Berkman Buzz, week of April 14

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations. For a complete picture, please visit our Berkman aggregator. Last week’s Buzz is here.

What’s going on…take your pick here or browse below.

* Ethan Zuckerman discusses african content creation.
* Wendy Seltzer contemplates ICANN’s challenges.
* David Isenberg on the Bells v. Cablecos battle.
* Rebecca MacKinnon reports on detained blogger Hao Wu.
* Lawrence Lessig rallies for iSummit 06.

The full buzz.

“Whether through market forces or through efforts like the One Laptop Per Child initiative, millions of Africans are going to get online in the next few years. Yes, they’re going to download textbooks and read wikipedia and send email and chat. But they’re also going to create content. New internet users these days go from consumer to creator in just a few clicks. It’s increasingly easy to take photos with your phone and share them on flickr, or share your thoughts through a blog. These tools aren’t being picked up just by the broadband-enabled elites in the North - they’re getting used by everyone who gets online. And this is going to have some profound and unanticipated consequences…”
Ethan Zuckerman, “A chance to speak up – notes for my talk at the Sweet Mother conference”

“Without big issues at stake, much of the general public can't be bothered to learn all of ICANN's acronyms and procedures to participate. Those who do are derided as kooks or edge cases. We're told that the telephone company doesn't want to hear from its customers (paraphrasing a comment by Board member Veni Markovski). ICANN's problem is that the table scraps of issues are still important. Certainly to those who have built businesses in ICANN-regulated industries, most notably domain name registrars and registries. But also to the general public…”
Wendy Seltzer, “ICANN: Fighting Over Table Scraps”

“Here's a very well-written report of the Bell's trail of Rate Relief and Broken Promises. It is funded by Broadband Everywhere, a consortium that's openly funded by small cablecos and the NCTA, who are fighting back against the Bell-flavored franchise reform law moving through Congress. It relies heavily on the work of Bruce Kushnick, but it also cites many relevant local press stories…Really good stuff on a bad story that demands more attention! Mainstream reporters, attention please…"
David Isenberg, “Telco Lies, the whitepaper”

"Nina has often been pointing out on her blog that as a privileged middle class Chinese who works in finance, and who has been generally unconcerned with politics, she hadn't been aware of the extent to which a Chinese person can suddenly lose his or her rights.'...before this happened to my brother, I felt that I had it all: family, friends, a job I liked, and a typical Shanghai “little capitalist” life...'"
Rebecca MacKinnon, "China continues to hold Hao Wu without charge"

“The aim of iCommons reaches far beyond the infrastructure that CC is building. The aim of the iSummit is to bring together a wide range of people in addition the CC crowd - including Wikipedians, Free Software sorts, the Free Culture kids, A2K heroes, Open Access advocates, and others — to “to inspire and learn from one another and establish closer working relationships around a set of incubator projects.” iCommons has a separate board from Creative Commons — Joi Ito is its chair — and its ultimate mission (in addition to this annual moveable feast of commons conversation) will be determined by the conversation that will continue in Rio…”
Lawrence Lessig, “iCommons and the iSummit”

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