Berkman Buzz, October 6, 2006
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.
* Wendy Seltzer points to HOWTO: How to Speak Anonymously in Public.
* Doc Searls offers ten suggestions to today's newspapers.
* Mark Frydenberg shares his students' podcasts.
* Ethan Zuckerman explains how to blog anonymously.
* CyberOne situates itself in a discussion of virtual worlds.
* Jonathan Zittrain explains role of ICann in regulation debate.
* Dan Gillmor highlights significance of entrepreneurial successes in journalism.
The full Buzz.
"Via BoingBoing and Toorcon comes a pointer to a great new HOWTO: How to Speak Anonymously in Public. Alan Bradley and Kevin Flynn apparently gave the talk on memory cloaking with only a laptop and video projection at the podium, tunnelling the talk and slides from a remote location over Tor so the connection couldn't be traced back to the speakers. Along with its detailed technical explanation, the guide points to lots of the subtle pitfalls that might trap the tyro anonymous speaker....."
Wendy Seltzer, "How to speak anonymously, from Toorcon"
"So, to help the papers out (as I did for public radio on Tuesday), I immodestly offer ten hopefully helpful clues. First, stop giving away the news and charging for the olds. Okay, give away the news, if you have to, on your website. There's advertising money there. But please, open up the archives. Stop putting tomorrow's fishwrap behind paywalls. Writers hate it. Readers hate it. Worst of all, Google and Yahoo and Technorati and Icerocket and all your other search engines ignore it...."
Doc Searls, "Newspapers 2.0"
"Mark Frydenberg of Bentley College hosted a discussion about the educational uses of media as part of the Berkman Center’s Tuesday Luncheon Series. After Frydenberg realized that most students weren’t listening to his podcasts of course lectures, he asked students to create the podcasts instead. Find out how student-created podcasts changed the learning process both inside and outside the classroom, and see examples of what is possible with some technical know-how, a web cam, and a bit of imagination...."
Mark Frydenberg, MediaBerkman
"My disclaimer: If you follow these directions exactly, you’ll sharply reduce the chances that your identity will be linked to your online writing through technical means - i.e., through a government or law enforcement agency obtaining records from an Internet Service Provider. Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that they work in all circumstances, including your circumstances, nor can I accept liability, criminal or civil, should use or misuse of these directions get you into legal, civil or personal trouble. These directions do nothing to prevent you from being linked through other technical means, like keystroke logging (the installation of a program on your computer to record your keystrokes) or traditional surveillance (watching the screen of your computer using a camera or telescope). The truth is, most people get linked to their writing through non-technical means: they write something that leaves clues to their identity, or they share their identity with someone who turns out not to be trustworthy. I can’t help you on those fronts except to tell you to be careful and smart. For a better guide to the “careful and smart” side of things, I recommend EFF’s “How to Blog Safely” guide. Onto the geekery: Step 1: Disguise your IP...."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor"
"What Icann does is seen as important by many in the "internet governance" community, including diplomats and some academics. They're wrong. Control over domain names is too casually taken to mean control over the internet itself, and Icann doesn't even exercise much control over domain names. So why do people even bother to dislike or fear it? One of the reasons is that they don't like the decisions it makes. Icann has a limited ability to pick winners and losers among those wanting to make money by registering new domain names...."
Jonathan Zittrain, "A domain by any other name"
"Here at the J-Lab Citizens’ Media Summit, a panel featuring Travis Henry of YourHub, Mary Lou Fulton of the Bakersfield Californian and Bakotopia, and Steve Yelvington of Morris Digital, which launched Bluffton Today. One thing they have in common: they all developed their own software to run their sites — and now they’re selling that software. The social networking software developed for Bakotopia — which goes beyond letting users blog and add photos and gives them MySpace-like profile pages, and the ability to add other users to “friend lists” is now for sale. Morris Digital now sells the mdSPOTTED photo gallery software that enables reader-participants of Bluffton Today to upload photos to the site. And YourHub, a community platform in a box for newspapers, is now licensed in nearly a dozen markets.My sense is that journalism is becoming a high-tech profession — not just in using the net as a distribution mechanism but developing new software...."
Dan Gillmor, "Journalism is becoming a high-tech profession -- complete with software licensing"