. US spies still won’t tell Congress the number of Americans caught in dragnet: Electronic surveillance programs Prism, Upstream hang in the congressional balance.
17. Despite Stream Of Leaks Exposing Tremendous Gov’t Surveillance Capabilities, James Comey Still Complaining About ‘Going Dark’
18. Congressman Introduces Bill That Would Allow People And Companies To ‘Hack Back’ After Attacks
19. Controversial ‘Vigilante’ App Relaunches To Help People Go Film Police
20. Tobii Recommends Explicit Consent for Recording Eye Tracking Data
21. Threat via Whisper prompts FBI to show up: “holy **** I’m… going to get raided”: Seriously, don’t post violent threats on “anonymous” messaging apps.
22. There were more device searches at US border last month than all of 2015: CBP has not answered Ars’ questions; ACLU has heard no explanation.
23. Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices and In the Cloud
24. Big data to get intellectual property protection in Japan: Companies would be freer to sell information they now collect and hoard
25. Consumer Reports Proposes Open Source Security Standard To Keep The Internet Of Things From Sucking
26. DeepMind says no quick fix for verifying health data access
27. Data Mining for Personally Targeted Politics
28. Judge Grants Search Warrant Demanding Info On Everyone Who Searched For A Certain Person’s Name
29. Geohot’s new automated-driving device can only be redeemed by coughing up data: Answers questions about NHTSA letter from October, Tesla snafu.
30. Consumer protection & privacy paramount at the FTC Forum on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain

Jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda (Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts & Ethan Zuckerman)
2. I Tried Trump’s Media Diet. Now Nothing Surprises Me Anymore
3. Trump’s FCC chairman says he won’t just do what Trump tells him to: Ajit Pai met with Trump Monday but won’t say what they discussed.
4. Trump renominates FCC Chair Ajit Pai for another five-year term: Cable lobby hails Pai for pushing “pro-consumer agenda” and “Internet freedom.”
5. The FCC Helped Make the Internet Great: Now, It’s Walking Away
6. Op-ed: The Internet belongs to the people, not powerful corporate interests – Senator Chuck Schumer writes for Ars – Keep net neutrality rules in place.
7. Op-ed: Protect the Open Internet with a bipartisan law – Senator John Thune writes for Ars – Time for a new approach on net neutrality.
8. Charter CEO Touts Pro-Industry Cable Deregulation Under Trump
9. FCC Boss Calls Net Neutrality A ‘Mistake,’ Repeats Debunked Claim It Stifled Broadband Investment
10. FCC Partially Kills Rules Requiring ISPs Be Clear About Usage Caps, Hidden Fees
11. Broadband lobbyists celebrate as FCC halts data security requirements: Data security rule would have confused Internet users, FCC chair claims.
12. FCC Broadband Privacy Rule On Hold, Likely Dead
13. Sprint’s long VoIP patent war leads to $140M verdict against Time Warner Cable: Can Sprint’s patent lawyers force competitors to pay up for VoIP?
14. CRTC says No to “backdoor MVNO” Sugar Mobile
15. Why proper MVNOs, unlimited data won’t happen in Canada
16. Brad Wall says people have spoken and they don’t want SaskTel sold
17. CRTC releases data on device unlock revenue made by Canadian carriers
18. YouTube TV Improves Outlook For AT&T Time Warner Merger
19. Report: Sprint “betting big on Trump,” could merge with T-Mobile or Comcast – Sprint owner weighs a few possible mergers, makes case to Trump administration.

DIGITAL

1. Snap explodes another 14% on second day of trading
2. NBCUniversal invests $500 million in Snapchat maker’s IPO
3. Snapchat says 42 million people are watching its NFL content
4. Shares of Snapchat Are Way Higher Than Expected
5. How Mobile Dominates YouTube Viewership
6. Uber and Airbnb are not the future of capitalism
7. Uber Maybe Not Taking Its COO Search Very Seriously
8. Important Ruling On Perennially-Problematic Creative Commons Non-Commercial License
9. Italian firm thinks Facebook’s “Nearby Places” is a copycat, gets feature shut down: Court ordered Facebook to suspend the feature or pay 5,000 euros per day.
10. Zuckerberg World President: From a Harvard dormitory at the ripe age of 20, Mark Zuckerberg created one of the most successful companies of the Internet Age. He is liked and respected by his employees and leads what is probably the Valley’s best run organization. Today, Facebook has become so powerful that it challenges established political structures and threatens to undemocratically twist the will of The People.
11. Massive Internet Outage Had A Pretty Dumb Cause: A Typo – Pity the poor Amazon programmer and their errant finger
12. Terms and Conditions (Rebecca Tushnet)
13. Industry, and Apple, opposing “right to repair” laws: Apple claimed jailbreaking would embolden hackers—says same about right to repair.
14. A right to repair: why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple – Farmers like fixing their own equipment, but rules imposed by big corporations are making it impossible. Now this small showdown could have a big impact
15. The Art Of Manipulating Algorithms:
16. Joy Buolamwini: How I’m fighting bias in algorithms
17. Patent-holding company’s $533M verdict against Apple is dust on appeal: Massive verdict would have been largest ever for a non-practicing entity.
18. Copyright Troll Sues Tor Exit Node, Gets Partial Win
19. Why Canada is Now Home to Some of the Toughest Anti-Piracy Rules in the World…And What Should Come Next (Michael Geist)
20. UK: Search engines agree to demote pirate sites in search result listings 
21. German Judge Fines Father Because He Didn’t Tell His Kid Not To Engage In Piracy
22. UK government publishes digital strategy to create and support a secure and thriving data economy 
23. The UK Government Digital Strategy is out, and it’s rubbish
24. “Save The Meme” Campaign Protests EU’s Proposed Piracy Filters
25. Politico publishes (part of) draft copyright report by MEP Comodini Cachia
26. Electronic marketing and internet use in Canada
27. 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump – Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him.
28. The Golden State of Hate: How the Internet Made Hate Respectable
29. South Africa Introduces Revised Cybercrime Legislation, Acknowledging Criticism
30. PR-Stupid JetSmarter Will Charge Journalists $2000 If They Don’t Write Positive Reviews
31. Soundcloud Tells Guy It Needs To Kill His Account Of 8 Years Because Someone Else Trademarked His Name
32. Silicon Valley Needs To Get Its Act Together On Sexual Harassment & Discrimination
33. Google’s Artificial Brain Learns to Find Cat Videos
34. Robots’ Legal Personality (Horst Eidenmuller)
35. Going for Gold: 3D Printing, Jewellery and the Future of Intellectual Property Law
36. Why the biggest challenge facing AI is an ethical one
37. How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything: Baidu’s Andrew Ng and Singularity’s Neil Jacobstein say this time, the hype about artificial intelligence is real
38. Why Netflix Lets You Subtitle All Your Shows In Comic Sans
39. Alcatel A5 LED: Because someone, somewhere wants a phone that doubles up as a mobile disco. Maybe.
40. Virtual Reality: How to protect your IP rights in a virtual world
41. Blockchain applications may be caught by Ontario’s securities law 
42. Blockchain and Secured Lending in Canada
43. Bitcoin Is A Chaotic Bedlam Of Manipulation And Deceit And That’s Just The Way We Like It
44. A Single Bitcoin Transaction Takes Thousands of Times More Energy Than a Credit Card Swipe
45. Mossberg: Tech’s ruling class casts a big shadow 

CREATIVITY

1. Audiences no longer care about platforms. The content creator is ‘king.’: Sweet Paul, Cheddar and Axios are proof that media consumers will change their behavior and go where a creator has produced interesting content.
2. Andrews v Sony ATV Music Publishing
3. SXSW Faces Heavy Criticism For Immigration Clause In Artist Contract: Downtown Boys, PWR BTTM, Priests, and more have signed an open letter demanding that SXSW retract the clause.
4. Downtown Boys, Priests, Sheer Mag, More Sign Open Letter Demanding SXSW Rescind Deportation Clause: “We are calling on SXSW to immediately drop this clause from their contract, and cease any collusion with immigration officials that puts performers in danger”
5. State Rep Diego Bernal pulls out of SXSW panel amid immigration controversy: “I will not in good conscience participate in a festival that uses the threat of deportation as part of it’s business practices.”
6. Federal Law Now Prohibits Censoring of Unfavorable Reviews
7. Careful clearing photos from social media for news reporting
8. Focus: Appropriation of personality after death issue in estates
9. Canadian Government on U.S. Special 301: We Don’t Recognize Validity of Flawed Report (Michael Geist)
10. Text Protecting Indigenous Cultural Expressions Streamlined At WIPO, But Divergence Persists
11. Why newspaper subscriptions are on the rise
12. How Disaster Science Explains the Oscars Mix-Up: Major errors don’t cause disasters. Banal mistakes and human nature do.
13. Why does anybody own CRISPR? An argument against academic IP
14. The Racist Legacy of NYC’s Anti-Dancing Law
15. The Defend Trade Secrets Act Isn’t An “Intellectual Property” Law (Eric Goldman)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools
2. Helpful(?) coding tips from the CIA’s school of hacks: WikiLeaks dump includes a best (and worst) practices guide for exploit developers.
3. How the CIA Can Hack Your Phone, PC, and TV (Says WikiLeaks)
4. CIA Leak Shows Mobile Phones Vulnerable, Not Encryption
5. Trump Administration Wants A Clean Reauthorization For NSA Surveillance
6. Selfie With Merkel by Refugee Became a Legal Case, but Facebook Won in German Court
7. Court Tells Cops They Can’t Use GPS Data Gathered After Suspect They Were Tracking Sold The Vehicle
8. DARPA’s Brain Chip Implants Could Be the Next Big Mental Health Breakthrough—Or a Total Disaster
9. Master spy behind Snoopers’ Charter wants to gag leakers, journalists: Cabinet office refuses to deny that ex-MI6 man Charles Farr is behind espionage law review.
10. To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case
11. Yahoo’s data breach costs general counsel his job
12. The cost of Yahoo’s data breach
13. BBC screenshots child abuse images on Facebook—Facebook reports it to cops: “Probe shouldn’t involve making more images,” say CPS rules. Did BBC follow them?
14. Prenda’s John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits To Basically Everything
15. VP Who Thought Clinton Private Emails Were Bad Also Had Private Emails: Mike Pence used an AOL account to conduct official business, which was hacked
16. The Vatican Announces Plan To Protect Pope Francis’ Publicity Rights
17. India Opening Up World’s Largest Biometric Database For Commercial Applications, Despite Inadequate Privacy Protection
18. Court Refuses to Dismiss Biometric Privacy Action over Facial Recognition Technology Used by Google Photos 
19. EFF: Data Collected From Utility Smart Meters Should Be Protected By The Fourth Amendment
20. CIA Leaks Unsurprisingly Show The Internet Of Broken Things Is A Spy’s Best Friend
21. GOP senators’ new bill would let ISPs sell your Web browsing data: Senate resolution would throw out FCC’s entire privacy rulemaking.
22. Body Cameras Used By UK Local Government To Catch People Dropping Litter And Walking Dogs
23. The Validity of EU-U.S. Personal Data Export Tools: A Pending Issue 
24. Hacker George Hotz cancels Model S order after Tesla reminds him about IP theft: Was set to receive a car last week, then came a last-minute call from Tesla legal.
25. Vizio Fails To Dodge Class Action Over Its Spying ‘Smart’ Televisions
26. Uber’s “Greyball” tool helped company evade authorities in Portland, Paris
27. Here’s A Tip: If You’re Desiging Special Apps To Hide From Regulators, You’re Going To Get In Trouble

Jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. YouTube launches its own streaming TV service: Another way to cut the cord
2. YouTube Unveils Live TV Bundle for $35 Per Month With 40 Channels
3. FCC head Ajit Pai: You can thank me for carriers’ new unlimited data plans – But there are good reasons to believe he’s wrong.
4. FCC Boss Falsely Claims His Attacks On Net Neutrality Have Already Made The Wireless Sector More Competitive
5. Under Ajit Pai’s FCC, mobile ISPs can charge tolls to bypass data caps: Plenty of customers still have data caps, and FCC won’t halt zero-rating.
6. FCC chief doesn’t plan to review AT&T–Time Warner merger
7. FCC lets “billion-dollar” ISPs hide fees and data caps, Democrat says: Even small ISPs owned by conglomerates exempt from billing rules after FCC vote.
8. ISPs who don’t want competition get good news from FCC chair: FCC to kill merger condition that required competition in 1 million locations.
9. The FCC’s new chairman just had his first real interview – here’s what it tells us about him
10. FCC to halt rule that protects your private data from security breaches: FCC chair plans to halt security rule and set up vote to kill privacy regime.
11. New FCC Chairman Moves to Roll Back Privacy Rules for Internet Service Providers 
12. Joint Statement Of FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn And FTC Commissioner Terrell Mcsweeny On Indefinite Suspension Of Data Security Rules
13. FCC Resolves Investigation of Improper Billing and Other Violations by Two TRS Providers
14. FCC Adopts Broader Exemption from Enhanced Open Internet Transparency Disclosure Requirements for Small Providers
15. FCC Boss Moves To Kill Broadband Privacy Protections. You Know, To Help The Little Guy.
16. Hack of Wireless Carrier Leads to Admonishment by FCC
17. FCC Approves For the First Time 100% Foreign Ownership of US Broadcast Stations
18. FCC Announces Details for Mobility Fund Phase II
19. FCC Finalizes Criteria for CAF Phase II Auction
20. FCC Approves ILEC Shift to GAAP Accounting, Mitigates Pole Rate Impact
21. The Alternative Facts of Cable Companies: A state attorney general sues Spectrum for ripping off customers. It won’t force change, but it could start a movement. (Susan Crawford)
22. Comcast’s Decision To Charge Roku Users A Bogus Fee Highlights Its Uncanny Ability To Shoot Innovation In The Foot

DIGITAL

1. Uber might genuinely be worried that #DeleteUber is working: “Everyone at Uber is deeply hurting after reading Susan Fowler’s blog post.”
2. Uber Case Could Be a Watershed for Women in Tech
3. Travis Kalanick, Uber Chief, Apologizes After Fight With Driver
4. Hootsuite CEO Directs Comment-Seeking Reporter To Phone Sex Line: Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, responding to a story published by Bloomberg Business today, publicly asked the reporter call him at a number that’s actually a paid sex hotline.
5. Milo Yiannopoulos apologizes to abuse victims: After comments surfaced in which he seemed to endorse sex between younger boys and men, Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart News and apologized to abuse victims, saying that he was also sexually abused as a child.
6. Meet the 16-year-old Canadian girl who took down Milo Yiannopoulos: This is the real story of how the video that took down Milo surfaced.
7. Do Sex Offenders Have A Free Speech Right To Use Facebook?: The U.S. Supreme Court considers whether social media is a privilege or a right in modern society
8. Section 230 Protects Grindr From Harrassed User’s Claims–Herrick v. Grindr (Eric Goldman)
9. Does Donald Trump Open The Way For Sex Offenders To Get Back On Twitter?
10. Twitter to police abuse in major shift
11. Case Preview: Jack Monroe v Katie Hopkins, Twitter libel trial about meaning and serious harm
12. Federal Judge Says Providing Web Hosting Isn’t Even Close To The Same Thing As Contributory Infringement
13. Odd lawsuit fails to ding FedEx for allowing copies of CC-licensed material: Judge dismisses case that could have upended Creative Commons copyright model.
14. Amazon to pay $1,000,000 to Competition Bureau for Unsubstantiated Sales Prices
15. Google Report: 99.95 Percent Of DMCA Takedown Notices Are Bot-Generated BS Buckshot
16. Why The DMCA’s Notice & Takedown Already Has First Amendment Problems… And RIAA/MPAA Want To Make That Worse
17. Revisiting If Suing Bloggers For Copyright Infringement Can Be Profitable–BWP v. Mishka
18. Tim Berners-Lee Endorses DRM In HTML5, Offers Depressingly Weak Defense Of His Decision
19. Tim Berners-Lee Endorses DRM In HTML5, Offers Depressingly Weak Defense Of His Decision
20. ICANN Is Moving Toward Copyright Enforcement, Academic Says
21. Kobo’s Quest for Status Quo in the E-books Market: A Never Ending Story
22. Copyright Law Versus Internet Culture (EFF)
23. Famous patent “troll’s” lawsuit against Google booted out of East Texas: Eolas has new patents, even after an epic trial loss.
24. Encryption patent that roiled Newegg is dead on appeal: Another Newegg patent victory, though Lee Cheng has moved on.
25. Disappointing To See Google’s Waymo Sue Over Patents
26. IBM gets a patent on “out-of-office” e-mail messages—in 2017: The US Patent Office sees no history, hears no history—unless it’s in patents.
27. Sony, Microsoft Lobby Against Right To Repair Bills (Yet Refuse To Talk About It)
28. Report: Disney lays off ~80 as it pulls back on supporting YouTubers
29. People now watch 1 billion hours of YouTube per day
30. YouTube Tops 1 Billion Hours of Video a Day, on Pace to Eclipse TV: Google unit posts 10-fold increase in viewership since 2012, boosted by algorithms personalizing user lineups
31. YouTube TV is the company’s new live TV subscription service: $35 per month for six accounts and access to live broadcast and cable networks.
32. Inside Another Internet Troll Factory: This Time In Sweden, But With Russian Connections
33. Russians Want To Make Wikipedia More ‘Truthful’ And Patriotic: Russia’s ‘youth parliament’ is trying to flood the site with thousands of articles to repair Russia’s image
34. Everything Is F’d And I’m Pretty Sure It’s The Internet’s Fault
35. Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?: We are in the middle of a technological upheaval that will transform the way society is organized. We must make the right decisions now
36. Using VR as a Tool to Cultivate Compassion with Condition One
37. Google has shipped 10M Cardboard VR viewers, 160M Cardboard app downloads
38. New $10 Raspberry Pi Zero comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
39. Post Cable Networks
40. The Future of Shopping Is More Discrimination: For you, a very special price indeed.
41. Notice and Takedown in the Domain Name System: ICANN’s Ambivalent Drift into Online Content Regulation (Annemarie Bridy)

CREATIVITY

1. The Internet Is Silencing Artists, According To An Artist On The Internet
2. Fan Creation & Copyright Survey: Preliminary Results
3. Pierce v. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.: District court dismisses real estate agent’s suit against Warner Bros. over “Ellen DeGeneres Show” segment on funny signs that resulted in harassing phone calls and messages, rejecting claims for false light invasion of privacy, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
4. Who Has All the Content?
5. Remix Culture Meets the Scolds
6. The Copyrightability of Yoga Poses, Dance Moves and Exercise Routines 
7. No Swiss protection for Louboutin’s red-soled shoes
8. Parties in Star Trek Fan Litigation Don’t Boldly Go Into the Unknown; Settle Claims
9. IP Scholars Warn About Stringent Copyright Rules In Asian RCEP Agreement
10. Industrial Design Registration In Canada – Everything You Need To Know about CIPO’s Six New Practice Notices
11. Blacklock’s Litany of Litigation Lengthens (Howard Knopf)
12. Tiffany & Co., Defenders Of Intellectual Property, Sued For Copyright Infringement
13. Liam O’Melinn, ‘The Ghost of Millar v Taylor: The Mythical Origins of Copyright’
14. Canadian Trademark Cases 2016 – And the awards go to…
15. What’s in a hangtag? that which we call Coach
16. The First Sale Doctrine and Establishing Legal Claims to Overcome It 
17. The 10 Current Scent Trademarks Currently Recognized by the U.S. Patent Office
18. ‘Fake News’ Now Means Whatever People Want It To Mean, And Legislating It Away Is A Slippery Slope Toward Censorship
19. Journalism can’t afford for corrections to be next victim of ‘fake news’ frenzy 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. CSIS saw ‘no high privacy risks’ with keeping personal data on Canadians
2. Judge: No, feds can’t nab all Apple devices and try everyone’s fingerprints – “Such Fourth Amendment intrusions are [not] justified based on the facts articulated.”
3. Judge Rejects Warrant Seeking To Force Everyone At A Searched Location To Unlock Seized Electronic Devices
4. Judge: FBI’s NIT Warrant Invalid And IP Addresses Do Have An Expectation Of Privacy, But No Suppression Granted
5. Judge Rules Against California Law Allowing Actors to Hide Age on IMDB: Federal judge granted an injunction against the law, saying it almost certainly violates the First Amendment and may not be enforced for now
6. Speaker’s Corner: Hidden camera has implications for privacy law
7. China Orders Every Vehicle In Region Troubled By Ethnic Unrest To Be Fitted With Satnav Tracker
8. Amazon Formally Resists Warrant For Echo Recordings In Murder Case: People have a First Amendment right to privacy when they ask Alexa for stuff, Amazon says
9. Amazon refusing to hand over data on whether Alexa overheard a murder – Amazon: Alexa and its users have a First Amendment right of protected speech.
10. Sean Spicer Launches Witch Hunt Over The ‘Secure’ App He Just Said Was No Big Deal
11. Internet of Things Teddy Bear Leaked 2 Million Parent and Kids Message Recordings: A company that sells “smart” teddy bears leaked 800,000 user account credentials—and then hackers locked it and held it for ransom.
12. Creepy IoT teddy bear leaks >2 million parents’ and kids’ voice messages: Publicly accessible database wasn’t even protected by a password.
13. German Regulators Urge Parents To Destroy WiFi Connected Doll Over Surveillance Fears
14. Yahoo cookie hacks affected 32 million accounts, CEO foregoes bonus: Nation-sponsored attackers targeted 26 specific accounts.
15. Jury Acquits Restaurant Owner Of Obstruction Charges For Tweeting Out Photo Of Teens Involved In Police Alcohol Sting
16. UK forced to derail Snoopers’ Charter blanket data slurp after EU ruling: Key provisions in Investigatory Powers law put on ice after DRIPA judgment.
17. Netherlands Looks To Join The Super-Snooper Club With New Mass Surveillance Law
18. Welfare Agency Responds To Criticism By Feeding Complainant’s Personal Info To Obliging Journalist
19. Winterville woman sues beer company over use of Facebook photo
20. The Global Reach of Canadian Privacy Law: Federal Court Issues Landmark Ruling in Globe24h
21. Serious Cloudflare bug exposed a potpourri of secret customer data: Service used by 5.5 million websites may have leaked passwords and authentication tokens.
22. Federal Trade Commission Delivers Cross-Device Tracking Report Recommendations
23. Cloud And Clear: What Canadian Lawyers Need To Know About Cloud Server Location
24. The Undue Influence Of Surveillance Technology Companies On Policing (Elizabeth Joh)

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. The Shattered Mirror, Part Three: Why Income Tax Changes for Digital Advertising Won’t Save Local Media (Michael Geist)
2. CRTC Extends Direct Regulation to Resellers of Telecommunications Services 
3. Bains Gives Bell-MTS Merger a Pass Despite Competition Bureau Finding Serious Wireless Market Problems (Michael Geist)
4. ‘Last night in Sweden’ was a figment of Trump’s Fox News-inspired imagination
5. Fox News is now forging U.S. foreign policy
6. How Trump’s obsession with the media endangers his presidency — and all of us
7. Huntsville, Alabama Is Suddenly Awash In Broadband Competition, Showing Why Comcast Is So Afraid Of Municipal Broadband
8. AT&T says its merger with Time Warner is exactly what customers want: AT&T says you’ll love “more relevant” ads, but senators warn of higher prices.
9. The implications of the end of net neutrality
10. If New FCC Boss Ajit Pai Is So ‘Pro Consumer,’ Why Does The Telecom Industry Need To Pay People To Say So?
11. Overwhelming OTT: Telcos’ growth strategy in a digital world – Incumbents are now asking if digital is a threat to or an opportunity for their business model. Beyond operational efficiency, they will need to focus on excellence in execution.
12. The Alternative Facts of Cable Companies: A state attorney general sues Spectrum for ripping off customers. It won’t force change, but it could start a movement.
13. After Losing 10,000 Viewers Per Day, ESPN Finally Buckles To Offering Standalone Streaming Video Service

