Organizers of this May's GDC Canada event in Vancouver, BC have confirmed the first social game and iPhone lectures for the event, with speakers from Zynga (Farmville), iPhone experts IUGO, and Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno discussing major emerging markets.

Registration is now open for the event at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which talkes place on May 6th and 7th -- with early, reduced-price passes only available until the end of March.

This year, new tracks will focus on more hot games industry topics including digital distribution, social games, and iPhone games.

Some of the initially announced highlights for these vital tracks, many of which are bringing major creators to speak to the Canadian market for the first time, are as follows:

- In 'Building Social Games: Games at the Speed of Light', Zynga VP and Farmville GM Bill Mooney discusses how "The social gaming market is exploding - viral propagation across the world, low barriers to entry which create agile competitors, and a rapidly changing and imperfectly understood marketplace." In this key lecture, Mooney "walks through key learnings from his time making [major] Zynga franchises Mafia Wars and FarmVille."

- A lectures called 'A Tale of 14 Apps: IUGO's App Store Journey' sees Sarah Thomson, business development director of the Toy Bot Diaries and Zombie Attack! iPhone game creator discuss "what is working on the App Store and what isn’t, what factors, internal and external, contribute to an app’s success or failure."

- Presenting a lecture called 'The Art of Conversion: How to Manage Players through Your Game Service', Playmatics co-founder Nick Fortugno (lead designer of casual smash Diner Dash) and Media Shifters' Andrew Mayer will discuss new digital models of monetizing game players, including "converting platform users into game players, converting players into viral advocates, and, most importantly, converting your user base into paying customers."

The event will also once again host tracks about game design, business and production, programming, and visual arts. GDC Canada, presented by Reboot Communications and this website's parent the UBM Techweb Game Network, will also host evening networking events, as well as an expo hall.

More information on the 2010 GDC Canada event, including pricing specifics, lectures announced to date and registration deadlines, are available on the official GDC Canada website.

Facebook may be denying any wrongdoing, but a California judge is disagreeing with the social networks' disagreement to the tune of a $9.5 million dollar settlement today.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the settlement comes in response to a class-action lawsuit over Facebook's Beacon program that published what users were buying.

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The decision allocates $6 million of the settlement to a "digital trust fund" that will go to organizations that study online privacy, says the Times article. The Times explains the bit of controversy hovering around this final decision:

Over the objections of privacy advocates, Facebook will have a seat on the fund's three-member board. It consists of Chris Jay Hoofnagle, who heads the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology; Tim Sparapani, Facebook's public policy director; and writer Larry Magid.

While some people are saying that the settlement is unfair in a few ways, Justin Brookman, a senior resident fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, seemed to disagree. The general contention has been that Facebook will have one seat on the three-member board for the "digital trust fund" and that it was already required to pay money out to promote online privacy, as our own Sarah Perez discussed when the settlement was first announced last October.

Brookman said that today's decision is "a really good settlement for consumers", explaining that "there are really very few settlements that come up with that type of monetary figure."

He also contended that, while Facebook will have a seat on the board, it will be a minority member, as a majority vote requires two out of the three parties to agree. He said that the other two members, Hoofnagle and Magid, were both good choices who will act in the public's interest.

"We have a lot of confidence they'll make wise awards of the money," he said. "They both criticized Facebook when Beacon came out."

According to the Times, however, this may not be the end of the appeal process.

One privacy advocate said he was exploring whether he could appeal the decision. "This sweetheart deal for Facebook is outrageous and another indication they don't really want to ensure privacy online," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

Brookman noted, however, that a settlement like this for privacy issues was relatively unprecedented.

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