Berkman Buzz: Week of June 2, 2008

June 06, 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

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

*Wendy Seltzer highlights a DMCA consideration of repeat infringers
*Ethan Zuckerman looks at business models for journalism in a digital age
*The Internet & Democracy Project discusses studying the Arabic blogosphere
*Sam Bayard examines Prince's newest copyright claim
*Mike Linksvayer for Creative Commons talks about Wikimedia Commons Most Valued Images feature
*David Weinberger liveblogs Walter Bender from Sugar Labs at Berkman's Tuesday luncheon series
*Weekly Global Voices: "China: Clearer answers and investigation into quake response needed"
*Weekly Publius essay: "Peter Suber: The Opening of Science and Scholarship"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The full buzz.

"The Scientology critic known as “Wise Beard Man” returned to YouTube this week after successfully filing counter-notifications to copyright claims that had earlier been made against his account. The takedown and delayed return illuminate another of the lesser-known shoals of the DMCA safe harbor, the 512(i)(1)(A) 'repeat infringers' consideration.  As Mark Bunker, the critic, describes it, he had initially set up a YouTube account under the name XenuTV, where he posted clips including commentary on Scientology. Some of these clips came from other sources, and two of them attracted DMCA takedown requests from Viacom, for 'Colbert Report' clips in which Stephen talked about Scientology. These might well have been fair use, or he might have chosen to remove them, but as Bunker says, 'Before I could act on the takedown notices and remove the offending clips, the accounts were canceled...'”
Wendy Seltzer, "DMCA 'Repeat Infringers': Scientology Critic’s Account Reinstated after Counter-Notification"

"One of the themes I was struck by at the Berkman at Ten conference was the idea that the net is now mature enough that we should be studying what’s actually happening, not just what we think should happen. While that doesn’t sound like that much of a breakthrough, it’s useful to me, at least, in thinking about how the center takes on projects and research topics. A good bit of the early work at the Center - especially our work on ICANN - was far more prescriptive than descriptive. A project like the Open Net Initiative, on the other hand, is careful to focus on documenting what’s happening around the Internet, leaving change of those realities to related projects like Psiphon and Global Voices Advocacy..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Financial models for 'difficult' journalism"

"I was pleased to see that the Foreign Policy editors’ blog picked up our research on the Iranian blogosphere. We are already off and running on our next blog research project, which will analyze the Arabic blogosphere and will use a similar methodology to our Iran study (a combination of social network analysis and content analysis). As we dig into the Arabic blogosphere, I was interested to see a post about Arabic bloggers on PostGlobal. Nicholas Noe and Maha Taki raise many of the same criticisms that John Kelly and I heard about the Iranian blogosphere–specifically, that the view of foreign bloggers is driven by media attention on a limited number of bloggers, often those who write in English and are therefore easily accessible to the Western press..."
The Internet & Democracy Project, "Understanding the Arabic Blogosphere"

"Prince is at it again. We've covered his legal antics before -- his lawyers went after a number of fan sites last November, and Universal Music sent a takedown notice to YouTube last June over a video of a toddler dancing with "Let's Go Crazy" playing in the background. This time, his record label apparently sent a takedown notice to YouTube over a video of Prince performing a cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. The interesting thing is that Radiohead wants the video put back up. A copy is available at present, but it's hard to tell whether this is because someone else posted the video or because YouTube put it back up at Radiohead's request..."
Sam Bayard, "Prince, Radiohead, and the Bootlegging Provision of the Copyright Act"

"I’m fond of pointing out that discovery is perhaps the biggest challenge and opportunity faced by the cultural commons — however you want to define “commons” — public domain, Free, everything CC licensed, all of “Web 2.0″, or something else.  However you define it, the commons includes at least many thousands to many millions of cultural works in every obvious medium — too much for any individual to make sense of. So it’s always exciting to see major hubs develop and refine methods for curating and exposing the best of the commons...'"
Mike Linksvayer for Creative Commons, "Wikimedia Commons Valued Images, curation and discovery"

"Walter Bender, who was president of the One Laptop Per Child project, is now the founder of Sugar Labs. [Live blogging. Getting it wrong. Missing stuff. That's just the way it is. Also, this will be much choppier than the talk actually is.]  The aim of OLPC, says Walter, was to transform education around the world. Laptops aren’t the solution the world’s problems, but learning is. And laptops can help with that. 'It’s all in service to learning,' he says. He refers to the book Predictably Irrational. Chapter 2 is on 'anchoring.' Walter says that he’s anchored to the idea that a 'connected computer is the most powerful tool we have' for knowledge creation and sharing. It’s not a panacea, and you can’t just throw the laptops over the wall and wait for the magic to happen, but laptops can be a catalyst..."
David Weinberger, "Berkman lunch: Walter Bender, Sugar Labs"

"Last month the Chinese government said that the process of obtaining complete information as to why so many school buildings collapsed in last month's earthquake is underway. This week it began reigning in media which have been asking too many questions, even barring grieving parents from protesting. The first attempt at providing answers came this week from the Sichuan Ministry of Education in the form of five key reasons for the number of school-related deaths, which haven't gone over well with many [zh] bloggers..."
John Kennedy for Global Voices, "China: Clearer answers and investigation into quake response needed"

"Who controls access to peer-reviewed research in the age of the internet? How are the relevant norms and interests evolving?  Some key variables are unchanged from the age of print. Scholarly journals usually don’t pay their authors, referees, or editors. Journals still typically ask for full transfer of copyright and authors still typically give it. Researchers want to publish in high-prestige journals and their universities reward them for doing so. Journal subscription prices continue to rise faster than inflation..."
Peter Suber for the Publius Project, "The Opening of Science and Scholarship"