DIGITAL

1. The State of the Internet 2017: All Statistics Here
2. A court order blocked pirate sites that weren’t supposed to be blocked: Poorly crafted court orders threaten the open Internet, Cloudflare says.
3. Court Says Google Has A First Amendment Right To Delist Competitor’s ‘Spammy’ Content
4. Google v. Oracle: Fair Use of a Copyrighted API
5. What developers can learn from PewDiePie: YouTube star’s explanation for anti-Semitic jokes may be familiar to those who follow the AAA scene
6. Advice For Rookie Comedian PewDiePie: Quit Whining And Write Some Damn Jokes – The world’s biggest YouTuber, fired by Disney, needs to start putting actual thought into his material.
7. PewDiePie taught YouTube a valuable lesson
8. Trump and PewDiePie are using the same playbook: Why is everybody always picking on me?
9. PewDiePie responds to Disney dismissal by attacking media
10. YouTube’s Monster: PewDiePie and His Populist Revolt
11. The three reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber: The deck is stacked very heavily against us
12. YouTube killing its most annoying ad format: The 30-second unskippable: The unpopular ads will be gone in 2018.
13. New Zealand appeals court upholds Kim Dotcom extradition ruling – Case is far from over: Dotcom’s lawyers vow to press on to Court of Appeal.
14. New Zealand Court Says Kim Dotcom Still Eligible For Extradition… But Not Over Copyright
15. Judge Splits $750 Piracy Penalty Between BitTorrent Peers
16. Dangerous: Judge Says It Was ‘Objectively Unreasonable’ For Cox To Claim DMCA Safe Harbors
17. Pirate Site With No Traffic Attracts 49m Mainly Bogus DMCA Notices
18. Five More Questions About Digital Copyright Law
19. Google and Microsoft agree to demote piracy search results in the UK: Deal struck after lengthy spat between search engines and entertainment industry.
20. Samsung’s Reputation Burned Down With The Galaxy Note 7: It’s now as popular as the United States Postal Service, which is not all that popular
21. Bogus Claims: Google Submission Points to Massive Fraud in Search Index Takedown Notices (Michael Geist)
22. Cox must pay $8M in fees on top of $25M jury verdict for violating DMCA – Judge: “Cox knew… its behavior was wrong, and continued in spite of that.”
23. Techdirt lawyers ask judge to throw out suit over “Inventor of E-mail”: Tech blog’s founder says lawsuit seeks “to stifle debate, silence criticism.”
24. European News Publishers Still Believe They Have The Right To Make Google Pay For Sending Traffic Their Way
25. Fighting Fake News: Can Technology Stem The Tide?
26. Building Global Community (Mark Zuckerberg)
27. Op-ed: Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto is a political trainwreck – He says that Facebook is developing AI to create a global democracy – kind of.
28. Facebook Plans to Rewire Your Life. Be Afraid.
29. Cheddar’s Jon Steinberg: Media should beware of Facebook
30. Don’t trust Facebook’s shifting line on controversy
31. Surfing, metrics and creation: Facebook and Snap
32. Manifestos And Monopolies
33. Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age – Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment (Pew Research Center)
34. Hollywood Has No Idea What to Do with VR
35. Valve’s Gabe Newell: VR could “turn out to be a complete failure” – Rare interview tempers long-term optimism with tech/content/price realism.
36. Virtual legality: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality – legal issues
37. IMAX continues VR expansion, partners with HTC Vive and more: The company will open four new pilot IMAX VR centers in the coming months across the US and China
38. Apple Vowed to Revolutionize Television. An Inside Look at Why It Hasn’t: The company is testing a new Apple TV capable of streaming ultra-high-definition 4K. It may not be enough to take on Amazon and Roku.
39. Dad who live-streamed his son’s birth on Facebook loses in court: Man filmed his partner’s labor, then sued TV companies that picked up the video.
40. Google Opens Up YouTube and Ad Platforms for Measurement Audit
41. Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong arrested on charges of bribery: Prosecutors claim that Samsung paid over $37M in bribes to help facilitate a merger.
42. Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
43. Ex-Uber engineer alleges sexual harassment, CEO reacts by promising investigation
44. Apple accuses EU of a litany of “breaches” in defense of Irish tax deal: Tech giant claims the EC isn’t playing fair over its demands to pay Ireland $13.7 billion.
45. Cyberbullying & Revenge Porn: An Update on Canadian Law 
46. Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law (Karen Levy) 

CREATIVITY

1. The Copyright Lobby’s IIPA Report: Fake News About the State of Canadian Copyright (Michael Geist)
2. Former RIAA Executive Attacks Fair Use
3. Court declines to apply fair dealing copyright exemption in news reporting case
4. SiriusXM Wins New York Case Over Pre-1972 Sound Recordings: The 2nd Circuit rules that the satcaster deserves summary judgment and the lawsuit from Flo & Eddie should be dismissed.
5. Flo and Eddie NY Suit on Pre-1972 Sound Recordings Ordered Dismissed By Court of Appeals – No Issues with Copies Made in the Transmission Process 
6. Australia’s Battle Over Fair Use Boils Over
7. Trademarks and music: No longer living it up at ‘The Hotel California’
8. Pro-Marijuana Student Organization Wins Court Case Over Using School Logos
9. University Rejection of Students’ Marijuana – Themed T-Shirt Violates First Amendment – Gerlich v. Leath (Eric Goldman)
10. Keeping up with the Kylies’ trade mark wars – dispute no longer Spinning Around
11. Ellen DeGeneres Defeats Lawsuit Over Breast Pun (Eric Goldman)
12. Chinese Trademarks And The Emoluments Clause: Do They Intersect In The Trump Presidency
13. China violated its own law to grant Trump a trademark: China’s Valentine’s Day present to Trump could put him in legal jeopardy.
14. Hollywood’s Greatest Wall: The fastest-growing movie market of this decade has been China. But projections about its future — and the decisions that Hollywood has made to take advantage, like the Matt Damon vehicle ‘The Great Wall’ — may have been shortsighted.
15. Jimmy Choo stomps on cybersquatting
16. Apple Says Nebraska Will Become A ‘Mecca For Hackers’ If Right To Repair Bill Passes
17. Vogue’s Race Problem Is Bigger Than Karlie Kloss: Even if the model featured in the magazine’s latest controversial spread had been Asian, it would still have been offensive.
18. Theater Group President: No, Netflix Isn’t Killing the Multiplex
19. Theft! A History of Music
20. You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Why Trump Copying Obama’s Cake Is Not Infringement
21. Sportswriting Has Become a Liberal Profession  –  Here’s How It Happened: Donald Trump’s election was merely an accelerant for a change that was already sweeping across sports journalism

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Divided federal appeals court rules you have the right to film the police: Filming cops, 2-1 court rules, ensures that they “are not abusing their power.”
2. The doll banned by Germany for being a transmitting device
3. German parents told to destroy Cayla dolls over hacking fears
4. How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Helped The NSA Spy On The Whole World
5. Coalition Slams DHS Plans To Demand Social Media Passwords
6. Data Protection Commissioner urged to halt EU data transfers to US
7. Court Allows Microsoft to Challenge Secrecy of User Data Requests
8. Judge In Twitter Lawsuit Over Surveillance Disclosure Dings DOJ For Cut-And-Paste Legal Argument
9. Court: Unsupported Assertions And Broad Language Aren’t Enough To Support Cell Phone Searches
10. The Ousting Of Trump’s National Security Advisor Shows Just How Dangerous ‘Lawful’ Domestic Surveillance Is
11. Hacks all the time. Engineers recently found Yahoo systems remained compromised: Company knocks $350 million off its purchase price.
12. Computer hacking charges brought against four of Gordon Ramsay’s in-laws: Celebrity chef alleges that Chris Hutcheson and three others hacked into his e-mails.
13. Marathon runner’s tracked data exposes phony time, cover-up attempt: A cut corner, a retraced route on a bike, and the Garmin tracker that exposed the lies.
14. Snapchat Spectacles are now available to buy online for $129: But they’re only available in the US for now.
15. The need for a Digital Geneva Convention (Brad Smith)
16. Microsoft President Calls for A “Digital Geneva Convention”
17. Cop filmed telling motorist he wanted to beat him, sic dog on him: New Jersey officer becomes enraged that he is being filmed during traffic stop.
18. The Fifth Amendment Vs. Indefinite Jailing: Court Still No Closer To Deciding On Compelled Decryption
19. Italy Proposes Astonishingly Sensible Rules To Regulate Government Hacking Using Trojans
20. Kernel Is Trying To Hack The Human Brain — But Neuroscience Has A Long Way To Go: The future of computing may be inside our skulls

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Fuss over American Super Bowl ads ignores reality of Internet TV
2. CRTC wireless code review generates regulatory risk: Desjardins analyst
3. Why the Wireless Industry Fears Bill Transparency and Bans on Unlocking Fees (Michael Geist)
4. Comcast, AT&T Are Paying Minority Groups To Support Killing Net Neutrality
5. Wyden, Other Senators Warn That Net Neutrality Repeal Will Make SOPA Backlash Look Like A Fireside Snuggle
6. Tom Wheeler: Trump, GOP Plan To ‘Modernize’ The FCC A ‘Fraud’
7. The Trump administration’s other war on the media
8. FCC Commissioner Thinks Ultra-Fast Broadband Just a ‘Novelty’
9. ISPs ask lawmakers to kill privacy rules, and they’re happily obliging: Wheeler-era FCC rules that protect Web browsing data could be overturned.
10. “Broadband death star bill” blown up by municipal Internet advocates: Virginia anti-municipal broadband bill replaced by minor record-keeping change.
11. Yahoo reveals more breachiness to users victimized by forged cookies: Some accounts may have been accessed with forged cookies as recently as 2016.
12. Verizon Finally Gets Around To Telling Yahoo That It Ain’t All That
13. A Little Something Called Competition Forces Verizon To Bring Back Unlimited Data
14. Verizon offers unlimited data and won’t throttle video (unlike T-Mobile): Verizon’s $80 plan has unlimited phone data and 10GB of 4G LTE tethering.
15. Charter wrongly charged customers $10 “Wi-Fi Activation” fee, gets sued: Charter admits billing mistake in former Bright House area but faces a lawsuit.
16. Sewer broadband fraudsters handed lengthy prison terms: Bogus $200 million fiber network racket leads to collective 44 years in the slammer.
17. Lawyer’s claim: Feds issued a subpoena regarding Fox News sexual harassment scandal
18. A century and a half of Northern telecom innovations: Tracing 150 years of Canadian technological contributions to communication, from Bell to BlackBerry
19. The global media landscape: in eight charts
20. What does The Queen Mary International Dispute Resolution 2016 Survey tell us about the future direction of TMT disputes?
21. 2016 International Dispute Resolution Survey: An insight into resolving Technology, Media and Telecoms Disputes

