Berkman Buzz: Week of October 13, 2008

October 17, 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.

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*Chris Soghoian criticizes McCain's YouTube fair use request as asking for "special treatment"
*Eszter Hargittai looks at the Wikipedia deletion game
*David Ardia explains how CMLP is going to help Americans video their votes
*The OpenNet Initiative reports an alleged block of Livejournal.com in Kazakhstan
*Harry Lewis discusses the British government's data-logging proposal
*Publius Essay: "Is reputation obsolete?" by Judith Donath
*Weekly Global Voices: "Maldives: Election fever in blogosphere"

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"John McCain's presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate's campaign videos were pulled from YouTube. McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a 'fair use...'"
From Chris Soghoian's blogpost, "McCain seeks special 'fair use' copyright rules for VIPs"
YouTube's response to John McCain's request

"Can anyone help me understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to certain people (or topics) having entries on Wikipedia? Why do people get so worked up about the mere existence of certain entries? Currently, an entry for Joe the Plumber is being debated. Does it really dilute the value of Wikipedia to have entries like that..."
From Eszter Hargittai's blogpost, "The Wikipedia deletion game"

"As part of a new project spearheaded by YouTube and PBS called "Video Your Vote," the Citizen Media Law Project is researching the laws regulating recording activities at polling places. Our specific focus is on the laws that impact voters' ability to document their own voting experiences through video and still photography, as well as their ability to carry out other newsgathering functions, such as interviewing other voters outside of polling places..."
From David Ardia's blogpost, "CMLP Joins with YouTube and PBS to Help Citizens Video Their Vote"

"Bloggers in Kazakhstan are having difficulty accessing popular blogging platform Livejournal. It was reported widely on Friday that Livejournal.com was inaccessible. The Moscow Times said of the alleged block 'Internet users in Kazakhstan complained of censorship on Friday after being unable to access the popular blogging service LiveJournal, but the state-owned telecoms company denied it was blocking it...'"
From the OpenNet Initiative blogpost, "Livejournal.com Inaccessible in Kazakhstan"

"The British government is proposing to log every telephone call, the address of every email, and every web site visited by everyone in the UK. To fight terrorism, of course. Bits like these should be regarded as toxins. In theory they can be confined, but the public should be alarmed that so many are being kept, and so little reassurance can be provided about how they are to be contained..."
From Harry Lewis' blogpost, "Meanwhile, on the Big Brother Front"

"In the past, most conversations were ephemeral: spoken words quickly slipped into the past, resurrected only if a listener later repeated them from memory. Today, many discussions and transactions live on indefinitely. Online conversations are often permanently archived and events in the face-to-face world are frequently recorded. We photograph each other at events both significant and mundane, and upload the images to public media-feeds. Records of our travel times, purchases, health conditions, phone calls, and more exist in vast corporate and government databases. Today, I often no longer have to rely on someone else’s account of your past behavior: I can see for myself..."
From Judith Donath's essay for the Publius Project, "Is reputation obsolete?"

"The presidential election being held in Maldives is the first multi-party election in the country. This election is believed by many Maldivians as their chance to bring democracy to a country that has been ruled dictatorially by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom since he became president in November 1978...'"
From Nihan Zafar's blogpost for Global Voices, "Maldives: Election fever in blogosphere"