Berkman Buzz, week of April 28

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations. For a complete picture, please visit our Berkman aggregator and AudioBerkman. 

*In addition to our look at the past week's online Berkman conversations, we feature commentary from today's "Bloggership Symposium: How Blogs are transforming legal scholarship" and a look at Jonathan Zittrain's Inaugural Lecture at Oxford University, "The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It."*

What's being blogged from Bloggership... Take your pick here or browse below.

Tim Armstrong blogs Bloggership panelists' presentations.
Ann Althouse points out that blogs, not scholarship, are read.
Larry Solum narrates an online scholarly conversation.
John Palfrey looks at a recent blogging lawsuit.

And what's being talked about at the Berkman Center.

Jonathan Zittrain paints an inaugural picture of the future.
Ethan Zuckerman covers Jonathan Zittrain's inaugural lecture 'like a pro.'
John Palfrey dishes out on the legalities of podcasting.
Ethan Zuckerman shares some knowledge management.
Tim Armstrong studies the duration of copyright terms in the US.
David Isenberg bemoans the Barton bill.
David Weinberger takes a look at Siderean's metadata automation.
Urs Gasser highlights A2K presentation highlights.

The full buzz.

"...Larry Solum says blogs aren't changing anything about legal scholarship but are manifestations of other changes. He loves very long law review articles, but concedes that no one reads them. Yes, it's a funny thing about blogging: it's read. You have these elaborately written things that aren't read, and then everyone thinks of blogging as just thrown together. But short posts can be carefully written, and they can embody ideas that you have thought through in more formal scholarship..."
Ann Althouse, "Live Blogging the Bloggership Conference!"

"...I learned another lesson about the power of the blogosphere from a series of exchanges with Jack Balkin, who then ran Balkinization as a solo blog. In response to a column by Eddie Lazarus I posted a detailed reply, prompting Jack Balkin to publish a post entitled “Good Judging and ‘Following the Rules Laid Down.’” I countered with “A Neoformalist Manifesto,” followed by Balkin’s “Good Judging and "Following the Rules Laid Down," Part II.” The exchange ended with my “Fear and Loathing in New Haven.” The exchange conducted over the course of four days, runs almost fourteen-thousand words. Balkin’s contributions to the exchange were eloquent and powerful. They gave me the sense that the possibilities of blogging transcended the one-paragraph post; Balkin’s blogging blurred the lines between conventional legal scholarship and bloggership..."
Larry Solum, "A Blogger's Tale"

"The Boston Globe reports: "Warren Kremer Paino Advertising LLC, an agency hired by the Maine Department of Tourism, filed suit in US District Court in Maine last week, alleging the blogger, Lance Dutson of Searsmont, Maine, outside Camden, violated the agency's copyright and defamed the agency in blog entries self-published at www.mainewebreport.com."  My view is that a lawsuit of this sort should have to clear a very high bar before a court awards damages to the design firm, especially where the core discussion is a matter of political speech in which a citizen is commenting on the activities of a state agency of his home state..."
John Palfrey, "Maturation of Blogging"

"This new vision for universities involved “inverting the pyramids” - rather than creating monuments to individual egos, we need start understanding what we can build as a group, understanding that there are bad people amongst us, inaccuracies generated, and still a great work achieved..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Jonathan Zittrain on generativity and the future of the Internet"

"One of the questions we get all the time is: "how do I know what's legal and illegal when I'm podcasting?"  It's one of those questions that can make a lawyer cringe, because you either 1) spend the rest of the cocktail party trying to give a decent answer or 2) you have to say it's too complicated and the person should hire a lawyer. So, a better answer..."
John Palfrey, "A free, legal guide for podcasters"

" It’s the opening talk in a series of talks on Knowledge Management, as OSI tries to figure out how to better handle information sharing within the vast and complicated organization. My hope is not to talk about conventional KM at all - intranets, shared calendars, groupware - and instead talk about how new “read/write web” technologies change how we conduct research and advocacy. I’ve posted a vast slide deck..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Slides for My OSI Talk"

"As part of my preparations for teaching the Intro to Intellectual Property course this fall at the University of Cincinnati, IÂ’ve been working on a one-page chart to illustrate the duration of copyright terms in the United States under the 1976 Copyright Act..."
Tim Armstrong, "Copyright Duration and Renewal, Illustrated"

"Its anti-discrimination provision, its best shot at prohibiting blocking, impairment or degrading of any content, application or service is based on the four watery Martin Internet Principles (original .pdf, derived .html) which are weakened by phrases like "subject to the needs of law enforcement," and "that do not harm the network," and Footnote 15 that says..."
David Isenberg, "Barton Bill Battle Begins"

"Siderean , one of the interesting faceted classification companies, has announced some new capabilities that aim at automating the generation of metadata and that integrate tagging with facets. The automation comes from entity extraction tools..."
David Weinberger, "Siderean's tagged facets"

"Our colleagues and friends from the Information Society Project at Yale Law School have organized a landmark conference on Access to Knowledge, taking place this weekend at Yale Law School, that brings together leading thinkers and activists on A2K policy from North and South and is aimed at generating concrete research agendas and policy solutions for the next decade. ....Here are some of Friday's and yesterday's conference highlights in newsflash-format:..."
Urs Gasser, "Some highlights of Yale's A2K conference"


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