DIGITAL

1. A battle rages for the future of the Web: Should the WWW be locked down with DRM? Tim Berners-Lee needs to decide, and soon.
2. Maker Studios Braces for More Layoffs as Disney Plans to Shrink Creator Network
3. Maker Studios Reportedly Slashing Its Creator Network Of “Thousands” To Just 300
4. PewDiePie dropped by Maker & YouTube ad platform over antisemitic content: PewDiePie calls out “old school media” for attempt to “decrease my influence and my economic worth”
5. YouTube Cancels PewDiePie Show After Disney Cuts Ties With Star Over Anti-Semitic Posts
6. When did fascism become so cool? PewDiePie’s antics are the thin end of the wedge: A white guy with a net worth of $124m making poor brown people hold up a sign calling for genocide is pure banter, isn’t it?
7. Pewdiepie Dropped By Disney Following Offensive Video Content
8. Disney drops YouTube star PewDiePie over anti-Semitic content
9. PewDiePie Incident Means More Scrutiny for Influencers: But ad buyers doubt marketers will pull budgets from all YouTube influencers
10. How Wikipedia Is Cultivating an Army of Fact Checkers to Battle Fake News: The online encyclopedia has been fact checking the Internet for more than 15 years. Now it wants to bring its skeptical eye to the masses.
11. Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle: Oracle insinuates Google was “a plagiarist” that committed “classic unfair use.”
12. Oracle Files Its Opening Brief As It Tries (Again) To Overturn Google’s Fair Use Win On Java APIs
13. Authors Alliance Amicus Brief Supports Fair Use Defense In Georgia State Case
14. Wikipedia bans Daily Mail for “poor fact checking, sensationalism, flat-out fabrication”: Daily Mail is too unreliable and can’t be used as a source, Wikipedia editors rule.
15. Handful of “highly toxic” Wikipedia editors cause 9% of abuse on the site: New study of Wikipedia comments reveals most attackers aren’t anonymous.
16. PayPal Kills Canadian Paper’s Submission To Media Awards Because Article Had Word ‘Syrian’ In The Title
17. Shopify’s Breitbart Fight Proves It: These Days, Tech Has to Take a Side
18. Lawsuit alleges Magic Leap workplace is ‘misogynistic,’ ‘dysfunctional’
19. Hedge funds reportedly want to buy Mt. Gox bankruptcy claims: A US lawyer has even set up a website to make this process easier.
20. Women filmed by Ottawa ‘pick-up artist’ may have no legal remedy
21. Maniac Killers of the Bangalore IT Department: Why is India obsessed with crimes committed by software engineers?
22. First Amendment Protects Google’s De-Indexing of “Pure Spam” Websites–e-ventures v. Google (Eric Goldman)
23. Internet firms’ legal immunity is under threat: Platforms have benefited greatly from special legal and regulatory treatment
24. UK Search Engines Will Sign Up To A ‘Voluntary’ Code On Piracy — Or Face The Consequences
25. Is the Internet a wilderness of commodity news?
26. Can Snapchat really save news? More than half of users don’t follow outlets on the platform
27. Don’t fear artificial intelligence: experts
28. Artificial Intelligence forges ahead of the law
29. It’s not as simple as man versus machine. (Sara Watson)
30. Netflix Cheating Is Common, But Is It Really All That Bad?: Almost half of couples that binge-watch together have been disloyal
31. Patent Troll Sues Netflix, Soundcloud, Vimeo And More For Allowing Offline Viewing
32. I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook. You Should Stop Playing Right Into It.
33. NHL’s First Games In Live VR To Be Seen By Canadians With Headsets Found In Cases Of Beer
34. Manchester United set to launch worldwide premium streaming app costing up to £4.99 per month with services in over 160 countries
35. 200 Coders and Hackers United to Save NASA’s Climate Data From Deletion

CREATIVITY

1. Kesha releases emails allegedly sent by Dr. Luke
2. The Moral Rights in a Banksy?
3. The Met Goes Public Domain With CC0, But It Shouldn’t Have To
4. How the copyright industry works methodically to erode your civil liberties and human rights
5. The Need Right Now for Subversive Photography: What does it mean for a photograph to challenge what we know about the world and reveal new aspects of it?
6. Maasai people of East Africa fighting against cultural appropriation by luxury fashion labels: Their name and image is estimated to be worth billions of dollars 
7. Beyoncé to Get Lawyers in “Formation”
8. Paul McCartney chants ‘Get Back’ again – The Future of Copyright Termination 
9. Is There Copyright Infringement in Whoville?
10. Prince’s music will be on Spotify and other services starting Sunday: When you’re facing a $100M tax bill, it’s time to make a deal.
11. University Rejection of Students’ Marijuana – Themed T-Shirt Violates First Amendment – Gerlich v. Leath (Eric Goldman)
12. Use of P’s photos to advertise D’s goods must be challenged via copyright, not Lanham Act, under Dastar (Rebecca Tushnet)
13. Back To Basics: Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen Presents Near-Term FTC Reforms
14. Not Everyone Is Geeking Out Over Saudi Arabia’s First Comic Con: The cosplay fest is headed to the religious kingdom, but certain restrictions apply — especially for women
15. How Ancient Legends Gave Birth to Modern Superheroes
16. Can AI Make Musicians More Creative?: Google And Sony Want To Change The Way Artists Think About Artificial Intelligence
17. 2016 Copyright Year in Review
18. Robots As Legal Metaphors (Ryan Calo)
19. What Intellectual Property Can Learn From Informational Privacy, And Vice Versa (Diana Liebenau)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Canada’s Federal Court awards damages against a foreign website for breach of privacy laws
2. Oh, Sure, Suddenly Now The House Intelligence Boss Is Concerned About Surveillance… Of Mike Flynn
3. Judge sides with Microsoft, allows “gag order” challenge to advance – Court: “First Amendment rights may outweigh the Government interest in secrecy.”
4. Court Says Microsoft Can Sue Government Over First Amendment-Violating Gag Orders
5. What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?: DHS says agents are in the right to ask for passwords, decryption help.
6. Twitter to judge: Let us tell everyone exactly how many secret orders we get: Government fights Twitter’s attempts at transparency with generic filing.
7. Canada will soon force companies to disclose hacking attempts, data breaches
8. Amnesty International uncovers phishing campaign against human rights activists: Attacker targeted groups in Qatar, Nepal using extensive fake social media profile.
9. Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Official
10. Landmark Court Decision Means Canada Has Now Joined The ‘Right To Be Forgotten Globally’ Club
11. Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives: He’s not charged with a crime. Judge demands he help prosecutors build their case.
12. After Passing Worst Surveillance Law In A Democracy, UK Now Proposes Worst Anti-Whistleblowing Law
13. UK government’s huge citizen data grab is go – where are the legal safeguards? – Analysis: Whitehall’s digital strategy lands a day after peers debate Digital Economy Bill.
14. UK Police Spy On Journalists At Small Town Paper, Gather One Million Minutes Worth Of Call Data
15. UK Train Operators Plan To Charge Passengers Using Their Biometrics
16. UK gov’t hit by 188 serious cyberattacks in the past three months: NCSC claims that Russia and China have stepped up the game.
17. DHS Secretary Says Agency Is Planning On Demanding Foreigners’ Social Media Account Passwords
18. Ohio Arsonist Gets Busted By His Own Pacemaker
19. Now sites can fingerprint you online even when you use multiple browsers: Online tracking gets more accurate and harder to evade.
20. Does Facebook Have the Right to Challenge Search Warrants Seeking Facebook Users’ Data? New York’s Highest Court Hears Argument 
21. Republican senators concerned about Yahoo’s “candor” concerning data breaches: In new letter, two GOP senators say company has been “unable to provide answers.”
22. Digital star chamber: Algorithms are producing profiles of you. What do they say? You probably don’t have the right to know (Frank Pasquale)
23. Get To Know Me: Protecting Privacy And Autonomy Under Big Data’s Penetrating Gaze (Sheri B. Pan)
24. Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy (Emily B. Laidlaw)

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. The Future of Simsub Post-Super Bowl: Why Canadian Viewership Data Vindicated the CRTC (Michael Geist)
2. Bell Media adopts new tactics in bid to lure Super Bowl viewers
3. Poll: Vast majority of Canadians oppose Internet Tax, prefer funding CanCon by extending GST/HST to foreign online companies
4. Focus: Is shutting down TV service victory for broadcasters?
5. Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules
6. FCC chair stuns consumer advocates with move that could hurt poor people: Ajit Pai “walk[ed] back the stated goal of his chairmanship,” advocate says.
7. New FCC Boss Ajit Pai Insists He’s All About Helping The Poor, Gets Right To Work Harming Them Instead
8. FCC makes it harder for poor people to get subsidized broadband: Some might pay $9.25 more as ISPs lose ability to sell low-cost Internet plans.
9. Ajit Pai defends decision to revoke low-cost broadband designations
10. FCC rescinds claim that AT&T and Verizon violated net neutrality: Republican Ajit Pai halts Wheeler’s net neutrality investigation of zero-rating.
11. New FCC Boss Kills Zero Rating Inquiry, Signals Death Of Net Neutrality Enforcement
12. Undoing the Past – New FCC Rescinds Rulings on Noncommercial Ownership Reports, Political Broadcasting Sponsorship Disclosure and Shared Services Agreements
13. FCC opens radio and television broadcasting to foreign entities
14. New FCC Boss Decides It’s Cool If Phone Monopolies Want To Rip Off Inmate Families
15. FCC Chairman Pai Promotes Transparency – Releases Draft Orders on Next-Generation TV and FM Translators for AM Stations – What Will Be Considered for Radio at February FCC Meeting? 
16. FCC tries something new: Making proposals public before voting on them: Wheeler said releasing text before vote would cripple process—now we’ll find out.
17. “Lipstick on a pig”: Time Warner Cable “deceived the FCC” in speed tests – “We just have to make it work temporarily,” TWC said of FCC speed tests.
18. Not so fast—Comcast told to stop claiming it has “fastest Internet”: Verizon wins challenge of Comcast’s fastest Internet and “in-home Wi-Fi” claims.
19. How Comcast’s Growing Broadband Monopoly Is Helping It Temporarily Fend Off The TV Cord Cutting Threat
20. Here’s Exactly How the Internet Is Now Under Threat: Obama’s FCC head Tom Wheeler talks candidly about the open internet — and why, in Trumpworld, four companies could lock it up.
21. Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile & AT&T Issue Breathless Love Letter To Privacy With One Hand, Lobby To Kill All Privacy Protections With The Other
22. The Shattered Mirror, Part Two: The Underwhelming Recommendation for Open Licensing at the CBC (Michael Geist)

DIGITAL

1. Breitbart loses advertising deals with 818 companies due to grassroots campaign
2. Alt-Right Website, Breitbart, Loses Over 800 Advertisers For Offensive Content
3. Playpen moderator sentenced to 20 years in prison
4. The art of the troll: New tool reveals egg users’—and Trump’s—posting patterns: When an account makes 500 posts a day, that’s a sure sign that there’s something amiss.
5. Ahead Of France’s Elections, Facebook Tries To Stop Fake News: With a new filter, it’s working with French media companies to fact check stories
6. Want to post a discriminatory ad? Facebook may try to stop you automatically: Follows November outcry over targeted FB ads’ possible violations of Fair Housing Act.
7. “Fake news is bad, but the ministry of truth is even worse”: Europe Considers Regulation for the Post-Truth Era
8. Refugee who took selfie with German chancellor has had enough of “fake news”: Anas Modamani says Facebook should do more to stop misuse of his image.
9. ‘Fake news’ highlights much bigger problems at play
10. Judge rules against DOJ in Amazon, Expedia case against Trump travel ban – Washington AG: “No one is above the law—not even the president.”
11. Apple, Google, and 95 other tech firms join forces to fight Trump travel ban: Companies say executive order is “overbroad…lacks any basis in precedent.”
12. Basically The Entire Tech Industry Signs Onto A Legal Brief Opposing Trump’s Exec Order
13. BT backs Google in EU’s Android antitrust spat: “We welcome Google’s anti-fragmentation initiatives,” says BT in snub to Brussels.
14. How Iranian authorities have been fighting the ‘Soft War’ online
15. Netflix abroad set for showtime after EU strikes a “portability” deal: But Brexit Brits’ beach-based boxset binges could be short-lived.
16. Pirate Party’s Pirate Site Was Legal Under EU Law, Court Rules: Six years ago the Czech branch of the Pirate Party declared open war on a local anti-piracy outfit, opening several ‘pirate’ sites to draw fire from copyright holders. But, after being prosecuted in a criminal court last year, the matter has now been dropped after it was deemed the Pirates acted in accordance with a recent landmark EU ruling.
17. Amazon Defeats Lawsuit Over Its Keyword Ad Purchases–Lasoff v. Amazon (Eric Goldman)
18. Patent troll sues Netflix over offline downloads: Patent for “CD-Rs by mail” service—perhaps inspired by old-school Netflix—used to sue.
19. HP patents, sold off to a troll, are used to sue Cisco and Facebook: Patents went from 3Com to HP to East Texas-based Plectrum LLC.
20. Kanye West caught using Pirate Bay to download music software
21. Music Industry Majors Sue Hip-Hop Streaming Site Spinrilla
22. A Word of Caution: File Wrapper Contents Can Come Back to Haunt You
23. How a former editor allegedly used Vice Canada to recruit drug mules for a global smuggling ring
24. The Codification Of Web DRM As A Censorship Tool
25. Google Brain super-resolution image tech makes “zoom, enhance!” real: Google Brain creates new image details out of thin air.
26. YouTube now lets creators with 10,000 subscribers live-stream video on mobile: And new “Super Chat” lets viewers pay to get noticed.
27. Facebook Plans To Be Like YouTube, Not Netflix
28. Facebook is focusing on shorter content, YouTube model for its video strategy
29. GoPro reports 35% lift in YouTube uploads
30. The Problem With Snapchat’s IPO
31. Snapchat parent warns of Brexit anxiety and sexting confusion in IPO filing: First public prospectus reveals a $405 million ad biz—and a net loss of $515 million…
32. Majority Stake Owner Wants to Sell BroadbandTV – Or Take It Public
33. Snapchat Stacks New York Times on Media Pile
34. Something Happened: The origin of day-one patches – Canadian software houses were fast and loose places in the 1980s.

