Global Voices Newsfeed

Berkman Buzz: October 12, 2012

rheacock — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:10:35 -0400

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
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Meg Ambrose ponders cyberbullying and the right to be forgotten

Social isolation, bullying, and depression are difficult to endure, but the added feeling that one must endure them forever – the hopelessness – is simply too much for many. The It Gets Better Project was started to address this issue for the LGBT community. It is “a response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school.” If Amanda held felt she could move on from that photo – if she could “get it back,” perhaps she would have felt that it would get better. How can we even suggest to her that it will get better when the life of her information online seems eternal?

From Meg Ambroses's blog post, "Bullying and the Right to be Forgotten: A Right to End Victimization"
About Meg Ambrose | @megleta

Diana Kimball hosts a virtual book club

All in all, over 25 people read the book as part of 24-Hour Bookclub. (I asked for names and addresses afterward for a small surprise we’re planning, which is how I know with such specificity.) I collected over 150 tweets into a mammoth Storify. I made some new friends, and strengthened old friendships. When I saw photos of dear friends in San Francisco sitting and reading the book together in Dolores Park, my heart nearly exploded. Really, what could be better than reading together?

I finished the book in the early afternoon. This was around when the first wave of readers finished, too, so I tweeted out some congratulations. For the rest of the day, I watched as others crossed the finish line, celebrating with them as they did. As for me, I didn’t want the day to be over. In the end, I went back to the beginning and started again.

From Diana Kimball's blog post, "24-Hour Bookclub Recap: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore"
About Diana Kimball | @dianakimball

PIL "Smart Talk" interview w/Ken Bain just posted; "nourishing intellectual curiosity in the classroom" -- must read. http://projectinfolit.org/st/bain.asp
—Alison Head (@alisonjhead)

Want to get involved in DPLA tech development? check out http://dp.la/wiki/Dev_portal and http://github.com/dpla #DPLAmidwest
—Digital Public Library of America (@digpublib)

David Weinberger gives an update on the DPLA from Chicago

After attending today’s working meeting of the DPLA (I’m unable to attend tomorrow’s more public-facing session), I’m quite encouraged. The DPLA is now in execution mode, and I believe the pieces are in place.

The Content workstream is well along in securing a range of content, including heritage collections and copyright-free books from the Internet Archive and Hathi Trust. The processes and relationships required for accessing and maintaining the metadata are well along.

From David Weinberger's blog post, "[dpla] DPLA looking good"
About David Weinberger | @dweinberger

Congrats to David Weinberger, winner of the GetAbstract International Book Award 2012 for his book Too Big to Know http://bit.ly/VUDQyJ
—Berkman Center (@berkmancenter)

Indonesia: Anti-Corruption Agency Gets Online Support

The power of social media was once again affirmed in Indonesia when internet users collectively expressed their support to corruption investigators who are being harassed by the police and some politicians.

Online support for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) became an offline campaign as netizens organized protest actions and assemblies against a raid conducted by the police and to thwart a proposal in the Parliament to weaken the authority of the agency.

Many people accused the police of using its coercive power to stop the KPK from effectively conducting its probe on the corruption practices in the bureaucracy.

From Mong Palatino's blog post for Global Voices, "Indonesia: Anti-Corruption Agency Gets Online Support"
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

This Buzz was compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

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Berkman Buzz: July 27, 2012

rtabasky — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:57:56 -0400

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
To subscribe, click here.

The Berkman Center is hiring! We are now accepting applications for a number of technically-inclined leadership positions.

Doc Sears explores the future possibilities of VRM and consumer liberation

It's a Saturday morning in 2022, and you're trying to decide what to wear to the dinner party you're throwing that evening. All the clothes hanging in your closet are "smart"—that is, they can tell you when you last wore them, what else you wore them with, and where and when they were last cleaned. Some do this with microchips. Others have tiny printed tags that you can scan on your hand-held device.

As you prepare for your guests, you discover that your espresso machine isn't working and you need another one. So you pull the same hand-held device from your pocket, scan the little square code on the back of the machine, and tell your hand-held, by voice, that this one is broken and you need another one, to rent or buy. An "intentcast" goes out to the marketplace, revealing only what's required to attract offers. No personal information is revealed, except to vendors with whom you already have a trusted relationship.

From Doc Searl's article on the Wall Street Journal, "The Customer as a God"
About Doc Searls | @dsearls

Stored Communications Act fails to protect protester's privacy interests and tweets

A recent court ruling has highlighted the need to update the Stored Communications Act (SCA), a federal statute, enacted in 1986, that circumscribes privacy rights in electronic communications. The protections afforded by the SCA do not reflect the breadth and depth of personal data that service providers such as cell phone carriers, email services, and social networks regularly collect and store. That the government can access so much data without a warrant creates a significant risk of chilling online free speech. (Note: the author is not a lawyer.)

