Chilling Effects Newsfeed

Berkman Buzz: March 4, 2011

rheacock — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:43:22 -0500

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

* Jonathan Zittrain and Molly Sauter wonder whether the US will get an Internet kill switch
* Wendy Seltzer reviews takedown complaints in the Android marketplace
* Mike Ananny and Taylor Owen argue that despite Twitter, reporters still matter
* Stuart Shieber reviews institutional memberships for open-access publishers
* Herdict explains Internet filtering during the Jasmine Revolution
* David Weinberger raises questions for the Digital Public Library of America
* Weekly Global Voices: "Palestine: Demands for a Unified Nation set for March 15"

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The full buzz.

"Oddly, the U.S. government may already have the authority to shut down the Internet anyway. Section 706 of the Communications of Act of 1934 – written into the Act shortly after the 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor – provides the President with the ability to shut down 'any facility or station for wire communication' or take federal control of such facilities in the event of a 'state of war' and for up to six months after the expiration of such a state. Of course, the War Congress of 1941 wasn’t thinking about the Internet at the time, though there is some indication that the Department of Homeland Security believes this provision could apply. In June of 2010, the Department of Homeland security apparently cited Section 706 as 'one of the authorities the President would rely on if the nation were under a cyber attack.'"
From Molly Sauter and Jonathan Zittrain's blog post, "Will the U.S. get an Internet 'Kill Switch'?"

"Since Apple launched its iPhone App Store, applications marketplaces have popped up with increasing prominence. Google, unlike Apple*, does not lock Android users into purchasing from its Android Market, but it does make that marketplace a convenient place to find Android applications (passing 100,000 apps late last year). In February, Chilling Effects saw 206 complaints to Google regarding Android Market apps, almost evenly split between trademark and copyright.* Because the Android Market offers commercial transactions, its context differs somewhat from the search and blog hosting in which DMCA -- copyright -- complaints predominate. At the same time, many apps are offered free of charge."
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post for Chilling Effects, "Takedown Complaints in the Android Marketplace"

"What would it mean for the future of international journalism if – a big if – all revolutions were tweeted? Until recently, most western societies viewed the world through the eyes of foreign correspondents. But if Canadians can now watch revolutions like Egypt’s unfold in real-time – via tweets, Facebook pages and Al Jazeera – then why should news organizations send foreign correspondents to far-off places?"
From Mike Ananny and Taylor Owen's editorial for The Mark, "Why Reporters Still Matter in the Age of Twitter"

"The issue of OA publisher memberships is interesting and fraught. Harvard University is not currently a member of any of the major OA publishers—BioMed Central, Hindawi, or Public Library of Science. (Actually, Harvard Medical School is a PLoS member.) I’m not involved in Harvard’s decisions about institutional memberships, although I am not a fan of memberships in general, as you will see. I’ll explain my own view of the difficulty with memberships in terms of the market design for publisher services, and then talk about what alternatives there are."
From Stuart Shieber's blog post, "Institutional memberships for open-access publishers considered harmful"

"As protests and unrest continue to destabilize the Middle East and North Africa, the effects of these popular revolutions have predictably affected Internet access in these countries. Below is a list of recent filtering measures implemented by governments who continue to face opposition from their citizens."
From Qichen Zhang's blog post for Herdict, "Internet Filtering in the Jasmine Revolution"

"I got to attend the Digital Public Library of America‘s first workshop yesterday. It was an amazing experience that left me with the best kind of headache: Too much to think about! Too many possibilities for goodness!"
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Questions from and for the Digital Public Library of America workshop"

"As the Arab world witnesses uprising after uprising, seeing dictators fall and others exposed one after another, the Palestinian case looks like the ultimate goal. The fate of Palestine has long suffered from its neighbors’ incapability (more or less intentional) of forming a strong block against Israel, whether through feeding the divisions inside the Palestinian political scene, or more directly by being an ally of Israel."
From Imane Eddbali's blog post for Global Voices Online, "Palestine: Demands for a Unified Nation set for March 15"

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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock

The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected 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.

Questions for Secretary Clinton concerning "Internet freedom"

syoung — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:31:00 -0500

Berkman Center faculty associate Matthew Hindman provoked an energetic email exchange among members of the extended Berkman community today, in anticipation of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "Internet Freedom" speech (transcript, #NetFreedom). Matt had asked for suggestions of a question to ask Secretary Clinton:

Secretary Clinton will be giving a policy speech tomorrow (Tuesday) entitled "Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Challenges in a Networked World." The event is actually on the ground floor of my building here at GWU, and I'll be in attendance. It's apparently a post-Egypt update to her much-discussed "Remarks on Internet Freedom."
It's likely that there will be an opportunity after the address to ask questions. Suggestions?

A digest of the pre-speech responses to Matt's request:

Rebecca MacKinnon: I also understand that this is an effort to assert that the U.S. still believes in Internet freedom after wikileaks.

Clay Shirky: so a possible question might be to ask her why she thinks those two views are compatible.

Sasha Costanza-Chock: here are some followups for "will anyone think the U.S. still believes in internet freedom after..."
* After the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (the 'kill switch' legislation)?
* After ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)?
* After the proposal to use trade law (Special 301) to target countries that 'harbor pirate websites' contained in this 90 pages of IP monopolist industry drivel: Feb 2010 Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator report?
* After maneuvering for 'veto power' over new top level domains?

Elliot Noss: please do not forget the COICA bill and ICE enforcement against domain names.

Chris Soghoian: "This week, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing focused on law enforcement access to modern communications services -- specifically, the FBI wants backdoors in Skype, Blackberry, Google and Facebook. If the FBI wants to force these services to enable communications intercepts, how can we judge the Saudis, the Indian and the Lebanese governments for wanting similar access? Isn't it a bit hypocritical for the State department to encourage the use of secure encryption tools in those countries when the FBI is trying to circumvent encrypted communications here in the US."

Rebecca MacKinnon: "Given that no case has yet been brought in any court against Wikileaks for publication of the diplomatic cables, if the U.S. Secretary of State makes a statement claiming that Wikileaks had no right to do what it did - despite the fact that numerous first amendment scholars believe there is no legal case against Wikileaks - isn't that a message to the world that the U.S. executive branch seeks to weaken the first amendment, does not respect rule of law, separation of powers, or the fundamental principle of our legal system that everybody is innocent until proven guilty?"

Wendy Seltzer: "We've set a great example for the world in protecting freedom of expression through the First Amendment -- even when that expression makes those in our government uncomfortable. If the Secretary is now condemning Wikileaks without a trial and Senator Lieberman pressured Amazon to stop doing business with the group -- despite the fact that numerous first amendment scholars believe there is no legal case against Wikileaks -- doesn't that weaken the power of our example? Do we now invite others to disregard rule of law, separation of powers, and the fundamental principle that everybody is innocent until proven guilty?"

Brad Abruzzi: "It's been argued that the U.S. government exerted pressure and made threats implicit or explicit under the century-old espionage laws that predate and surely offend contemporary, generally-held constitutional protections owed to a free press, in order to deter online entities from hosting the leaked diplomatic cables and routing donations to Wikileaks. To the extent this has occurred, don't these actions compromise our moral authority to advance the causes of Internet freedom, free expression, the rule of law, and the fundamental legal principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty?"
Alternatively,
"How does your stated position that Wikileaks acted unlawfully -- which we assume is based on the century-old espionage laws that predate and surely offend contemporary generally-held constitutional protections owed to a free press -- square with the values that you hope to promote abroad (e.g., Internet freedom, free expression, the rule of law, and the fundamental legal principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty)?"