CREATIVITY

1. Prof: “Can you sue the President based on his tweets? We’re about to find out” – Lawsuit joins at least 15 other cases challenging president’s executive order.
2. BuzzFeed Sued for Naming Tech CEO in Story About Trump’s Alleged Russian Ties
3. Court Tells Melania Trump She Can’t Sue The Daily Mail In Maryland, So She Refiles In New York
4. Recent Law School Grad Sues Twitter Because Someone Made A Parody Twitter Account
5. Bad Idea Or The Worst Idea? Having The FTC Regulate ‘Fake News’
6. Liberals Won’t Bail Out Canada’s News Industry, Sources Say
7. Time Inc. begins shopping for potential buyers
8. Feds must take action on copyright trolls
9. HowStuffWorks Attempts To Explain Why Advertisers Use Super Bowl Euphemisms, But I Have A Simpler Explanation
10. New National “Right to Work” Bill Threatens Hollywood Unions
11. ESPN Settles Lawsuit Over Reporter’s Tweet Revealing an NFL Star’s Amputated Finger
12. Nine Years Later, Patriots Get ’19-0′ And ‘Perfect Season’ Trademarks, Despite Doing Neither
13. Former NFL star Shawne Merriman sues Under Armour for trademark infringement
14. Federal Court Basically Says It’s Okay To Copyright Parts Of Our Laws
15. The Kylie Jenner–Kylie Minogue Trademark Dispute Was a Battle of the Old School vs. the New
16. Investors pour another $8.5M into Star Trek Timelines dev Disruptor Beam
17. Employers, employees and consultants – who owns what when it comes to intellectual property?
18. How being replaced by a machine turned this graphic artist into an activist
19. Political ad isn’t commercial, can’t be basis of Lanham Act claim (Rebecca Tushnet)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Did a Canadian court just establish a new right to be forgotten online? (Michael Geist)
2. Did a Canadian Court Just Establish a New Right to be Forgotten? (Michael Geist)
3. When are public documents too public?: A.T. v. Globe24h.com tests the limits
4. Goodale orders review into illegal CSIS metadata program: The CSIS Operational Data Analysis Centre had stored “associated data” — usually called metadata — on innocent Canadians for nearly a decade.
5. US visitors may have to reveal social media passwords to enter country: “If they don’t want to cooperate, then you don’t come in.”
6. Ohio man’s pacemaker data may betray him in arson, insurance fraud case: Man describes quickly packing and fleeing; heart data shows otherwise, doctor says.
7. Court Tosses Lawsuit Brought By Brother And Sister Against Take-Two Interactive Over NBA2K Face Scans
8. Biometrics, Gaming & Privacy Laws: Facial scanning features can help put players in the game, but they can also put game makers in court if they aren’t implemented carefully
9. Vizio Agrees To Pay $2.2 Million To Settle Too-Smart TV Lawsuit: The TVs were tracking viewership habits and selling the information to advertisers
10. Vizio Fined $2.2 Million For Not Telling Customers Their TVs Were Spying On Them
11. Vizio TVs secretly tracked viewership in U.S. without consent: Canadian units excluded from system that set screens to report what people watched — without them knowing
12. Superior Court of Quebec Authorizes Privacy Class Action in Zuckerman v. Target Corporation
13. Jason Pierre-Paul and ESPN reach settlement in invasion-of-privacy lawsuit
14. Baseball team pays a big price for hacking
15. Major privacy case to open before High Court in Dublin: Facebook and privacy campaigner party to action by Data Protection Commissioner
16. The Ninth Circuit Holds That a Telephone Consumer Protection Act Violation Alone Is Sufficient To Establish Standing
17. Maybe the US does have the right to seize data from the world’s servers: Until Supreme Court resolves this, we’ll likely see many conflicting rulings.
18. The FBI Can Engage In All Sorts Of Surveillance And Snooping Without Actually Placing Someone Under Investigation
19. How Google fought back against a crippling IoT-powered botnet and won: Behind the scenes defending KrebsOnSecurity against record-setting DDoS attacks.
20. Privacy Tort Update – Not So Fast on Public Disclosure of Embarrassing Private Stuff 
21. FTC Will Consider Spying Toy Privacy Concerns 
22. Windows DRM: Now An (Unwitting) Ally In Efforts To Expose Anonymous Tor Users
23. Former NSA contractor may have stolen 75% of TAO’s elite hacking tools: Prosecutors reportedly plan to charge Harold T. Martin with espionage.
24. A rash of invisible, fileless malware is infecting banks around the globe: Once the province of nation-sponsored hackers, in-memory malware goes mainstream.
25. Keys Under Doormats: Mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications
26. Ron Deibert’s Lab Is the ‘Robin Hood’ of Cyber Security
27. It’s Too Complicated: How The Internet Upends Katz, Smith, And Electronic Surveillance Law (Steven M. Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Susan Landau, & Stephanie K. Pell)

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Ajit Pai on net neutrality: “I favor an open Internet and I oppose Title II”: New FCC chairman won’t say whether he’ll enforce net neutrality rules.
2. FCC Chairman Pai takes Wheeler’s set-top box plan off the table: Cable industry was open to compromise, but no Republican plan has been offered.
3. FCC exempts small ISPs from broadband truth-in-billing rules: Rule requiring disclosure of hidden fees won’t benefit customers of small ISPs.
4. Pai FCC’s First Commission-Level Vote Targets Rural Broadband Access 
5. Sen. Franken asks AT&T to prove Time Warner merger is good for customers: AT&T won’t commit to public interest statement as it tries to avoid FCC review.
6. Eliminating Net Neutrality likely to raise the cost of using the Internet
7. New York AG Sues Charter For Slow Broadband Speeds, Says Company ‘Ripping Off’ Users With Substandard Service
8. Republican-led FCC drops court defense of inmate calling rate cap: FCC lawyers no longer authorized to defend intrastate calling caps.
9. Verizon Eyes Charter Megamerger, Because Who Likes Broadband Competition Anyway?
10. Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes: Xfinity beta app is now on Roku; for now, customers still need a Comcast TV box.
11. 13 Years Ago at the Last Houston Super Bowl – Janet Jackson’s Impact on FCC Indecency Rules 

DIGITAL

1. Intellectual Property Owner Awarded Control of Infringer’s Social Media Accounts
2. Perfect 10, Inc. v. Giganews, Inc.
3. Facebook Live Is the Right Wing’s New Fox News: How the rough-around-the-edges live-streaming tool became the perfect incubator for conservative news in the Trump age.
4. The Data That Turned the World Upside Down
5. Axel Springer CEO: Facebook should not fact check ‘fake news’ — it is not a news organization
6. Flush with anti-Trump donations, ACLU gets Y Combinator’s mentorship
7. China’s Response To Study Confirms It Uses ‘Strategic Distraction’ To Prevent Collective Action. Sound Familiar?
8. Copyright Trolls Overplay Their Hand In Finland, Bringing A Government Microscope To Their Practices
9. RIP, “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System: The anti-piracy accord between ISPs and entertainment industry meets its demise.
10. Ding Dong: Silly Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Scheme Is Dead
11. Internet Service Providers, Studios and Record Labels Call It Quits on Copyright Alert System
12. The US ‘Six Strikes’ Anti-Piracy Scheme is Dead: The “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System is no more. In a brief announcement, MPAA, RIAA, and several major US ISPs said that the effort to educate online pirates has stopped. It’s unclear why the parties ended their voluntary agreement, but the lack of progress reports in recent years indicates that it wasn’t as successful as they had hoped
13. Venezuelan officials arrest four Bitcoin miners on charges of stealing electricity: With the economy in shambles, Bitcoin miners have tried to side-step currency woes.
14. Monero, the Drug Dealer’s Cryptocurrency of Choice, Is on Fire
15. Sony missed writing on the wall for DVD sales, takes nearly $1B writedown: Or, in corporate-speak, loss was “mainly driven by an acceleration of market decline.”
16. Thanks to YouTube, Vevo Nears 100 Million Active Monthly Users
17. Lawyer for “inventor of e-mail” sends threat letter over social media posts: Shiva Ayyadurai’s attorney, who sued Techdirt, goes after another blogger.
18. Thousands of College Kids Are Powering a Clickbait Empire: How a 29-year-old built Odyssey, a vast network of college students happy to fuel multi-million dollar marketing campaigns for peanuts.
19. The internet of toys
20. Robot knows when to hold ‘em, wins huge in poker tournament: 120,000 hands and a $1.7 million margin of victory later, Carnegie Mellon’s AI wins out.
21. Click Here to Kill Everyone: With the Internet of Things, we’re building a world-size robot. How are we going to control it? (Bruce Schneier)
22. The merging of humans and machines is happening now: Her organisation invented the internet. It gave us the self-driving car. And now DARPA’s former boss sees us crossing a new technological boundary
23. Tech Leaders Are Just Now Getting Serious About the Threats of AI: Apple joins a leading AI ethics group, one of several tech-led initiatives preparing for a highly automated future.
24. The Gates Foundation Emerges As A Leader In The Fight For Full Open Access And Open Data
25. Apple will move its entire international iTunes business to Ireland: International HQ will move from one tax haven to another.
26. Apple sets revenue and iPhone sales records in Q1 of 2017
27. TV shows go into overdrive on Snapchat
28. Can One App Revolutionize TV Ratings For The Streaming And Binge-Watching Era?
29. Causality in machine learning
30. Canada’s Supreme Court Is Preserving Every Website Mentioned In Its Rulings
31. What We Buy When We Buy Now (Aaron Perzanowski & Chris Hoofnagle)

