Berkman Buzz: Week of May 11, 2009

May 15, 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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*William Fisher: "Copyright and wrongs," an Economist debate
*Jonathan Zittrain: "How to Get What We All Want," for Cato Unbound
*Ethan Zuckerman: "The assassinated lawyer, the arrested Twitterer - corruption, whistleblowing and protest in Guatemala"
*Doc Searls: "Is tweeting still silo’d?"
*Dan Gillmor: "Government’s Long History of Supporting Journalism"
*Law Lab: "Some scenes from the robots-vs.-lawyers future"
*StopBadware: "Silent patching works, but at what cost?"
*David Weinberger: "TED translates"
*Citizen Media Law Project: "White House Drops License Restrictions on Photos, Flickr Stream Now in Public Domain"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Arab World Reacts to Jordan's Twittering Queen Rania"

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"In my previous contributions to this debate, I identified some serious defects in our current copyright system. Several of the comments from the floor have pointed to other major problems in that system. Even my opponent concedes in his rebuttal that there is much room for improvement. How, then, might we do better? More specifically, how might we modify our laws so as to ensure that the creators of works from which we all benefit are fairly compensated, without needlessly impeding the use of modern technologies to access and share the fruits of the creators' efforts and without hampering consumers' ability to incorporate those fruits into new works of their own..."
From William Fisher's closing remarks in the Economist debate, "Copyright and wrongs"

"OK, enough with who doesn’t get what. The arguments over cyberlibertarianism sparked by the release of Code aren’t due to gaping ignorance or even dueling ideologies. They’re more about emphasis. It didn’t have to be that way: there’s a separate, straightforward anti-libertarian case that lots of people would want to make for increased government policing of the Internet because of the bad things that can and do take place on it. This week’s example is the 'Craigslist killer,' who assaulted people he met through that site. In his wake, several U.S. state attorneys general are pressuring Craigslist to shut down its 'erotic services' section..."
From Jonathan Zittrain's essay for Cato Unbound, "How to Get What We All Want"

"That’s the beginning of a three-page letter written and signed by lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg on May 9th. 'If you are reading this message, it’s because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was assasinated by the private secretary to the President, Gustavo Alejos, and his associate Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of President Alvaro Colom and of (the President’s wife) Sandra De Colom...'"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "The assassinated lawyer, the arrested Twitterer - corruption, whistleblowing and protest in Guatemala"

"It’s good that Twitter is learning a lot from its experience in the last day. It’s not good that tweeting, which most of us treat as something inherently public and non-proprietary, such as blogging and emailing, seems to be privately controlled, with one company in the sole responsible position. Sez Biz at that last link..."
From Doc Searl's blog post, "Is tweeting still silo’d?"

"In 1791, James Madison penned a short essay that foretold a long, and ongoing, financial involvement by government in journalism. Madison said, in part: 'Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments, as good roads, domestic commerce, a free press, and particularly a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people, and Representatives going from, and returning among every part of them, is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits, and is favorable to liberty, where these may be too extensive...'"
From Dan Gillmor's blog post, "Government’s Long History of Supporting Journalism"

"We recently welcomed Richard Susskind and others at the Berkman Center. Susskind joined us for a discussion in the morning about technical requirements for software needed for our Vermont digital corporations project. Susskind is known for his description of a near-future of law where the legal services industry is radically changed by the completion of many legal tasks by computers. (Actually that’s only perhaps half the picture. The rest involves the divvying up of legal tasks among various providers to those who can most efficiently complete them)..."
From the Law Lab blog post, "Some scenes from the robots-vs.-lawyers future"

"Last week, the ZDNet Zero Day blog summarized a report by researchers from Google Switzerland and ETH Zurich as follows: 'Google’s decision to silently update the Chrome browser — without the user’s knowledge or consent –  has put the company at the head of the pack when it comes to securing modern Web browsers.' Indeed, the report noted that, unsurprisingly, the less user intervention and aggravation required to update the browser, the more likely the browser is to be up to date on a given user’s machine..."
From Maxim Weinstein's blog post for StopBadware, "Silent patching works, but at what cost?"

"TED has started a great new project: Distributed translations of TED Talks. Taking a page from Global Voices, it’s crowd-sourcing translations. This is exactly what should happen and is a great solution for relatively scarce resources such as TED talks. Figure out how to scale this and get yourself a Nobel prize..."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "TED translates"

"Wired/Epicenter reported yesterday that popular photo-sharing site Flickr, in collaboration with the Obama administration, has changed the licensing designation on photos in the Official White House Photostream to reflect that, as U.S. government works, they are in the public domain. The photos previously bore a Creative Commons Attribution license, but now are labeled 'United States Government Work,' with a link to § 105 of the Copyright Act, the provision relating to works created by the federal government..."
From Sam Bayard's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "White House Drops License Restrictions on Photos, Flickr Stream Now in Public Domain"

"After her debut on YouTube, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan is now courting microblogging service Twitter, allowing the world to catch up with the 140-character messages of the self-described mum and wife 'with a real cool day job.' Not only is she giving us a sneak preview of her private life as a Queen and mother with messages like this and this [see image above], but has also agreed to conduct her first Twitter interview, according to the World Economic Forum Blog..."
From Amira Al Hussaini's blog post for Global Voices, "Arab World Reacts to Jordan's Twittering Queen Rania"