Berkman Buzz, Week of January 28

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of January 28, 2008

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

*Doc Searls informs us on ways we inform ourselves in an open code world
*Corinna Di Gennaro and Miriam Simun highlight the issue of digital dossiers
*Dan Gillmor calls for digital entrepreneurship in the media sphere
*Derek Slater says, when it comes to delivering faster
broadband, the US is slow on the uptake
*David Ardia notes, the Subway vs. Quiznos lawsuit tackles some meaty issues
*The OpenNet Initiative looks at the fight against filtering in Yemen
*David Weinberger gives us a glimpse into the first Web Difference class of the semester
*The Citizen Media Law Project launches Legal Guide
*Weekly Global Voice: Middle East: Internet Outage Enrages Bloggers

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The full buzz.

"The model of free and open code development was much on my mind yesterday at the Berkman Center, where I joined in deep, interesting discussions about journalism, and especially about how to measure the real progress of what is coming to be called participatory journalism — a more encompassing and accurate name for what we also call citizen journalism. Somewhere in the midst I began to think about the imperatives of traditional journalism — and how those only partially serve the needs of the self-informing public. Two things stood out for me as markers of a difference. The first is the way we still write and read newspapers. The second is the way curious persons inform themselves about any subject of their choosing..."
Doc Searls, "Journalism in a world of open code and open self-education"

"Facebook collects information about users and then reserves the right to share all the amassed information with third parties.  When signed in to email or blogger, Google is keeping tabs on every search the user conducts.  In twenty years, marketers may know a six-year-old’s interests and habits better than he knows them himself. Our research has shown that while many young people are disinterested about data collection issues, they are also largely unaware of what is being collected, how it is being used, and what the repercussions may be.  Some who are more aware, cite the inevitability of compromising their privacy if they are going to engage in the social world, which, for the 12-24 age group, has migrated online..."
Corinna Di Gennaro and Miriam Simun, "Frontline’s 'Growing Up Online': What about the digital dossier?"

- continued -

"Something has changed, and it has profound meaning for the future of media and communications, including PR. Digital technologies are dramatically reducing the cost of entree for creating new products and services, and, in the case of digital media, those costs can be close to zero. This is one reason that communications of all kinds are being disrupted for business, in both methods and models. Traditional media-related enterprises, including journalism and advertising, are feeling the effects earlier than most, but everyone is vulnerable..."
Dan Gillmor, "Digital Entrepreneurship Needed Across All Media"

"Broadband deployment in the U.S. is at best disappointing and at worst a crisis. The United States lags behind other countries in broadband uptake per capita, ranked 15th in the latest Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) data. While consumers in Sweden and Japan are starting to zoom ahead with 20 and even 90 megabit/second connections delivered over fiber connections, U.S. consumers pay more for less, with only DSL and cable available in most markets. Some rural areas lack broadband altogether..."
Derek Slater, "Towards a bigger, better broadband future"

"The case itself is quite fascinating. In late 2006, Quiznos and video-sharing site iFilm co-sponsored a nationwide contest, “Quiznos v. Subway TV Ad Challenge,” inviting members of the public to submit videos comparing a Quiznos sandwich to a Subway sandwich using the theme "meat, no meat." Contestants submitted their videos to www.meatnomeat.com, and iFilm published entries on its website, where they remained following the end of the contest and selection of the winner..."
David Ardia, "Slandering Sandwiches and User Submitted Content"

"Yemen’s major news aggregator and portal calls for 'insurgency against Internet filtering' after the government of Yemen blocked the portal and at least 7 other news Web sites. The portal, yemenportal.net, warned in a press release (Arabic) that, unless the government unblocks the news sites, the portal will provide space for banned websites to display their content in full..."
ONI, "Insurgency against Internet filtering: Yemen’s electronic media’s reaction to crackdown on Web sites"

"After introductions — the course is over-subscribed, and there are about 35 people in the room — JP leads a half hour discussion of the 'autoadmit' matter. As one of the students explains, AutoAdmit is an anonymous forum for people to compare law schools. The target audience is people trying to decide between law schools. One of the owners is a UPenn law student, and there may be a second, unknown owner. A while ago, people started posting some awful stuff: threats, name-calling, etc. E.g., one of the postings claimed that a particular student killed himself, although that was false. And there were allegations of sexual acts by that student. What was different about the fact these acts occurred at an online message board, JP asks..."
David Weinberger, "Class 1"

"Today we are launching the first sections of the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide. The guide is intended for use by citizen media creators with or without formal legal training, as well as others with an interest in these issues, and addresses the legal issues that you may encounter as you gather information and publish your work online..."
Citizen Media Law Project, "Citizen Media Law Project Launches Legal Guide"

"What is a blogger without access to the Internet? This was the dilemma facing tens of thousands of bloggers in parts of the Middle East and Asia, after a cable in the Mediterranean was damaged, crippling millions of Internet users. No surprise, some of the region's bloggers were fuming especially when they realised that it could take up to two weeks to fix the damage and have to deal with slow Internet in the meanwhile.
Qatar: Thanks to slow Internet, Mohamed Nanabhay in Doha sends us a Twitter message saying:
Apparently some undersea cables have been damaged near Alexandria, Egypt and thus the 28.8k type internet speeds on my ADSL..
Bahrain:Braving slow connections, Bahraini Mahmood Al Yousif says the fact that such a large part of the world depends on ‘one cable' for its online communications is ridiculous and needs to be addressed..."
Amira Al Hussaini's for Global Voices, "Middle East: Internet Outage Enrages Bloggers"