Berkman Buzz, week of February 23

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of February 23, 2007

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

*Dan Gillmor in public access TV debate.
*Rebecca MacKinnon applauds Chinese-English blogging project.
*Doc Searls discusses satellite radio merger.
*Ethan Zuckerman, free speech, and Egyptian bloggers.
*Jake Shapiro embraces Internet radio partnerships.
*Lawrence Lessig defines fair use standards.
*Beyond Broadcast 2007 video uploads.

The full buzz:

"“Good to bad to ugly, public access cable TV has given voice to people who had something to say. Using the cable companies’ production facilities and distribution, these folks have been able to make themselves heard by anyone who cared to watch and listen. Public access, by almost any standard, has been a valuable addition to the local media scene. Valuable, but outdated: It’s time to phase out public access — but in a way that brings us even better publicly created news and entertainment.”
Dan Gilmor, "Beyond Broadcast: Future of Public Access TV"

“Guangzhou-based blogger and Global Voices language editor John Kennedy is leading an exciting new initiative which Roland Soong has dubbed the Open Source Translation Blogging project… and which "Letters from China" calls the Great Hall of the Bloggers. John's idea, which started in a comments thread on LfC's blog, is similar to a dream Roland has had for a couple of years: To build a cooperative of bilingual bloggers who coordinate translation of important conversations taking place on the Chinese Internet - particularly stuff that we think will help the English-speaking world to understand China better. ..."
Rebecca MacKinnon, "Join the Open Source Translation Blogging Project"

“There are too few companies — just two — in satellite radio here in the U.S.; and soon there will be only one. Imagine if one company owned the whole FM band. It's like that. (Yes, I know Clear Channel sort-of does in many places, but what's dead about terrestrial radio is not on the table here.) The only thing keeping this merger out of antitrust territory is the still experimental nature of the whole medium, and the fact that neither company as it stands is known for its profitability.”
Doc Searls, "A Ground Level View of the XM/Sirius Merger in the Sky"

"Kareem isn’t the first Egyptian blogger to go to prison, but unlike my friend Alaa Adb El Fateh who was held for participating in a political protest, Kareem is being jailed for writing on his blog. The response from press freedom organizations like Reporters Without Borders has been swift and unequivocal - this is an absurd sentence for a young man who’s simply exercising his basic rights of free speech. But the reaction from the blogosphere in Egypt and throughout the Middle East is a bit more complicated. ..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Free Kareem, and Everyone Else Illegally Imprisoned in Egypt"

"With a catalog of thousands of hours of diverse and compelling and relevant radio content from all over the world, all in a digital index with metadata and rights info and other good things in the mix, PRX is primed to partner on creating interesting new streams for Internet radio and ultimately HD or new terrestrial signals (especially as our friends at PRC start getting new stations up and running with a need for new formats). Just browsing through the PRX list of Formats, Topics, Tones, Generation PRX, or Docs on Demand, can spark a dozen ideas for new streams. Here’s the basic idea …”
Jake Shapiro, "Let's Do a 'Side Channel'"

“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, “Major News: Fair Use and Film"