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Berkman Buzz: Week of February 15, 2010

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 asks, "What Was Google Thinking?"
* Chilling Effects unpacks some recent music blog takedowns.
* Future of the Internet rounds up the generativity news.
* Karim Lakhani falls in love, mostly, with a certain device.
* Doc Searls has a (revenue) proposal for you, BBC.
* David Weinberger interviews Yochai Benkler for "Broadband Strategy Week."
* Ethan Zuckerman blogs Jure Leskovec's talk on Memetracker.
* Weekly Global Voices: Rising Voices: "Nomad Green: Mongolia - A Disaster In The Making"
* Dan Gillmor encounters some "head-slappingly strange logic."
* Skepticism of the "Icelandic Modern Media Initiative" from the CMLP.
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Facebook's privacy storm"

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The full buzz.

"Buzz is an opt-out service–you’re in it until you tell Google you want to be out. And it is hard to get out (though in the past few days Google has, in response to the furious reaction it’s gotten, made the instructions a bit more visible). Even if you get out of Buzz, however, your secret lover may be exposing you. Happy Valentine’s Day!"
From Harry Lewis' blog post What Was Google Thinking?

(More on Google Buzz from Harry Lewis: http://www.bitsbook.com/2010/02/google-smartly-changes-its-mind/ and http://www.bitsbook.com/2010/02/class-action-against-google-buzz/)

"Music bloggers are up in arms over Google's removal of six popular music blogs. Google claims it deleted the blogs after receiving multiple Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices alleging that the blogs allowed readers to download copyrighted works without the owner's permission. The dispute appears to arise partially from an aggressive stance taken by Google in response to industry takedown notices and partially from a lack of understanding of DMCA takedown procedures by the blog owners."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, Bloggers Cry Foul in Google Music Blog Takedowns

"However, Google has more pressing privacy concerns to worry about this week, with the rollout and reaction to Google Buzz. Google generally does just fine releasing a half-baked product and cleaning up the details later, but that’s a terrible idea when the rollout includes auto-sharing previously private information. It’s disturbing that this concern made it past however many rounds of internal testing Google did."
From Elisabeth Oppenheimer's post for Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet blog, FOI Topics and Links of the Week

"My excuse to get the Kindle was to eliminate the 1.5 meter – at least 10 kilogram tower of academic papers that I had to read over the Christmas break while travelling overseas to visit family in Dubai. I instantly fell in love with the device. Reading on the Kindle is a joy. The device actually disappears and I find my self completely engrossed in the story or the arcania of untangling endogeneity in econometric studies of innovation contests."
From Karim Lakhani's blog post The Anti-Social Nature of the Kindle

"I love BBC domestic programming (such as Radio 4, which I have to dig to find on the BBC website if I’m coming in from a non-UK IP address, as I am now), and would like to pay as much for it as any UK citizen does through taxes."
From Doc Searls' blog post A modest revenue proposal to the BBC

"Yochai Benkler on why the US is in the middle of the pack: Yochai Benkler talks about the report the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society (disclosure: Where I’m a senior researcher) did for the Broadband strategy initiative..."
David Weinberger captions his video interview with Yochai Benkler

"Jure tells us that he’s interested in the intersection of news media, technology and the political process. Specifically, he’s fascinated by the tension between global effects of mass media and local effects carried by social structure. “How does information transmitted by the media interact with the personal influence networks that arise from people’s social networks?”"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Jure Leskovec on Memetracker, quantitative media analysis

"Recent news reports inform that Mongolia is witnessing the fiercest winter in living memory and adding to the misery decreasing foodstock may leave approximately 20 million farm animals frozen to death before Spring. The United nation warns that thousands of Mongolian nomad families face food shortages and severe poverty because approximately 1.7 million of their farm animals including sheep, camels and cattle have already been killed because of the harsh winter."
From Rezwan's blog post for Rising Voices, Nomad Green: Mongolia - A Disaster In The Making

"Good. Grief. The fact that the ombudsman of the New York Times needs to explain to readers why his newspaper reports actual news as it happens — and Olympic results are actual news — is a depressing commentary on our nation’s entertainment-driven culture."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post There are No ‘Spoilers’ in News

"The IMMI proposal addresses all aspects of media law, beefing up protections for whistleblowers, reporters' sources, and communications with those sources. It also aims to reduce prior restraints, libel tourism, and the statute of limitations for bringing lawsuits against publishers. Plus, it offers protection to ISP hosts and implements fee-shifting for winning media defendants."
From Arthur Bright's blog post for the CMLP, Fortress Iceland? Probably Not.

"Facebook and other social networks have an especially tricky time in this zone, since so much user data is relational. You upload a photo of you and me; I tag it with your name. I leave Facebook — does your name disappear from the photo since I was the one who originally tagged it? Should all traces of someone vanish from everyone’s news feed, or is the alert that X posted a photo (along with a thumbnail of the photo) a different contribution than … posting the photo?"
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post Facebook's privacy storm [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in February 2009]