Berkman Buzz: Week of December 1, 2008

December 05, 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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*The Internet & Democracy project presents a startling fact about online journalists
*Max Weinstein looks at the trouble with spam blacklists on the StopBadware blog
*On the MediaBerkman blog, David Weinberger interviews Charles Nesson about challenging the RIAA
*Sam Bayard names a few problem in the matter of an anonymous blogger
*Hal Roberts test drives Google Ad Planner
*Publius Essay: "The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN"
*Weekly Global Voices: "D.R. Congo: Journalist's murder highlights fragile democracy"

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"For the first time in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ prison census, more online journalists than traditional journalists are now in jail. From the press release: 'Reflecting the rising influence of online reporting and commentary, more Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium…45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time in CPJ’s prison census...'"
From the Internet & Democracy project blogpost, "More Online Journalists Jailed Last Year Than Traditional Reporters"

"Over at the Washington Post, columnist James McGrath Morris vented this weekend about his trouble with spam blacklists...I’m not sure about the McCarthyism comparison, but Mr. Morris otherwise raises an important point about the power of blacklists and the need for transparency and due process. Back in July, I guest blogged over at the ZDNet Zero Day blog and laid out five principles for a fair website blacklist..."
From Max Weinstein's blogpost for StopBadware.org, "Trouble with blacklists"

"Radio Berkman is live! cHow the RIAA is attempting to enforce exorbitant fines on one file sharer, and the efforts of one law professor to take them down. David Weinberger interviews Charlie Nesson and Joel Tennenbaum about their lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America..."
From the MediaBerkman blogpost, "Radio Berkman: The 'Pay Us' Hotline - Fines and the RIAA"

"On Monday, the blog-hosting service Blogger took down a blog called 'Jeffrey Denner's ineffective assistance of counsel' after Jeffrey Denner notified Blogger that a Massachusetts court had issued a restraining order prohibiting one Derrick Gillenwater from using the words 'Jeffrey' or 'Denner' or 'Jeffrey Denner' in any blog postings.  Blogger notified the anonymous operator of the blog, who goes by the moniker 'Boston Bob.'  Yesterday, Boston Bob replied as follows..."
From Sam Bayard's blogpost for CMLP, "Mystery Blogger Caught Up in First Amendment Flap"

"For a long time, the only free source of data about site traffic online has been the Alexa Top Sites list, but the data for the Alexa list is based on the very skewed sample of folks who run the Alexa toolbar, and who the heck runs the Alexa toolbar these days? When I’ve needed data about the most popular sites in a country, I’ve had to use the Alexa data, but only holding my nose with knowledge that the data at best represents a wild guess. There have been better sources of data, but they were all closed, expensive, and generally collected in at least mildly sketchy ways..."
From Hal Roberts' blogpost, "Google Ad Planner: Advertising Surveillance of the Internet"

"As part of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society that resulted from the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), governments agreed to set in motion an Internet Governance Forum (IGF), mandating it, among other tasks, to: 'Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet Governance…'; 'Identify emerging issues…'; 'Discuss, inter alia, issues relating to critical Internet resources'; and 'Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet…'”
From the Publius essay, "The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN"
Part 1 of 3, Part 2 of 3, Part 3 of 3

"The streets of Managua were not the only place where supporters of the two political parties in Nicaragua were present during the recent municipal elections held on November 9. One could also find them on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. In some cases, there were virtual confrontations, where the written word was used as a weapon and the bloggers also did not hold back. However, at least in these spaces, there were no victims or injured as a result...'"
From Elia Varela Serra's blogpost for Global Voices, "D.R. Congo: Journalist's murder highlights fragile democracy"