Berkman Blog Buzz

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  For a complete picture, please visit our Berkman aggregator.  Last week's Blog Buzz is here.

“This year’s iteration of course LSTU E-120, ‘Internet & Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control,’ is now underway at the Harvard Extension School. More information at the official course web site . . . You can think of it as a mini-blog consisting mostly of pointers to current news items on subjects of likely interest to students in the course, or people interested in cyberlaw topics more generally.” – Tim Armstrong, “Mini-Blogging at Course H2O Site"

“If you're reading isen.blog, you should also be coming to F2C: Freedom to Connect, April 3 & 4, Washington DC!! A production of isen.com and pulvermedia, in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, O'Reilly Media, Free Press, Public Knowledge, Tropos Networks, the VON Coalition, firstmile.us, Patriot.net and other organizations, associations and companies that care about Internet Freedom. (More partners to be announced in the near future.)" – David Isenberg, “Announcing F2C:Freedom to Connect”

“And while Yahoo! was indeed ‘just following the law,’ I still stand by what I said yesterday: A company that cares about human rights should not put user data in jurisdictions where full compliance with the law makes collaboration with human rights violations inevitable. Either they did not think this through before setting up their Chinese e-mail service or they don't care.” – Rebecca MacKinnon, “Yahoo! in China and Degrees of Evil”

“Yes, there are stories to be written about the ‘murkiness’ and ‘nuance’ of the relationships of bloggers to their readers and to companies who pay those bloggers. But, Rebecca [Buckman] could not have picked a worse example than the Fon advisory board: We all were transparent about our relationship and not only is there no current compensation package for the advisors, we still haven't even discussed it with Martin.” – David Weinberger, “WSJ on Fon, disclosure, and my friends”

“In blogging about my panel at the Al Jazeera forum last week - “Media and Power” - I mentioned that I’d found the experience of the panel frustrating. While that’s true - I find panels where six smart people all get less than ten minutes to speak profoundly disappointing - my frustration was actually much broader and had to do with the issue I’ve been fascinated by for the past few years: what we do and don’t pay attention to in the wider world.” – Ethan Zuckerman, “What I (largely) failed to say at the Al Jazeera conference”

“Legendary Harvard Law School professor and cyberlaw and evidence expert Charles Nesson will speak to the Digital Media in Asia Project on Wednesday, Feb. 8 . . . Professor Nesson will lead a discussion on how the internet, weblogs, and the media/entertainment/sports industries can be utilized to create international bridges between cultures. The focus will be on China and Jamaica. We will be joined by special guest Berkman Center for Internet & Society fellow Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief and China/weblog expert.” – Digital Media in Asia Blog , “Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson & China Blog Expert Rebecca Mackinnon to Speak to the Digital Media in Asia Project”