Berkman Buzz, week of September 3
BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of September 3, 2007
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What's going on... take your pick or browse below.
*danah boyd is "confused by Facebook."
*Doc Searls wraps up his cross-country trek.
*Tim Armstrong revisits Spam debate.
*Wendy Seltzer on errant DMCA takedowns.
*David Weinberger's latest newsletter.
*Citizen Media Law Project: A&P Sues Two College Kids Over (Hilarious) "Produce Paradise" Video.
*Weekly Global Voice: Violent BBQ crackdown backfires.
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The full buzz.
"Social network sites have become powerful tools and platforms for all sorts of content and cultural producers. Starting with Friendster, artists leveraged the network capabilities to communicate with their fans. This took on a new level with MySpace, resulting in the explicit creation of artist profiles. Even within the constraints of Facebook, artists built groups and found other ways to collect and communicate with their fans."
danah boyd, "confused by Facebook"
"Got in yesterday (Sunday), around noon, a week exactly after leaving Santa Barbara. The trip could hardly have been easier, considering. The weather was pretty much perfect, every day. The car, which turned past 120,000 miles in Arches National Park, ran smoothly and with no complaints. The dashboard says 'EMISSIONS WORKSHOP', with a little 'check engine' light that means the same thing."
Doc Searls, "From home to home: Day 8"
"Here at Info/Law, weÕve got our spam tag over there on the right-hand side, and if you click it, you can see the half-dozen or so posts, some of them bearing only indirectly on the Òspam problem,Ó that we have managed to cobble together between the three of us over the past year and a half. So apparently, at least among my Info/Law colleagues and myself, spam isnÕt exactly a burning issue on the order of, say, privacy."
Tim Armstrong, "Is Spam Still Part of the Info/Law Debate?"
"Author Denise McCune posts a great account of the workings and failings of the DMCAÕs notice-and-takedown procedures. As Cory Doctorow has also reported on BoingBoing, the VP of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America sent an error-filled takedown complaint to text-sharing site Scribd, causing removal of many non-infringing postings including reading lists suggesting great science fiction, and CoryÕs own novels, which heÕs CC-licensed for free redistribution."
Wendy Seltzer, "DMCA Truth Is Stranger than Science Fiction"
"I've posted a new issue of my newsletter. You can read it here. You can subscribe for free here."
David Weinberger, "Joho the Newsletter"
"Two brothers from New Jersey, Mark and Matthew D'Avella, spent the summer working for the A&P supermarket in Califon, New Jersey. They made the best of what could have been a boring situation by creating parodic rap songs with supermarket themes under the name 'Fresh Beets.'"
Sam Bayard, "A&P Sues Two College Kids Over (Hilarious) "Produce Paradise" Video"
"A city on a hill, south-central ChinaÕs Chongqing municipality seems to stand above many other places in the the country when it comes to using affordable technology to document things like crime and clashes, and getting it on the internet."
John Kennedy, "China: Violent BBQ crackdown backfires"