On June 30, 2012, a Manhattan criminal court judge ruled that Twitter must provide to police the records of Malcolm Harris, a Twitter user charged with disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest in October 2011. In a single ruling, Judge Sciarrino dismissed both Harris’s and Twitter’s motions to quash the subpoena. In so doing, the judge confirmed his prior ruling and held that under the SCA, the subpoena was properly requested. Judge Sciarrino’s decision is a reminder that although the Internet has augmented and amplified individual expression, it has also provided states with unprecedented tools for regulation, review, and punishment. As Judge Sciarrino himself acknowledges, the Internet’s central role in civic and private life has created a new privacy interest that is not yet explicitly protected by existing statutes. Adapting the law to safeguard these interests may be essential if the Internet is to remain a vibrant forum for free expression.

From Marianna Mao's blog post on Herdict, "Current data privacy laws undermine expressive freedoms"
About Herdict | @Herdict

New @BerkmanCenter briefing doc on e-books and e-lending in libraries w/ @d_obrien and @jpalfrey http://tinyurl.com/co866av #ebooks

U.S. District Court denies service of process via social media site

The judicial system in the United States has kept up with technological change in many ways. We have electronic filing, websites for federal courts, and Internet streaming court coverage. But there is one way that courts have not been as quick to adapt electronically – service of process.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a request to allow service of process via social networking site (in this case, Facebook). The case, Fortunato v. Chase Bank U.S.A., involved Chase Bank's attempts to locate and serve process on a third-party defendant who fraudulently charged up multiple credit cards and gave a false physical address. The judge called the request "unorthodox," and found that Chase Bank had not given the court "a degree of certainty" about the defendant's alleged Facebook profile and the email address attached to that profile that would ensure that the defendant would receive and read the notice. However, the judge did allow for alternative service by general publication in local newspapers.

From Tabitha Messick's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "Service of Process, 2.0"
About the Citizen Media Law Project | @citmedialaw

Justin Reich learns about RoadTrip Nation and new platforms for learning

"There is so much opportunity with new technologies. But so much innovation is taking on the character of the old style of schooling." - Mike Marriner, Roadtrip Nation

I was really lucky last evening to grab a beer after work with Mike Marriner, one of the founders of RoadTrip Nation. Many of you may know Roadtrip Nation from its PBS television show, but the whole project is taking a new direction towards providing curriculum and online platforms for students and teachers.

From Justin Reich's post, "Using Road Trips to Help Kids Find Their Passions"
About Justin Reich | @bjfr

"Inside the Quest to Put the World's Libraries Online": A close examination of the Digital Public Library of America ow.ly/cxRxd
—metaLAB (@metalabharvard)

A Marathon to Translate the Declaration of Internet Freedom

The world may be glued to the TV to watch the start of the Olympic Games in London, but Global Voices Lingua translators are excited about another challenge: the Internet Freedom Translathon, a marathon to get the Declaration of Internet Freedom translated in as many languages and dialects as possible over the course of 24 hours on Friday August 3. Everyone can join: you don't have to be an Olympic athlete or professional translator to help!

From Paula Góes' blog post for Global Voices, "Global: A Marathon to Translate the Declaration of Internet Freedom"
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

This Buzz was compiled by Royze Adolfo

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Berkman Buzz: July 20, 2012

rtabasky — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:29:02 -0400

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.

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We are delighted to announce a Call for Papers for The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (danah boyd and John Palfrey, editors) presented by the Berkman Center and the Born This Way Foundation, and supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The deadline is July 25.

The Berkman Center is hiring! We are now accepting applications for a number of technically-inclined leadership positions.

Urs Gasser and Matthew Becker explore the interoperability of bar codes

The second case studies in our interop series looks into Bar Code interoperability, a great case that highlights the aspects inter-industry cooperation as well as collective action problems. The case was researched by incoming Berkman student fellow Matthew B. Becker. He submitted the following blog post as an introduction to the case:

When approaching the subject of interoperability, bar codes were an immediate interest of mine. Practically ubiquitous today, bar codes can be found on nearly every package, and are increasingly common in many other applications beyond retail. It is precisely this prevalence that made me wonder how such a technology came to be implemented so widely.

From Urs Gasser's blog post on Law and Information, "Interop Case Study #2: Bar Code Interoperability"
About Urs Gasser | @ugasser

Urs Gasser introduces Paul Kominers' smart grid case study in an interop series

As previously noted, “Interop” is part of a series of experiments regarding the format of a book. In the case of Interop, we publish it along with a set of case studies that have served as the raw data for the analysis and theory we present in the book version. As our early case studies on digital music, digital identity systems, and mash ups, all the materials are freely available online, via SSRN. Over the next few weeks, we will introduce some of the more recent case studies, several of them authored by wonderful research assistants on our Interop research team. Today – in time with the very high temperatures outside and the increased energy consumption – we would like to introduce the case study on the “smart grid” written by Paul Kominers. Paul submitted the following abstract to introduce the case he researched with us:”

Imagine a mountain climber without a map. Rather than going downwards to return to town as might be sensible, he wants to find the highest point in the entire mountain range. But due to a blizzard, he cannot see very far; he can only tell whether a certain direction takes him higher or lower, and he has to stop every fifty yards or so to reevaluate and pick a new direction.

