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Berkman Buzz: Week of May 31, 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.

* Jonathan Zittrain storms Fort Knox.
* John Clippinger opines on privacy and sharing online.
* David Weinberger live-blogs Susan Crawford's talk at Pdf 2010.
* Chilling Effects looks at the "innocent infringer" defense.
* Harry Lewis may have used cash for his prepaid cell phone.
* Herdict reports on Facebook's accessibility in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
* OpenNet Initiative on Twitter's vanishing flotillas.
* Ethan Zuckerman complicates your revolution.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Hong Kong: Goddess of Democracy denied entry"

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The full buzz.

"Fort Knox represents the ideal of security through centralization: gunships, tanks, and 30,000 soldiers surround a vault containing over $700 billion in American government gold. It’s not a crazy idea for a nation’s bullion; after all, the sole goal is to convincingly hoard it. But Fort Knox is an awful model for Internet security."
From Jonathan Zittrain's post, The Internet’s Fort Knox Problem

"Privacy-shmivacy. “Who cares?” says CEO Mark of Facebook and CEO Eric of Google. Trust us. To paraphrase Google’s Eric Schmidt, if you don’t trust us, then you were probably doing something you shouldn’t. We want all the information we can get from you because that is how we make our billions. Just let go and go with the flow. Don’t be anti-social. This is social media. Be social. SHARE."
From John Clippinger's post Facebook is Betting Against its Users

"Susan Crawford says, “We are in the course of a titanic battle for the future of the Internet in the United States. The technology community is radically underrepresented in this battle.” Telephone providers and cable providers have each been merging, increasing monopoly holds on regions.The government has a key role in providing a level playing field for innovators. If you’re worried about personalization at the app level (as per Eli Pariser yesterday), you should be very worried about it at the network level."
From David Weinberger's blog post [pdf] Susan Crawford: Rethinking broadband

"A recent ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, applicable to residents of Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, appears to recognize the "innocent infringer" defense for copyright infringement of sound recordings. This runs counter to decisions of two other circuit courts which effectively read this defense out of the law for music infringement. In addition, the decision defines a record album as a single "work" to which only a single statutory penalty applies, rather than holding that each song on the album is a separate work, thus reducing the risk of ruinous penalties for innocent infringement."
From David Abrams' blog post for Chilling Effects, East Coast Enlightenment - Protect the Innocent

"It’s coming, I’d guess; as is registration for Internet services, already the law in South Korea. When the left (which is happy with more social intervention and control) and the right (which foresees the end of civilization in the bungling Times Square bomber) line up, the libertarian arguments don’t have much traction."
From Harry Lewis' blog post Another Attack on Anonymity

"As Pakistan lifted a two-week long ban on Facebook Monday, Bangladesh began blocking the site. Both bans followed the creation of a Facebook group promoting “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” an event that encourages participants to submit artistic representations of the prophet Mohammed — something many Muslims consider to be idolatry — as an exercise in free speech."
From Rebekah Heacock's post for Herdict, Pakistan Lifts Facebook Ban; Bangladesh Cracks Down

"While not making explicit reference to the incident, his statements suggest #Flotilla's dissapearance was not intentional. TechCrunch gave details, noting that "the most likely explanation is that Twitter's recently updated trending topics algorithm mistakes #gaza and #flotilla for older news unrelated to current events" and this in turn triggered their spam filter when peoople began tweeting about #Flotilla this weekend."
From Sarah Hamdi's blog post for ONI, #Flotilla Censored?

"“Theory of change” is a term I never heard until I started working for foundations. One of the main problems you face working at a foundation is choosing between rival good ideas. You’ve got a pot of money, and nice, well-meaning people come to you with cool, clever ideas for changing the world. It’s worth unpacking the logic behind any project you would consider funding. What do we want to accomplish, in the long run, and how would this project advance those goals?"
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Overcoming apathy through participation? – (not) my talk at Personal Democracy Forum

"Today is the 21st anniversary of the June 4 Massacre in Beijing Tiananmen and the Hong Kong public will continue their annual candle night vigil tonight. However, the preparation process hasn't been very smooth so far. And this year, the conflict point is around the Goddess of Democracy. First of all, the Hong Kong police confiscated two statues of the Goddess of Democracy before the annual march to commemorate the Tiananmen incident on 30 of May. The government explained that the organizers of the public exhibition in Times Square has violated the “Public Entertainment Ordinance”."
From Oiwan Lam's blog post for Global Voices, Hong Kong: Goddess of Democracy denied entry

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The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the blogs of Berkman Center directors, fellows, projects: http://cyber.harvard.edu/planet/current/

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always weclome and can be emailed to syoung@cyber.harvard.edu