Dan Gillmor: And will the technology being created to preserve Net freedom in other countries be deployed in the US, too?

David Weinberger: If I may answer for The Secretary: We support Internet freedom, not the use of the Net for unlawful purposes, whether that's to violate national security or the rights of the owners of intellectual property. This is precisely analogous to our nation's long-held commitments to free speech and the right to assembly: those rights are not intended to protect illegal activity,
Since that is pretty much the predictable answer (isn't it?) and since that answer is not by itself all that outrageous or unreasonable (note my weasel words "by itself"), I think to push this discussion forward, you have to either focus on something highly specific (to which The Secretary is likely to give a dodgy, unsatisfyingly generic answer) or try to take the discussion in a different direction. E.g.:

"It is thrilling to hear the Secretary of State stand so firmly on the side of Internet Freedom. But, when it comes to how to apply that policy, we seem to be running into a clash of cultures on several issues. For example, US policy increasingly favors strict enforcement of so-called intellectual property rights, including harsher punishments, while many on the Internet (including many young people) are building a culture based on sharing and remixing that assumes a looser interpretation of those rights. There has not been in this country an opportunity for all the stakeholders to sit at the table to discuss how these issues might be worked through to protect the rights of creators and remixers in the new age the Net is ushering in. Would you favor opening such a dialogue, sponsoring it, having State participate in it, and perhaps holding off on some of the more extreme IP protection policies the US government is so aggressively pursuing?"

Bruce Etling: She'll address this argument in her speech, I'm sure. I too would emphasize the need to be supportive of the goal of a free and open internet for everyone; i don't think this community is opposed to that. My response on the wikileaks question if I'm Secretary Clinton:
"If a Chinese or Iranian patriotic hacker broke into your computer and online accounts and stole your banking and credit card information and posted that on the web to intimidate you, and also broke into your email to find out which dissidents you are talking to privately and made those names public as well as portions of those emails, taken out of context, to arrest and then try those dissidents on trumped up charges, and you speak out against those hackers, aren't you, as a leading internet scholar, being hypocritical, seeking to weaken the first amendment, lack respect for the rule of law, separation of powers, and the fundamental principle of the US legal system that everybody is innocent until proven guilty?"
While those in support of wikileaks will argue he's a journalist and has free speech protections, it is clear that the govt. treats this as a case of theft and possibly violation of espinage act. All public statements have made this clear and they will not say the opposite publicly at this speech--if you got her to say that opposite it would be something, but I doubt she would fall for it.

Jillian York: The counter-question to that, of course, is what the US would do if a Chinese or Iranian patriot hacker broke into their government's systems and released documents...
As to your second point, though I think you're absolutely right about their attitude, that still doesn't explain why the US State Department would stand idly by while a US Senator bullies corporations--without any law to back him--into taking Wikileaks sites down. That most certainly doesn't jibe with US attitudes toward whistleblowing sites elsewhere.

Yochai Benkler: If this ends up being her response, then it would be based on a reassertion of what we know to be false, factually. That's what I spent the last two months studying and what I documented in the paper I emailed around last week. Wikileaks did nothing remotely comparable to "broke into your computer and online accounts and stole your banking and credit card information and posted that on the web to intimidate you, and also broke into your email to find out which dissidents you are talking to privately and made those names public as well as portions of those emails, taken out of context," It isn't about being "haters" as opposed to "loyal opposition." It is about refusing to be swept up in moments of red baiting and witch hunts.
If the secretary wants to preempt these claims, she should say something like
"Internet freedom is hard, it can be embarrassing and it can be challenging. We learned it on our own skin with Wikileaks, and we overreacted because it can be very unpleasant, and it can seem very threatening. But we spent the last two months digesting the events and we have come to understand that at the end of the day we are all better off in a world where Wikileaks can leak and we get to argue back, but not shut it down."
I wouldn't hold my breath.

Bruce Etling: i love david's framing/question.
jill, that is a good question. i don't think that's ever happened, though, so we don't know yet. (right?) or has secretary clinton said something specific about an overseas whistle blowing site already?

Yochai Benkler: as to whether it is, or is not, appropriate to criticize State for what Lieberman did, remember that PayPal referred to Harold Koh's letter in its explanation of its removal of services, and that letter apparently also played a role in how Amazon justified its removal of services; OMB memo regarding continuing classified status was followed by a range of agencies, including pentagon and library of congress, shutting off access to Wikileaks for their employees; and the Washington Post publishing a career advice column suggesting that ambitious young professionals not read the cables if they don't want to jeopardize their futures in government jobs.
I'm not sure it is very powerful to say, "I stood up and said that Wikileaks was an attack on the international community; my legal advisor wrote a letter demanding return of the cables that were illegally obtained; the Vice President said Assange was like a high-tech terrorist; Senate Homeland Security Comittee chairman asked firms to shut down access; I said nothing when firms began shutting off services to Wikileaks in response to his request; but, hey, the US government is a complicated place, and we're not responsible for what others are doing." Would we accept "the government is a complicated place" as an excuse made by the foreign minister of another country in reference to some other agency being responsible for asking private ISPs to shut down Internet access to a political irritant?

Catherine Bracy: It's worth noting that Secretary Clinton specifically called out Joe Lieberman in her last Internet Freedom speech:
"I wish to acknowledge Charles Overby, the CEO of Freedom Forum here at the Newseum; Senator Edward Kaufman and Senator Joe Lieberman, my former colleagues in the Senate, both of whom worked for passage of the Voice Act, which speaks to Congress’s and the American people’s commitment to internet freedom, a commitment that crosses party lines and branches of government."

Fernando Bermejo: It seems that the idea of Internet freedom, as being put forth by this administration, aims towards universal applicability (after all, why is it the Secretary of State—and not any other Secretary—who’s become the main proponent and leading figure in this issue?). My question would be whether she is willing to accept the same principles at home and abroad. If Wikileaks releases secret information from an African government or from China, is that a problem? (If not, it should be the same for the US). If Iranian officials put Liberman-like pressure on private companies to block, say, Facebook, is that a problem? (If yes, it should be the same for the US). Etc.

Matthew Hindman: There are some great points and suggestions in this thread.
It's a hard call, but I'll do my best to ask a variant of Dan and Fernando's question (with some additional context added by Sasha / Chris / Bruce / others): will the same principles and technological tools that we use to support activists in emerging democracies be available U.S. citizens?

The conversation continued through Secretary Clinton's speech:

Jillian York: Well, [Clinton] answers my second question! Too bad she didn't call out Lieberman by name.

Rebecca MacKinnon: so according to her logic the pentagon papers should not have been allowed either?

Jillian York: The problem, I think, is that her framing implies that Wikileaks itself stole the documents. Since we don't know if that's true (the alternative being they were handed the documents by Manning), then the question is: would her response be different if she thought Manning--and not by Wikileaks' order--had stolen the documents?

Rebecca MacKinnon: yeah exactly. i thought the law was pretty clear. that stealing docs is a crime, but publishing them if you obtain them from somebody else is not.

Jillian York: That's why I think her premise is that Wikileaks itself stole (or coerced Manning to steal) the documents.

