Berkman Center

Insurance May Ease Monetary Sting for Bloggers Sued Over Posts (Bloomberg)

''U.S. lawsuits over Web postings jumped 70 percent in 2008 compared with 2006, when the social networking site Facebook Inc. was opened to anyone with a valid e-mail address and Twitter Inc. began, according to the most recent data from the Citizen Media Law Project, which is affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts.''

Amazon Offers to Replace Copies of Orwell Books (New York Times)

'''There is this new prospect for control, and it is hard to imagine that regulators or litigants won’t notice,' said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of the book 'The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It.' Litigants in defamation cases or government regulators could demand that these services remove entire works from their collections, or simply a word or paragraph that they found offensive, Mr. Zittrain said.''

Harvard's John Palfrey Explores What It's Like to Be a Digital Native (School Library Journal)

''Palfrey, along with Urs Gasser, executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is coauthor of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Bks., 2008). To find out what young people really think about the technology that surrounds them, the two researchers spent a few years interviewing about 250 teens worldwide. They also talked with parents, teachers, librarians, and other adults who work with kids to discover their take on this brave new digital terrain.''

Why Twitter Scares The NFL (Forbes)

''The NFL 'has no property right over fans' tweets,' says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Fans have the same right guaranteed by the First Amendment to publish accounts of football games, even in play-by-play form, that any news organization would, she argues.''

Harvard’s DASH for open access (Harvard Gazette)

'''It’s the best university policy anywhere,' said OSC fellow Peter Suber of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition in Washington, D.C., and a fellow of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 'It shifts the default so Harvard faculty must make their work openly available unless they opt out,' he said. 'The default at most universities is the other way around: You have to choose open access and arrange for all the provisions.'''

Gotcha! Why Online Anonymity May Be Fading (NPR)

'''You can claim anonymity, but there is a range of things that a judge will use to determine whether you have used your anonymity responsibly,' says Judith Donath, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.''

Blogosphere of influence (The National (UAE))

''Who are the Arabic bloggers? According to the Berkman [Center] report Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent, they are mainly male, mainly young and mainly Egyptian or Saudi.''

As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten the openness that spawned e-mail, YouTube and Twitter (AP)

'''There is more freedom for the typical Internet user to play, to communicate, to shop — more opportunities than ever before,' said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. 'On the worrisome side, there are some longer-term trends that are making it much more possible (for information) to be controlled.'''

Is Twitter Taking Over Your Home Life? (Forbes)

'''These are social worlds that we are constructing for ourselves that are as complex as our real worlds,' says [Berkman fellow David] Weinberger. 'People behave in them for the widest possible range of motives: to distance themselves or to involve themselves.' danah boyd, a well-respected expert on social media, also at Harvard['s Berkman Center], had this to say about Morishige's tweeting of her birth and the dinner-tweeter: 'When "family time" becomes obligatory, not everyone is particularly excited.

Yahoo's Bold Advance into the Middle East (BusinessWeek)

''In the past year, several Middle Eastern bloggers have complained about notices from Maktoob to take down their postings, says Helmi Noman, a research affiliate with Harvard's Berkman Center who has studied Internet censorship in the Middle East.''

Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Citizen Media Law Project Launches Legal Assistance Network for Online Journalists

Berkman in the News