Berkman Buzz: Week of December 6, 2010

December 10, 2010

What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* John Palfrey hits the radio to talk about controversial site RateBU.com
* Alum Derek Bambauer discusses the USICE's seizure of 82 domains.
* Jonathan Zittrain evaluates the latest developments for net neutrality.
* The OpenNet Initiative looks at Net censorship in Syria.

Special Section: This Week on WikiLeaks 

* Clay Shirky envisions what a post-WikiLeaks future looks like.
* Jonathan Zittrain and Molly Sauter provide an A-Z of WikiLeaks.
* Dan Gillmor argues a defense of WikiLeaks.
* David Weinberger explains why he stands with the Net.
* The OpenNet Initiative analyzes Twitter's trending topics vis-a-vis #WikiLeaks.
* Radio Berkman 171: WikiLeaks and the Information Wars.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Special Coverage: WikiLeaks and the World 2010"

Special announcement: The Berkman Center is currently accepting applications for 2011-2012 fellowships through our annual open call.  The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. ET on December 15, 2010.

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The full buzz.

"The site has generated a lot of controversy, too, as well as some legal questions. WBUR’s Deborah Becker spoke with Internet law expert John Palfrey about the legal implications of this site on Thursday’s Morning Edition."
From WBUR.org, "Expert: Controversial BU Site Governed More by Contract Between Entities"

"Every country in the world believes that some material on the Net qualifies inherently for censorship. It’s obvious! In this respect, we’re no different from China. So, we should give up pretensions of American exceptionalism for information controls – for us, it’s IP; for Saudi Arabia, it’s porn; for France, it’s hate speech. Only the quality of the legal process differentiates censors. And with these seizures, I think there’s much to worry us in the (lack of) process…"
From Derek Bambauer's blog post, "U.S. Gets In on Censorship Action"

"With a net neutrality rule in place, if a Web site’s bits can’t be stopped in the middle just on the basis of where they came from, the ISP can’t threaten to come between the site and its users.  The market alone may not be able to deal with this in the absence of a net neutrality rule, both because there isn’t much competition for broadband at a given location and because it’s good for people to have assurances ahead of time that sites they are beginning a relationship with — as they put photos on Flickr or stow mail on Gmail — won’t suddenly be pulled out from under them, held ransom to extra payments either from the sites or from them."
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post, "The FCC tees up net neutrality"

"Syria currently blocks dozens of websites including some major blogging platforms and social networks, along with humanitarian and political websites. However, circumvention has become common knowledge for a large swath of the tech savvy youth and thus is available to a majority of users. The government is aware of this, but the sporadic nature of online censorship means that very few websites were ever unlocked in Syria due to having too many parties involved in the process. Will other websites soon be free just like Wikipedia Arabic that was blocked for a while and then unblocked? One can only hope."
From The OpenNet Initiative's blog post, "Syrian Telecom Minister: "The Answer is Raising Awareness, Not Censorship"

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Special Section: This Week on WikiLeaks

"Over the long haul, we will need new checks and balances for newly increased transparency — Wikileaks shouldn’t be able to operate as a law unto itself anymore than the US should be able to. In the short haul, though, Wikileaks is our Amsterdam. Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow."
From Clay Shirky's blog post, "WikiLeaks and the Long Haul"

"The third phase [of WikiLeaks] is the one we currently see with the release of the diplomatic cables: Wikileaks working in close conjunction with a select group of news organizations to analyze, redact and release the cables in a curated manner, rather than dumping them on the Internet or using them to illustrate a singular political point of view.
From Jonathan Zittrain and Molly Sauter's article for the Technology Review, "Everything You Need to Know About WikiLeaks"

"Media organizations with even half a clue need to recognize what is at stake at this point. It's more than immediate self-interest, namely their own ability to do their jobs. It's about the much more important result if they can't. If journalism can routinely be shut down the way the government wants to do this time, we'll have thrown out free speech in this lawless frenzy."
From Dan Gillmor's article for Salon.com, "Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech"

"I know I’m anti-anti-Wikileaks not because I know I like Wikileaks (although I do lean that way). It’s not Wikileaks that has summoned the wrath of the incumbents. It’s the Internet. The incumbents have now woken up to the Net’s nature, and are deploying every weapon they can find against it, including siccing Interpol on Julian Assange for incidents of what were reportedly consensual sex."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Standing with the Net"

"With all due respect to other trending topics, which on this day covered topics largely dealing with the death of Elizabeth Edwards and the attack in Varanasi, perhaps the Wikileaks story should have been trending, and perhaps the algorithm is due for some form of an overhaul to balance the needs of Twitter the company and Twitter the communications platform. The situation, then, is not whether or not Wikileaks is being discriminated against, but whether or not we value that algorithmic discrimination as users."
From Devin Gaffney's post for ONI, "#WikiLeaks and Twitter Trending Topics: Manual Interference or Algorithms as Usual?"

"Zittrain, Lessig, and the Berkman Center Fellows explore many facets surrounding the Wikileaks imbroglio, including the values of transparency and freedom of speech; the legality and ethics of the Wikileaks data dump; the role of the news media; and the involvement of government and private tech organizations to take Wikileaks down.
From Radio Berkman 171: "WikiLeaks and the Information Wars"

"State secrets exposed this year by whistle-blower website Wikileaks keep causing the world to shudder. A video showing Iraqi civilians killed by U.S forces; a compilation of tens of thousands of documents about the war in Afghanistan; hundreds of thousands of documents about the war in Iraq; and now 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables. On Global Voices, we have looked at worldwide online citizen media reactions. The leaked documents contain so much information, both journalists and bloggers have struggled to make sense of them. The initial excitement is huge. What happens next?" From Global Voices Online Special Coverage section, "WikiLeaks and the World 2010"

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The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects -- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/ -- and sometimes from the Center's wider network -- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/network/

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to jyork@cyber.law.harvard.edu