Berkman Blog Buzz, week of March 3

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.

* China, Part Deux: Digital Media in Asia comments on Chinese parodies and their case in court, and Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman post about China's new domain names
* Derek Slater is excited about playlist sharing as self-expression
* Dan Gillmor reports on Yahoo investing in user-generated content tools
* Urs Gasser comments on French DRM ruling
* Lawrence Lessig generates excitement about cultural environmentalism
* David Isenberg looks back on his "Google Scenario"

"If Chen pursues a legal case it is unclear if Chinese courts would allow a parody fair-use defense. Such parodies are rarely produced or broadcast by the strictly controlled state-run traditional media, so these might be untested legal waters. There is a developing trend of homemade spoofs gaining phenomenal popularity over the internet in China (e.g., the Back Dorm Boys, whose goofy dormroom webcam video of themselves performing Backstreet Boys tracks was such a sensation it landed them an advertising deal with Motorola)...."
Digital Media in Asia, "Homemade videos in China highlight the internet as an alternative to state-run TV" 

"China has not shut out the global internet, or created parallel evil twins of our well-loved and well-used top-level domains. What China has done is create its own Chinese sub-internet adjacent to the global one run by ICANN. This is precedent-setting. Will other governments follow? An Iranian-administered set of top level domains in Farsi? A Russian-administered set of TLD's in Russian? Why not?...."
Rebecca MacKinnon, "China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation"

"Much of the discussion at the World Summit on the Information Society focused on ways to create a domain name system independent of ICANN, which is percieved by some as being US-controlled despite ICANN's international board membership. China has now gone ahead and created three new TLDs that will only work for users in China. Type ??.?? into your web browser outside China and it will probably not resolve. The same domain name in China likely will resolve as of tomorrow...."
Ethan Zuckerman, "So where do I register ethanzuckerman.?"

"Washingtonpost.com's Howard Parnell has written a fantastic article about playlist sharing as a form of self-expression that can generate rich interpersonal relationships and vibrant communities.  The article builds in part on my recent paper on playlists, co-authored with Mike McGuire. Parnell focuses on the story of Justine Saylors, a grieving mom who took solace in music after the death of her son: Last summer the 44-year old Lake Oswego, Ore., resident discovered iMixes -- music playlists compiled by iTunes users, then uploaded and shared with other customers. Soon she was typing words and phrases such as "bereavement" and "death of a child" into the iMix search tool, then sampling and in many cases buying songs at 99 cents a pop from the lists that turned up...."
Derek Slater,  "Downloading Empathy to your iPod"

"If he's really serious about 'user-generated content' (an expression that I loathe) that's a surprise to me, given his history. His turnaround is an admission that he didn't grasp what the Web was about and I give him points for admitting it. Yahoo has been a leader in the bottom-up space for some time. The grassroots need even more help, and this could be a big boost..."
Dan Gillmor, "Yahoo's Course Correction"

"The French Cour de Cassation Ð the highest court in the French judicial system recently reversed a ruling by the Paris Court of Appeals in the landmark case UFC v. Films Alain Sadre et al. and remanded it, stating that the private copying ÒrightÓ is not an absolute usersÕ right and, therefore, that the application of technological protection measures inhibiting the making of copies for private purposes is not illegal under French law...."
Urs Gasser, "French Supreme Court Upholds Legality of DRM on DVD"

"While the topic of Jamie's book (IP policy) is something IP scholars had been talking about for ever, Jamie's book was one of the best to introduce these issues to a community beyond law scholars. (I first heard about the book at lunch a decade ago when Harvard's provost told me it was one of the most important law books I had ever read.). The book, and the articles that followed it, gave birth to what we should call the 'cultural environmentalism' movement - the movement to think about IP policy as environmentalists think about pollution policy...."
Lawrence Lessig, "Cultural Environmental at 10"

"There are three usefully distinct regulatory scenarios for Internet connectivity. In one, "Telco-topia," market entry is limited to duopoly, perhaps augmented by network access technologies so crippled that they'll always be also-rans, such as Broadband over Powerline and today's wireless options. In a second scenario, "New Entry," regulation supports new entrants and holds established companies in check; this is the thrust of Rick Whitt and Vint Cerf's proposed Horizontal Leap Forward model legislation based on layers, and it underlies the Powell FCC's focus on multi-modal competition. A third scenario, "Structural Separation," is...."
David Isenberg, "The Google Scenario"

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