Berkman Buzz, week of May 5

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

Take your pick here or browse below.

David Weinberger talks about the virtues of messy categories.
Ethan Zuckerman describes Michael Leibold's virtual world.
Lawrence Lessig brings us into the network neutrality debate.
John Palfrey studies his students' learning environment.
Lawrence Lessig points out little known movie trivia.
Ethan Zuckerman review "Internet Geolocation and Evasion"
Rebecca MacKinnon reports on the WeMedia conference.
Wendy Seltzer on depiction and trademark law.
ONI releases Belarus Internet Watch Report.
Beyond Broadcast asks who is leading our creative future.


The full buzz:


"Michael Leibold from the Institute for the Future is less interested in virtual worlds, than laying a metaverse on top of the real universe. His dream is the “Star Trek Tricorder” model - step anywhere in the world and get cultural, political, historical, economic and social information about that place.  This idea suggests moving away from the “console view of the world”, assuming that the “world computer” is a handheld, mobile device. This device helps you discover the informational labels that have been put onto the physical world. This layered cartographic data is a web attached to physical places and physical objects, which allows you to access those layers of data when you’re in the world, looking at a store, a building or a natural vista..."
Ethan Zuckerman
"Michael Leibold on building a tricorder - the geographic web"

"So I've been in a debate with Christopher Yoo over at legal affairs on the topic of Network Neutrality -- Here's a Snippet:..."
Lawrence Lessig
"Network Neutrality redux"

"But I’m also puzzling over another, related question. If you are teaching today’s Digital Natives but not using technology to do so, why not? And if you are, what’s your purpose in doing so? You may well have a good reason NOT to use computing in any way in the teaching process. A professor at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren, makes a compelling case about how she teaches using the Socratic method and the extent to which that method is about a highly focused, person-to-person exchange in the classroom (and associated benefits to onlookers who are not looking at IMs and smirking about what someone just sent them). Absent a specific pedagogical reason of this sort — and there are many — I think any educator, at any level, has to ask themselves if they are in fact engaging students in the digital environment in which a large percentage of their students immerse themselves..."
John Palfrey
"Computing and education"

"A relatively little-known fact outside of copyright practice is that movie studios regularly purchase the film and television rights to newspaper stories. Yes, newspaper stories, which by their nature, report on facts or ideas, two things the copyright law does not protect..."
Lawrence Lessig
Why do studios pay for newspaper movie rights?

"One of the best in the pile I’m working through is “Internet Geolocation and Evasion” by James Muir and P.C. van Oorschot at Carleton University in Ottawa. The authors address the question of how easy or hard it is to avoid being geolocated - i.e., having a web server make a credible guess as to your physical location based on information transmitted by your web browser when you access a webpage. This problem is closely related to a problem I’m concerned about - how do you ensure a user can access a webpage without revealing her real-world identity?..."
Ethan Zuckerman
"A problem with Tor... which is really a problem with Java"

"It has been an exhausting day - I moderated two panels, one on the evolving media landscape in China/East Asia, the next on media trends in India/SouthAsia. I couldn't take notes because I was moderating but fortunately Jeff Jarvis has blogged the whole day in detail, and there's a long writeup here on the WeMedia blog..."
Rebecca MacKinnon
"WeMedia, WhereMedia?"

"Wrong. Trademark law does not give companies veto power over the depiction of real products, either in documentary or in fiction. That's why when Disney's George of the Jungle 2 showed Caterpillar bulldozers battling George's jungle creatures, to unflattering effect, an Illinois district court denied Caterpillar Inc.'s bid to stop it. The court found Cat unlikely to succeed on either infringement or dilution grounds..."
Wendy Seltzer
"WSJ on computers in movies (and trademark missteps)"

"Indirect methods to disrupt Internet access to opposition websites during elections may be the way of the future in democratically-challenged countries. Today the Open Net Initiative releases its first Internet Watch Report the Internet and Elections: The 2006 Presidential Election in Belarus. The report presents the findings of ONIs effort to monitor the Internet during Belarus recent presidential elections...."
OpenNet Initiative
"ONI Releases Belarus Internet Watch Report"

"That begs the question: who should be leading the Creative Future of the US? ...  Are commercial participatory media services public media? Is it in our best interest to furnish publicly funded alternatives which compete directly with these popular commercial services and web applications? Who is best suited to provide these solutions?..."
Beyond Broadcast

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