AllThingsD Week in Review: Apple Freshens Up & Pinterest and Snapchat See Dollar Signs

The Top 10 stories that powered AllThingsD this week, in one convenient post.
snapchatdollar640

Facebook Reverses Stance — Again — On Violent Viral Video

Free expression in the online world is a tricky issue for any social network.
Facebook_F380

In Lifting Violent-Video Ban, Facebook Seeks Its “Tahrir Square” Moment

The world’s largest social network wants to move more into the public sphere.

QOTD: Call of Jury Duty

It is very difficult to make the difference between real footage and the footage you can get from video games, so we are arguing that we have to get even closer to reality, and we also have to include the rules of the law on conflict.

François Sénéchaud, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Division for the Integration and Promotion of the Law, which aims to have the hyperrealistic violence depicted in war-oriented games like Call of Duty followed up by equally hyperrealistic punishment for war crimes, where applicable

Viral Video: Imagine if We All Got Along

It isn’t hard to do.

Voices

Obama Urges $10 Million to Study Video Games and Violence

In a highly-anticipated press conference Wednesday morning to address gun violence in the United States, President Barack Obama called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to renew scientific inquiry into the relationship between “video games, media images, and violence,” and urged Congress to support a bill that would grant the organization $10 million to conduct this new research.

YouTube Blocks Israeli Hamas Assassination Video — And Puts It Back Up Again

Israel wants the world to see a clip of its military at work. Google’s site took it down, but says that was a mistake. “Sometimes we make the wrong call.”

Voices

Firms Seek Supply Route Around Conflict in Congo

While the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake is causing many companies to worry about the electronics supply chain, a different pall is hovering over a rare, blue-gray metal that is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Voices

Justices Split on Violent Games

The Supreme Court seemed split Tuesday over First Amendment protection for videogames, scrambling the justices’ typical ideological lineup in a conflict between a new medium’s free expression rights and government efforts to shield youth from bad influences.

Voices

Supreme Court to Hear Videogames Case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide the constitutionality of a California law that seeks to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors. Two lower courts struck down the law as an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech.