Berkman Buzz: Week of April 20, 2009

April 24, 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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*Ethan Zuckerman: "LinkedIn briefly blocks Syria, more confusion over trade/commerce regulations"
*Aaron Shaw: "Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote"
*Doc Searls: "In defense of Craigslist"
*MediaBerkman: "Richard Susskind on 'The End of Lawyers'"
*Gene Koo: "What video games offer democratic participation" (cross-posted from Valuable Games)
*Chris Soghoian: "Online worlds for kids lack basic privacy"
*Citizen Media Law Project: "Whatever Happened to Playing Fair?"
*danah boyd: "RIP Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS)"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Indian Elections ‘09: Where The Shoe Pinches"

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"If you’re old enough to remember downloading most of your software from FTP and gopher sites, you probably remember clicking on agreements where you promised not to export software to a wide range of nations the US maintained trade sanctions against. For much of the 1990s, strong encryption - including the sort of encryption used to securely send a credit card to Amazon - was considered a munition under US laws and subject to complex export regulations. The absurdity of this wasn’t lost on the geek community - it was very fashionable (if you were a Perl hacker) to pass through airports wearing a shirt with a implementation of RSA in Perl printed on the front..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "LinkedIn briefly blocks Syria, more confusion over trade/commerce regulations"

"Well, Facebook users’ votes on the proposed Terms and Conditions are in - all 650,000 of them - and the company is pleased to report that 75% of the voters approved! Hang on a moment, though - they only got 650,000 votes? I thought they wanted 30% of the Facebook user population to participate? Since Facebook claims over 200,000,000 users - 650K is less than one third of one percent. Thirty percent would have been 60 million votes, not a measly 650 thousand..."
From Aaron Shaw's blog post, "Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote"

"Here’s a job for the Citizen Media’s long tail: find the fist time anybody used the terms 'Craigslist killer', 'Craigslist case' or 'Craigslist murder'. What the effort will highlight are two issues for journalism. One is the absence of an engine that allows easy first-date or date-range search. (Unless I’m mistaken about that, which I’d be glad to be.) The other is the unfairness of turning the name of a business into an adjective that modifies the noun for a crime — essentially re-branding that business as a criminal accessory..."
From Doc Searls' blog post, "In defense of Craigslist"

"Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services predicts that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditization of legal services, and by the pervasive development and uptake of new and disruptive legal technologies. But this could result in quite different law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today..."
From the MediaBerkman blog post, "Richard Susskind on 'The End of Lawyers'"

"As President Obama recognized in his Open Government Directive, transparency is only the first step towards a more vibrant democracy. The bigger problem has always been fostering widespread participation. After all, one of the most vexing problems facing today’s government – regulatory capture of an agency by special interests – flourishes despite, or perhaps even because of, the openness of the administrative state. The rulemaking process is open to the citizenry, but the public just doesn’t care – at least not to the degree of special interests..."
From Gene Koo's blog post, "What video games offer democratic participation"

"Saturday's New York Times has an interesting article about the rise of automated moderation software used in the virtual worlds aimed at children and teenagers, such as Neopets and Club Pengiun. However, buried half way in the article is this nugget of information: 'The software is integrated into a virtual world’s site. If the technology uncovers phrasing, syntax, slang or other patterns in a conversation that match known signs of bullying or sexual predation, it sends an alert to a moderator, who can then "drill down" to look not only at the entirety of the specific conversation, but also at every posting from either participant..."
From Chris Soghoian's blog post, "Online worlds for kids lack basic privacy"

"A few recent intellectual property disputes have highlighted the fact that the decision to pursue legal action is both a legal and a moral choice.  While concepts such as 'fair use' help to ensure protection of both intellectual property rights while promoting creative expression, they can't replace a simple concept we all learned in kindergarten:  'treat others the way you’d like them to treat you.' A couple of days ago, New York TV news station CW 11 convinced YouTube to take down a video from prank group Improv Everywhere that copied part of a CW 11 newscast.  The twist as that the CW 11 newscast itself copied an earlier Improv video to unintentionally hilarious effect..."
From Matt Sanchez's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project: "Whatever Happened to Playing Fair?"

"I have been quite fortunate over the years. I have received numerous opportunities that afforded me opportunities to go far and do amazing things. One such opportunity was the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS). Much to my horror and sadness, I have learned that Pennsylvania has cancelled PGSS due to lack of resources. This brings me tremendous sadness. During the summer before my senior year, I attended PGSS at Carnegie Mellon with 89 other students from around Pennsylvania. We were selected based on our potential and given a free summer at CMU to focus on science. We were taught classes that we weren't taught in high school - molecular biology, inorganic chemistry, discrete math, computer science, modern physics..."
From danah boyd's blog post, "RIP Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS)"

"When Muntadhar al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at the then US President George Bush, little did he know that his method of getting a point across would soon become viral across continents. In India too, the trend seems to have caught on. For indeed, the humble footwear has become the preferred weapon of choice among a section of Indians who wish to voice their resentment and be heard over the din of political platitudes being mouthed by leaders in the face of the Assembly Elections..."
From Aparna Ray's blog post for Global Voices, "Indian Elections ‘09: Where The Shoe Pinches"