From Urs Gasser's blog post, "Interop Case Study #1 Fitness Case Study and the Electric Grid"
About Urs Gasser | @ugasser

Peter Suber discusses the UK's open access efforts

There were three separate, significant announcements today from the UK. All three make major moves toward assuring open access to publicly-funded research. But they differ in important respects. We shouldn't overlook the differences or think there was just one large announcement. Here's a quick overview:

(1) The Research Councils UK (RCUK) strengthened its long-standing OA policy. My blog post includes a short list of the major points on which the new RCUK policy differs from the Finch recommendations. (2) David Willetts, the UK Science Minister, accepted the OA recommendations in the Finch report. In a comment, my blog post pulls together my previous criticisms of the Finch report. (3) The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) announced plans to mandate OA for research submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) after 2014.

From Peter Suber's blog post, "Sorting out three big open-access announcements from the UK today"
About Peter Suber | About Harvard Open Access | @petersuber

Google May Have To Start Censoring Search Results In France: ...http://bit.ly/QddsgI
—Opennet (@ONInews)

Dan Gillmor contemplates Marissa Mayer's next steps at Yahoo

On paper, or maybe that should be in pixels, Marissa Mayer is a brilliant choice to run Yahoo. No one disputes her talent or drive; even if some colleagues anonymously call her personal style prickly, that would not be an issue if we were talking about a male chief executive.

No, the big question is about Yahoo itself. Has the downward trajectory of the past several years become an unrecoverable tailspin? If so, nothing she or anyone else can do will matter much in the end.

From Dan Gillmor's post, "What Marissa Mayer has to work with at Yahoo"
About Dan Gillmor

ISPs halt implementation efforts for Copyright Alert System

The nation's largest Internet service providers, in an unprecedented partnership with titans of the entertainment industry, have agreed to implement a uniform policy aimed at deterring online copyright infringement known as the Copyright Alert System. An agreement that sets forth extensive details about the program was finalized more than one year ago, but it has yet to take effect. Coverage of the scheme by Time and CNN has drawn attention back to the program in recent weeks. So, where exactly does the Copyright Alert System stand?

For those of you unfamiliar with the CAS, it is a graduated response approach to copyright enforcement created in an agreement between five major ISPs and representatives from the entertainment industry. Often referred to as the "six strikes" plan (for the number of warnings subscribers may receive), the program will result in a series of alerts that increase in seriousness if an Internet user's account is flagged by a content owner as one associated with the unauthorized sharing or downloading of copyrighted material via a peer-to-peer network.

From Natalie Nicol's post, "Coming Soon? Graduated Response Measures by Internet Service Providers"
About Natalie Nicol | @natnicol

check out this awesome @Flickr set on @TechGirls discussion w/@berkmancenter youth & media crew #GeekIsChic 1.usa.gov/NxjC9e
—Suzanne Phillion (@SuzKP)

YouTube implements a facial blurring tool to protect identity of content providers

Yesterday, YouTube announced a new tool within their upload editor that enables people to blur the faces within the video, and then publish a version with blurred faces. WITNESS has advocated for YouTube and other platforms to take this step for a number of years in blogs, public presentations, reports and private advocacy and applauds YouTube for leading the way in including this functionality.

We'll be reviewing the tool in the coming days, and explaining how to use it well to protect vulnerable people in your videos. In this post I'll discuss the human rights perspective on why tools like this are important for commercial platforms to adopt.

From Witness's post, "YouTube's New Face Blur Tool and What It Means for Activists Globally" for Global Voices
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices
About Witness | @witness org

This Buzz was compiled by Royze Adolfo.

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Berkman Buzz: July 6, 2012

rtabasky — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:17:35 -0400

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
To subscribe, click here.

The Berkman Center is hiring! We are now accepting applications for a number of technically-inclined leadership positions.

Technology can't improve schools all on its own

When it comes to using educational technology in the classroom, it seems like every school is doing it, has done it already, or has plans to do it in the near future. Without a doubt, technology in the classroom, whether an iPad, laptop, or online simulation, has the potential to transform education for many students, and, in many cases, is already making great strides. But with the advent of the technology craze upon us, it is important for educators and administrators not to let their excitement for its potential carry them away; technology can be integrated into an educational program, but is not a standalone silver bullet for improving outcomes.

From Justin Reich and Ryan Normandin blog post on Education Week, "Technology Is Not a Silver Bullet"
About Justin Reich | @bjfr
About Ryan Normandin | @RyanNormandin

Ethiopia tightens internet control measures

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is the latest group to voice concerns over Ethiopia’s increasingly draconian Internet control, even as the government justifies these measures as a safeguard against telecom fraud.

On Monday, CPJ outlined its concern about new sophisticated censorship methods employed in Ethiopia, which the group said may encourage other authoritarian regimes in Africa. According to the Associated Press, the CPJ statement says that “‘the rollout of a far more pervasive and sophisticated blocking system’” started in April to include smaller blogs by exiles and news services, and even individual Facebook pages.”

From Malavika Jagannathan's blog post for Herdict, "Ethiopian Internet control measures continue to garner concern"
About Herdict | @herdict
@malavikaj

#UN Human Rights Council endorses net freedom of expression #FOE #netfreedom ow.ly/c2GEl
— Herdict (@Herdict)

Netizen Report: Netizens innovate to promote political and social change

Most of this report was researched, written and edited by Weiping Li, James Losey, Tom Risen and Sarah Myers.

