Berkman Buzz, week of September 15

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, just sign up here.

What's going on... take your pick or browse below.

* Rebecca Nesson recaps CyberOne's Day One
* The Clinical Program in Cyberlaw supports the Gardner Museum's road to podcasting
* The Center for Citizen Media plans for the Political Transparency Project
* Eric Priest considers the future of internet pircacy in China
* Ethan Zuckerman discusses South African community radio

The full Buzz.

"This afternoon we gave a lecture in our class. This evening the whole world can see the lecture video for free and is also free (and encouraged) to download it, edit it, remix it, make it better make it into anything. This evening we have class notes from the lecture taken by a student volunteer and available to the whole world. This evening a student in our class answered our challenge to participate by starting a blog about his/her experience in the class. This evening the Harvard Extension School is offering our lecture video to the world synchronized with John Lobato’s class notes and dad’s quirky point-of-view PowerPoint. A few months ago it was only an idea, and today we’ve taken the first real steps towards openness. Maybe that’s what is making me feel so confessional this evening..."
Rebecca Nesson, "Day One Comes to a Close"


"'The Concert,' the museum's new classical music podcast, features unreleased live performances by master musicians and talented young artists recorded from the museum’s Sunday Concert Series, the nation’s longest-running museum music series. Today, the museum posts the first in a series of 45-minute podcasts, including music by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin for solo piano, orchestra, string quartet,
and voice. A new podcast will be posted on the 1st and 15th of every month, and users will be able to subscribe to receive free, automatic updates delivered directly to their computers or mp3 players.

With this podcast, the Gardner Museum also breaks new ground, becoming the first art museum to encourage sharing and free distribution of its online programming by using a 'some rights reserved' copyright license from Creative Commons. On the website, links to the Music Sharing license encourage users to freely share the music they download in 'The Concert,' making the Gardner Museum one of the few early adopters of flexible copyright in licensing classical music..."
"Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Launches Free Classical Music Podcast"


"As noted in an earlier posting, the Sunlight Foundation has awarded us one of its 'Transparency Grants' for a test in California. As the foundation noted, we intend to

develop an Election Year Demonstration Project for citizen journalism in one Congressional district. CCM will oversee the creation of a website that will seek to cover everything that can possibly be reported on a Congressional election, with an emphasis on drawing on the talents and ideas of local citizen reporters. The site will include in-depth biographical and political information on candidates, audio and video archives, campaign finance profiles, first-person reports, links to articles, etc. This project is designed to serve as a model for possible nationwide implementation in hundreds of districts in 2008..."

The Center for Citizen Media, "Political Transparency Project"


"China is caught between two eras in the development of copyright protection: while it struggles to defeat what one might call "twentieth-century piracy" (that is, the unauthorized copying and selling of DVDs, VCDs, and CDs, also referred to herein as
'traditional piracy'), it finds itself careening toward the growing
threat of 'twenty-first century piracy,' (that is, internet file-sharing, or 'internet piracy,' which threatens to overtake physical piracy in the value of goods 'stolen')…

The Chinese government faces critical questions at this crossroads: Should it allocate the bulk of its enforcement resources to traditional piracy enforcement as that problem increases in the future?  Or should Chinese authorities attempt to pursue internet piracy now, recognizing that in the future it is sure to become the bigger problem?  To what extent should China fear the internet as a new medium for the distribution of pirated works and to what extent does the internet present new opportunities for combating piracy?..."
Eric Priest, The Future of Music and Film Piracy in China


"Community radio has had a great policy influence within South Africa. Community radio stations don’t pay a license fee, which is quite unusual. There are frequencies reserved for community radio, and a fast-track licensing process. But there’s still a great need for expansion, especially in rural areas, which still don’t have access to media. And there’s a market threat of community radio stations being crowded out by religious and right-wing stations, which are on the rise in South Africa.

Daniel Moalosi from NCRF celebrates the future possibilities of community radio, arguing that 'the future is digital.' While FM 'is not going to die,' he thinks it’s critical for community radio stations to think about online radio, podcasting and mobile radio - broadcasting to mobile phones via EDGE/UMTS and thinking about mobile satellite radio, ala Sirius/XM. While digital audio broadcasting hasn’t caught on well yet in Africa, he points to 35,000 internet radio stations online. 53% of South African radio stations have access to ADSL - whether or not they can afford it - which makes audio streaming a possibility. He presents a model for streaming radio which costs 7500 rand (about $100) to startup and 3700 rand (about $50) to maintain..."
Ethan Zuckerman, Checking in from Highway Africa