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Randomizing Someone Else’s Creativity as a Form of Creativity

A few nights ago, I saw a friend of mine from Utah, USA, whom I know from a previous video game charity event (Darkwing_Duck_SDA on Twitter), playing a randomized version of The Legend of Zelda. For those of you who haven’t played the original Zelda for NES (I hope I’m not aging myself too badly as the resident […]

Class 13 Slides; April 7, 2015

Class 13 Slides; April 7, 2015

Our last set of slides for the semester.  So many of they that they had to be split in half (even after using PowerPoint’s compression utility). So the first deck is on surveillance. The second is a stand-alone final review of the course memes. jon

News of the Week Top 5; April 8, 2015

News of the Week Top 5; April 8, 2015

1. The cost of silence: mass surveillance & self-censorship 2.  DDoS attacks that crippled GitHub linked to Great Firewall of China: Whitehat hacker’s traceroute wizzardry pinpoints origin of denial-of-service code. 3. The Internet of Kafkaesque Things (Jay Stanley) 4. How the DMCA’s Online Copyright Safe Harbor Failed (Eric Goldman) 5. Taking Down Bigots With Their Own Weapons Is Sweet, […]

Game of Thrones Piracy

The first four episodes of Season 5 of Game of Thrones were leaked early online.  Interestingly, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has stated: “Our experience is [piracy] leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game […]

Online Shaming or Sadistic Trolling

There was an article in the Globe and Mail earlier this week about online shaming, including a discussion of sadism as an inherent character trail. I thought it tied in well to some of our discussions in class; plus, it’s an interesting read as a study break 🙂 Cheers!

Nintendo and We Play videos

Great interview with Elena Iosef by Amanda Lang about copyright and gameplay: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/youtube-gaming-stars-blindsided-by-nintendo-s-ad-revenue-grab-1.3010550

John Oliver with Edward Snowden

Here is the John Oliver interview with Edward Snowden that was mentioned in class today. Hilarious, sad, and insightful — all in one.  

Tuesday’s Class Presentation

Amanda has asked me to post the following  readings for Tuesday. Please be forewarned that the second link is graphic in text and video. The irony of this warning given the context of the course will of course not be lost on anyone…. Why hasn’t Japan banned child-porn comics? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30698640 The 10 Most Disturbing Scenes […]

News of the Week Top 5; April 1, 2015

News of the Week Top 5; April 1, 2015

1. China Uses Unencrypted Websites to Hijack Browsers in GitHub Attack 2. Ellen Pao’s Statement On Losing The Kleiner Perkins Case: “The Battle Was Worth It” 3. How C-51 undermines privacy (Lisa M. Austin, Benjamin J. Goold, Avner Levin and Andrea Slane)   4. Facebook tracks logged-out users in ‘violation’ of EU law, study says 5. Bell censorship: the status quo […]

Not that you need to see more of me or anything…

At the end of the Week 12 slides I briefly did a recap of some slides from a keynote presentation I gave to the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Media & Communications Law Conference in 2011. Those slides touch on the theme of how to nurture the freedoms that result in creativity with a desire […]