Bruce Etling: I'm waiting to read Yochai's article, but my understanding is that if they can prove that Assange coerced or encouraged Manning to steal the documents, then they can prosecute him under the espionage act as part of a conspiracy to steal the documents. My understanding is that it will be very difficult to prove.

Harry Lewis: So the question could be very simple: "Are you saying that Wikileaks stole the diplomatic cables and should be prosecuted for theft? Or merely "denounced" for publishing documents someone else stole?" She should be pinned down on this dishonest rhetorical glide, which does make the NYT of Pentagon Papers day also thief.

Andy Carvin: Alas, she took no questions. Bolted as soon as she finished.

Matthew Hindman: Apparently Secretary Clinton has decided that discretion is the better part of valor. Unlike her Internet freedom speech a year ago, and contrary to on-the-ground reports prior to the event, she left the podium without taking questions...
I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to ask a question. But thanks anyway for an edifying discussion.

Brad Abruzzi: But the Espionage Act also, by its terms, reaches distribution and even receipt of information downstream of the "theft." 18 U.S.C. sec. 793(c), (d) (query whether the state of mind req'ts might give Wikipedia some wiggle room. as against the measure of deference a court might give to the gov't's views on what is "information relating to the national defense" and "used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation").
To my knowledge there is no First Amendment limiting gloss on the law that would constrain the government from enforcing these provisions criminally, where the recipient did not conspire in or aid and abet the theft (although the Court has interposed a requirement that the defendant have acted in bad faith). The Pentagon Papers case only declined to restrain the publication of the papers; it did not rule out criminal punishment of publication after the fact.
The Secretary makes a fair point, I think, in emphasizing the difference between persuasion and coercion — although as anyone working in the U.S. State Department well knows, there are gradations between the two, and we might very well obtain a result by "persuading" a result by implying coercion in the alternative. We're all much more persuasive when we're backed by power. Brandishing laws like these, with their significant criminal penalties and all the uncertainty that attends their application, starts to edge into the coercion zone. Short of doing the brandishing, it's still at least somewhat problematic to deploy "persuasive" rhetoric against this backdrop of law.

Yochai Benkler: 1. part III of the paper does the legal analysis. If they had stolen, it's not controversial that they can be prosecuted for the theft. But that has never been the argument. It's "conspiracy" of a type that would put the NYT reporters who did NSA eavesdropping or Pentagon Papers as co-conspirators as well.
2. The strategy in this talk is similar to the strategy throughout the events. The framing is very similar to Koh's letter, or, for that matter, to Mitchell's letter to the NYT during the Pentagon Papers conflict.
Step A: state truthfully that the documents were obtained initially illegally (by the whistleblower);
Step B: leave open the implication that publishing the materials was also illegal.
This is false, as a matter of constitutional law; but it is not in fact stated, it is merely implied by omission; this leaves room for various extralegal avenues that can be denied as not under your control to do the suppression work (Amazon, EveryDNS, Mastercard, various US agencies for computer systems under their control, etc.)
Step C: Make the weakest possible version of the claims of your critics: that saying Wikileaks should not be suppressed means that you think that governments should never have confidential communications ever. And then use the obvious refutation of that claim to produce the implication that you are in fact engaging the criticism. This is nonsense. The argument is that it is the government's role to keep confidential what needs to be kept confidential, and it is the press's role to decide which parts, and how, to publish when leaks do occasionally occur. This produces a system that mostly can work secretly, with occasional stochastic moments of sunshine to give a spot-checking possibility for the public.
There is nothing unusual about this practice. It is fairly standard in debating and legal argument. As in those other contexts, the fact that a skilled practitioners makes the moves does not mean you, the reader, should allow yourself to be suckered into thinking that it is in fact a substantive response to the actual criticism.

David Weinberger: By my reading of her remarks, she would have condemned the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, assuming that those documents had the same deleterious effects on policy and safety of personnel that she claims for the Wikileaks material. "Condemn" is weak tea in the range of options, and I don't think there is any Secretary of State in history who would condone (and not condemn) the leaking of confidential materials.
So, the question isn't whether she condemns the leak. Of course she does. The question is what steps she thinks should be taken to prevent such leaks and to punish those in the chain of leakage. About that she is quiet in this snippet of this speech, except to say that the gov't did not (and, by implication, should not) "coerce conduct" in the private sector that would limit Internet freedom.
If you think about the pressure she's under, what she says seems designed calibrated to dispute those who want to use Wikileaks as an excuse to limit Internet freedom.
How this matches to State's behavior -- then, now, and later -- is a different matter.

Ethan Zuckerman blogged his response to Secretary Clinton's speech: A three week old reaction to Secretary Clinton’s internet freedom 2011 speech. See also Ethan's response to Secretary Clinton's first "Internet freedom" speech, in 2010 -- Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention -- if not also his many posts that touch on this and related issues.

Berkman Center alum Rebecca MacKinnon wrote about the speech in Foreign Policy: "Internet Freedom" in the Age of Assange. See also Rebecca's response on China specifically via Evan Osnos' New Yorker blog: Q. & A. with Rebecca MacKinnon: Internet in China.

And Berkman staffer Jillian York opined for Al Jazeera English: Grasping the new online reality.

Berkman Buzz: Week of October 18, 2010

syoung — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:30:00 -0400

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

* 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.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/ -- and sometimes from the Center's wider network -- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/network/

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

Berkman Buzz: Week of July 26, 2010

syoung — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:25:00 -0400

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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

* Wendy Seltzer, "Jailbreaking Copyright's Scope."
* Facebook caper? Jonathan Zittrain holsters his pitchfork.
* Facebook privacy settings? danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai ask, "Who cares?"
* Peace on Facebook? Ethan Zuckerman tries to do the math.
* Dan Gillmor's initial comments on the WikiLeaks "Afghanistan diary."
* Weekly Global Voices: "Côte d'Ivoire: Journalists accused of document theft are freed"
* Herdict on court-ordered filtering in Russia.
* CMLP on the FTC's defense of its Blogger Endorsement Guidelines.
* Radio Berkman 160: "Business, Meet Web"
* Doc Searls' belated eulogy for Ricochet.
* David Weinberger imagines a software-defined radio future.

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The full buzz.

"A bit late for the rule’s “triennial” cycle, the Librarian of Congress has released the sec 1201(a)(1)(C) exceptions from the prohibitions on circumventing copyright access controls. For the next three years, people will not be ” circumventing” if they “jailbreak” or unlock their smartphones, remix short portions of motion pictures on DVD (if they are college and university professors or media students, documentary filmmakers, or non-commercial video-makers), research the security of videogames, get balky obsolete dongled programs to work, or make an ebook read-aloud. (I wrote about the hearings more than a year ago, when the movie studios demoed camcording a movie — that didn’t work to stop the exemption.) Since I’ve criticized the DMCA’s copyright expansion, I was particularly interested in the inter-agency debate over EFF’s proposed jailbreak exemption. Even given the expanded “para-copyright” of anticircumvention, the Register of Copyrights and NTIA disagreed over how far the copyright holder’s monopoly should reach."
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post Jailbreaking Copyright’s Scope

(And, for Chilling Effects, David Abrams reviews the Librarian of Congress' latest DMCA circumvention exceptions.)

