Berkman Blog Buzz, week of February 24
A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations. For a complete picture, please visit our Berkman aggregator. Last week's Blog Buzz is here.
What's going on … Take your pick here or browse below.
*Derek Slater gets excited about Yahoo! Music Exec dumping DRM
*Dan Gillmor issues call to bloggers to collaborate with mainstream press
*China, China, and more China…. Rebecca MacKinnon investigates one blocked Chinese blog. ONI analyzes the effects of China’s mandatory website registration regulation. Ethan Zuckerman takes on the complexities of China's firewall.
*David Weinberger contemplates the future of metadata.
*Wendy Seltzer reports on the first round of Google vs. Perfect Ten.
First off, no other music store exec has been willing to say this in public. What's more, not every music store exec actually wants this. Apple would keep its DRM regardless of the record labels' decisions, and Microsoft seems pretty content to play DRM gatekeeper. To create lock-in, they're happy to sell customers less useful products...."
Derek Slater, "Yahoo! Music Exec: 'Dump the DRM!'"
"If successful, this intiative will demonstrate that newspapers are finally acknowledging the substantive, high-quality work being done by bloggers who don’t work for them and have decided that it is in their best interest to incorporate good blog content into their offerings. This is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious attempts thus far to facilitate cross-over and collaboration between traditional media organizations and the rapidly-expanding blogosphere...."
Dan Gillmor, "Calling all bloggers"
"I talked a bit about the historical parallels between then and now in an article last month, and how history might be repeating itself, despite the Communist Party's best efforts. Are U.S. tech companies ultimately betting on the losing horse?) In a later post, the blogger concludes that his/her blog was blocked because he/she wrote about and reproduced material from a recently banned publication, Freezing Point. He/she says a lot of MSN Spaces blogs talking about Freezing Point have been blocked...."
Rebecca MacKinnon, "Microsoft blocks democratic China blog"
"This new regulation does not rely on sophisticated filtering technology, but uses the threat of surveillance and legal sanction to pressure bloggers and website owners into self-censorship. While savvy website owners might thwart the registration requirement with relative ease, the regulation puts the vast majority of Chinese Internet users on notice that their online behavior is being monitored and adds another layer of control to China’s already expansive and successful Internet filtering regime...."
OpenNet Initiative, "ONI bulletin released today analyzing Chinese non-commercial website registration regulation"
“These are people who understand how to get around the firewall by using proxy servers and, in many cases, can read English, giving them access to a great deal of controversial content that Chinese authorities don’t bother to censor. More importantly, they’re very good at sharing this information in ways that escapes censorship - printing out key web pages and distributing them on paper, using SMS messages and creative strategies to show dissent on their weblogs....”
Ethan Zuckerman, “It’s too late to prevent ‘The Internets’”
"I suspect that having reduced the problem of metadata to its most elemental form — type in a word or two that will remind us of what a page or photo is about — we will now complexify it usefully to the point at which the complexity gets in the way...."
David Weinberger, "Wikisonomies"
“It also holds that showing third-party pages inline, as Google image search does via frames when a user clicks a thumbnail, does not count as an infringing "public display" by Google. These results make sense. The infringement, if any, takes place on third-party sites and the search engine should not be held liable for their activities. Most warming to my heart, the court found it entirely unnecessary to reach the question of DMCA safe harbors, for there was no liability against which Google needed harboring....”
Wendy Seltzer, "Google wins some loses some, in first round versus Perfect Ten"
What's going on … Take your pick here or browse below.
*Derek Slater gets excited about Yahoo! Music Exec dumping DRM
*Dan Gillmor issues call to bloggers to collaborate with mainstream press
*China, China, and more China…. Rebecca MacKinnon investigates one blocked Chinese blog. ONI analyzes the effects of China’s mandatory website registration regulation. Ethan Zuckerman takes on the complexities of China's firewall.
*David Weinberger contemplates the future of metadata.
*Wendy Seltzer reports on the first round of Google vs. Perfect Ten.
First off, no other music store exec has been willing to say this in public. What's more, not every music store exec actually wants this. Apple would keep its DRM regardless of the record labels' decisions, and Microsoft seems pretty content to play DRM gatekeeper. To create lock-in, they're happy to sell customers less useful products...."
Derek Slater, "Yahoo! Music Exec: 'Dump the DRM!'"
"If successful, this intiative will demonstrate that newspapers are finally acknowledging the substantive, high-quality work being done by bloggers who don’t work for them and have decided that it is in their best interest to incorporate good blog content into their offerings. This is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious attempts thus far to facilitate cross-over and collaboration between traditional media organizations and the rapidly-expanding blogosphere...."
Dan Gillmor, "Calling all bloggers"
"I talked a bit about the historical parallels between then and now in an article last month, and how history might be repeating itself, despite the Communist Party's best efforts. Are U.S. tech companies ultimately betting on the losing horse?) In a later post, the blogger concludes that his/her blog was blocked because he/she wrote about and reproduced material from a recently banned publication, Freezing Point. He/she says a lot of MSN Spaces blogs talking about Freezing Point have been blocked...."
Rebecca MacKinnon, "Microsoft blocks democratic China blog"
"This new regulation does not rely on sophisticated filtering technology, but uses the threat of surveillance and legal sanction to pressure bloggers and website owners into self-censorship. While savvy website owners might thwart the registration requirement with relative ease, the regulation puts the vast majority of Chinese Internet users on notice that their online behavior is being monitored and adds another layer of control to China’s already expansive and successful Internet filtering regime...."
OpenNet Initiative, "ONI bulletin released today analyzing Chinese non-commercial website registration regulation"
“These are people who understand how to get around the firewall by using proxy servers and, in many cases, can read English, giving them access to a great deal of controversial content that Chinese authorities don’t bother to censor. More importantly, they’re very good at sharing this information in ways that escapes censorship - printing out key web pages and distributing them on paper, using SMS messages and creative strategies to show dissent on their weblogs....”
Ethan Zuckerman, “It’s too late to prevent ‘The Internets’”
"I suspect that having reduced the problem of metadata to its most elemental form — type in a word or two that will remind us of what a page or photo is about — we will now complexify it usefully to the point at which the complexity gets in the way...."
David Weinberger, "Wikisonomies"
“It also holds that showing third-party pages inline, as Google image search does via frames when a user clicks a thumbnail, does not count as an infringing "public display" by Google. These results make sense. The infringement, if any, takes place on third-party sites and the search engine should not be held liable for their activities. Most warming to my heart, the court found it entirely unnecessary to reach the question of DMCA safe harbors, for there was no liability against which Google needed harboring....”
Wendy Seltzer, "Google wins some loses some, in first round versus Perfect Ten"