Berkman Buzz, week of July 9

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of July 9, 2007

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

*Doc Searls discusses the dangers of limited local radio.
*Rebecca MacKinnon joins the growing crowd of professionals on Facebook.
*Ethan Zuckerman looks at the translation gaps of the global blogosphere.
*David Isenberg wonders how to celebrate a special free speech anniversary.
*David Weinberger questions the simplicity of life’s journey.
*Citizen Media Law Project: Embedded Video and Copyright Infringement.
*Weekly Global Voice: Kurdistance: The State of Kurdish Activism.

The full buzz.

“This morning I was listening to the Dennis Miller Show on KTMS/990. The sound was buzzy, but better than yesterday when it literally sounded like a microphone was being held up to a table radio. (And perhaps that's what was going on.) He's very good, actually. A warm complement to the snarky stand-up guy who has spent most of his career on stage, in front of a camera, or both.”
Doc Searls, “The roll (and role) of radio”

“I finally joined Facebook on Sunday night, following up on a month-old invitation from my friend Thomas Crampton to join the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Facebook (I kid you not, there is such a thing). I joined the bricks-and-mortar FCC in Hong Kong for a chunk of money after all, so why not join this virtual one for free?”
Rebecca MacKinnon, “Joining the Club on Facebook”

“One of the major focuses of Global Voices over the past year has been translating content from other languages into English, and translating the resulting English content into as many languages as possible. We were a little slow in realizing the importance of translation when we started GV - a large number of the blogs we were following were in English, and it seemed like added context to English-language blog posts might represent the majority of the work we did. The vast majority of early blogging tools were in English, which meant that unless someone wrote a guide to blogging in a local language, non-English speakers were at a distinct disadvantage.”
Ethan Zuckerman, “Lost (and found) in Translation”

“July 21 is the 35th anniversary of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words. According to a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a Milwaukee police officer patrolling the crowd of Carlin's July 21, 1972 performance, ". . . would have stormed the main stage, stopped the show and dragged Carlin off to jail. Instead, he went to the stage area and complained to a superior officer [who said] 'We'll get him when it's over.'"”
David Isenberg, “35th anniversary of Carlin's Seven Dirty Words”

“As I write this, it is my mother in law's 80th birthday. I love her, I like her, and I enjoy being with her. As far as arbitrary markers go, an 80th is a big deal. We've marked it by gathering the entire family, as well as the four couples known collectively as The Wine Group who have known her since high school. They are only slightly reduced by age: One couple is now a single, they are all shorter than they used to be, one of the men runs down conversational paths a little too long. Still and all, when I was a lad, eighty year olds were by and large dead, and for the survivors we had words like ‘dotage’ and, if they were lucky, ‘spry.’”
David Weinberger, “Older than Lennon”

“Citizen journalists commonly embed video clips to illustrate a story or other posting. Sometimes, the posting itself (and its dissemination on YouTube) is the story. Have you ever wondered whether embedding that video clip might lead to copyright woes? If so, apparently you're not alone. There's been a good deal of discussion relating to this issue on various blogs and websites recently. The discussion took a humorous turn this week when a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals judge inserted a link in an opinion directing readers to a YouTube video about George Brett's famous "pine-tar incident," only to find that the link was removed from YouTube due to a notice of infringement by Major League Baseball.”
Sam Bayard, “Embedded Video and Copyright Infringement”

“Some may be surprised to hear that coverage of the Kurdish blogosphere has been appearing on Global Voices for longer than coverage of the Turkish blogospheres. Whereas the Turkish blogosphere has been expanding, the Kurdish blogosphere (at least the English language end) is slowly disappearing. Today’s article will focus on the current state of Kurdish activism (as blogging can be considered as a primary element of that) and a new initiative that is designed to help extend the Kurdish voice.”
Deborah Ann Dilley, “Kurdistance: The State of Kurdish Activism”