The past few weeks have seen promising developments in the use of online journalism to counter official narratives in countries under political upheaval.

The Network for Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism launched in mid-June, becoming the first investigative journalism website in Iraq devoted to stories of “corruption, mismanagement of funds and power across Iraq.” Its articles will be published in Arabic, English and Kurdish. Syrian video activists have also launched an effort to create an online alternative to state-run media. Rami Jarrah, founder of the Activists News Association, hopes the network will transform the activists, who have been using video cameras to document the uprising, into citizen journalists whose work could eventually supplant that of the state media should Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be forced from power.

Derek Bambauer dissects the Commerce Clause in NFIB v. Sebelius

NFIB v. Sebelius, the 2012 Supreme Court decision rejecting nearly all of the constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act, has (at least) two bits of interest to infolaw folks. First, the majority opinion finds that the ACA‘s individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause. Congress regulates all manner of infolaw issues under the Commerce Clause, perhaps most notably trademarks. Second, the Court strikes down the Medicaid expansion provision, finding essentially that it is an unconstitutional condition on Congress’s spending largesse. This is fascinating for those of us interested in how Congress uses its spending powers to shape speech. I’m going to tackle what I see as a puzzle in the majority’s Commerce Clause analysis, with the usual disclaimer: I’m not expert in the structural aspects of the Constitution.

From Derek Bambauer's post, "Parsing the Commerce Clause"
About Derek Bambauer | @dbambauer

Global network organizations support Declaration of Internet Freedom

Over the past year, in the US, Italy and other countries, Internet communities have flexed their muscles and demonstrated their popularity and capacity for organizing public opinion, by convincing lawmakers not to pass bills that would have made life difficult for ‘Net service providers and site owners.

Recently, two US Congressmen who were important opponents of SOPA in the House and Senate, Darrell Issa and Ron Wyden, called for and then published a draft Digital Citizen’s Bill of Rights, which they opened for public annotation and comment. (Kudos for the concept and quick turnaround – that’s a more direct engagement of readers than any other political effort I’ve seen recently. But I hope they keep developing the platform, or move it to something more refactorable.)

From Samuel Klein's post, "Sudo Make Me an Internet"
About Samuel Klein | @metasj

Must-read: @derekslater on measuring digital creativity in INSEAD/WIPO Global Innovation Index 2012 http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii/main/fullreport/files/Chap1/Chapter11.pdf @berkmancenter
—Urs Gasser (@ugasser)

Voters express sentiments on Twitter during elections

Following the end of the presidential candidates' campaigns, election day was held last Sunday 1 July 2012, from which the next President of the United Mexican States would emerge victorious. Mexicans also elected 128 senators and 500 members of parliament. Citizens went to the polls to vote without restrictions or major incidents.

At the time of writing this post, according to official, albeit preliminary, information released by Mexico's electoral monitoring organisation, the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), turnout was at 63.14% with 90.82% of the votes counted. Preliminary counts seemed to favour the candidate Enrique Peña Nieto [en], from the political party coalition known as Compromiso por México (”Compromise for Mexico”), with 37.83 of the electoral vote..

From J. Tadeo and Ayoola Ayabi's blog post,
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices
About J. Tadeo
About Ayoola Alabi

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Berkman Buzz: June 29, 2012

rtabasky — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:01:58 -0400

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
To subscribe, click here.

The Berkman Center is thrilled to announce our 2012-2013 fellows! As well, we are now accepting applications for a number of technically-inclined staff positions.

Publishers and policy-makers recognize Open Access revolution

I get the sense that we’ve moved into a new phase in discussions of open access. There seems to be a consensus that open access is an inevitability. We’re hearing this not only from the usual suspects in academia but from publishers, policy-makers, and other interested parties. I’ve started collecting pertinent quotes. The voices remarking on the inevitability of open access range from congressional representatives sponsoring the pro-OA FRPAA bill (Representative Lofgren) to the sponsors of the anti-OA RWA bill (Representatives Issa and Maloney), from open-access publishers (Sutton of Co-Action) to the oldest of guard subscription publishers (Campbell of Nature). Herewith, a selection. Pointers to other examples would be greatly appreciated..

From Stuart Shieber's blog post on The Occasional Pamphlet, "The inevitability of open access"
About Stuart Shieber | @pmphlt

Stolen Valor Act: Jeffrey Hermes finds value of falsity in the First Amendment

In the fourteen years that I practiced as a media defense lawyer before joining the Berkman Center, there was one sentence from one Supreme Court opinion that I learned to loathe above all others. It appears in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), and reads as follows: "But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact." Id. at 340.

The court goes on to explain: Neither the intentional lie nor the careless error materially advances society's interest in "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate on public issues. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S., at 270. They belong to that category of utterances which "are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 572 (1942).

From Jeffrey P. Hermes' blog post, "Falsity and the First Amendment: The U.S. Supreme Court Rules on the Stolen Valor Act"
About Jeffrey Hermes

new blog post: Internet blackout in Sudan?bit.ly/M9yVWD
—OpenNet Initiative (@OpenNet)

Connected Principles: Encouraging school administrators to use social media

By encouraging administrators to become learner-leaders, to use social media connect with each other, share best practices and experiment, Canadian school principal George Couros is leading by example, exhortation, and instigation the people who are supposed to be leading our schools into the future. He created and regularly contributes to the website that serves as an online gathering place especially for school principals, Connected Principals, and has blogged in detail about why and how school administrators should be using social media in practical ways in their schools -- linking in this one compendium post to a dozen of his specific blog posts.