"So, is this a problem? As I’m writing, news is only just breaking, so it’s like that moment when a toddler trips, falls, and then has to think about whether to cry or not. “You’re OK!” is usually what the alert parent encouragingly says — and if the toddler buys it, it’s usually true. In fact, even if the toddler doesn’t buy it, it’s still usually true. In this case, I think I’m with the metaphorical parent. The data that Ron grabbed is precisely what Facebook users have chosen (or perhaps more accurately, passively acquiesced) to share. For those who lock their privacy settings to avoid having a public listing in a Facebook search, they’re not present here. For those who have, they are — along with a click through to their respective Facebook pages however they’ve chosen to share them."
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post Facebook’s ocean of names becomes a torrent

(Harry Lewis also shares his thoughts on the scraping of Facebook's directory.)

"Eszter Hargittai and I just published a new article in First Monday entitled: “Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?” Abstract: With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While its changes in this domain have often prompted privacy advocates and news media to critique the company, Facebook has continued to attract more users to its service. This raises a question about whether or not Facebook’s changes in privacy approaches matter and, if so, to whom. This paper examines the attitudes and practices of a cohort of 18– and 19–year–olds surveyed in 2009 and again in 2010 about Facebook’s privacy settings. Our results challenge widespread assumptions that youth do not care about and are not engaged with navigating privacy......"
From danah boyd's blog post Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?

"I’m a data junkie, and there’s little more frustrating to me than an incomplete data set. Basically, by showing us a very small portion of the nation to nation social graph, Facebook is hinting that the whole graph is available: not just how many friendships Indian Facebook users form with Pakistani users, but how many they form with Americans, Canadians, Chinese, other Indians, etc. Obviously, this is info I’m interested in – I’ve been building a critique that argues that usage of social networking tools to build connections between people in the same country vastly outpaces use of these tools to cross national, cultural and religious borders."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Counting International Connections on Facebook

"WikiLeaks' roles -- intermediary, publisher, P.R. agent and more -- is not utterly unprecedented, but the size and importance of this story takes the shifting changes in media to new levels. (Do read Jay Rosen's smart instant analysis on all of this.) What do we make of such a "stateless news organization," as Jay elegantly puts it, which works so hard to subvert so many media assumptions of the past?"
From Dan Gillmor's post in Salon, The WikiLeaks war logs change everything

(More responses to the WikiLeaks news this week -- from
Doc Searls, The Wikileaks Story
Herdict, Wikileaks Censored?
Global Voices Online, Afghan Bloggers on Wikileaks War Logs)

"The three journalists of Le Nouveau Courrier d'Abidjan arrested for refusing to reveal their sources have been finally released this evening after a two-week ordeal. On July 13th, Le Nouveau Courrier published an investigative report on the coffee and cocoa export trade in Côte d'Ivoire, which provoked a police raid in the newspaper offices. Since they didn't find the base documents used for the article, and the editorial team refused to give them up, publisher Stéphane Guédé, managing editor Théophile Kouamouo [who is also a Rising Voices grantee] and editor Saint Clavier Oula were taken into police custody. Two days later they were taken to jail, where they have been waiting for their sentence since then."
From Elia Varela Serra's blog post for Global Voices, Côte d'Ivoire: Journalists accused of document theft are freed

"Although the ISP used a “common carrier” argument, saying that the sites themselves were not responsible for the content created or uploaded by their users (a la section 230 of the CDA here in the US ), the court ruled in favor of the Prosecutor and forced the ISP to block the sites. Allegedly, the first four mentioned sites had copies of “Mein Kampf” and on YouTube the video “Russia for Russians”. The court considered all of these materials to be “extremist materials” and thus ordered the IP blocks to prevent access."
From Alex Fayette's blog post for Herdict, Russian court blocks YouTube and other sites

"As I've explained in detail in prior posts, the Commission revised the guidelines last year for the first time since 1980, with a particular emphasis on endorsements by bloggers and other online citizen journalists who do not disclose that the products or services they review were provided to them for free or at a discount. Despite a number of questionable incidents since the FTC issued its revised guidelines, it has taken only one public action under the revised rules: sending a letter in April to Ann Taylor Loft raising concerns about a promotion the clothing company ran for bloggers and warning the company not to undertake any similar campaigns. The FTC's new factsheet states that "since the FTC issued the revised Guides, advertisers, ad agencies, bloggers, and others have sent questions to endorsements@ftc.gov," and offers what it says are "answers to some of the most frequently asked questions." But the factsheet also seems to be responding to criticims of the rules, by myself and others."
From Eric Robinson's blog post for CMLP, FTC Seeks to Clarify -- and Justify -- Its Blogger Endorsement Guidelines

This week on Radio Berkman: This week on Radio Berkman: Berkman fellow and Law Lab co-director Oliver Goodenough speaks with Zeba Kahn about Vermont's virtual business laws...
Radio Berkman 160: Business, Meet Web
More episodes of Radio Berkman

"In retrospect, Ricochet was way ahead of its time. It used mesh networking, spread spectrum, low-power license-free channels, and other forms of network coolness. It failed, like so much else, by being gassed up and deflated in the dot-com boom and bust. But what it negotiated with the cities and with private residents for node sites still impresses me."
From Doc Searls' blog post Remembering Ricochet

"Software-defined radios (SDRs) are not the next generation of transistor radios or boomboxes (ask your parents, kids). They are radios in the more primordial sense of being devices that can receive radio-wave signals. The radios you and I are used to are hard-wired to do one thing: Tune into specific frequencies and translate the radio signals into toe-tapping tunes or the blather of infuriating talk show hosts. SDRs can be programmed to do anything they want with any type of signal they can receive. For example, they might treat messages as, say, maps, or signals to turn on the porch light … or as Internet packets."
From David Weinberger's blog post GE pushes ahead with software-defined radio … good news for civilians, too?

(See/hear also The Wonderful World of Spectrum with Christian Sandvig, on Radio Berkman.)

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The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/

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

Berkman Buzz: Week of May 31, 2010

syoung — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:00:00 -0400

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

* Jonathan Zittrain storms Fort Knox.
* John Clippinger opines on privacy and sharing online.
* David Weinberger live-blogs Susan Crawford's talk at Pdf 2010.
* Chilling Effects looks at the "innocent infringer" defense.
* Harry Lewis may have used cash for his prepaid cell phone.
* Herdict reports on Facebook's accessibility in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
* OpenNet Initiative on Twitter's vanishing flotillas.
* Ethan Zuckerman complicates your revolution.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Hong Kong: Goddess of Democracy denied entry"

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The full buzz.

