Berkman Buzz: Week of January 12, 2009

January 16, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, sign up here.

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*John Palfrey and Dena Sacco discuss keeping the web safe on Radio Berkman
*David Ardia weighs in on the groundbreaking order to bring the Internet into the courtroom for Tenenbaum v. RIAA
*The Citizen Media Law Project releases a must-read for citizen journalists documenting the 2009 Presidential Inauguration
*Tim Hwang takes us to "Cooperationland" on the new Cooperation Project blog
*Ethan Zuckerman brings us some good news and some bad news from Zimbabwe
*Max Weinstein explores the dark side of automatic updates
*The Internet & Democracy project sits down for a viewing of Russian President Medvedev's vlog
*Dan Gillmor looks at a hidden pitfall for citizen journalists
*Weekly Global Voices: "Fiji Floods: 'The Village Drowned'"

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"An exhaustively researched report on the safety of the web is the result of a year of work for the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. The report reveals some surprises about just how safe the web and social networks really are for minors, and some recommendations for dealing with sexual predators, cyberbullying, and access to explicit content..."
From the Radio Berkman podcast, "A Safer Web"

"United States District Court Judge Nancy Gertner agreed today to allow video cameras into her Boston courtroom to provide live Internet coverage of a hearing next Thursday in the lawsuit against Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum, who allegedly downloaded seven songs illegally over a peer-to-peer network..."
From David Ardia's blogpost, "Federal Judge in Boston Orders Groundbreaking Webcast of Hearing"

"Heading to Washington, D.C., to attend the Presidential Inauguration?  You're bringing your camera with you, right?  Well it shouldn't come as any surprise that heightened security measures across the Washington area will affect where you can go, what you can bring with you, and what you can do to document the inaugural events.  In an effort to help the estimated two million people who are expected to attend some of the events, we've just published a legal primer on attending and documenting the 2009 Presidential Inauguration..."
From the Citizen Media Law Project blogpost, "CMLP Publishes Guide to Covering the 2009 Presidential Inauguration"

"There’s kind of an in-joke that’s popped up within the Berkman Center within the past couple of months among the group of research assistants that work on the online case studies research group. There’s so many simultaneous moving parts and research efforts going on within the cluster of projects that comprise The Cooperation Project and its allies that we’ve affectionately just started calling it simply, 'Cooperationland...'"
From the Cooperation Project blogpost, "So What's All This Cooperation About?"

"I mentioned two days ago that Zimbabwean authorities were holding a two-year old child prisoner, along with his activist parents. Denford Magora drew my attention to the situation, and has been orchestrating an online campaign to seek the child’s release. The AP reports today that Nigel Mutemagau has been released to relatives, but that his parents are still being held. AFP quotes reports from opposition figures that point out that the child was held for 76 days in prison before being released..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blogpost, "Good and bad news from Zimbabwe"

"When it comes to keeping client software patched against the latest known security vulnerabilities, automatic updates are one of the more effective mechanisms out there. By shifting the burden of checking regularly for updates from the user (we humans are notoriously unreliable) to the software, companies ensure that users at least are aware of the patches and, depending on the configuration, even get the patches installed automatically..."
From the StopBadware.org blogpost, "The dark side of automatic updates"

"With the global economy in a tailspin and Russia engaged in a new cold war with Ukraine over natural gas shipments, Russian President Medvedev took the slopes in his first vlog post of the new year to encourage Russians to ‘rest better.’ His previous videos have focused on more hard hitting issues like the economy and his recent trip to Latin America, where he reported on forming or rebuilding relations with ‘important’ Latin American countries like Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba (he says in that video that he considers Cuba a long time ‘traditional partner’ and Fidel Castro to be a key Latin American political figure)..."
From the Internet & Democracy Project blogpost, "Medvedev to Russian People: We Need to Learn to Rest Better!"

"This is a surprise, and an unwelcome one. Before people panic, however, we should keep in mind that — given the typical freelance rates paid by media outlets these days — you’d have to spent a lot of time sending stories to large media organizations before you’d be even potentially liable for gift taxes. The good news is that it won’t affect in any way the occasional contributor, or even a frequent contributor to nonprofit or low-traffic sites, and it has no bearing whatever on your own work on your own blog, period..."
From Dan Gillmor's blogpost, "The Unspoken Peril for 'Citizen Journalists' Surprise! You Owe the IRS Some Gift Tax!"

"The rains in Fiji began falling Wednesday, January 7 and didn't let up for more than a week. All told — and we aren't quite done yet — eight people have died (three people are reported missing), nearly 10,000 people are being housed in shelters and damage to homes, crops and businesses could climb to hundreds of millions of dollars...'"
From  John Liebhardt's blogpost for Global Voices, "Fiji Floods: 'The Village Drowned'"