From Howard Rheingold's blog post, "George Couros: Connected Principals Should Be Learner Leaders"
About Howard Rheingold || @hrheingold

Two issues discussed at #HCIC: access to social data and the value/challenges of system building&mdashAndres Monroy Hernandez (@Andresmh)

Creative Commons and P2PU collaborate to build School of Open

The School of Open is a collaboration between Creative Commons and P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University). Its aim is to provide easily digestible educational exercises, resources, and professional development courses that help individuals and institutions learn about and employ open tools, such as the CC licenses. .

From Jane Park's blog post for Creative Commons, "Help us build a School of Open"

Yemenis tweet about about ongoing electricity cuts during revolution

Electricity, food and water are basic human rights and have been the main demands of the majority of Yemenis long before the revolution started and still continue to be so. Nothing seems to have changed with the overthrow of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and living conditions only seem to get worse under the new National Consensus Government. Most Yemenis are living in dire conditions due to the daily and long hours of electricity cuts that have been affecting most areas of Yemen, from the north to the south.

From Noon Arabia's post on Global Voices, "Yemen: Electricity Woes in Yemen"
About Noon Arabia About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

This Buzz was compiled by Royze Adolfo.

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Berkman Buzz: February 17, 2012

rheacock — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:51:29 -0500

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
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Mako Hill explains how robots.txt files make the private public

Public Resource republishes many court documents. Although these documents are all part of the public record and PR will not take them down because someone finds their publication uncomfortable, PR will evaluate and honor some requests to remove documents from search engine results. Public Resources does so using a robots.txt file or "robot exclusion protocol" which websites use to, among other things, tell search engine's web crawling "robots" which pages they do not want to be indexed and included in search results. Originally, the files were mostly used to keep robots from abusing server resources by walking through infinite lists of automatically generated pages or to block search engines from including user-contributed content that might include spam.

The result for Public Resource, however, is that PR is now publishing, in the form of its robots.txt, a list of all of the cases that people have successfully requested to be made less visible!.

From Mako Hill's blog post, "Quasi-Private Resources"
About Mako Hill

Try out the Gender Remixer for LEGO's marketing to girls and boys http://www.genderremixer.com/lego/ @berkmancenter
—John Palfrey (@jpalfrey)

Radio Berkman needs your help!

Hey folks! We’re hoping to take Radio Berkman in some amazing new directions this Spring, but we want your feedback.

Should we change our name? How can we tell better stories? What’s missing from current reporting on tech and internet issues?

We’ve made up a cute little survey right here, and would love for you to drop us some thoughts!

From Dan Jones's blog post for MediaBerkman, "Help Radio Berkman!"
About MediaBerkman | @radioberkman

The Citizen Media Law Project publishes its February law brief

The Citizen Media Law Project has had a busy month on all fronts! In January, the CMLP filed an amicus brief (under our new name, the Digital Media Law Project - more on that coming soon) with the support of our colleagues at Harvard Law's Cyberlaw Clinic in the Massachusetts Appeals Court. As our press release notes, in the brief - filed in the case Jenzabar, Inc. v. Long Bow, Inc. - CMLP expressed concerns about use of trademark law in cases that center around communicative, critical speech about a trademark's owner or affiliates, as the free-speech balancing tests employed in trademark law do not adequately protect such critical speech. The CMLP wishes to send a big thank you to HLS students Alan Ezekiel, Michael Hoven, and Andrew Pearson for their impressive work on the brief.

From the Citizen Media Law Project blog post, "Citizen Media Law Brief"
About the Citizen Media Law Project | @citmedialaw

Jonathan Zittrain & Kendra Albert explore Apple's new Gatekeeper

Mountain Lion is slated to include a feature called Gatekeeper as part of the security and privacy settings. Gatekeeper allows administrators (those with full privileges on a Mac) to limit the applications that can run on the Mac. They can choose among allowing apps downloaded from the Mac App Store only, or apps from outside the Store so long as they are digitally signed to Apple’s satisfaction by their developers, or apps from anywhere. (The latter has been the way both Mac and Windows PCs have worked, for better or worse, since the introduction of the Apple II in 1977.)

We here at Future of the Internet will refrain from saying “I told you so” about the prospect of Macs only running applications from the Mac App Store.

From Kendra Albert and Jonathan Zittrain's blog post for The Future of the Internet, "OS X Mountain Lion and Gatekeeper"
About Jonathan Zittrain | @zittrain

Smart, insightful piece from Julian Dibbel on the potentials and limits of mesh networks: http://t.co/mJMou47w—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz)

Jeffrey Schnapp ponders the limits of screen culture

Trend-tracking isn’t my day job. But in my own shuttling back and forth between physical and digital curation, scholarship, and teaching, I’m regularly struck by the ways in which the normativity of screen culture today is intensifying urges for sensorially richer, more tactile forms of experience and communication. From the revival of knitting and other forms of manual craft to the chapbook subculture that seems to be spreading worldwide to makers fairs, “analog” modes of experience, culture, and knowledge making/sharing are showing signs of renewed vigor. Or, rather, their renewal is being fed by the very pervasiveness of networked electronic screens.

