Berkman Buzz: Week of March 10, 2008

March 14, 2008

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, just sign up here.
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of March 10, 2008

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What's going on...take your pick or browse below.

*John Palfrey discusses engaging digital natives in the political process.
*Stephanie Wang looks at the restriction of YouTube video content in certain countries.
*Victoria Stodden proposes a possible solution to the problem of election violence.
*danah boyd talks about the ways kids are claiming their space.
*Wendy Seltzer examines the latest DMCA overreach.
*Sam Bayard tells us about a Kentucky bill to stop anonymous posting.
*Doc Searls adds "clueship" to our lexicons.
*Global Voices announces Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008.
*Weekly Global Voices: "Cuban Videos: media ploy or example of free speech?"

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"I’ve been making my way with care (and great pleasure) through the fine series of books that the MacArthur Foundation and MIT Press have put together on Digital Media and Learning. There are six in total, each worth reading. (I previously blogged about the volume on Youth, Identity, and Digital Media.  I’m trying to finish the edits on Born Digital, the book on related themes that Urs Gasser and I are writing. The sticky chapter for me at the moment is called “Activists.” It will probably end up as the next-to-last chapter. I think it’s crucially important as a topic..."
"Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth"

"YouTomb, a project of the MIT Free Culture group that studies takedown notices by the video-sharing website YouTube, has identified a mechanism used by Google to restrict video content in specific countries. This appears to be the method YouTube is using to filter videos on behalf of governments and private actors that request it.  A growing number of countries have instituted mostly short-lived blocks against YouTube for containing culturally or politically sensitive content, including Brazil, China, Morocco, Syria, Thailand and Turkey..."
"YouTube and the rise of geolocational filtering"

"I can’t help but notice the violence surrounding the recent elections in Kenya, Pakistan, Zimbabwe (where I still have family) and many other places. To the extent that the problem is citizen mistrust of the voting process, this seems like an effective place to direct aid resources and energy. Why not fund, with the host country’s cooperation, open source election machines similar to those used in Australia? The Australian approach allows people to inspect the machine’s software if unsatisfied about the machine’s ability to count votes..."
"Reducing Election Violence Cheaply - eVoting?"

"The NYTimes ran a piece today called Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK). (Note: the article is very American-centric - in the States, older folks tend to be texting illiterate.) The article begins with an anecdote of a parent shuttling around his daughter and her friend. They are talking and dad butts in and they roll their eyes. And then there is silence. When dad comments to his daughter that she's being rude for texting on her phone rather than talking to her friend, the daughter replies: 'But, Dad, we're texting each other. I don't want you to hear what I'm saying...'"
"how youth find privacy in interstitial spaces"

"Over at Wired’s Threat Level blog, Kevin Poulsen reports on a new DMCA overreach: the U.S. Air Force complained (via outside counsel) about his posting of their recruiting video. The post, Kevin says, was initially made at the Air Force’s invitation.  If the government created this work, then the DMCA claim is improper. Works of the U.S. government are not copyrightable. But the statute allows the government to receive copyright assignments, so if an independent contractor created the video, still available at the Air Force’s (non .mil) site, the government could meet that technical requisite of the DMCA..."
"Air Force DMCA-Bombs YouTube"

"Last week, Republican Tim Couch of Kentucky introduced a bill in the state legislature that would impose criminal fines on Kentucky-based website operators who fail to collect 'a legal name, address, and electronic mail address' before allowing a user to post a comment. The proposed law would also require website operators to 'establish reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name, address, and valid electronic email address of [a user] who posts false or defamatory information about the person...'"
"Kentucky Legislator Introduces Bill to Stop Anonymous Posting"

"So I came up with this noun: clueship. Meaning the ability to give or get clues. It’s one name for two conversational assets: having something new to say, and having a willingness to listen to new things other people are saying.  Although conversation is a purely human activity, what we meant by 'markets are conversations' in The Cluetrain Manifesto was broader than that. We wanted to recall markets as what they were to begin with: places where people gathered to do business and make culture. There conversation was anchored in people talking to each other, but was also something larger than that. It was demand and supply speaking to, and hearing, each other...."
"Clueship"

"Global Voices and Global Voices Advocacy are pleased to announce the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008, which will take place in Budapest, Hungary on June 27-28, 2008 with the support of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and MediaHungaria..."
"Announcing the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008"

"An online 4 minute video excerpt posted by international media taken from a 2 hour meeting between the president of the National Assembly and students from the Computer Science University (UCI [ES]) has brought forth contrasting reactions and debates regarding free speech in Cuba and the direction of the Cuban Revolution..."
"Cuban Videos: media ploy or example of free speech?"