"Fort Knox represents the ideal of security through centralization: gunships, tanks, and 30,000 soldiers surround a vault containing over $700 billion in American government gold. It’s not a crazy idea for a nation’s bullion; after all, the sole goal is to convincingly hoard it. But Fort Knox is an awful model for Internet security."
From Jonathan Zittrain's post, The Internet’s Fort Knox Problem

"Privacy-shmivacy. “Who cares?” says CEO Mark of Facebook and CEO Eric of Google. Trust us. To paraphrase Google’s Eric Schmidt, if you don’t trust us, then you were probably doing something you shouldn’t. We want all the information we can get from you because that is how we make our billions. Just let go and go with the flow. Don’t be anti-social. This is social media. Be social. SHARE."
From John Clippinger's post Facebook is Betting Against its Users

"Susan Crawford says, “We are in the course of a titanic battle for the future of the Internet in the United States. The technology community is radically underrepresented in this battle.” Telephone providers and cable providers have each been merging, increasing monopoly holds on regions.The government has a key role in providing a level playing field for innovators. If you’re worried about personalization at the app level (as per Eli Pariser yesterday), you should be very worried about it at the network level."
From David Weinberger's blog post [pdf] Susan Crawford: Rethinking broadband

"A recent ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, applicable to residents of Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, appears to recognize the "innocent infringer" defense for copyright infringement of sound recordings. This runs counter to decisions of two other circuit courts which effectively read this defense out of the law for music infringement. In addition, the decision defines a record album as a single "work" to which only a single statutory penalty applies, rather than holding that each song on the album is a separate work, thus reducing the risk of ruinous penalties for innocent infringement."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, East Coast Enlightenment - Protect the Innocent

"It’s coming, I’d guess; as is registration for Internet services, already the law in South Korea. When the left (which is happy with more social intervention and control) and the right (which foresees the end of civilization in the bungling Times Square bomber) line up, the libertarian arguments don’t have much traction."
From Harry Lewis' blog post Another Attack on Anonymity

"As Pakistan lifted a two-week long ban on Facebook Monday, Bangladesh began blocking the site. Both bans followed the creation of a Facebook group promoting “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” an event that encourages participants to submit artistic representations of the prophet Mohammed — something many Muslims consider to be idolatry — as an exercise in free speech."
From Rebekah Heacock's post for Herdict, Pakistan Lifts Facebook Ban; Bangladesh Cracks Down

"While not making explicit reference to the incident, his statements suggest #Flotilla's dissapearance was not intentional. TechCrunch gave details, noting that "the most likely explanation is that Twitter's recently updated trending topics algorithm mistakes #gaza and #flotilla for older news unrelated to current events" and this in turn triggered their spam filter when peoople began tweeting about #Flotilla this weekend."
From Sarah Hamdi's blog post for ONI, #Flotilla Censored?

"“Theory of change” is a term I never heard until I started working for foundations. One of the main problems you face working at a foundation is choosing between rival good ideas. You’ve got a pot of money, and nice, well-meaning people come to you with cool, clever ideas for changing the world. It’s worth unpacking the logic behind any project you would consider funding. What do we want to accomplish, in the long run, and how would this project advance those goals?"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Overcoming apathy through participation? – (not) my talk at Personal Democracy Forum

"Today is the 21st anniversary of the June 4 Massacre in Beijing Tiananmen and the Hong Kong public will continue their annual candle night vigil tonight. However, the preparation process hasn't been very smooth so far. And this year, the conflict point is around the Goddess of Democracy. First of all, the Hong Kong police confiscated two statues of the Goddess of Democracy before the annual march to commemorate the Tiananmen incident on 30 of May. The government explained that the organizers of the public exhibition in Times Square has violated the “Public Entertainment Ordinance”."
From Oiwan Lam's blog post for Global Voices, Hong Kong: Goddess of Democracy denied entry

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The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the blogs of Berkman Center directors, fellows, projects: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/

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

Berkman Buzz: Week of May 17, 2010

syoung — Fri, 21 May 2010 17:00:00 -0400

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

* OpenNet Initiative notes Pakistan is blocking Facebook.
* David Weinberger grapples with too much difference.
* danah boyd considers Facebook's utilityness.
* Harry Lewis rounds up news on privacy.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Top Conservative on Twitter Takes Critic to Court"
* Fernando Bermejo reads the Google Adwords policy page.
* Chilling Effects does the math on the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
* Ethan Zuckerman blogs Miriam Meckel's talk on "social media journalism."
* Dan Gillmor asks how we're going to sort good info from bad.
* Weekly Global Voices: "South Africa: 32 teams and 40,000 prostitutes for 2010 FIFA World Cup?"

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The full buzz.

"There has been significant response on Facebook itself, with a number of users planning to boycott or quit Facebook on May 20. And today it was announced that a Pakistani high court has ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block Facebook until May 31, at which point a longer hearing will take place."
From Jillian York's blog post for ONI, Facebook Blocked in Pakistan Following 'Draw Mohammad Day' Competition

"The previous chapter left the reader thinking that there’s no bottom to the worldwide disagreements the worldwide web is making apparent. There’s too much difference. So, I’m beginning Chapter 4 with some rules of thumb for scoping diversity — that is, getting the right amount that a group can work together and make itself smarter, as opposed to either falling into groupthink or falling apart because people just disagree too fundamentally. I seem to have four heuristics, although, as always with such sets, that there are four and not three or fifteen is more arbitrary than any of us would like to believe..."
From David Weinberger's blog post [2b2k] Scoping diversity

"I cannot imagine that Facebook wants to be regulated, but I fear that it thinks that it won’t be. There’s cockiness in the air. Personally, I don’t care whether or not Facebook alone gets regulated, but regulation’s impact tends to extend much further than one company. And I worry about what kinds of regulation we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong: I think that regulators will come in with the best of intentions; they often (but not always) do. I just think that what they decide will have unintended consequences that are far more harmful than helpful and this makes me angry at Facebook for playing chicken with them."
From danah boyd's blog post Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated

"The deputy prime minister refers to a “culture of spying on its citizens” and says “It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding citizens get treated as if they have got something to hide.” In the U.S. the politics of surveillance seem to be the reverse of the attitudes in England. Here it is the left that complains about the violations of individual liberty occasioned by surveillance, either governmental or commercial, and it is the right that defends surveillance, either as an aid to law enforcement and national defense, or as a free exercise of unrestrained capitalism."
From Harry Lewis' blog post All the news on the privacy front

"In addition to monetary damages, Leahy argues that he is "entitled to see the complete records of all Facebook communications and telephonic communications between Grasmick and her 283 Facebook friends, as well as public and private messages sent by Grasmick to those 469 persons she follows on Twitter, in order to determine the identity, if there is such, of any additional defendants who should be named in this complaint." Compl. ¶ 18. Can you say improper fishing expedition?"
From David Ardia's blog post for CMLP, Top Conservative on Twitter Takes Critic to Court [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in May 2009]

"The recent petition in Spain was triggered by the upcoming legislative change that will lift some restrictions on abortion practices in the country–abortion was until now legal, but subject to wider restrictions. What ensued was an exchange—both in private and through the media—between Google and the petitioners, with Google showing its willingness to discuss the issue and review its norms if necessary, and the clinics engaging the Government in their support and threatening with legal action."
From Fernando Bermejo's blog post "Don't do..."

"In the time it takes you to read this article, at least one URL may have disappeared from Blogger as a result of a takedown notice from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. While the IFPI's takedown of several high-profile music blogs has raised eyebrows over the past several months, an analysis of the Chilling Effects notice archive reveals that IFPI's campaign is much larger in scope than previously understood, likely facilitated by automated infringement detection tools."
From Balke Ellis Reid's blog post for Chilling Effects, The IFPI's Takedown Campaign: By the Numbers

"Between June 7-26th, 2009, [Miriam Meckel's] team collected 2 million Iran-focused tweets from 480,000 accounts. They selected the 200 most active users, and filtered that set down to the 100 most “relevant” users talking about the protests. Their analysis of The Lede suggests that [Robert] Mackey chose 12 highly relevant Iran sources accessible on Twitter and relied heavily on them as sources. “Almost 60% of (51) iran related blog entries show mentions of Twitter users as sources.”"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Miriam Meckel – Iran, Robert Mackey and information brokers

"We are in a splintering media world where anyone can commit a globally visible act of journalism — or deception. This means we’re awash in both good and bad information, and if Theodore Sturgeon’s maxim is true, most of it is crud. But with the huge amount of new stuff out there, this also means that there’s an enormous amount of good stuff, too. So how do we sort the good from the bad? I’ve discussed it at some length in my own new project, but I’d like to be sure I haven’t missed anything."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post IdeasProject: What Can We Each Do to Get Reliable Information?

