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Berkman Buzz: Weeks of November 23 and 30, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Christian Sandvig will never have done with watching babies laugh.
* Dan Gillmor is troubled -- deeply -- by Comcast and NBC together.
* Chilling Effects smells a nice fresh dubious trademark claim.
* Donnie Dong is waiting to see what will happen with the Chinese Literary Copyright Association.
* Wendy Seltzer argues that "open-source DRM" is a contradiction in terms.
* Internet & Democracy reads the news about the IDF's new media unit.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Mongolia: Climate Change Affecting Nomadic Way of Life"
* OpenNet Initiative discovers that the .il TLD is unblocked in UAE.
* danah boyd on the importance of hanging out.
* Herkko Hietanen may do some innertubing next year.
* CMLP is a bit happy about SLAPP and anti-SLAPP in Cali.
* David Weinberger live-blogs Kevin Werbach interviewing Larry Strickland.
* Doc Searls translates the phrase "transition from circuit switched network to all-IP network."
* Micro-post of the week: Eszter Hargittai thanks John Palfrey.

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The full buzz.

"It’s not that Media Studies has ever been held in particularly high regard as an important subject (though the cinema people keep trying), but when writing about online video there’s an even greater presumption of frivolousness. As I am often arguing about the valuable role of public media and media generated by what we used to call “the audience,” I get stuck between the dead-boring vibe of PBS pledge drives and scenes of people freaking out on their webcams. Either this is perceived a good-for-you but not something we’d actually watch (PBS), or it’s momentarily amusing but perceived as ultimately valueless (YouTube freakout)."
From Christian Sandvig's blog post In Search of the Most Defensible YouTube Video

"So it’s official. Comcast has announced its intention to buy NBC Universal from GE. The danger of this cannot be overstated, but it could actually be the catalyst for a policy conversation the nation desperately needs to hold. A Comcast-NBC combination is brazenly anti-competitve and anti-democratic. It would give one company far too much ownership over not just professionally produced media but also the ways media consumers can receive it."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post Comcast-NBC: The Road Toward Control Over What We Create

"Getty Images has been sued by Car-Freshner Corp. for trademark infringement, dilution, and unfair competition over stock photographs of cars that include images of tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror. Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log reports, via Seattle Trademark Lawyer, that Car-Freshner Corp. has sued the online photo-licensing clearinghouse Getty Images for allegedly distributing photos of car interiors that include tree-shaped air fresheners."
From Rebecca Schoff's blog post for Chilling Effects, Something Smells Off: Getty Images Sued Over Silhouette of Air Freshener

"China Association of Copyright on Literature Works (CACLW), the governmental authorized org for collective copyright management) is searching the books which are scanned by Google, and calling Chinese authors either sign the GoogleBookSettlement or join CACLW's collective legal action."
From Donnie Dong's blog post Fighting Google Unarmed?

"Why did it take nearly a decade for portable video to move beyond compact DVD players? Why can we do so much more with music CDs and their successors than with DVDs and theirs? I argue the difference is baked-in DRM and its legal side-effects."
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post New Paper: Anticircumvention Versus Open Innovation

"In a quote that could have just as easily have come out of Sarah Palin’s mouth, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu recently told a journalism conference that the Israeli military is creating an Internet and new media unit to get past the ‘filter’ of the mainstream media. This after their self-described success with YouTube during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ last year in Gaza."
From Bruce Etling's blog post for Internet & Democracy, Israeli Defense Forces Embrace Web 2.0

"Mongolian nomadic families have historically depended on the vast land for their livelihood. In the past, rangeland for their grazing animals had been plentiful, and food and water were readily collected from their surroundings. However, all is that is changing, as climate change is having a negative impact on their way of life."
From Eduardo Avila's blog post for Global Voices, Mongolia: Climate Change Affecting Nomadic Way of Life

"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has unblocked access to Web sites on the Israeli country code top-level domain “.il" ONI noticed earlier this month that .il Web sites have been accessible from the UAE, and has since been testing for filtering of tens of .il Web sites from different categories including government, politics, religion, and entertainment. All sites have been found consistently accessible via the country's two ISPs, Etisalat and du."
From Helmi Noman's blog post for ONI, UAE unblocks access to top Israeli domain ".il"

"As adults, we take social skills for granted... until we encounter someone who lacks them. Helping children develop social skills is viewed as a reasonable educational endeavor in elementary school, but by high school, educators switch to more "serious" subjects. Yet, youth aren't done learning about the social world. Conversely, they are more driven to understand people and sociality during their tween and teen years than as small children."
From danah boyd's blog post Sociality Is Learning

"Vantaa district court decided in a case that defines the limits of freedom of speech and online liability that discussion forum administrators are not liable for people gathering to float down the river drinking beer. That is even as the participants used the discussion forum to discuss the organization of the event."
From Herkko Hietanen's blog post for Turre Legal, Finnish court: Administrators are not liable for activities planned at discussion forum

"California SLAPP jurisprudence is the gift that keeps on giving, especially for weary bloggers looking for something to write about. (SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. You can read all about them in our Legal Guide.) Our friend Adrianos Facchetti over at the California Defamation Law Blog has been blogging and tweeting up a storm this week about anti-SLAPP cases."
From Kimberley Isbell's blog post for CMLP, SLAPP Me Baby, One More Time

"Larry says that he’s the President’s chief advisor on information policy. “The bulk of our resources go to the assignment of federal spectrum.” They handle the relationship with ICANN and issues of Internet governance. They have a “policy shop” that they are going to “rebrand” as the Internet policy shop, rather than an telecom policy shop. Danny Weizner of MIT is heading that up. And there’s a lab in Boulder that does spectrum research. They have a grant-making organization that has $5B in Recovery funds for project that expand broadband adoption."
From David Weinberger's blog post [sn09] Larry Strickland

"Yesterday the FCC released a public notice seeking comment on the “transition from circuit switched network to all-IP network.” ...Translation: from the phone system to the Internet. This is huge. Really. Freaking. Huge. Or maybe not. Could be it’s all just posturing or worse. But I don’t think so. Or I hope not."
From Doc Searls' blog post Liberating the Net from Telephony

"Tx @jpalfrey for very generous review of my book Research Confidential: http://bit.ly/8lMgFm it's been so much fun teaching this course w/u!" [10:02 AM Dec 1st]
Eszter Hargittai thanks John Palfrey in connection with her book and their shared course on research methods.