CREATIVITY

1. Fairness Confirmed Again: Federal Court of Appeal Upholds Copyright Board’s Fair Dealing Ruling (Michael Geist)
2. Supreme Court rejects appeal against B.C. Election Act: Registration rules for political ad sponsors don’t restrict individual political expression, court finds
3. Back To The Stampede: Court Upholds Forum Selection Clause Requiring Copyright Action To Return to Alberta
4. Actress in Viral Video Can’t Prevent Video From Being Made Into an Advertisement–Roberts v. Bliss (Eric Goldman)
5. Ninth Circuit Finds First Amendment Protects Against Right-of-Publicity Claim Involving Film “The Hurt Locker” 
6. Woman Claims Her Picture is Worth $2 Billion in Right of Publicity Suit
7. Court of Appeal endorses Data Protection Act as alternative to defamation claim
8. The Federal Court of Appeal Rules on Access Copyright’s K-12 Tariff
9. The New Joint DOJ/FTC Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property 
10. Judge Gorsuch On Copyright And Technology (James Grimmelmann)
11. Apple sued over singer’s right of publicity in iPhone ad singing: No copyright, but can an artist’s voice sustain a “right of publicity” case?
12. Mac Repair Company iGeniuses Sends Legal Threats To Unhappy Customers, Demanding $2500 Per Negative Review
13. Michael Jackson Is Worth More Than Ever, and the IRS Wants Its Cut: Jackson’s star lawyer made a mint for his heirs, so now the government has to be startin’ somethin’.
14. Germany Finally Dumps Law That Says It’s A Crime To Insult Foreign Leaders
15. Jose Cuervo Loses Bid To Block Trademark Registration For Il Corvo Wine
16. The Shattered Mirror, Part One: Fair Dealing Reform Isn’t the Answer for News in the Digital Age (Michael Geist)
17. How the arts helped kill off the NEA — by trying to play the conservative “economic value” game: Our strategy of ditching “Art for Art’s Sake” in favor of “ArtWorks” hasn’t saved the arts — and it never will
18. Trump Advisor Pens Almost Totally Clueless Piece About ‘Intellectual Property Theft’
19. How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content
20. Strategies for Discerning the Boundaries of Copyright and Patent Protections (Pamela Samuelson)
21. Freeing Buskers’ Free Speech Rights: Impact of Regulations on Buskers’ Right to Free Speech and Expression (John Jurich)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Suspecting arson, cops subpoena homeowner’s pacemaker logs, then charge him with multiple felonies
2. Trump’s Executive Order Eliminates Privacy Act Protections for Foreigners (Michael Geist)
3. New Trump Executive Order Says Federal Agencies Should Exclude Foreigners From Privacy Protections
4. President Trump’s Executive Order May Impact the Privacy Shield 
5. Already Under Attack In Top EU Court, Privacy Shield Framework For Transatlantic Data Flows Further Undermined By Trump
6. Trump Orders The Cyber To Be Fixed In The Next Sixty Days
7. Twitter Reveals Two National Security Letters After Gag Orders Lifted; Rightly Complains About Gag Orders
8. Court Says Location Of FBI’s Utility Pole-Piggybacking Surveillance Cameras Can Remain Secret
9. Bodycam footage leaks, resisting arrest charges dropped – Girl screams: “I just recorded everything.” Police officer responds: “Me too.”
10. Appeals court rules that stolen laptops class action against payer can proceed
11. Live Streaming: The Privacy Concerns of Behind-the-Scenes Access
12. Site that sold access to 3.1 billion passwords vanishes after reported raid: LeakedSource garnered criticism for actively cracking the passwords it sold.
13. Majority of Android VPNs can’t be trusted to make users more secure: Study of nearly 300 apps finds shocking omissions, including a failure to encrypt.
14. St. Louis Cardinals Hacking Scandal: A Real-World Example of the Importance of Password Management 
15. Amidst Increased Government Surveillance, Chinese Internet Users Finally Gain Important Online Privacy Protections
16. One More Time With Feeling: ‘Anonymized’ User Data Not Really Anonymous
17. FTC Report Reinforces the Rules for Cross-Device Tracking
18. “You took so much time to joke me”—two hours trolling a Windows support scammer: “Albert Morris” and team get taken for a ride while we tried to track their tradecraft.
19. Blue Lies Matter: BuzzFeed News reviewed 62 incidents of video footage contradicting an officer’s statement in a police report or testimony. From traffic stops to fatal force, these cases reveal how cops are incentivized to lie — and why they get away with it.
20. In not-too-distant future, brain hackers could steal your deepest secrets: Religious beliefs, political leanings, and medical conditions are up for grabs.

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Chairperson, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Appointment Opportunity
2. 18 bogus arguments about the CRTC and Super Bowl ads
3. Outgoing Obama trade chief urges Canada to reverse Super Bowl ad decision
4. Super Bowl Commercials Set to Air North of the Border
5. NFL Gets Involved In Plan To Keep American Super Bowl Commercials Out Of Canada
6. Report: President Trump Picks Former Verizon Lawyer Ajit Pai To Head FCC
7. FCC Chairman Pai vows to close broadband “digital divide”: Pai voted against previous broadband expansion orders, but has plans of his own.
8. FCC to be led by Ajit Pai, staunch opponent of consumer protection rules: Ex-Verizon lawyer Pai will take “weed whacker” to net neutrality under Trump.
9. Comcast, AT&T, and ISP lobbyists are excited about Trump’s FCC chair: Ajit Pai repeatedly sided with ISPs on FCC rules, will be “formidable opponent.”
10. GOP asks Ajit Pai to kill plan for helping customers avoid cable box rentals: Wheeler’s attempt to remake cable box market nears official demise.
11. The U.S. Without Net Neutrality: How An Internet Nightmare Unfolds: Today, we take the freedom of the web for granted. Under Trump, maybe we shouldn’t
12. Google and Netflix join fight against municipal broadband restrictions: Internet companies and advocacy groups battle Virginia anti-muni broadband bill.
13. Google, Ting, Netflix Dare To Suggest That Maybe Giant, Anti-Competitive ISPs Shouldn’t Be Writing State Telecom Laws
14. Netflix is so big that it doesn’t need net neutrality rules anymore: But small video providers still need network neutrality, Netflix says.
15. Netflix May Not Be Worried About The Looming Death Of Net Neutrality, But Startups Should Be Terrified
16. Netflix calls out HBO for not letting subscribers binge on new shows
17. Trump voters need fast broadband and net neutrality too, Tom Wheeler says: Wheeler talks to Ars about “Cablewood,” competition, regulation on last day at FCC.
18. Outgoing FCC Boss Reminds Trump Supporters That Net Neutrality Is Good For Them, Too
19. When home Internet service costs $5,000—or even $15,000: We talked to two homeowners who grudgingly paid thousands to RCN and Comcast.
20. AT&T raises phone activation fee another $5, now charges $25: $25 fee for AT&T users who bring own device or buy phone on installment plan.
21. Through Price Hikes And Annoyance, AT&T Still Waging War On Unlimited Data Users
22. The FCC Fines Straight Path $100 Million for Failing to Meet License Obligations 
23. The trouble for Canadian digital policy in an ‘America first’ world (Michael Geist)
24. What’s in the box? Not a valid agreement to arbitrate! (Rebecca Tushnet)

DIGITAL

1. Struggling Canadian News Agencies Ask Government For A ‘Google Tax’
2. Canadian retailers will be able to offer discounts on ebooks by three major publishers: Competition Bureau takes fourth publisher HarperCollins to the Competition Tribunal
3. Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer found guilty, again, of source code theft – Court: It’s silly to let Sergey Aleynikov go free just because he stole digital files.
4. Apple sues Qualcomm, saying chipmaker withheld $1B as “extortion”: Suit claims payment was withheld after Apple talked to Korean regulators.
5. Apple sues Qualcomm in China, expanding fight over patent licensing: Qualcomm is under legal attack, now in two of the world’s biggest markets.
6. Section 230 Helps Snapchat Defeat Personal Injury Claim Due to ‘Speed Filter’–Maynard v. McGee
7. Samsung chief avoids arrest in South Korean corruption scandal: The bribery investigation continues, but for now Lee Jae-yong remains free.
8. California Man Brings Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple For Not Preventing Drivers From Doing Stupid Stuff
9. Perfect 10 Loses Once Again, Sets More Good Copyright Precedent
10. Amazon wants to skip to the end of EU’s e-book antitrust case: “We disagree with some of Vestager’s ideas,” says Amazon as it tables settlement offer.
11. Snapchat To Enable Ad Targeting Using Third Party Data
12. Netflix added over 7 million new subscribers last quarter
13. How Social Cash Made WeChat The App For Everything: A centuries-old tradition gave rise to China’s most valuable company and captured the attention of everyone from teens to Silicon Valley.
14. Facebook Journalism Project is Nothing But A Much-Needed PR stunt
15. Source: Facebook encouraged Antonio Brown to do locker-room live broadcast
16. Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Obama stock photo draws backlash
17. Welcome to the world of trolling in virtual reality: Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of faceless avatars screaming at you.
18. As PC sales shrink, the gaming PC market grows faster than expected: Report shows PC gaming hardware worth over $30 billion, well ahead of schedule.
19. What the Five Year Anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA Blackout Can Teach Congress About Tech
20. Copyright Office Says Current Law Addresses Concerns about Software-Enabled Consumer Products
21. EU MEPs Call Again For ‘Robot Rules’ To Get Ahead Of The AI Revolution
22. How artificial intelligence can be corrupted to repress free speech: It’s easier than you think, even here in America.
23. Can We Balance Human Ethics With Artificial Intelligence?
24. The Ethics and Governance of AI: On the Role of Universities (Urs Gasser)
25. The Real Story Of 2016: What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong. (Nate Silver)

CREATIVITY

1. Supreme Court Delves Into Question Of Whether Or Not You Can Trademark ‘Disparaging’ Terms
2. Transcript of Oral Argument in In Re Tam
3. Lee v. Tam post-argument (Rebecca Tushnet)
4. Tiffany & Co. Successfully Asserts Trademark Infringement Claims Against Costco
5. Trump Campaign Wants To Trademark ‘Keep America Great’
6. CBS, Paramount Settle Lawsuit Over ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film
7. CBS & Paramount Finally Settle With Fan Film Axanar
8. Axanar Productions, Paramount, and CBS settle Star Trek copyright lawsuit: Axanar says it’s “not paying anything,” will turn its feature into two 15-minute shorts.
9. CJEU rules that EU law does NOT prevent punitive damages in IP cases
10. France: Any Alteration/Modification of a Work in Public Domain is Infringement of Moral Rights
11. Sir Paul Will Not Let It Be: McCartney Makes Preemptive Strike Against Music Publishers to Reclaim His Copyrights 
12. Apple Sued Over Use of Jamie XX Song in iPhone Advertisement
13. Is A ‘Fattened’ Version Of A Famous Jorge Luis Borges Story Artistic Re-Creation, Or Copyright Infringement?
14. Author Sued for “Children’s Versions” of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
15. Copyright Has A Real & Serious Free Speech Problem
16. Want to double-down on fixing the Copyright Law? Fix ELUAs.
17. Producers Pressured to Disavow
18. Arrested Flag Burner Sues Arresting Officers
19. Original “patent troll” law firm is shutting down: The Niro firm made tech companies shudder and made a few inventors wealthy.
20. What does post-truth mean for a philosopher?
21. What Do You Mean by ‘The Media?’: The term has been weaponized.
22. Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ after spike in demand
23. The Top Ten TTAB Decisions of 2016 [Part 1]

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Court ruling stands: US has no right to seize data from world’s servers – Outcome means hot-button privacy topic could reach US Supreme Court.
2. State Appeals Court Says Unlocking A Phone With A Fingerprint Doesn’t Violate The Fifth Amendment
3. China announces mass shutdown of VPNs that bypass Great Firewall: China says all VPN providers must get permission from government to operate.
4. China Bolsters The Great Firewall, Cracks Down Harder On VPN Use
5. Megaviral Meitu “beauty” app’s data grab is anything but skin-deep: Android version seeks intrusive permissions, sends lots of data to servers in China.
6. Kaspersky Lab’s top investigator reportedly arrested in treason probe: Charges ignite concern that other researchers could be prosecuted as well.
7. Chicago Mayor Promises To Turn Over Emails From His Private Accounts Following Courtroom Losses
8. Snowden’s Favorite Email Service Returns, With ‘Trustful,’ ‘Cautious,’ And ‘Paranoid’ Modes
9. CIA Slightly Scales Back Its Domestic Surveillance Powers In First Major Policy Update In Over 30 Years
10. Proposed CIA Chief Seems Happy To Spy On Americans, Even If Using Info Hacked By Russians
11. Ransomware app hosted in Google Play infects unsuspecting Android user: “All Your Data Is Already Stored On Our Servers!” malicious app warned.
12. UK Government Refuses To Impose Privacy Rules On Surveillance Cameras In Hospitals
13. Should Celebrities Be Able to Stop Fake News Sites Using Their Faces?