From Jeffrey Schnapp's blog post, "Uprisings (on the limits of screen culture)"
About Jeffrey Schnapp | @jaytiesse

Weekly Global Voices: Syria: Razan Ghazzawi Arrested...Again

Syrian security forces arrested Syrian blogger and freedom of speech advocate Razan Ghazzawi on Thursday 16 February, 2012, during a raid on the offices of the Syrian Center for Freedom of Expression in Damascus where the activist works. Ghazzawi was arrested along with 13 of her colleagues, including the Head of the Center, Mazen Darwish.

This is the second time Razan Ghazzawi is arrested by the Syrian authorities. She was first detained in December 2011 at the Syrian-Jordanian border while on her way to attend a conference on freedom of expression online. Her arrest sparked an online outcry and an international campaign called for her immediate release. Razan was eventually released after spending 15 days in jail..

From Hisham Almiraat's blog post for Global Voices Online, "Syria: Razan Ghazzawi Arrested … Again"
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

This Buzz was compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

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Berkman Buzz: October 21, 2011

ashar — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:42:15 -0400

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here.

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* The Digital Public Library of America announces $5 Million in Funding from the Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund
* Ethan Zuckerman recaps Beth Coleman's presentation on "Tweeting the Revolution"
* John Palfrey describes teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on the history, present, and future of libraries
* Rebecca MacKinnon examines why censorship is a central issue in Tunisian political discourse and debates
* The Youth and Media Project launches a new website
* The Citizen Media Law Project reports on how one doctor's complaint turned a public database private
* Weekly Global Voices: "Israel: Joy and Anger Continue Over Shalit Deal"

Note: The Berkman Center is now accepting applications for fellowships in the 2012-2013 academic year! See here for information.

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The full buzz.

"The Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund today announced a major contribution for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) in the form of combined $5 million in funding. The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all."
From the Digital Public Library of America's blog post, Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund Announce Funding for the Digital Public Library of America

"'Tweeting the Revolution', tries to understand how we read large data sets to understand located action. This is a timely topic because we’re seeing a rise in protest activity that’s been missing from the public sphere for a few decades. Coleman wants to know what we can understand about social media and people’s willingness to take an activist stance. One of the foci of her work is the idea of mediated copresence, which she sees as a major way of understanding the relationship between technology and public action."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, Beth Coleman on "Tweeting the Revolution"

"What this class has me thinking this morning about is not just the substance — the future of libraries, the organization of knowledge, how we store and provide it and think about it — but also about the possibilities for teaching and learning. Yesterday, Harvard announced a landmark new gift: $40 million to catalyze innovations in learning and teaching from Rita and Gustave Hauser. If we have the chance to spend those resources, and ideally more, that it catalyzes from other donors, over the next decade to improve our learning and teaching, how might we go about that?"
From John Palfrey's blog post, Bibliotheca Class, and Learning and Teaching at Harvard

"Censorship is a key subject in the Tunisian political discoure and debates. There have recently been protests by conservatives demanding censorship of all media including TV, film, and Internet and protests by liberals against censorship. After all Internet censorship was lifted when Ben Ali stepped down in January, some censorship of pornographic and incendiary web content returned in May, prompting heated debates over who has the authority to decide what goes on the censorship list and whether that power will inevitably be abused."
From Rebecca MacKinnon's blog post, Tunisia and the Internet: A chance to get things right?

"Please visit our virtual lab space for up-to-date information on our research, advocacy, and curricular projects, including new photos and videos."
From the blog post Youth and Media Project Launches New Website

"Kansas City Star reporter Alan Bavley had a hunch. After years of investigating the health care industry, Bavley began to suspect that state medical boards did not adequately discipline doctors who committed malpractice. Physicians battling substance abuse, for example, were punished far more harshly. " From the Citizen Media Law Project's blog post on "Health Reporters Unite! How One Doctor's Complaint Turned a Public Database Private" From the Citizen Media Law Project's blog post, Health Reporters Unite! How One Doctor's Complaint Turned a Public Database Private

"The news of Shalit's release was almost the only thing discussed in the Israeli twittersphere and blogosphere since the deal was announced."
From the Global Voices post, Israel: Joy and Anger Continue Over Shalit Deal

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Compiled by Amar Ashar.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

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

Berkman Buzz: July 8, 2011

syoung — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:00:00 -0400

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here.

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Citizen Media Law Project on Vermont's amendment to its open records law.
* William McGeveran considers individual privacy and election law.
* David Weinberger is reading Tolstoy's essay on Shakespeare.
* Peter Suber breaks down the open access and copyright situation.
* OpenNet Initiative watches Australia turn on Internet filtering.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Togo: Fragile Truce Emerges After Five Weeks of Student Protests"

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The full buzz.