"If you are going to South Africa to watch the 2010 FIFA World Cup, you should probably be prepared to meet 40,000 prostitutes from around the world who are expected to flock to South Africa…well, that is if you believe in rumours!"
From Ndesanjo Macha's blog post for Global Voices, South Africa: 32 teams and 40,000 prostitutes for 2010 FIFA World Cup?

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The Berkman Buzz is curated weekly from the blogs of current Berkman Center directors, fellows, projects: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/

Berkman Buzz: Week of March 8, 2010

syoung — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:35:00 -0500

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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 turns out an aphorism, expertly.
* Doc Searls responds to Pew's Future of the Internet IV survey.
* Ethan Zuckerman blogs John Wilbanks' talk on generativity in science.
* Herdict is looking for a few good sheep.
* Harry Lewis on the "madness" of criminal libel in France.
* Internet & Democracy chews changes from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
* CMLP reviews the copyright confusions of Walsh against Walsh.
* Chilling Effects tallies up "innocent infringer" damages.
* Future of the Internet updates the TiVo / EchoStar saga.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Introducing MediaCloud"
* Weekly Global Voices: "Haiti: Two Months Later"

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The full buzz.

"Because of some talks I’m giving, I’ve been thinking about how to put the concrete effects the change in expertise has for the authority of business. I want to say that in the old days, we took expertise and authority as the last word about a topic. Increasingly, the value of expertise and authority is as the first word — the word that frames and initiates the discussion."
From David Weinberger's blog post [2b2k] Authority as having the first word

"Yet money can still be made with goods and services — even totally commodified ones. Amazon makes money with back-end Web services such as EC2 (computing) and S3 (data storage). Phone, cable and other carriers can make money with “dumb pipes” too. They are also in perfect positions to offer low-latency services directly to their many customers at homes and in businesses. All the carriers need to do is realize that there are benefits to incumbency other than charging monopoly rents."
From Doc Searls' blog post Futures of the Internet

"The truth is that the scientific world is far less generative than the digital space. He proposes three major obstacles to generativity: accessibility, ease of mastery, and tranferability. He points out that, as science has gotten more high tech, it’s far harder to master. The result is hyperspecialization: neuroanatomists don’t talk to neuroinformaticists… “and god help you if you cross species lines.” And so universities are making huge investments to try to encourage collaboration: MIT’s just build a $400 million building – the Cook Center – to force collaboration between cancer researchers… and predictably, researchers are fighting the mandate to move in and work together."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post John Wilbanks on Science Commons, and generativity in science

"Want to help us spread the word about Herdict? We’re looking for a few good volunteers to become country leaders, especially for the following locales: Syria, China, Iran, Australia, Morocco, Turkey, Vietnam, Burma, Tunisia, UAE. Being a Herdict Country Leader requires an interest in Internet filtering (censorship), experience using social media, and a desire to create a strong network of Herdict users in your country or community."
From Jillian York's blog post for Herdict, Promote Herdict: Be a Country Leader!

"I have been thinking for awhile about the myriad ways in which we could wind up knowing less, not more, as a result of the digital explosion. So this will be the first in a series. Feel free to post or email others you’d like to suggest. The editor of the European Journal of International Law is going to stand trial in criminal court in France, because a book review on a web site associated with the journal displeased the author of the book. The book’s author demanded that the review be taken down; the editor wrote a thoughtful response, inviting the reviewer to alter his review if he wished, and inviting the author to post a comment of her own if she wished."
From Harry Lewis' blog post How We Could Know Less #1

"This morning the New York Times quotes a ’senior administration official’ who says that the US is set to relax sanctions against Iran, Syria and Cuba to allow US companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to allow downloads of personal Web-based services in those countries. Around the water cooler this morning, my colleague Jill York correctly pointed out that the article appears to conflate too many things together when it describes ‘Internet services’ that are currently banned, and that might be allowed as part of the planned waiver."
From Bruce Etling's blog post for Internet & Democracy, US Set to Relax Internet Restrictions Towards Iran, Syria and Cuba

"The campy video features musician and political supporter Joe Cantafio performing his take on the 1971 classic "Walk Away." Cantafio used the same, or substantially similar, music from the song to create “Lead the Way,” an ode to Walsh’s campaign. When Walsh the Rocker found out a Republican used his music as part of a campaign video, an entertaining—though misguided—discussion on copyright law began."
From Justin Silverman's blog post for the CMLP, Candidate Joe Walsh vs. Rocker Joe Walsh: A DMCA Knockout

"A second federal appeals court has now eviscerated the “innocent infringer” defense for copyright infringement, this time for residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The court concluded that, as long as a copyright notice appears on a physical CD somewhere, anyone who illegally downloads that music from the Internet is subject to the higher $750 statutory minimum damages; even if that person believed he or she had permission to download the material. In 2005, a different appeals court made a similar ruling affecting residents of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, Careful What You Download - What You Don’t Know Can Cost You

"The latest development in the story, from last week, is that the Federal Circuit has again affirmed that EchoStar needs to destroy the DVRs. The court didn’t directly review the merits of the order, but rejected EchoStar’s narrower claim that the order should be construed to allow other remedies other than remotely disabling the DVRs. EchoStar’s delay in implementing the bricking has resulted in a finding of contempt of court."
From Jonathan Zittrain and Elisabeth Oppenheimer's blog post, The end draws near(er) for EchoStar DVRs

"One of the questions Yochai and I have debated is whether cases of bloggers shaping the news agenda are common or rare. To answer this question, we’d need to track not just cases when bloggers succeed in propogating memes, but those cases where propogation fails. My guess is that looking for terms that are unusually common in specific blogs versus blogs or newspapers as a whole is one way to find these cases – someone at Powerline was hoping that Samir Kantar would become a major discussion point in talking about Obama’s engagement with Iran. It didn’t. Being able to identify these failures as well as successes is a first step towards understanding how ideas do and don’t move between blogs and mainstream media."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Introducing MediaCloud [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in March 2009]

"Today marks two months since the January 12 earthquake devastated Haiti - and even in the midst of other natural disasters, bloggers still seem to be struggling to come to grips with what this tragedy actually means for the people of a nation that is often referred to as “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” The day to day reality of post-quake life in Port-au-Prince and environs is markedly different from the glory days of Haiti's proud past, which HaitiAnalysis.com ably chronicles in this post by Mara Chinelli of CampusTimes.org..."
From Janine Mendes-Franco's blog post for Global Voices, Haiti: Two Months Later

Berkman Buzz: Week of February 22, 2010

syoung — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:10:00 -0500

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

Essential reading: * Ethan Zuckerman problematizes censorship circumvention systems.
* Chilling Effects witnesses the Microsoft/Cryptome collision.
* Donnie Dong on China's newest website registration requirement.
* Has the CMLP found a new test for Section 230 of the CDA?
* ProjectVRM surfaces a conversation on geocasting.
* danah boyd shares her perspective on Chatroulette.
* David Weinberger waves a terse goodbye to the information age.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Macedonia: Grassroots Effort to Preserve Folk Music Online"
* Dan Gillmor insists on journalism as ecosystem.
* Christian Sandvig kvetches about video game criticism.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Join the herd!"

