Berkman Buzz: Week of September 28, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Harry Lewis proposes that Plato was the primordial note-taker.
* New on Publius: "A Brief Overview of U.S. Public Policy on OER from California's Community Colleges to the Obama Administration"
* Chilling Effects digs into the DMCA in Scott v Scribd.
* The CMLP chuckles at the response to Glenn Beck's UDRP action against a parody site.
* The Internet & Democracy project visits StopBadware.org's territory.
* Doc Searls wants to know whose "Side(wiki)" you're on.
* Dan Gillmor shares his views on social network policy with the Washington Post.
* Ethan Zuckerman contemplates the Amish Internet and "Imagined Communities."
* Weekly Global Voices: "Typhoon Ketsana batters Southeast Asia"
* Micro-post of the week: David Weinberger shelves Dewey.

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The full buzz.

"Problem is, there’s an argument that what professors say in class is their intellectual property. After all, if they just read their own lecture notes, then their words have been 'fixed in a tangible medium,' to quote the Copyright Act. So the professor automatically holds the copyright, and Magliozzi, or his note-taking helpers, are violating it. By that logic, it’s the same thing as listening to a song being sung, transcribing it, and posting the notes and lyrics on your web site. Copyright violation. Magliozzi, according to the Arlington Advocate story, seems to be counting on leniency because his site is a non-profit."
From Harry Lewis' blog post A Harvard Skirmish in the Copyright Wars

"The reality of most educational resources is that they are restricted to a set of traditional players with access through institutional employment or enrollment. As such, many educational materials can cost a lot to access; or if access is free, copyright restrictions block creative re-use, restricting the actions of remix essential to modern pedagogical activity. This follows the economic market for educational resources, which is a typical content sales market. Educational materials are packaged up as copyrighted goods that have to be bought from a store or accessed through course fees, repositories with restricted access, or directly from the manufacturer-publisher."
From Carolina Rossini and Erhardt Graeff's essay on Publius, A Brief Overview of U.S. Public Policy on OER from California's Community Colleges to the Obama Administration

"A number of cases in California have confirmed what a straight-forward reading of the law would suggest: that the DMCA safe harbor provisions apply to hosting sites when those sites meet the requirements set out in section 512 of the law. (Perhaps most recently, a federal judge ruled in California that the safe harbor provisions applied to video-sharing site Veoh, see Veoh Survives Universal Music Group Copyright Infringement Suit.) Plaintiffs in a case just filed in Texas against document sharing site Scribd, however, would like to challenge that understanding."
From Rebecca Schoff's blog post for Chilling Effects, DMCA Double Take: Suit Claims No Safe Harbor for Scribd

"We reported earlier this month that Glenn Beck filed a UDRP action against glennbeck rapedandmurdered ayounggirlin1990.com seeking transfer of the domain name. Beck alleges that the website, which instantiates an Internet meme born on Fark.com that pokes fun at Beck's rhetorical style, is improperly using his trademarked name. This week, First Amendment bad ass Marc Randazza filed a response brief on behalf of Isaac Eiland-Hall, the previously anonymous individual behind the site."
From Sam Bayard's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, His Identity Revealed, Publisher of Glenn Beck Parody Site Comes Out Swinging

"Experts at InfoWar Monitor have discovered that journalists working for foreign media outlets in China, including Reuters, the Straits Times, Dow Jones, Agence France Presse, and Ansa, are the targets of a recent malware (malicious software) attack. Nart Villeneuve and Greg Walton suspect that the attack is connected with increased security around the Communist regime’s upcoming 60 year anniversary..."
From Bruce Etling's blog post for the Internet & Democracy project, Foreign Media Outlets Targeted in Chinese Malware Attack

"As a writer, Sidewiki kinda creeps me out. As Dave Winer tweeted to @Windley, What if I don’t want it on my site? Phil tweeted back, but it’s not 'on' your site. It’s 'about' your site & 'on' the browser. No? Yes, but the browser is a lot bigger than it used to be. It’s turning into something of an OS. The lines between the territories of writer and reader, between creator and user, are also getting blurry. Tools for users are growing in power and abundance. So are those for creators, but I’m not sure the latter are keeping up with the former — at least not in respect to what can be done with the creators’ work. All due respect for Lessig, Free Culture and remixing, I want the first sources of my words and images to remain as I created them. Remix all you want. Just don’t do it inside my pants."
From Doc Searls' blog post Whose Side(wiki) Are You On?

"Anyone involved in the Twitter world and journalism has surely heard about the Washington Post’s decision to sharply restrict what editorial employees can say online, especially in social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. The newspaper has been ridiculed more than praised. My contribution to the early debate was a Tweet saying that I considered the move to be more proof — as if anyone needed it — that old-line print-journalism people have taken firm control of the Post’s news operation. The paper’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, called yesterday. He’s looking into the situation, and wanted to chat further. I agreed that this deserves more than 140-character microblog posts."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post Washington Post, Social Networks and Transparency

"A fascinating story you might have missed. Noam Cohen of the New York Times looks at The Budget, a newspaper in Sugar Creek, Ohio that serves a large Amish community as well as an “English” (non-Amish) community. The story appears to be inspired by Jessica Best, a Welsh journalist who had the opportunity to study the paper on a summer fellowship. She blogged about her experiences and wrote an excellent piece for Journalism.co.uk about the experience, and the interesting compromises the paper’s taken in a digital age."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post "The Budget" and the Amish Internet

"Typhoon Ketsana struck several Southeast Asian countries leaving hundreds dead and millions homeless. It triggered the worst flooding in the Philippines which affected 3 million people as of this writing. It displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in central Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Laos."
From Mong Palatino's blog post for Global Voices, Typhoon Ketsana batters Southeast Asia

"Good article about libraries leaving Dewey in favor of bookstorish shelvings. http://bit.ly/c33ME (my take: http://bit.ly/n3nuE)" [3:20 PM Oct 2nd]
David Weinberger highlighting Barbara Fister's "The Dewey Dilemma"