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Not Exactly a Netflix Tax: Where Canada Stands on a Digital Sales Tax (Michael Geist)
2. Careful: a digital tax isn’t the same as a Netflix tax
3. Killing net neutrality at FCC is “not a slam dunk,” departing chair says: While Republicans could end net neutrality, Wheeler explains why they shouldn’t.
4. Outgoing FCC Boss Warns New FCC About The Perils Of Killing Net Neutrality
5. FCC Report Clearly Says AT&T & Verizon Are Violating Net Neutrality — And Nobody Is Going To Do A Damn Thing About It
6. Report: Verizon Considering Comcast Merger In Supernova Of Dysfunction
7. Trump team reportedly wants to strip FCC of consumer protection powers
8. Trump’s Plan Is To Gut All FCC Consumer Protection Powers
9. Don’t Touch That Dial: Why attempts to improve AM and FM radio technologies tend to land with a thud—a thud no harder felt than with the FMX standard, circa 1989. 

DIGITAL

1. Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier
2. Brexit leads to iOS App Store price jump: Apple raising prices by just under 25% to account for pound’s depreciation since vote to leave the EU
3. Labor Department sues Oracle for racial discrimination: Regulators say white male workers paid more than non-white counterparts.
4. Feds sue Qualcomm for anti-competitive patent licensing: Regulators say “no license, no chip” policy amounts to an illegal monopoly.
5. BuzzFeed’s Bombshell: Why the site published the explosive memos about Trump and Russia—and why no one beat them to it.
6. Was BuzzFeed wrong to publish the Trump dossier? This media ethicist says yes.: “They were serving themselves and their own clicks.” –Kelly McBride, vice president of Poynter
7. Here’s Why BuzzFeed Was Right to Publish Those Trump Documents
8. Exclusive interview with BuzzFeed editor: BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief talks to Brian Stelter about the decision to publish the unsubstantiated dossier on President-elect Donald Trump
9. Trump Is Making Journalism Great Again: In his own way, Trump has set us free.
10. Techdirt’s First Amendment Fight For Its Life
11. How To Use Facebook And Fake News To Get People To Murder Each Other: In South Sudan, a country where the vast majority of people lack internet access, fake news and hateful speech leap from Facebook to the real world — with possibly deadly consequences.
12. Yet Another Lawsuit Hopes A Court Will Hold Twitter Responsible For Terrorists’ Actions
13. Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier
14. Land Court Finds that Texting Can Bind Parties 
15. Online Price Advertising: Amazon to Pay $1.1 Million to Settle Canadian Competition Bureau Investigation 
16. New York Times report: ‘The Internet is brutal to mediocrity’
17. The Great Unbundling
18. Software Copyright Litigation After Oracle v. Google
19. No, you do not have to pay a ‘settlement fee’ if you get an illegal download notice
20. San Francisco sues local drone maker, drone maker then shuts down: Lily Robotics never shipped a single drone.
21. YouTube livestreams now have their own tip jar
22. The Inside Story of BitTorrent’s Bizarre Collapse: How a group of valley outsiders blew through the company’s cash and nearly left it for dead.
23. How Netflix Lost Big to Amazon in India: The streaming company botched its chance to own India’s huge new video market.
24. The next best thing to teleportation: Living in one country and working in another will soon be common, thanks to remote-control robots. Future Now spoke with economist Richard Baldwin about how this trend could change the world.
25. Student Disciplined for Posting Threatening Mashup Video to Instagram–AN v. Upper Perkiomen School District (Eric Goldman)
26. Drone maker Lily Robotics sued by San Francisco district attorney
27. Why Blockchain Will Trump Populism
28. The entire modern copyright was built on one fundamental assumption that the Internet has reversed
29. Treat robots as “electronic persons” but with kill switches, argue MEPs: Committee approves proposal that mulls “electronic personality” for robots.
30. Using Tinder in Your Hometown Is Like Visiting an Alternate Reality: Surfing the app on a trip back home can be a way of regressing, or imagining what life would be like if you never left.
31. Siri-ously 2.0: What Artificial Intelligence Reveals About the First Amendment (Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton, Margot E. Kaminski)

CREATIVITY

1. Fake News, Fake Art?  Richard Prince Disavows Work Depicting Ivanka Trump
2. Ceci n’est pas une Prince*: Richard Prince Appropriates and Repurposes Himself 
3. How the Killers & a fortune cookie turned philanthropic
4. Star Trek fan-fiction copyright suit tests ‘fair use’ defence
5. Louis Vuitton’s appeal fails in parody case
6. LA Chargers Already Face Trademark Opposition To Their Name Over The Term ‘L.A.’
7. Artist creates “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” memes to stop people from whitewashing MLK
8. How Reality TV Builds Narrative Is Crucial to Understanding Trump
9. For Hollywood, The Best Way To Win Against Disney Is To Not Be Disney
10. New Study Essentially Suggests That Publishers Should Do CwF + RtB Instead Of Going Legal To Combat Piracy
11. What If China’s Money Stream Stops Flowing to Hollywood?
12. Austria: Tattoos and Copyright
13. Billions of Bilious Barbecued Blue Blistering Barnacles: Tintin Gets Color Makeover!
14. Lucasfilm: Carrie Fisher will not return to Star Wars in CGI form: Still leaves major questions about Leia’s role in Episode IX unanswered.
15. Beware! Academics are getting reeled in by scam journals: The number of predatory publishers is skyrocketing – and they’re eager to pounce on unsuspecting scholars.
16. Copyright Reform in Canada – the 2017 Section 92 Review (Howard Knopf)
17. Quick Links, Part 10: Marketing, Uber, Airbnb, Taxes & More (Eric Goldman)
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 11: Social Media, Harassment, E-Discovery & More (Eric Goldman)
19. Free speech debates are more than ‘radicals’ vs ‘liberals’ (Eric Heinze)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Assange weasels out of pledge to surrender if Manning received clemency: WikiLeaks founder now says it’s not good enough Manning will be released in May.
2. Chinese Officials With Government Access To Every Kind Of Personal Data Are Selling It Online
3. Court rules against man who was forced to fingerprint-unlock his phone: Unlocking a phone like this “is no more testimonial than furnishing a blood sample.”
4. Mississippi AG Jim Hood sues Google—again
5. Syrian Migrant Says He’s Tired Of Being The Subject Of ‘Fake News,’ Sues Facebook For Posts Linking Him To Terrorism
6. US court says PSN data doesn’t get Fourth Amendment protection: Sony could hand info to the police without a warrant.
7. It’s shockingly easy to hijack a Samsung SmartCam camera
8. Empirical Data on the Privacy Paradox
9. Cell Phone Hacking Company Hacked; 900 GB Of Logins, Log Files, And Forensic Evidence Taken
10. Did The FISA Court Finally Reject The FBI’s Advances?
11. Top UK Cop Says Hackers Should Be Punished Not With Prison, But With Jammed WiFi Connections
12. VR as the Most Powerful Surveillance Technology or Last Bastion of Privacy? It’s up to Us.
13. Law Enforcement Has Been Using OnStar, SiriusXM, To Eavesdrop, Track Car Locations For More Than 15 Years
14. NSA to share data with other agencies without “minimizing” American information: Rules opposed by civil liberties and privacy advocates.
15. It’s Official: Sixteen Government Agencies Now Have Access To Unminimized Domestic NSA Collections
16. After Lawsuits And Denial, Pacemaker Vendor Finally Admits Its Product Is Hackable
17. Cloudflare Finally Able To Reveal FBI Gag Order That Congress Told Cloudflare Couldn’t Possibly Exist
18. Our Apathy Toward Privacy Will Destroy Us. Designers Can Help: The loss of security and privacy online may seem inevitable, but designers can help the public help themselves.
19. Privacy’s Trust Gap (Neil Richards & Woodrow Hartzog)

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Canadian Regulators Declare 50 Mbps To Be The New Broadband Standard
2. Why a media coalition is decrying a CRTC ruling on Super Bowl feeds (Michael Geist)
3. NFL Blitzes Trudeau in Arcane Super Bowl Advertising Dispute
4. Norway Set to Be First Country to Switch Off FM Radio: Move to all-digital radio sparks debate
5. ISPs Get Right To Work Pushing For Elimination Of New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules
6. Verizon Cracks Down On Unlimited Data Users, Claims Nobody Wants Unlimited Data Anyway
7. FCC Denies Reconsideration of Noncommercial Broadcasting Ownership Report Requirements – But Signs that New Commission May See Things Differently 
8. Tom Wheeler accuses AT&T and Verizon of violating net neutrality: Paid zero-rating in crosshairs, but it won’t matter once Trump is president.
9. AT&T Intends To Dodge FCC Review Of Time Warner Mega-Merger, But Trump Remains A Wild Card
10. AT&T Already Backing Off Its Biggest Time Warner Merger Promise: Cheaper TV
11. AT&T and Time Warner still trying to sidestep FCC scrutiny of merger: Time Warner might get rid of dozens of licenses to avoid public interest review.
12. Ad Industry Wants New FCC Broadband Privacy Rules Gutted Because, Uh, Free Speech!
13. Don’t Gut Net Neutrality. It’s Good for People and Business
14. Verizon raises upgrade fee to “cover increased cost”—but its costs declined
15. Verizon purges unlimited data customers, targets those using 200GB: Heaviest unlimited data users must switch to limited plans or be disconnected.
16. The Fox News nighttime lineup has shed its last element of real journalism
17. The huge challenge of covering Trump fairly
18. Yes, Donald Trump ‘lies.’ A lot. And news organizations should say so.
19. The U.S. Media’s Problems Are Much Bigger than Fake News and Filter Bubbles
20. It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’
21. How to Reverse Journalism’s Decline: American journalism is in dire straits. Is a robust public subsidy the antidote?
22. Inside The Rise Of The “Breitbart Of The Left”: David Brock, the conservative apostate turned liberal agitator, lays out his plans for the future of the Internet for progressives. “We’re going to go after spineless Democrats who want to make nice with Trump.”
23. Did Media Literacy Backfire? (danah boyd)

DIGITAL

1. Popular tech blog sued by self-proclaimed “inventor of e-mail” hits back: “This fight could be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely right.”
2. Bureau closes Apple iPhone investigation: No abuse of dominance found related to contracts with Canadian wireless carriers (January 6, 2017 — Ottawa, On — Competition Bureau)
3. France’s ‘Right To Disconnect’ Is Now Live, For Reasons Passing Understanding
4. Linking to illegal content can constitute a copyright infringement – CJEU Sanoma interpreted by a German Court
5. EFF to Court: Don’t Let the Right of Publicity Eat the Internet
6. Children in England sign over digital rights ‘regularly and unknowingly’: Children’s commissioner calls for greater representation after study finds half of eight- to 11-year-olds have agreed opaque T&Cs with social media firms
7. A Lack of Yakking: Students appear to have moved on from Yik Yak, once a prime app for anonymous gossip and racist comments — a relief for administrators struggling to curb online bullying.
8. Tim Wu: ‘The internet is like the classic story of the party that went sour’ – The influential tech thinker has charted the history of the attention industry: enterprises that harvest our attention to sell to advertisers. The internet, he argues, is the latest communications tool to have fallen under its spell
9. How a week of Trump tweets stoked anxiety, moved markets and altered plans
10. Snapchat Accused of Misleading Investors in Ex-Employee’s Lawsuit
11. Yahoo is dead, long live Altaba!: Following Verizon purchase, only Asian investments and some patents remain.
12. Verizon Insists Higher Phone Upgrades Are Being Used To Enhance The Network Instead Of Make Up Revenue Decline
13. TV anchor says live on-air ‘Alexa, order me a dollhouse’ – guess what happens next: Story on accidental order begets story on accidental order begets accidental order
14. The Humans Working Behind the AI Curtain
15. Why We Can’t Fix Twitter: Social media is broken. When will we realize that we’re the problem?
16. How should Twitter respond to WikiLeaks threats to track its verified users?
17. France does not currently need the new 3D printing laws that parliament is considering, say experts
18. Martin Shkreli harasses Teen Vogue writer, has Twitter account suspended
19. Eli Pariser: activist whose filter bubble warnings presaged Trump and Brexit – Upworthy chief warned about dangers of the internet’s echo chambers five years before 2016’s votes
20. 2016 sees Internet Explorer usage collapse, Chrome surge
21. Netflix Downloader Pulled Offline Following Trademark Complaint
22. BBC vs Netflix: iPlayer to stream shows before they air on TV – Beeb gets in on binge-watch game—hopes to lure Brits away from rival services.
23. Vancouver-based BroadbandTV expands to Southeast Asia, Middle East
24. The Internet of Things: U.S. Copyright Office Releases Report on Software Enabled Products
25. FridgeCam lets you make your dumb fridge smart with a simple camera: Why replace an entire fridge when you can stick a camera inside the one you have?
26. Blockchains for Artificial Intelligence: From Decentralized Model Exchanges to Model Audit Trails
27. Hacking the Attention Economy (danah boyd)
28. Top 10 Internet Law Developments of 2016 (Eric Goldman)
29. Honest YouTube Rewind: The Most Controversial YouTube Stories of 2016
30. Why Trolls Won in 2016
31. 2016: The Year We Stopped Listening To Big Tech’s Favorite Excuse – For a time, “We’re just a platform” was a handy excuse for the unexpected consequences of Silicon Valley’s most important companies. But this year it stopped working.
32. Aaron Swartz and me, over a loosely intertwined decade: Remembering the talented activist who lived in our Internet neighborhood.

