Berkman Buzz: Week of August 10, 2009

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

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

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*Internet & Democracy Project: "Internet Filtration in the Middle East"
*Radio Berkman: "Tweeting a Dead Horse"
*Carolina Rossini: "The Political Economy of Intellectual Property in the Emerging Alternative Energy Market"
*Citizen Media Law Project: "The New Intellectual Arms Trade: Amazon and B&N as Literary God-Emperors"
*Harry Lewis: "Censorship via the Copyright Act"
*Doc Searls: "Unsettling books"
*David Weinberger: "Lego hops off the Cluetrain onto the tracks in front of it, wondering what that increasingly loud sound could be"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Palestine: Reactions to Launch of Google.ps"

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"This week the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) released its 2009 report on Internet filtration across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).  Research for this release was conducted in 2008-2009, but it builds upon findings dating back to 2003, including a report released in 2007.  The full release (available in PDF) chronicles the detailed testing of over 2,000 websites in each country. The ONI’s work on Internet controls in the region provides crucial context for the Internet & Democracy’s work on the networked public sphere..."
From Scott Hartley's blog post for the Internet & Democracy Project, "Internet Filtration in the Middle East"

"The hype shows no signs of abating. Now that people have moved from just talking-about-Twitter, to the more meta talking-about-talking-about-Twitter, we here at Radio Berkman decided to take on the topic from our own perspective and see if there is possibly anything new left to be said about the popular microblogging service..."
From the Radio Berkman blog post, "Tweeting a Dead Horse"

"The alternative energy field represents a unique case for studying the trends regarding political economy of intellectual property (IP) in an emerging market. Some of the technology can be considered mature; however many are the barriers - technical, political or related to funding - that justify a young market in many countries. It is these issues that are at the centre of our research under the Industrial Cooperation Project at the Berkman Centre at Harvard University..."
From Carolina Rossini's blog post for IQsensato’s "Ideas in Development Blog," "The Political Economy of Intellectual Property in the Emerging Alternative Energy Market"

"When we were kids, we couldn’t wait for the future to hurry up and get here. Flying cars, pills for food, conveyor belts, the works. What we didn’t understand was that the future would arrive in pieces: the everywhere computer (iPhone), the million channel TV (YouTube), the all-knowing answer machine (Wikipedia), and the hive mind (Twitter). These wonders didn’t arrive in a big box marked “Future,” but appeared one at a time.  Sometimes the future is so discreet, you don’t realize you are living in it..."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "The New Intellectual Arms Trade: Amazon and B&N as Literary God-Emperors"

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a remarkable account of a clever use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Ac by the Burning Man Organization. That’s the radical artistic celebration and community-gathering that happens every year in Nevada. BMO includes in the terms and conditions to which you agree when you buy a ticket that BMO will own any photos or videos of the events that are used in a way BMO doesn’t like. Once BMO owns the copyright, it can, of course, demand that they be taken down from wherever you’ve posted them. Ingenious! Same technique some doctors are using to prevent patients from posting unflattering reviews — sign over to the doctors the copyright on anything you say about them, and they figure they can force the doctor-review web sites to remove the material, which isn’t yours to post..."
From Harry Lewis' blog post, "Censorship via the Copyright Act"

"I’m a born researcher. Studying stuff is a lot of what I do, whether I’m looking out the window of an airplaine, asking a question at a meeting, browsing through the Web and correspondence, or digging through books and journals in libraries.Most of my library work, however, isn’t in library buildings. I work on my own screen. And there, much of what I’ve been studying lately is in Google scans of books..."
From Doc Searls' blog post, "Unsettling Books"

"Jake McKee was the Global Community Relations Specialist at Lego. In his essay in the tenth anniversary edition of Cluetrain (subtle product placement, eh?) he tells how Lego learned to engage with its users, and how this was good for everyone. (Josh Bernoff writes about this) Lego was a great example of how a business can benefit by getting down off its high horse and playing in the grass with its customers. Thank you, Jake..."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Lego hops off the cluetrain onto the tracks in front of it, wondering what that increasingly loud sound could be"

"'Over the years google has been adding many of the world’s local domains like google.co.uk and google.jo in which case they provides localized search results,' says blogger ArabCrunch, announcing Google's decision to add the domain google.ps to the list. The new localized Google domain is intended to work in the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinian Internet service providers (ISPs) operate..."
From Jillian York's blog post for Global Voices, "Palestine: Reactions to Launch of Google.ps"