Berkman Buzz: Week of January 18, 2010

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.

* Peter Suber takes stock of open access in 2009.
* John Palfrey reports from a reader privacy event.
* danah boyd argues that privacy is still very much alive.
* Fernando Bermejo wonders aloud about flash cookies.
* Future of the Internet puts out a HIT about worker satisfaction.
* Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw looks for a fight.
* CMLP tries not to cut itself on the First Amendment.
* Doc Searls connects the dots of the Content-o-net.
* OpenNet Initiative ballparks the number of Internet users being filtered around the world.
* Weekly Global Voices: "More websites banned in Myanmar. Global Voices banned too"
* David Weinberger reacts to Hillary Clinton's Internet speech...
* ...and Ethan Zuckerman weighs in as well.
* Internet & Democracy reads that the Kremlin tells governors to blog.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Inauguration Day Online"

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The full buzz.

"2009 was Open Access Year in the Netherlands, but it might have been Open Access Year worldwide. The growth on every front was extraordinary. In this review of the highlights, I won't cover individual new OA journals, repositories, or databases; and like last year, the volume has forced me to omit most new developments in open education, public-sector information (PSI), and wikis. Last year I had a special section on OA to humanities research, but this year I cut that as well to make room for a section on the recession. As always, apologies to the many projects I had to omit. ... BTW, if you track these things, March 31 was OA Day in Copenhagen, and October 19-23 was OA Week worldwide."
From Peter Suber's Open Access in 2009

"Anne Klinefelter, the beloved law library director at UNC-Chapel Hill (you should hear her dean introduce her; really!), is hosting a Data Privacy Day event on reader privacy. She makes the case in her opening panel remarks that, if we wish to translate library practices with respect to privacy into a digital world, we need to figure out how to translate not just law but also ethics."
From John Palfrey's blog post Reader Privacy Event at UNC-Chapel Hill

"When I learned that Mark Zuckerberg effectively argued that 'the age of privacy is over' (read: ReadWriteWeb), I wanted to scream. Actually, I did. And still am. The logic goes something like this: * People I knew didn't used to like to be public. * Now "everyone" is being public. * Ergo, privacy is dead. This isn't new. This is the exact same logic that made me want to scream a decade ago when folks used David Brin to justify a transparent society. Privacy is dead, get over it. Right? Wrong!"
From danah boyd's blog post Facebook's move ain't about changes in privacy norms

"Last September Adobe purchased Omniture for $1.8 billion. In my view, it was a surprising mix, and I went around trying to understand what was behind it. While for some people the deal seemed to make business sense , others were more skeptical. And I left it at that. But a couple of weeks after the operation was announced, I came across a post in a rather laconic blog that pointed to flash cookies as a key element for understanding the deal."
From Fernando Bermejo's blog post Tracking the trackers

"Much of the point, as I read it, was just that cloudwork practices are so new, dynamic, and varied that it’s hard to know what the good and bad effects will turn out to be. As they point out, this could be a boon for workers here in the US who want flexibility and autonomy, as well as creating new kinds of opportunities for workers abroad."
From Elisabeth Oppenheimer's blog post for Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet blog, Life in a clickshop

"DisputeFinder is a Firefox extension, that is a collaboration between Intel Research and UC Berkeley. Its basic premise is to allow readers of web content to understand the broader context of claims made on websites. If a claim about a controversial topic (think global warming, gun control or a “healthy” new diet) is made on a site, users of this plugin will be immediately notified by colored text that there are conflicting viewpoints on that particular topic."
From Dharmishta Rood's blog post for Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw, DisputeFinder: crowdsourcing controversy

"From a functional perspective, I think that the First Amendment is the most important amendment in the bunch, because it ensures that the people can denounce any injustices the government perpetrates. To be sure, various other amendments bar greater evils than censorship—the Thirteenth Amendment ban of slavery springs to mind as an obvious example. But I'd argue that, without the First Amendment, banning such evils would be harder to do as a practical matter without a legally sanctioned watchdog function of constitutional proportions."
From Arthur Bright's blog post for the CMLP, The Double-Edged Sword of Online Free Speech

"Encirclement is more than censorship. It’s a war strategy, and China has been at war with the Internet from the start. But while China’s war is conscious, efforts by other countries to encircle the Net are not."
From Doc Searls' blog post How the Internet becomes the Content-o-net

"The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has been monitoring Internet filtering around the world since 2002. Currently, more that 40 countries are filtering the Internet to varying degrees, while a number of others, including Australia, Iraq, and Spain, are considering enacting filtering policies. So, just how many people are censored online around the world?"
From the OpenNet Initiative blog post, More than half a billion Internet users are being filtered worldwide

"Bagan ISP, one of the two internet service providers under MPT (Myanmar Post and Telecommunication), has started banning more websites, including blogs with their own domains. Some of the newest addition to the ban list includes twitter, wordpress (and its subdomain blogs), and Global Voices."
From tan's blog post for Global Voices, More websites banned in Myanmar. Global Voices banned too

"First, my overall reaction to Hillary Clinton’s speech: It’s thrilling that a Secretary of State would claim “freedom to connect” as a basic human right. That’s a very big stake in the ground. Likewise, it’s sort of amazing that the State Department is funding the development of tools to help users circumvent government restrictions on access. On the negative side, it’s distressing (but not surprising) that the Secretary of State should come out against anonymity so we can track down copyright infringers. Of course, in response to a question she said that we have to strike a balance so that the anonymity of dissenters is protected even as the anonymity of file sharers is betrayed. I just don’t know how you do that."
From David Weinberger's blog post Hillary Clinton’s Internet policy speech

"It was encouraging to hear Secretary Clinton sounding like a dyed in the wool cyberutopian. Her description of the Internet as a “new nervous system for the planet” reflects aspirations much more than reality. Yes, we’re getting information from Hunan and Haiti… but we’ve got a lot of work to do to ensure that these networks allow all people to speak and to be heard."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Reacting to Clinton’s Freedom to Connect speech

"The Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports that the Kremlin, worried about the waning influence of official mass media in the regions, has told regional governors to become active bloggers and participants in online social networks, or risk losing their posts. The article further explains that the governors’ Internet activities will become one of the criteria by which their effectiveness will be judged, and that those who do not perform well will be weeded out."
From Bruce Etling's blog post for Internet & Democracy, Kremlin Tells Governors to Blog, or Pack their Bags

"On Tuesday morning at 11:45, I ran out of my last final exam and plopped myself down in front of the nearest screen, determined not to miss a moment of Barack Obama’s inauguration. Televisions are harder to find around campus these days, but all I needed was a laptop with Internet access, and nearly everyone in the dining hall was congregated around one or another. I was only one of millions who found themselves in front of a computer rather than a TV (or in DC in person.)"
From Sarah Zhang's blog post for Digital Natives, Inauguration Day Online [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in January 2009]