CREATIVITY

1. US Supreme Court loaded with First Amendment cases: Can you trademark an offensive name or not? Justices to decide.
2. Axanar isn’t fair use, judge finds, setting stage for Star Trek copyright trial: Set courtrooms to stun as judge rejects motions for summary judgment from both sides.
3. Court gives jury mission to explore strange world of copyright and fair use
4. Copyright in Klingon
5. Why Unreleased Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Beach Boys Tracks Are Suddenly Appearing: EU Copyright Law
6. Bill O’Reilly accused again of sexual harassment. Ratings to spike!
7. The Killers issue demands to Panda Express over fortune cookie: It appears that the Las Vegas rock band stumbled upon a fortune cookie that reminded them of a hit track from their first album, Hot Fuss.
8. Judge Rules ‘Krusty Krab’ Restaurant Violates Viacom’s ‘SpongeBob’ Rights
9. Indian High Court Blocks Rent-Seeking Collection Societies From Seeking Any More Rent
10. Ontario Court of Appeal confirms $80,000 libel judgment against Ezra Levant: Saskatchewan lawyer brought suit in response to blog posts
11. <i>Walking Dead</i> creator lives to fear others’ trademark applications
12. Tresona Multimedia, LLC v. Burbank High School Vocal Music Association
13. Now BMI takes on the US Radio industry
14. Bulgarian Public Radio Forbidden To Play 14 Million Pieces Of Music By Copyright Collection Society
15. China & Hollywood: What Lies Beneath & Ahead In 2017
16. Congressman Appoints Himself Censor, Removes Painting Critical Of Cops From Congressional Halls
17. A Seismic Ruling Revisited: No Common-Law Public Performance Rights in Pre-1972 Sound Recordings in New York–Flo & Eddie v. Sirius
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 8: Fake News, Terrorist Content, Censorship & More (Eric Goldman)
19. 2016 Quick Links, Part 9: Privacy/Security (Eric Goldman)
20. Copyright Law & The Drummer (Ronojoy Basu) 

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. Facebook, Google face strict EU privacy rules that could hit ad revenues: Plans to plug “void of protection” could place ad trackers on cookie diet in Europe.
2. LA Community College paid $28,000 to free itself from ransomware
3. CSIS assessing ‘bulk data’ collection, records show
4. IMDb tells California it will continue to publish actors’ ages: The law “plainly violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution and cannot be enforced,” says the Amazon-owned company.
5. Court Says 791 Days Of Warrantless Location Tracking ‘Unreasonable,” But Refuses To Toss Evidence
6. What The US Intelligence ‘Russia Hacked Our Election’ Report Could Have Said… But Didn’t
7. How the U.S. Hobbled Its Hacking Case Against Russia and Enabled Truthers: There’s a ton of evidence tying Moscow to the DNC hack. Somehow, Washington managed to screw up its presentation of that evidence.
8. FBI Releases A Stack Of Redactions In Response To FOIA Request For Info On Its Purchased iPhone Hack
9. Unsecure routers, webcams prompt feds to sue D-Link: D-Link failed to maintain confidentiality of private key used to sign its software.
10. US warns of unusual cybersecurity flaw in heart devices
11. Feds may let Playpen child porn suspect go to keep concealing their source code: In 2016, judge ordered DOJ to give up source code targeting a Tor-hidden child porn site.
12. ‘For The Children’ Cyberbullying Law Running Into Opposition From Groups Actually Concerned About Children
13. How hackers made life hell for a CIA boss and other top US officials
14. Big Surprise! – Fraud and identity theft a real problem for online dating sites! 

jon

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

1. Terence Corcoran: The CRTC needs to stop playing this game and let networks decide what ads run during the Super Bowl
2. Canada Classifies Broadband as a Basic Telecommunications Service
3. Tucker Carlson delivers sexism for Fox News
4. Megyn Kelly Is Leaving Fox News for NBC
5. Canada among the ‘most expensive mobile data countries,’ report says: People are worried about ‘crazy, huge overage fees,’ OpenMedia spokeswoman says
6. FCC Approves Up to 49% Foreign Ownership of Univision – What Guidance is Provided to Potential Foreign Investors in US Broadcast Stations? 
7. FCC Settles Largest Lifeline Enforcement Case for $30 million and Permanent Ban from the Program 
8. FCC Denies Petition for Declaratory Ruling on Fax Advertisements 
9. Dutch Regulators Demand T-Mobile Stop Zero Rating, Remind Users That Free Data Isn’t Really Free
10. Cord-Cutting Forces Cable Networks to Make Hard Choices
11. CASL — Year in Review

DIGITAL

1. ‘Copyright Trolls’ Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Theft by Deception
2. Browsewraps, fair dealing and Blacklock’s Reporter v Canada: a critical commentary
3. Failure to Introduce Source Code of Original Work Fatal to Claim Against Alleged Derivative Work
4. Apple pulls New York Times apps from Chinese App Store by China’s request: Apps have been missing from the store since December 23.
5. Honest Shanghai app gives citizens public credit score
6. China has made obedience to the State a game: China has created a social tool which gives people a score for how good a citizen they are
7. Web of tax breaks and subsidies keeps iPhone production in China: Foxconn’s clout as Apple’s manufacturing partner nets billions in incentives.
8. Apple’s FaceTime blamed for girl’s highway crash death in new lawsuit: Family claims Apple should have deployed patented tech to “lock-out” motorists.
9. Victims Of Car Crash Sue Apple For Not Preventing Distracted Driver From Hitting Their Vehicle
10. Families of Orlando nightclub shooting victims sue Facebook, Google and Twitter
11. Follow Buddies and Block Buddies: A Simple Proposal to Improve Civility, Control, and Privacy on Twitter (Danielle Citron & Benjamin Wittes)
12. Google Apparently No Longer Humoring Court Orders To Delist Defamatory Content
13. The Most Important Law in Tech Has a Problem: How “safe harbor” turned into a protector of privilege.
14. Facebook scrubs — then restores — post that called Trump supporters ‘fascists’
15. Now Italy Wants To Make ‘Fake News’ Illegal
16. How Amazon, Google, and Facebook Will Bring Down Telcos
17. Op-ed: Five unexpected lessons from the Ashley Madison breach – This is the first FTC complaint involving lying bots – there will be more.
18. Pirates: You Can Click But You (Can’t) Can Hide
19. LG threatens to put Wi-Fi in every appliance it introduces in 2017: Its new fridge includes Amazon’s Alexa and a bunch of cameras.
20. Snapchat using machine learning to introduce greater targeting to its ad stack
21. Ridiculous Congressional Proposal Would Fine Reps Who Live Stream From The Floor
22. From Tape Drives to Memory Orbs, the Data Formats of Star Wars Suck (Spoilers)
23. 2016 Was The Year Torrent Giants Fell
24. Is an NSA contractor the next Snowden? In 2017, we hope to find out: These 5 cases touch on the near-future of drones, privacy and IP law.
25. Glasses From eSight Help Legally Blind Indianapolis Colts Fan See First Game
26. The Chatbot Will See You Now
27. The Bot Politic: Silicon Valley’s usual solution to designing an inoffensive, eager-to-please technology has been to make it a woman. But why use gender at all?
28. The most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016: Google v. Oracle; Prenda lawyers arrested; and much more.
29. Our Unfortunate Annual Tradition: A Look At What Should Have Entered The Public Domain, But Didn’t
30. Fighting for Fair Use and Safer Harbors: 2016 in Review (EFF)

CREATIVITY

1. ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film Not Fair Use, Will Be Tried by Jury
2. Aussie Productivity Commission Doubles Down On Fair Use And Serious Copyright & Patent Reform
3. Surrender Dorothy: Court Upholds Damages, Injunction for Movie Content Infringement
4. Welcome, Mr. Walt Disney, to the Canadian Public Domain (Howard Knopf)
5. Milo Yiannopoulos’s Cynical Book Deal
6. Milo Yiannopoulos Inks Book Deal With Simon & Schuster: The “alt-right” icon was banned from Twitter after launching a widespread attack on actress Leslie Jones.
7. Simon & Schuster Threatened with Boycott for $250K Book Deal with Alt-Right Homocon Troll Milo Yiannopoulos
8. Our Murrow Moment: The time for hand-wringing and hysteria is over. The Trump presidency promises a civic stress test. In a time of principled fights, citizens and journalists need to respond with fearlessness rooted in fairness.
9. Librarians must resist trumpism
10. Actors rush to protect their image from ‘digital resurrection’ after they have died following eerie Star Wars: Rogue One reanimation of Carrie Fisher
11. Fox News Opinions Get Wide Berth Under Defamation Law
12. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ‘The Bachelor’ Is Killing Romance in America
13. Creative solutions to cultural appropriation – fashion industry
14. The most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016: Google v. Oracle; Prenda lawyers arrested; and much more.
15. Tesla Gave Up Its Patents, But People Are Freaked Out That Faraday Future Put Its Own Into A Separate Company
16. Ten Worst Section 230 Rulings Of 2016 (Plus The Five Best)
17. 2016 Quick Links, Part 3: Trademarks And Domain Names (Eric Goldman)
18. 2016 Quick Links, Part 4: Counterfeits And Olympics (Eric Goldman)
19. 2016 Quick Links, Part 5: Patents, Other IP, Employment, CFAA (Eric Goldman)
20. Functionality Screens (Christopher Buccafusco & Mark Lemley)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

1. A French court case against Google could threaten global speech rights
2. Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference
3. White House Kicks Russian Diplomats Out Of The Country, Releases Preliminary Report On Russian Hacking With More To Come
4. Obama tosses 35 Russians out of US, sanctions others for election meddling: Intelligence dump from DHS and FBI bolsters claims of Russian election interference.
5. Singapore Will Add Iris Scans As Identifier For Citizens And Permanent Residents Starting January 1
6. UK Councils Used Massive Surveillance Powers To Spy On… Excessively Barking Dogs & Illegal Pigeon Feeding
7. Surveillance in Latin America: 2016 in Review (EFF)
8. Facebook buys data on users’ offline habits for better ads: And opting out is a lot more complicated than it should be.
9. Man Has To Beg LG To Uncripple His ‘Smart’ TV After Ransomware Attack
10. Malware Purveyor Serving Up Ransomware Via Bogus ICANN Blacklist Removal Emails
11. Online and Mobile Tracking Company Settles FTC Charges It Deceptively Tracked Consumers
12. Watch out hackers: Deploying ransomware is now a crime in California: Previously, prosecutors had to rely on the state’s extortion statute.
13. Confirmed Horrible Person James Woods Continues Being Horrible In ‘Winning’ Awful Lawsuit To Unmask Deceased Online Critic
14. EU Binding Corporate Rules For Transferring Data: A Comparison of US Law, EU Law, and Soon-To-Be EU Law
15. The Real Name Fallacy
16. When Do Data Breaches Cause Harm? (Daniel Solove)

jon