Berkman Buzz: November 4, 2011
A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.
* Wendy Seltzer reports on last week's ICANN public meeting
* The OpenNet Initiative makes its global filtering data available for download and reuse
* Ethan Zuckerman explores the phenomenon of the "rebuttal tweet"
* Jeffrey Schnapp discusses physicality in the libraries of the future
* The Citizen Media Law Project keeps track of ACTA
* Weekly Global Voices: "Global Voices Podcast: Bridging the Language Gaps"
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The full buzz.
"Law enforcement demands to domain name registrars were a recurring theme of the 42d ICANN public meeting, concluded last week in Dakar. The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) took every opportunity at its public meetings with GNSO and Board, and in its Communique to express dismay, disappointment, and demands for urgent action to 'reduce the risk of criminal abuse of the domain name system.'"
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post, "ICANN: The Stakes in Registrar Accreditation"
"The OpenNet Initiative is pleased to announce the availability of our summarized global Internet filtering data as a downloadable CSV file under a Creative Commons license. The data provides an overview of the most recent ONI ratings of the breadth and depth of Internet censorship in seventy-four countries across four content categories (political, social, Internet tools and conflict/security). This release makes ONI data more accessible to researchers, journalists, and data mash-up developers."
From Masashi Crete-Nishihata's blog post for the OpenNet Initiative, "ONI Summarized Global Internet Filtering Data Now Available for Download"
"There’s some sort of psychological impact that comes from receiving a rebuttal tweet. Twitter is a social network, and to some extent, we’re all looking for the small serotonin burst that comes from an affirmative retweet – 'Yay, a person liked what I have to say!' Not only does the rebuttal fail to provide the boost – it provides (for me, at least) a much stronger negative signal: someone I don’t know disagrees with me strongly enough to single me out and correct me. Did I get my facts wrong? Is this a chance to start a discussion, or is someone merely yelling at me? Even if I’m confident about what I wrote, the rebuttal tweet interrupts my comfortable echo chamber of affirmation and invites me to think about whether I’m considering an issue broadly enough. And that’s often a good thing."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "The rebuttal tweet"
"The seminar’s home in an architecture school has helped to drive the discussion towards a key question that confronts (and haunts–today is Halloween!) conversations regarding libraries of the future: namely, how much does physicality count. And what sorts of physicality? The physicality of the silent reading room, the open access stack, the coffee house in the basement, the carrel where you can 'spy' on the books and documents gathered together by another researcher?"
From Jeffrey Schnapp's blog post, "Bibliotheca and beyond"
"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is slowly inching its way towards implementation, but obstacles still remain. Now that the signing window for ACTA has been open for a while, let’s take a quick look at which countries have actually signed the agreement: United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "Keeping an Eye on ACTA"
"In this edition of the Global Voices Podcast we discuss languages that are hard to find on the internet. Do you speak a language that is hard to find online? Are you from a place where your mother tongue is not widely spoken? Then you may be a part of large number of people around the world who speak and write “under-represented languages”. We also look forward to the 11 Eleven Project on 11/11/11."
From Jamillah Knowles's post for Global Voices, "Global Voices Podcast: Bridging the Language Gaps"
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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock.
The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.
Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.