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Berkman Buzz: Week of October 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.

* Charles Nesson responds to Joseph Reagle's talk on "Good Faith Collaboration."
* Ethan Zuckerman asks how many jump the Great Firewall.
* OpenNet Initiative on demand for less Net censorship in China
* Facebook and privacy, again -- and Harry Lewis isn't surprised.
* Future of the Internet Topics and Links of the Week
* Dan Gillmor explains why he's not buying many Kindle books.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Serbia: Two Internet Entrepreneurs Detained for Months Without Trial"
* A year ago in the Buzz: Chilling Effects discusses the Unity Day softball game of '79.

Special note: The Berkman Center is now accepting applications for fellowships for the 2011-2012 academic year.

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The full buzz.

"why has wikipedia not become a model of how to get along and get something done? true, there are elements tagging along who don’t seem to get along, instead running running counter to the consensus of good faith at wikipedia’s core, but they are back-eddies as the core force of wikipedia rushes forward in development of public knowledge. wikipedia is a collective knowledge generator"
From Charles Nesson's blog post Community of Good Faith

(Bonus: Joseph Reagle's book talk)

"My colleague Hal Roberts, I and friends at Berkman released a paper today that attempts to estimate usage of circumvention tools, tools used to evade internet filtering. We were specifically interested in trying to compare usage of different types of tools – sophisticated blocking-resistant tools like Tor and Ultrasurf, ad-supported web proxies like Proxeasy or HideMyAss, and VPN-based systems like Hotspot Shield and Relakks. Unlike in our previous study of some of these tools, we weren’t trying to compare the functionality of these very different tools, or evaluate their performance – we just wanted to answer the question, “How many people use this tool?”"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post How many people jump the Great Firewall?

"For the younger demographics living in China during the age of social media and online networking, Facebook, Twitter, and numerous other Web 2.0 sites remain inaccessible to them. But it may be an older generation that will change that for them—or at least hope to. This week, senior members of the Chinese Communist Party—including Li Rui, Mao Zedong’s former secretary—signed a letter calling for freedom of speech and less Internet censorship by the government. According to the Wall Street Journal, much of the letter focused on allowing more freedom on the Internet rather than consistently resorting to the "invisible black hand" of state intervention..."
From Qichen Zhang's blog post for ONI, Older Generation of Chinese Politicians Seek to End Censorship

"The Wall Street Journal reports on leakage of Facebook data to the advertising world, even data held behind what were supposed to be Facebook’s highest level of privacy settings. Why does this keep happening? Surely not by design on Facebook’s part. The company has been bitten enough times over the past year not to be venal without good cause. I have much less confidence in the intermediaries in the leakage, the data aggregation firm Rapleaf for example, which pled that “We didn’t do it on purpose.” Uh-huh."
From Harry Lewis' blog post Facebook: More Privacy Woes

(More on this week's Facebook/privacy news: from former Berkman fellow Chris Soghoian here + here; and from affiliate Ben Adida.)

"Addressing the zombie invasion. U.S. officials are evaluating an Australian plan that targets the botnet epidemic. In particular, the American government is eying provisions that allow an ISP to notify customers with infected computers — since botnets typically run in the background of a user’s own applications, often the consumer is unaware that her PC has been taken over — and perhaps even quarantine maliciously co-opted machines by limiting online access. As the FOI book echoed in 2008, such a program increases security without resorting to perfect enforcement and may also encourage ISPs to provide consumers with tools to disinfect their computers, either as part of the service plan or for an additional fee."
From Jennifer Halbleib's post for Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet blog, FOI Topics and Links of the Week

"To the extent that Amazon has been trying to corner the market, I’m with critics (despite being a small Amazon shareholder) who don’t want that to happen; competition is more important than ever, especially when it comes to digital media, where it’s all too easy for monopolies to develop. But to the extent that Amazon wants to bring prices down to a level that bears some rational relationship to the fact that e-books cost much less to produce, I’m all for that."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post Publishers' crazy e-book prices

"Djordje Djokic and Dusan Jaglicic were both born in the mid-'70s in Serbia. They were pretty typical children in what was then Yugoslavia, with parents who taught them that hard work, a healthy family life and and education would bring them the merits they deserved. The two young men became close friends and, later, through the advantages and opportunities of the Internet, business partners. Dusan and Djordje went on to register www.freebeting.net and www.kladionicar.com in 2005, two sites that provided betting quotes, advice and sports news, but also links and ads to legal betting sites run from abroad. The two young entrepreneurs made money through affiliate sales on their sites - and plenty of it: authorities claim some 550 thousand Euros were made in profits from these sites."
From Danica Radisic's blog post for Global Voices, Serbia: Two Internet Entrepreneurs Detained for Months Without Trial

"After announcing that Philadelphia radio station WDAS would not be able to sponsor the Unity Day festival for the first time in 30 years, Clear Channel has used an allegation of trademark rights in the name "Unity Day" to prevent citizens from raising funds and obtaining city permits to keep the tradition going."
From the Chilling Effects blog post Trademark Disunity: Clear Channel Zaps 'Unity Day' [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in October 2009]

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

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