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The full buzz.

"I strongly believe that we need strong, anonymized and useable censorship circumvention tools. But I also believe that we need lots more than censorship circumvention tools, and I fear that both funders and technologists may overfocus on this one particular aspect of internet freedom at the expense of other avenues. I wonder whether we’re looking closely enough at the fundamental limitations of circumvention as a strategy and asking ourselves what we’re hoping internet freedom will do for users in closed societies. So here’s a provocation: We can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention

"Network Solutions has taken the Cryptome website down after receiving a DMCA takedown notice from Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. Microsoft objects to the publication of a handbook provided to law enforcement describing what information the service keeps on its users and what legal steps are required to obtain that information. However, its takedown of the well-known web site may have effect of increasing the number of people who read the document."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, Microsoft Invokes DMCA to Take Down Cyptome.org, then Relents

"“Registration” is a premising procedure for setting up a website in China. The information required in the registration includes the domain name, the IP address of the hosting server, the brief introduction of the website’s intended content, the owner/operator’s true name and Chinese citizen ID number, address and other contacts. Although the regulation uses the term of “registration” but not “license”, it is actually a compulsive requirement for any websites."
From Donnie Dong's blog post Wanna setup a Personal Website in China? BEING TAKEN A Portrait Please.

"The premise for this website is brilliant, even if potentially a litigation risk. PleaseRobMe.com ("PRM") aggregates Twitter posts indicating that the Tweeter in question is not at home. The folks at PRM aren't doing anything sneaky or hacker-like—they're just doing a simple Twitter search of anyone using foursquare.com—a site that lets Tweeters post their locations on a street map. The only thing that PRM is adding to the mix is framing content that snarkily suggests that these Tweeters aren't home, and thus, perhaps, would be good targets for robbery."
From Arthur Bright's blog post for CMLP, Please Sue Me: Is "Please Rob Me" A New Test for Section 230?

"The following excerpts a recent Project VRM Conversation on Geocasting — the ability to share your location data with the world, how you could optionally share it, and how it could be abused. A thread on privacy developed as often happens in these discussions about the ongoing digitization of our thoughts, movements, and actions. On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 7:45 AM, [Doc Searls] wrote: "This is a good thread. Thanks to all who are weighing in. I believe the fundamental problem — and opportunity — lies in the near-absolute difference between physical and virtual space. Privacy, as we’ve always understood it, is a physical thing."
From the ProjectVRM blog post Geocasting

"What I like most about the site is the fact that there’s only so much you can hide. This isn’t a place where police officers can pretend to be teen girls. This isn’t a place where you feel forced to stick around; you can move on and no one will know the difference. If someone doesn’t strike your fancy, move on. And on. And on."
From danah boyd's blog post ChatRoulette, from my perspective

"Just a terminological note: Over the past decade, we’ve gone from talking about social circles to social networks..."
From David Weinberger's blog post From circles to networks

"Appreciation of folk music has been a distinguishing feature of the Macedonian culture, and thanks to selfless efforts of one dedicated blogger it spreads through the blogosphere, too. As part of the world heritage, traditional Macedonian music has been enjoyed and reused world over, sometimes without attribution."
From Filip Stojanovski's blog post for Global Voices, Macedonia: Grassroots Effort to Preserve Folk Music Online

"The Polk awards have been ahead of the game in recent years. Two, notably, have recognized that journalism has moved squarely into the Digital Age, even though most of the kinds of journalism achievements that win big prizes — notably investigative reports — continue to be done by organizations willing to spend serious money and devote serious time to the efforts."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post The Old Guard Misses, Again, the Emerging Journalism Ecosystem

"I’ve always liked the kind of manliness that Esquire tries to evoke. The Esquire man wants to read advice about cufflinks, politeness, and how to order fancy drinks. Yet video games are now well established as a common domain of men–not boys–and it still isn’t clear how an Esquire man would play them, or comment on them."
From Christian Sandvig's blog post The Esquire gamer never shoots for the face.

"The folks at the Herdict project, a new effort being launched at the Berkman Center today, are interested in a different way of documenting web filtering and censorship. They’re asking users around the world to use the Herdict site or toolbar to report when they’re having trouble reaching a site. Herdict will coordinate reports and attempt to determine whether a site is being blocked by a government, an ISP or whether there’s a technical failure that’s preventing people from accessing a site."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Join the herd! [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in February 2009]

Berkman Buzz: Week of February 15, 2010

syoung — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:20:00 -0500

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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. (Fear not! The Berkman Buzz is, and has always been, proudly opt-in only.)

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

* Harry Lewis asks, "What Was Google Thinking?"
* Chilling Effects unpacks some recent music blog takedowns.
* Future of the Internet rounds up the generativity news.
* Karim Lakhani falls in love, mostly, with a certain device.
* Doc Searls has a (revenue) proposal for you, BBC.
* David Weinberger interviews Yochai Benkler for "Broadband Strategy Week."
* Ethan Zuckerman blogs Jure Leskovec's talk on Memetracker.
* Weekly Global Voices: Rising Voices: "Nomad Green: Mongolia - A Disaster In The Making"
* Dan Gillmor encounters some "head-slappingly strange logic."
* Skepticism of the "Icelandic Modern Media Initiative" from the CMLP.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Facebook's privacy storm"

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The full buzz.

"Buzz is an opt-out service–you’re in it until you tell Google you want to be out. And it is hard to get out (though in the past few days Google has, in response to the furious reaction it’s gotten, made the instructions a bit more visible). Even if you get out of Buzz, however, your secret lover may be exposing you. Happy Valentine’s Day!"
From Harry Lewis' blog post What Was Google Thinking?

(More on Google Buzz from Harry Lewis: http://www.bitsbook.com/2010/02/google-smartly-changes-its-mind/ and http://www.bitsbook.com/2010/02/class-action-against-google-buzz/)

"Music bloggers are up in arms over Google's removal of six popular music blogs. Google claims it deleted the blogs after receiving multiple Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices alleging that the blogs allowed readers to download copyrighted works without the owner's permission. The dispute appears to arise partially from an aggressive stance taken by Google in response to industry takedown notices and partially from a lack of understanding of DMCA takedown procedures by the blog owners."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, Bloggers Cry Foul in Google Music Blog Takedowns

"However, Google has more pressing privacy concerns to worry about this week, with the rollout and reaction to Google Buzz. Google generally does just fine releasing a half-baked product and cleaning up the details later, but that’s a terrible idea when the rollout includes auto-sharing previously private information. It’s disturbing that this concern made it past however many rounds of internal testing Google did."
From Elisabeth Oppenheimer's post for Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet blog, FOI Topics and Links of the Week

"My excuse to get the Kindle was to eliminate the 1.5 meter – at least 10 kilogram tower of academic papers that I had to read over the Christmas break while travelling overseas to visit family in Dubai. I instantly fell in love with the device. Reading on the Kindle is a joy. The device actually disappears and I find my self completely engrossed in the story or the arcania of untangling endogeneity in econometric studies of innovation contests."
From Karim Lakhani's blog post The Anti-Social Nature of the Kindle

"I love BBC domestic programming (such as Radio 4, which I have to dig to find on the BBC website if I’m coming in from a non-UK IP address, as I am now), and would like to pay as much for it as any UK citizen does through taxes."
From Doc Searls' blog post A modest revenue proposal to the BBC

