Berkman Buzz, week of December 15

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.

*Chilling Effects notes irony of YouTube anti-infringement action.
*Jim Moore extols virtues of OPML at Harvard and beyond.
*Bill McGeveran ponders economics of brand name babies.
*Ethan Zuckerman recaps lunch on the openness of Harvard.
*Charles Nesson ventures beyond Berkman Island in Second Life.
*Jake Shapiro reports from public media conference.
*David Isenberg discusses troubling data on telecom merger.
*MediaBerkman Video: Harvard Free Culture explores impact of digital activism.

The Full Buzz

“The Cease and Desist letter, sent by YouTube’s attorneys at law firm Wilson Sonsini, accuses TechCrunch’s Video Download Tool of violating YouTube’s Terms of Use as well as a number of state and federal laws – most notably, copyright infringement. YouTube alleges that the making of unauthorized copies of the videos on its servers infringes the copyright of YouTube users’ videos…”
Chilling Effects, “YouTube Threatens Legal Action Against Host of Video Download Tool”

“Outlines in turn are portals to other forms of expression. One can have an outline of mathematical equations, an outline of field research, an outline of experimental data, an outline of audio and video recordings, or an outline of Second Life communities.
Indeed, outlines are a central structural metaphor for the university. And outlines are almost always how collaboration is begun ('hey, take a look at this outline') and how the creative results of collaboration are summarized and shared ('here is an outline of what we came up with')…”
Jim Moore, “The Harvard Book of OPML”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a leap to me because so many parents already put brand names on their birth certificates. And I don’t mean names like Mercedes, that had a history as a name for people (and places and institutions) before it became associated with the car. My wife often recounts a presentation she attended from a Disney executive who bragged about the strength of Disney’s brand names, giving as an example the double-digit number of children in the United States named ESPN or Espn after the Disney-owned cable sports network…”
Bill McGeveran, “Baby-Naming Rights”

“Charlie Nesson - who introduces himself as 'Charles the Infuriator' - is chewing on an interesting new train of thought: the openness of universities...Charlie is organizing a conference at the University this summer, asking the question, 'How Open Will Harvard Be to Internet and Society?' Some examples make it a bit easier to understand what he’s asking:
*Does it make sense for scholars to use public money to do research, then hand that research over to a private company, which farms them out to other scholars who perform peer review - for free - then binds and sells the research for an awful lot of money? This model may have made sense years ago, but does it make sense in a digital age, or should Harvard move towards an Open Access model for publishing?
*How does corporate or government funding of research work to make parts of universities open and closed? How do we feel about closing off areas of knowledge due to the constraints of funding?
*Universities like MIT have taken big steps towards making their courses and software open and accessible to the wider world. Why have so few American universities embraced what’s available through these repositories?

Given these questions, Charlie invites the room to suggest their topics for this conference. The room is packed, and we get a wide range of ideas offered..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Charles Nesson’s lunch at Berkman: what does it mean for a university to be open'?"

"...my first visit to second life would have been one time, if that, without my daughter to lead me and hold me in. whenever i’ve left berkman island to go forth and look around i’ve found the environment elaborately constructed but humanly forbidding. yet i am excited at the prospect of holding court in this virtual immersive domain. second life is a crappy way to do some things, maybe a fine way to do others.

my sense is that second life is an ideal environment for mock trials. compared to live mock trials which tend to be a rush of words in which evidentiary objections are difficult to focus, the pace of exchange in the text environment of second life is slower and more deliberate; a record is naturally generated; evidentiary objects are easily represented..."
Charles Nesson, "zittrain & zuckerman"

“Fred tells the group that as broadcasters we’re still playing under the old rules - including 'strict liability' - while new competitors like YouTube and others have started playing by totally new rules. The new rules aren’t yet even rules, and some of the pending litigation and deal-making surrounding YouTube will have an impact. I ask Fred how safe the DMCA Safe Harbor (the part of the DMCA that protects sites from liability for infringement if they take down material when rights-holders notify them), and if it’s big enough to accommodate YouTube is it big enough for the rest of us too… He basically says 'yes' (good thing, I’m the 'DMCA agent' on record for PRX…)…”
Jake Shapiro, “Public Media Gathers in San Francisco”

“Merger proponents say that the BellSouth-AT&T merger is 'in the public interest' because the merged entity is more efficient, more innovative, and 'capable of accelerating and expanding the delivery of high quality advanced technologies and services to all classes of customers, large and small.' They also say that this merger will 'solidify and secure the nation’s status as a world leader in telecommunications and that it will strengthen national security.' Are these claims true?…”
David Isenberg, “BellSouth-AT&T Merger: Empirical Evidence”

"Harvard Free Culture presents 'an event on Cyberactivism and Culture Jamming this Friday (12/1) where we’ll explore the interplay between digital technologies, activism, and the ability to modify and critique cultural institutions.

Featuring four speakers:
Ji Lee, Artist and Creator of the Bubble Project
J. Salvatore Testa, Defender of Truth and Liberty, Hacktivismo
Prof. Fred Turner, Stanford University and author of 'From Counterculture to Cyberculture'
Prof. Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Harvard VES Dept., teaching 'Art and Activism since 1989: Culture Jam.'"
MediaBerkman, "Digital Disobedience: Cyberactivism and Culture Jamming"