"That's why Vermont gets a gold star for its amendment to its open records law enforcement, in §319 of the Vermont Statutes, that requires that the public agency pay your attorneys fees if you "substantially prevail" in your case. The language in the statute mirrors that of the federal Freedom of Information Act and seems to operate similarly (though the statute has yet to be interpreted by a Vermont court). That suggests that if the court finds that most of your requests should have been answered, 1) you get those records and 2) your attorney gets paid."
From Brittany Griffin Smith's blog post for CMLP, Vermont Gives its Open Records Law Teeth

"I’ve been thinking and writing again about the topic of my very first full law review article: the role of 'sunshine' in our election system and the way it can compromise individual privacy. In the internet era, personal convictions and associations may be burned by too much sunshine. Of course, the public deserves to know about the big donors who effectively fund political campaigns. But knowing the identity of ordinary people who write small checks, sign petitions, or cast ballots doesn’t help inform voters, and it can squelch participation in politics -- especially by those with unpopular views, and those who want or need to maintain an apolitical public persona."
From William McGeveran's blog post Sunshine, Elections, and Privacy (Again)

"Tolstoy really really doesn’t like Shakespeare. His polemic is a wonderful literary rant, taking him on for putting undifferentiated characters into ridiculous plots, speaking language no one would ever actually say, and betraying Christian values and virtues. His opening recounting of King Lear shows just how absurd the plot is, and he moves on from there. So why is Shakespeare universally acclaimed? He thinks the Germans -- Goethe, in particular -- started it, and it became what would today call a meme..."
From David Weinberger's blog post Tolstoy and the Shakespeare meme

"From the beginning, OA struggled against the widespread assumption that it must violate copyright law. But this has been a struggle against perception, not reality. In fact, steering clear of infringement has always been easier than steering clear of this false assumption and the harm it has caused. The assumption has made some authors fear OA. It has made some institutions skittish about committing to OA. It has needlessly weakened some OA policies, for example, by creating loopholes for dissenting publishers. It has even been a dishonest pretext for bad legislation...Here's an attempt to clarify the situation in a dozen propositions."
From Peter Suber, in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, Open access and copyright

"Last week, our friends over at Herdict reported on the proposed ISP-level censorship in Australia. The plan, released by Telstra and Optus (two major ISPs), aims to protect Australian citizens by blocking child pornography and child exploitation sites pulled from an Interpol blacklist. The list of sites (to be censored) was not released, although a government spokesperson claimed about 500 to 1000 sites would be included in the initial filter. Only a few days after the plan became public, Telstra was already wavering on whether to be a part of the implementation, mostly because of fears of Internet vigilantes. However, after the demise of LulzSecurity (a prominent 'hactivist' group), Telestra reaffirmed its commitment to the censorship regime."
From Kendra Albert's blog post for ONI, Australian Filtering Goes Live, 'Trivial' to Bypass

"West African country Togo's students' struggle for better education conditions is now in its fifth week and despite a recent truce, tensions remains high in the capital Lomé. A wind of appeasement seemed to blow on the demonstrations organized by the Mouvement pour l'Épanouissement des Étudiants Togolais - MEET (Movement for the Fulfillment of Togolese Students), when students managed to obtain from authorities the reinstatement...of the president of their association on June 30. Abou Seidou, a student of the University of Lomé, had been previously expelled for allegedly causing troubles on the campus."
From Julie Owono's blog post for Global Voices Online, Togo: Fragile Truce Emerges After Five Weeks of Student Protests

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Compiled by Seth Young.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

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

MIT bound!

syoung — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:30:00 -0400

Photo by oso, CC BY-NC-SA

Huge congratulations to our friend and colleague Ethan Zuckerman on his new gig at the MIT Media Lab!
Here's the news via Ethan's blog:

So, I got a new job. A really cool new job.

As of September, I’ll be based at the MIT Media Lab as a principal research scientist and director of the Center for Civic Media. The Center is the next generation of the “Center for Future Civic Media” founded by Henry Jenkins, Mitch Resnick and Chris Csikszentmihályi in 2007, supported by the Knight Foundation, to explore the opportunities, challenges and questions that surround communities, news and information in a digital age. The Knight Foundation announced a renewal of their support for the Center today, and we’re relaunching as the Center for Civic Media this fall. The press release announcing these changes is here, and Harvard’s Nieman Lab has an interview with me discussing about the new position.

CONTINUED...

Ethan's amazing capacity for integrating scholarship and action -- fueled by a mix of leadership, teamwork, creativity, and experimentation -- makes him the ideal person to lead the Center for Civic Media ("a leader I'd follow off any number of cliffs"). As a deeply committed leader, teacher, researcher, and provocateur, Ethan will be a lovely and catalytic addition to the Media Lab team ("a type of quantum energy not seen since the Big Bang"). All of us at the Berkman Center look forward to continued collaboration in the years to come!

And speaking of (the Center for) civic media and the Knight Foundation, tune in here at 2:30pm ET for the live webcast of the 2011 Knight News Challenge winners... [Ethan blogs the winners here, one of which, Zeega, we're especially excited about.]

Berkman Buzz: May 20, 2011

syoung — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:00:00 -0400

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here.