"Yochai Benkler on why the US is in the middle of the pack: Yochai Benkler talks about the report the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society (disclosure: Where I’m a senior researcher) did for the Broadband strategy initiative..."
David Weinberger captions his video interview with Yochai Benkler

"Jure tells us that he’s interested in the intersection of news media, technology and the political process. Specifically, he’s fascinated by the tension between global effects of mass media and local effects carried by social structure. “How does information transmitted by the media interact with the personal influence networks that arise from people’s social networks?”"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Jure Leskovec on Memetracker, quantitative media analysis

"Recent news reports inform that Mongolia is witnessing the fiercest winter in living memory and adding to the misery decreasing foodstock may leave approximately 20 million farm animals frozen to death before Spring. The United nation warns that thousands of Mongolian nomad families face food shortages and severe poverty because approximately 1.7 million of their farm animals including sheep, camels and cattle have already been killed because of the harsh winter."
From Rezwan's blog post for Rising Voices, Nomad Green: Mongolia - A Disaster In The Making

"Good. Grief. The fact that the ombudsman of the New York Times needs to explain to readers why his newspaper reports actual news as it happens — and Olympic results are actual news — is a depressing commentary on our nation’s entertainment-driven culture."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post There are No ‘Spoilers’ in News

"The IMMI proposal addresses all aspects of media law, beefing up protections for whistleblowers, reporters' sources, and communications with those sources. It also aims to reduce prior restraints, libel tourism, and the statute of limitations for bringing lawsuits against publishers. Plus, it offers protection to ISP hosts and implements fee-shifting for winning media defendants."
From Arthur Bright's blog post for the CMLP, Fortress Iceland? Probably Not.

"Facebook and other social networks have an especially tricky time in this zone, since so much user data is relational. You upload a photo of you and me; I tag it with your name. I leave Facebook — does your name disappear from the photo since I was the one who originally tagged it? Should all traces of someone vanish from everyone’s news feed, or is the alert that X posted a photo (along with a thumbnail of the photo) a different contribution than … posting the photo?"
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post Facebook's privacy storm [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in February 2009]

Berkman Buzz: Week of February 8, 2010

syoung — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:00:00 -0500

BERKMAN BUZZ: 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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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

* Chilling Effects asks, "Who Dat Trademark Belong To?"
* Doc Searls strips new new journalism practices back to basics.
* Miriam Meckel holds us up to the looking-glass, that we might see how sulky we are.
* Judith Donath explores our virtual (dis)honesties with Jeremy Bailenson.
* David Weinberger encounters an old nemesis, and pits Darwin against Hunch.com.
* Harry Lewis considers legislative changes to what matter is in Massachusetts.
* CMLP gnaws on the FBI's call for ISPs to have to log and retain more and more.
* OpenNet Initiative updates us on Germany's abandonment of a Net filtering law.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Pakistan: PTA Blocks President's ‘Shut-Up' Video"
* Publius: "Understanding our Knowledge Gaps: Or, Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?"
* Micro-post of the week: Christian Sandvig gets illocutionary with Fernando Bermejo.

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The full buzz.

"It's sunny and warm in south Florida as the New Orleans Saints head to the Super Bowl for the first time in the team's 42-year history. Back in New Orleans, though, a cold front is blowing through as the National Football League tries to use intellectual property claims to lock down "Who Dat," a seminal New Orleans slogan adapted by Saints fans to cheer on the team."
From Blake Reid's blog post for Chilling Effects, Who Dat Trademark Belong To?

"Interesting how normative practices continue to improve even as variants emerge, and even as supporting technology changes, along with users and uses. For example, reporting is still reporting, whether you’re doing it by blogging or tweeting or texting or phoning or … whatever the next thing is (or things are). The basic principles are the same."
From Doc Searls' blog post What’s Old is Nude Again

"Something irritated me when I looked at the photo of Steve Jobs sitting in his armchair on stage and holding the new iPad in his hands. What was it? I had to think about it. Why was he sitting like that? I have thought about it for quite a while now. And in the course of remembering this photo again and again it suddenly linked to some ideas that came across my mind and some encounters I had these days and all this has shaped an answer."
From Miriam Meckel's blog post Looking Glass

"One of Bailenson’s experiments showed that avatars programmed to mimic the subject’s gestures were more persuasive and well-liked than avatars using naturalistic but non-mimicking gestures. Is mimicry carried out via avatar simply an extension of the same social adaptability, or is it fundamentally different?"
From Judith Donath's post for the Law Lab, A Reflection on Jeremy Bailenson’s talk

"The challenge, of course, is figuring out what that central issue is. I’ve thrashed among several alternatives, each of which would provide a different way of structuring the book. If the book is about the problem that there’s too much to know (which is, after all, the title), then the preface should illustrate that point. If it’s about the growth of networked expertise, then I should present a contrast between the old and new ways of being an expert. If it’s about the restructuring of knowledge, then the preface should give an example of traditional knowledge and new knowledge. If it’s about the socializing of knowledge, then … etc., etc."
From David Weinberger's blog post [2b2k] Not throwing everything out

"In his opinion, the judge noted that the legislature had changed the law a few years ago to lengthen the prison term to five years, but didn’t bother to change the list of media. So, he concluded, computer to computer communications aren’t covered, and the court has to assume the legislature didn’t intend to include them. The omission is easily remedied, but it’s not up to the court to do that."
From Harry Lewis' blog post What Matter Is

"ISPs are resisting the request, not due to privacy concerns but due to infrastructure demands. Logging urls for every user would require an immense amount of storage. Of course, if the ISP has a pay-per-view system, and the FBI can finally start paying its spying fee promptly, I'm sure the spy infrastructure could be paid for with taxpayers' money."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the CMLP, Does This Look Infected to You? Government Virus as Counter-Proposal to FBI's URL Demands

"Since the former government, made up of a coalition of Germany´s two biggest parties, the social democratic SPD and the conservative CDU, passed the law in June/July 2009, it remained a controversially discussed topic in Germany. Especially civil society groups including the Internet community criticized the then Minister of Family Ursula von der Leyen for using child porn as an excuse to create a structure of online censorship."
From Daniel Oppermann's blog post for ONI, German Government Steps Away from 2009 Filtering Plan

"Instead it was then reported that the Internet governing body Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which monitors internet access from Pakistan has placed an URL-specific ban on one particular video in which the President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Ali Zardari is seen to deliver a very forceful and curt “Shut-up” to some participant at the rally he was addressing...barely a few weeks back."
From Teeth Maestro's blog post for Global Voices, Pakistan: PTA Blocks President's ‘Shut-Up' Video

"Recent discussions, either at already concluded ICT4D conferences and workshops, or here at the Harvard Forum, or in the planning discussions for future conferences, have reminded us of the sometimes strong and often unhelpful disciplinary walls that can be constructed across ICT4D’s cross-disciplinary areas and the common tendency for this field to intellectually jog-in-place. Here’s that story."
From Michael Best's essay for Publius.cc: Understanding our Knowledge Gaps: Or, Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?

"Bermejo wants to apply Austin's speech act to theorize the difference betw. Inet and old media. = "bit acts"? #berkman #infra" [1:55 PM Feb 10th]
Christian Sandvig reports from a talk on/in infrastructure with Fernando Bermejo.