Month: April 2016

(credit: Thomas Hawk)

"We Shall Overcome," a song that was the "unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement," was wrongly placed under copyright and should be put in the public domain, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court. The complaint (PDF) was filed by the same group of lawyers who succeeded at putting the world's most famous song, Happy Birthday, into the public domain after years of litigation. It's a proposed class action that seeks the return of copyright licensing fees they say were wrongfully collected by Ludlow Music Inc. and The Richmond Organization, which claim to have copyrighted "We Shall Overcome" in 1960.

According to the lawsuit, the song is much older than that. The plaintiffs say the song is based on "an African-American spiritual with exactly the same melody and nearly identical lyrics from the late 19th or early 20th century."

At most, they say, the defendant companies own specific arrangements of the song, or additional verses that were added in 1960 when the song was copyrighted and again in 1963.

On May 22 2014, Mr Shafi Ahmed, consultant general colorectal, and laparoscopic surgeon at Barts NHS trust was in the news for bringing his craft a good deal closer to the gaze of his medical students.

By donning Google Glass as he removed tumours from the liver and bowel of a 78-year-old British man, he allowed 13,000 trainees and clinicians to witness a surgeon’s eye view of the procedure as it happened.

Now, the streaming surgeon is going live again. The Royal London hospital's operating theatre—with the surgery at centre stage—will be available for all to see live in virtual reality at lunchtime on Thursday, April 14.

UL, the 122-year-old safety standards organisation whose various marks (UL, ENEC, etc.) certify minimum safety standards in fields as diverse as electrical wiring, cleaning products, and even dietary supplements, is now tackling the cybersecurity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with its new UL 2900 certification. But there's a problem: UL's refusal to share the text of the new standard leaves some experts wondering if UL knows what they're doing.

When Ars requested a copy of the UL 2900 docs to take a closer look at the standard, UL (formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories) declined, indicating that if we wished to purchase a copy—retail price, around £600/$800 for the full set—we were welcome to do so. Independent security researchers are also, we must assume, welcome to become UL retail customers.

"It's very concerning," Brian Knopf of I Am The Cavalry, a group of security researchers focused on public safety issues, told Ars. "Without transparency, the research community cannot help improve or audit the standards." As Ars has previously reported, Knopf is leading an effort to develop a five-star cybersecurity rating system for IoT devices.

I don't have access to Ubisoft's many bank accounts, but Tom Clancy's The Division looks like the most expensive game the publisher has made by some distance. The Clancy brand alone represents decades' worth of investment, the production values are phenomenal, and a long marketing campaign was rewarded with the best first-week sales of any new franchise ever. These financial reference points are important because they tell us something about The Division: it is a blockbuster designed for the mass-market or, to use industry terminology, an exemplary "triple-A" title.

Working on a game like this is a dream opportunity for many developers, and like any project it comes with restrictions. When you're designing for a mainstream audience, rather than designing a game you hope will find an audience, aspects like how challenging it is are the subject of obsessive tweaking. A mainstream game wants a smooth learning curve with just enough friction, avoiding extremes that could either frustrate or bore the player.

One could argue that The Division is aiming at a player who doesn't exist—the "average" player—and so there is no perfect balance, just the best possible compromise. The developers nevertheless control the numbers at the heart of The Division's gunplay, and post-launch have and will continue to tweak aspects of the game that the player base has trouble with.