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* David Weinberger proposes new defaults for library privacy.
* Media Cloud, "The Russian Media Ecosystem and the Arab Spring"
* Doc Searls wonders aloud about mainstream media's hyperlinking practices.
* Dan Gillmor asks us to raise our linking standards.
* Citizen Media Law Project on the District's Anti-SLAPP Law.
* OpenNet Initiative looks into a case of centralized, automated filtering.
* StopBadware on the security benefits (and drawbacks) of centralized app stores.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Tunisia: Internet Censorship Makes a Comeback"

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The full buzz.

"Without library privacy, individuals might not engage in free and open inquiry for fear that their interactions with the library will be used against them. Library privacy thus establishes libraries as a sanctuary for thought, a safe place in which any idea can be explored. This in turn establishes the institution that sponsors the library — the town, the school, the government — as a believer in the value of free inquiry. This in turn establishes the notion of free, open, fearless inquiry as a social good deserving of support and protection. Thus, the value of library privacy scales seamlessly from the individual to the culture." From David Weinberger's blog post for Hyper-Public Rebooting Library Privacy in the Age of the Network

"It is no secret that the Arab Spring has shaken authoritarian governments not just in the Middle East, but around the world. China has engaged in a severe crackdown on dissent, including imprisoning well-known artist Ai Weiwei, and has also gone so far as to prohibit the sale of Jasmine. But what about Russia, which has left its Internet mostly open but is more similar to China in its repression of offline political action? ...the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia provide a great example of the appearance of an agenda item in the Russian blogosphere that is almost completely absent from official Russian government information channels. The Russian government, it seems, didn’t know what to say, or how to say it." From Bruce Etling's post for Media Cloud, The Russian Media Ecosystem and the Arab Spring

"On the whole, mainstream media have had a passive-aggressive approach to the Web ever since they were first challenged by it, in the mid-’90s. Even now, in 2011, they’re still trying to shove the Web’s genie back in the old ink bottle. They do it with paywalls, with schemes to drag your eyes past pages and pages of advertising, and (perhaps worst of all) by leaving out hyperlinks. Never mind that the hyperlink is a perfect way to practice one of journalism’s prime responsibilities: citing sources. Or, by another verb, attriibuting." From Doc Searls' blog post Why not link to sources?

"In a book a few years ago, I called the worldwide web a 'great autonomous linking machine' – a shoutout to the web's most essential characteristic: hyperlinks. Information creators use them to take people to new places. Information consumers use them to traverse the increasingly blurry boundaries of human knowledge. We all benefit." From Dan Gillmor's post on the Guardian, The web's weakest links

"We're pleased to announce that we have updated the CMLP Legal Guide on the District of Columbia's anti-SLAPP law to incorporate its brand new anti-SLAPP statute that came into effect on March 31, 2011. A SLAPP, or 'Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,' is a lawsuit filed in retaliation for speaking out on a public issue or controversy. The new D.C. statute falls on the more protective end of the spectrum of anti-SLAPP laws..." From the CMLP blog post Legal Guide Updated With D.C.'s New Anti-SLAPP Law

"I investigated the issue and found out that the website tumblr.com and all blogs hosted by Tumblr are indeed blocked, but interestingly, the decision to block the site was actually made in Canada by the company that provides the filtering technology to the ISPs in Qatar (Qtel), UAE (du), Yemen (Yemennet), and Kuwait (Fasttelco). I checked how Netsweeper currently categorizes the Web site tumblr.com, and found out that it has been categorized/miscategorized as ‘Journals and Blogs’ and as ‘Pornography’. As a result, tumbr.com and all blogs hosted by the service became inaccessible for Internet users in the four countries because ISPs in these countries rely on Netsweeper technology to implement national Internet filtering." From Helmi Noman's blog post for ONI, When a Canadian company decides what citizens in the Middle East can access online

"The other day, the JoshMeister blogged about the Mac App Store and the effect of its approval delays in getting critical security updates to users. [...] As the app store model becomes more popular on both smartphones and PCs, it’s important to explore issues like this. What the JoshMeister doesn’t mention is that centralized app markets can also help encourage users to keep software updated. It’s much easier to have a single marketplace app, once per day or week, say 'here are all the apps that have updates, click to update them all' than to have to manage each app individually. If this encourages users to keep their apps up to date, that’s a positive thing for security." From Maxim Weinstein's blog post for StopBadware, The App Store giveth and the App Store taketh away

"Internet censorship is making a comeback in Tunisia, much to the annoyance of many cyber activists across the country. During the rule of ousted Tunisian president Zein El Abideen Ben Ali, the government exercised a harsh censorship policy by blocking all web pages and websites that criticized the regime, including websites such as those of Al Jazeera, Amnesty International, WikiLeaks, YouTube, Nawaat and DailyMotion, as well as dozens of Facebook pages. On January 13, 2011, Ben Ali addressed the Tunisian people and promised to put an end to Internet censorship, in an attempt to absorb the rage of the masses, especially the youth. Ben Ali kept his promise but it was too late for him to remain in power and, ever since mid-January, Internet users in Tunisia have started to enjoy an unprecedented uncensored web access. Recently, however, the Tunisian Agency of Internet censored four Facebook pages..., following a military order." From Afef Abrougui's blog post for Global Voices Online, Tunisia: Internet Censorship Makes a Comeback

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Compiled by Seth Young.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

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