Berkman Buzz, week of December 21

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of December 17, 2007


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What's going on... take your pick or browse below.

*Wendy Seltzer describes yet another questionable DMCA takedown.
*OpenNet Initiative: Responses to Surveillance.
*Doc Searls explains why social networking sites are the new walled gardens.
*Digital Natives: “Digital natives” under attack! (as a metaphor).
* Citizen Media Law Project: Congress Passes FOIA Reform Bill, Expands Definition of “News Media.”
* Weekly Global Voice: The troubled pasts of Burkina Faso.

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The full buzz.

“Earlier this month, comedy group The Richter Scales released a funny music video, ‘Here Comes Another Bubble.’ The video showed a montage of Silicon Valley images over a sound-track adapted from Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ lampooning the Web 2.0 bubble that seems near bursting again. The video must have touched a nerve, as well as a funny bone, because it got wide linkage and discussion and became the week’s top-rated video.  Then, it was removed from YouTube, ‘due to a copyright claim by a third party.’ Photographer Lane Hartwell says she objected to use of her photograph of Valleywag’s Owen Thomas, so she sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube.”
Wendy Seltzer, “Here Comes Another Takedown”

 “For better or worse, surveillance is increasingly a part of modern life. Is it effective to continue to protest this increase, and to argue for a different tradeoff between security concerns and privacy or civil liberties? Or is it better to find an alternate way to respond to the increasing use of state-sponsored surveillance?  Professor Glenn Reynolds’ recent op-ed in Popular Mechanics highlights a different response to surveillance: turning cameras and other recording devices on public officials, a practice termed sousveillance by Professor Steve Mann. Reynolds suggests that citizen monitoring of official actions by police, politicians, and other ‘big shots’ may be a democratizing force capable of countering the tendency towards ubiquitous surveillance.”
OpenNet Initiative, “Responses to Surveillance”

“‘Should Brands Join or Build Their Own Social Network?’ is the question Jeremiah Owyang raised yesterday on Twitter and in facebook. If you’re a facebook member, you can participate. I am a member, but I’d rather not. At least, not there. All due respect (and I respect Jeremiah a great deal), I’d rather talk outside the facewall. Forgive me for being an old fart, but today’s ‘social networks’ look to me like yesterday’s online services. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the rest? Facebook to me is just AOL done right. Or done over, better. But it’s still a walled garden. It’s still somebody’s private space. Me, I’d rather take it outside, where the conversation is free and open to anybody.”
Doc Searls, “The only real social networks are personal ones”

 “MIT professor Henry Jenkins is one of several bloggers who have criticized the Digital Native/Digital Immigrant metaphor in recent weeks. Jenkins argues the metaphor oversimplifies and exaggerates generational distinctions, in the process letting adults ‘off the hook’ for getting involved with technology and how kids use it. Last week, I had the privilege of seeing Jenkins discuss these concerns, along with many other issues, on stage with two other brilliant luminaries: Katie Salen, a game designer and professor at the Parsons School of Design, and Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard School of Education. When Jenkins’s ‘native/immigrant’ critique came up, Gardner responded that though the metaphor may be used simplistically, it still has value.”
Jesse Baer, “‘Digital natives’ under attack! (as a metaphor)”

 “Earlier this week, Congress passed a bill that substantially reforms the Freedom of Information Act and expands the definition of who is a ‘representative of the news media’ under the Act. The bill, entitled the ‘Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act’ or, more succinctly, the ‘OPEN Government Act of 2007,’ passed unanimously in the Senate last week and cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote on Tuesday. One of the most striking changes in the bill would significantly benefit bloggers and non-traditional journalists by making them eligible for reduced processing and duplication fees that are available to ‘representatives of the news media.’”
David Ardia, “Congress Passes FOIA Reform Bill, Expands Definition of ‘News Media’”

 “The United Nations Development Programme recently released its 2007/2008 Human Development Index, which ranks countries not just by incomes, but by social indicators like life expectancy, literacy and education. This year, the news was not good for Burkina Faso, which dropped from the world’s fourth poorest country to its second poorest. It didn’t escape the local independent press that the country actually placed last because the sole country it beat out, Sierra Leone, is attempting to rebuild itself after a decade-long civil war.”
John Liebhardt, “The troubled pasts of Burkina Faso”