Berkman Buzz, week of March 19

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of March 19, 2007

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

*Larry Lessig explains why "COPA is struck down."
*Ethan Zuckerman describes a day at Berkman.
*Urs Gasser collaborates with Shanghai.
*David Weinberger starts blogging for HuffingtonPost.
*Doc Searls gives "Required Listening."
*Rebecca MacKinnon on China's censored history leaking out.
*Wendy Seltzer explains "Uses of the DMCA."

The full buzz.

“Another Philadelphia court has struck another effort by Congress to regulate “harmful to minors” speech. (ACLU v. Gonzales). No surprise. Though it has taken almost a decade, it is the right answer given the flaws in the statute.”
Larry Lessig, "COPA is struck down."

“About a week ago, I was writing a blog post and wanted to link to a friend’s personal site. I wanted to make sure I got the link right, so I googled her name. I was surprised to discover that Google wouldn’t let me connect directly to her site - instead, under the description of her site as the warning “This site may harm your computer”.”
Ethan Zuckerman, "Hacked websites, trojan horses, Russian/Panamanian blackhat hackers - just another day at the Berkman Center."

“Whether it’s group projects like Lonelygirl15 or solo efforts, taking on another identity to write fiction has a long path, including my friend Ben Franklin, who wrote many of his works under psuedonyms, sometimes posing as a woman which might have given his words a credibility to female readers that they might have lacked if they’d seen his bald pate. Fiction, Liz points out, is lying as an art form - how does writing fiction in a form that is often used as a journaling or citizen media form complicate that line between lying and storytelling? …”
Urs Gasser, "Entering Collaboration with Fudan University, Shanghai."

“I'm starting to blog for the HuffingtonPost. It's way cool to be a reader of something and then get to write for it. Maybe I'm supposed to be blasé about it, but I'm totally not.”
David Weinberger, "Blogging for Huffington Post."

"Today's Berkman Center lunch talk, by Prof. Mary Wong of Franklin Pierce Law Center is outstanding. Here's the webcast. Recognizing both the fluidity and the stability of our rhetorical frames. To look beyond contract, beyond copyright, beyond intellectual property frameworks...
This is dear to my mind. A few minutes ago she said we don't really have a clear understanding of what a "commons" is. This is close (but far from identical) to what I said here about the Net not having one yet.”
Doc Searls, "Required Listening."

"In 1998, retired Xinhua News Agency journalist Dai Huang (now 79) published a book about his life -  including the 21 years he spent in labor camps after he was labeled a "rightist" in 1957 during the "anti-rightist campaign." His crime included: criticizing Mao's cult of personality.  Despite the fact that the book already had two print runs in the late 90's and early 00's, the publishing authorities have now blocked him from reprinting the book again. This is yet another indication that China's leadership has gotten more paranoid and insecure in many ways than they were in the late 90's - despite the fact that China's global influence and power have grown in recent years."
Rebecca MacKinnon, "Anti-Rightist campaign: China's censored history leaks around the Internet (in spite of Sohu)."

"I have my complaints with the DMCA's notice-and-takedown regime, but where I think it goes too far toward chilling speech, Viacom thinks it doesn't go far enough. That's the gist of its recent complaint against YouTube. Viacom argues that despite YouTube's DMCA compliance, taking down videos when notified of copyright claims, the site should be held liable for direct and indirect infringement of Viacom's copyrighted works (specifically, public performance, public display, reproduction, inducement, contributory, and vicarious infringement -- what, no derivative works claim?).”
Wendy Seltzer, "The Uses of the DMCA: Viacom v. YouTube."