Berkman Buzz, week of February 9

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of February 9, 2007

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

*Derek Slater watches out for "Viacom's Dragnet."
*Doc Searls has "ears to my music."
*David Weinberger reviews the "content" battles of the week.
*Wendy Seltzer observes "Copyright at the Whitney."
*Dan Gillmor knows "Apple Has Been Telling its Own Story for Years."
*Global Voices: "Music Video On South East Asian Haze."

The full Buzz:

"Last week, Viacom sent 100,000 takedown notices to YouTube, but not all the videos included Viacom content. Among the 100,000 videos targeted for takedowns was a home movie shot in a BBQ joint, a film trailer by a documentarian, and a music video about karaoke in Singapore. For its part, Viacom has admitted to “no more than” 60 mistakes, so far. Yet each mistake impacts free speech, both of the author of the video and of the viewing public."
Derek Slater, "Unfairly Caught in Viacom's Dragnet? Let EFF Know!"

"Two questions: 1) If creators, intermediaries, vendors and customers had relationships with each other — that is, if there were trust mechanisms not based on control (or its euphemism, "management") — we wouldn't need DRM at all, would we? 2) What would we have then? Besides — finally — a real marketplace?"
Doc Searls, "Ears to My Music."

"Interesting stuff percolating around the question of how controlled content ought to be, where "ought" means morally, culturally, and for hard-nosed business reasons. Is the issue coming to a head?"
David Weinberger, "The Content Control Bubble."

"It goes without saying that I can't go anywhere without seeing copyright issues lurking in the background. The last room of the Whitney's "Picasso and American Art," however, forced them to the foreground.
Throughout the exhibit, which showed Picasso artworks alongside American artworks they had inspired, were wonderful examples of transformative use -- artists from Max Weber to Jasper Johns taking elements from Picasso's work to create new art. Derivative works they might have been, but no one sued and the world is richer for them."
Wendy Seltzer, "Copyright at the Whitney: the Oldenburg-Picasso Exhibit."

"True, Jobs does occasionally bring a favored big-journalism reporter into the tent for a preview, but almost never to actually announce something via that reporter’s news outlet. Rather, it’s to amplify the news.
Other CEOs have offered up open letters before, too, such as the letter on net neutrality last year by Google’s Eric Schmidt, who got some attention in the press. CEOs don’t do it ever day, and when they do it’s usually to rebut or clarify something already in the public arena."
Dan Gillmor, "Apple Has Been Telling its Own Story for Years."

"Malaysian blogger Kean-Jim Lim introduced this music video made by some Malaysians protesting the haze brought about by slash and burn agriculture in nearby Indonesian island of Sumatra."
Preetam Rai, "Music Video On South East Asian Haze."