Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Fast Track Trade Authority only applies to future trade agreements

According to the Fast track 2015, once a trade agreement is finalized, the president must publish the finalized trade agreement within 60 days. Unfortunately, this might not be the case as it could only apply to future trade agreements, and may not apply to the TPP, keeping the full text hidden for the next few years as Australian Trade Minister Robb announced to the Australian (Subscription only) that the trade agreement will be signed within weeks after the deal is concluded, which could be up into the end of next month. Congress will then within 60 days from both houses must approve the agreement with changes to its laws.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Time to kill Flash player, no seriously

Even with more new patches, hackers can still exploit the software. So as Facebook Security just told Adobe to finally sunset Flash Player. They're not suggesting to kill it overnight, Adobe hasn't announced a sunset date for it.  In 2011,  Adobe announced to switch to HTML5 for mobiles. When Adobe announces a sunset date, game developers are going to soon adopt HTML5 before it shuts down. That means no more updates. Flash games will be in the dust, Zynga will soon have to kill off its flash games and put focus on mobile games.

Current PCs that run Windows 7 will need to upgrade to windows 10.

As for XP and Vista, HTML5 videos will work on some videos like YouTube (I did a test, worked fine on some videos but other videos require hardware upgrade, that is buying a new laptop or tablet). But with flash being ditched, the ball in Mozilla's court will decide the fate of its support for XP and Vista for it future versions of Firefox including its project Shumway that converts Flash animation to HTML5, which really needs to push forward pulling it out of its nighttime testing and putting it into the next version and thus like I said Mozilla will soon announce that its next version and other future versions will stop supporting XP and Vista, and supports version 7, 8.1 and the upcoming version 10 within a couple of weeks.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata died, 55

Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata has died from duct growth on July 11. His age was 55.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Heroes of the Realm game shuts down on July 25, Zynga possible shut down next week

 Heroes of the Realm is shutting down because of lack of players and very little funds to update the game.


Hello, everyone.
After much deliberation, we regret to announce the official shutdown of Heroes of the Realm. We will close the Cash Shop today and will close the service on July 25, 2015.
We feel much of the community has expected this for some time now, based on the multi-month
update drought, but that does little to settle our feelings towards this announcement.

We would like to sincerely thank the dedicated community of Heroes of the Realm for their continued support throughout this journey. However, due to the circumstance of the Development Studio, we are unable to
support the community in the way it merits.

Your Kreds spent in the game will be returned to your account
following Kongregate’s refund policy – a 30 day guarantee on purchases.

From everyone here at the HotT team, we cannot thank you all enough for your dedication and support.
Sincerely,
Heroes of the Realm Team


Zynga is possibly going to shut down in the next week or two because it's stock dropped about 40 cents over the past month.

Friday, July 3, 2015

Funimation's statement puts Fan Artists in its legal crosshairs

Since the passage of Fast Track Trade Authority,  Funimation has released a statement regarding fan art at anime cons and online.

The statement reads as follows

FUNimation's Stance1 On Fan Art
At law, a fan-created artwork that is clearly based on existing artwork owned by a copyright holder other than the fan (e.g. FUNimation), is considered an unauthorized "derivative work" or an unauthorized reproduction (by substantial similarity) and therefore infringes the copyright holder's rights under 17 U.S.C. § 106. 

Despite FUNimation's legal stance on this issue, FUNimation appreciates the entertainment, education and skill that goes into and arises from the imitation and creation of works derived from existing works of popular manga and anime. FUNimation likewise realizes that the "Artist Alley" area of most conventions can be a good showcase for these works and therefore FUNimation tends not to enforce its copyright rights against those in Artist Alley who may be infringing FUNimation's copyright rights. 

FUNimation's trademark rights, on the other hand, cannot go unenforced. This stems from a key distinction between U.S. Copyright Law and U.S. Trademark Law-in short, if copyright rights are not enforced, the copyright stays intact and the copyright holder generally will not suffer any harm beyond the infringement itself. But if trademark rights are not enforced, the trademark can be cancelled. Because of this difference, FUNimation cannot knowingly tolerate unauthorized use of its trademarks, such as use of trademarks in conjunction with the display or sale of works whose creation is likewise unauthorized. This means that FUNimation will take action if it or its agents discover unauthorized works, including fan art, which include a FUNimation-owned/licensed trademark within the work or are on display in conjunction with signage bearing a FUNimation-owned/licensed trademark. Note that the trademarks FUNimation is primarily concerned with are brand names and logos. 

As to the Dealer's Room, FUNimation strictly enforces both its copyright rights and trademark rights, almost without exception. This applies to works that are believed to be counterfeit, unlicensed or fan-created. 


What this means for fan artists is that they can no longer post fan art of Funimation's licensed properties online (DeviantArt, Flickr, Etsy, Zerochan, Pixiv, Pinterest, etc.) even if they're not making a profit according to the third paragraph of this statement.

This isn't Funimation's decision. They had no choice because they could risk losing their licensing rights if they refuse to crack down  against fan art on behalf of the anime studios (Toei, Shin-Ei Douga, etc.).

Because of this Japan likely changed it's copyright law to meet the requirements of Trans-Pacific Partnership including copyright terms.

So even if the fan art doesn't contain logo of the company or of the titles of it's licensed properties, fan artists could still be in legal trouble just as they would get into trouble with Disney for drawing Mickey Mouse.

Disclaimer: I am not a legal attorney. Funimation's statement is not for legal advices. Please consult an legal attorney

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Latest and final leak of TPP could force stores to pull generics off shelves and kill affordable health care

This is the latest and final leak of TPP in the IP chapter on drug patents which contains a provision that would force all retailers to pull all generic drugs off the shelves. Why would Obama want to do that? He wants to let people die off from treatable diseases including HIV/AIDS. Schools will not be able to afford vaccinations. This is nothing but profits over health and there's nothing we can do about it with the passage of Fast Track.