Berkman Buzz, week of October 27

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, just sign up here.

What's going on... take your pick or browse below.

* Ethan Zuckerman addresses privacy concerns in Russia’s active LiveJournal community.
* David Weinberger discusses role of PR in blogosphere.
* Rob Faris comments on Iranian Internet restrictions.
* John Palfrey reflects on Paul Kennedy's history of the UN.
* William McGeveran revisits question of fair use in book scanning.
* Rebecca MacKinnon warns against slippery slope of censorship.
* Lawrence Lessig evaluates Creative Commons’ role in ‘sharing economy.’
* Colin Rhinesmith talks about use of technology in social activism.

The full buzz.

“… [M]any bloggers chose LiveJournal because they didn’t trust their personal information to a Russian company. While bloggers can leave and move to any number of other services which will be less clearly tied to Russian entrepreneurs, they’ll lose some of the community features that make LiveJournal such a unique online space. The Russian blogosphere is so closely tied to LiveJournal … that the blogosphere is informally referred to as ZheZhe, short for “ZhivoyZhurnal”, or LiveJournal. …”
Ethan Zuckerman, “Turmoil in the ZheZhe”

“I personally think there are two fundamental roles for PR in the new world: Transparent advocacy and facilitating open, genuine engagement among customers and companies. Transparent advocacy means that the agency argues for its client, providing useful information to people who want to receive it. Genuine engagement means the agency helps its client participate in the Web conversation honestly and frankly, whether that's through employee blogging, customer forums, or ways yet to be invented. …”
David Weinberger, “PR’s Steps and Missteps into Webby World”


“The common element that these media share is that they are an easy and fun way to take in ideas, making this an obvious target for filtering. Limiting bandwidth is an exceedingly blunt tool for squashing decent. Broadband Internet is more than a pathway for cultural change; it is also an important conduit for 21st century human expression and economic growth. Iran is unfortunately not alone in denying its citizens access to the outside world and the benefits of connectivity. …”
Rob Faris, “Strangling the Net: Iran Censors Plan to Restrict Broadband Access”

"As those who study the Internet and care about human rights, we haven’t made the case clearly yet for where the rights of free expression and privacy in the Internet context fit in this balance. Many of us no doubt have strong convictions about which side of the ledger filtering and surveillance fall on; others, I know, see the issue are tricky and nuanced. There’s a field emerging here with enormous significance. The ability of activists to rely upon the Internet in repressive regimes is but one of the important things that hangs in the balance. I suspect that there are many captains of industry at large technology companies that feel caught in a purgatory wrought by this tension. The most notable thing to me about Kennedy’s book — through no fault of his, to be clear — is the extent to which Internet plays essentially no role in the story of the UN’s first 60 years. ..."
John Palfrey, "Internet and the United Nations"

“It may be time to revisit whether scanning, even though it is literally a form of reproduction, should be considered more like machine-assisted reading, at least when the purpose is the kind of data-crunching of either indexing … or analyzing linguistic patterns. These are projects formerly completed by laborious analog effort.  When done in that fashion neither a library card catalogue nor a dictionary represents even a close call on copyright infringement – both are perfectly legal. …”
William McGeveren, “Scanning Books for Lexicography as Fair Use”


“In the past few months I've started predicting to friends and colleagues that if trends continue on their current trajectory, in a few more decades there may be little difference between the U.S. and Chinese governments as far as censorship, surveillance, limits on freedom of expression, use of propaganda, and manipulation of the public are concerned. And if that does happen, it will be because the majority of Americans allowed it to happen …”
Rebecca MacKinnon, “U.S. Military Censorship?”


“The "sharing economy" is different from a traditional commercial economy. It is not simply people working for free. Instead, this is the economy that supports Wikipedia (and free and open source software before that). It is the economy that drives much of the creativity in YouTube and blip.tv. It is the world of "amateur" creators, meaning again, not those whose work is amateurish, but those who do what they do for the love of what they do, and not for the money. …”
Lawrence Lessig, “CC Values”


“ … ACMEBoston has been working with the Boston Neighborhood Producer’s Group to help bridge the “Knowledge Divide” when it comes to learning how to use these new media tools. I noted that we used our video blog on blip.tv to help share the two short videos that Danielle and I shot during our meeting at BNN’s Multimedia Center to help raise awareness about our work and to encourage others to get involved …”
Colin Rhinesmith, “My Talk at Bentley College”


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