Berkman Buzz, week of February 4

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, just sign up here.
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of February 4, 2008

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

*Swear you DVRed Lost, but it's nowhere to be found? Jonathan Zittrain knows what might have happened
*Ethan Zuckerman gives us a seat at Berkman's conference on internet and democracy in Istanbul
*If danah boyd boycotts locked-down academic journals, is it called a boydcott?
*Doc Searls says Yahoo must remain open if Microsoft closes the deal
*Public Radio Exchange digs into the Public Media Election Collaboration with two new campaign curators
*David Ardia comments on Bush's Open (and shut) Government
*Persephone Miel asks why an NPR uncovering a VA hospital scandal didn't (Fort) Drum up more blogger interest
*Weekly Global Voice: Foko blog club gives Malagasy youth a voice

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The full buzz.

"[T]he court ordered EchoStar to kill the DVR functionality in products already owned by 'end users': millions of boxes which were already sitting in living rooms around the world with owners who might be using them at that very instant. Imagine sitting down to watch television on an EchoStar box,  and instead finding that all your recorded shows had been zapped, along with the DVR functionality itself—killed by remote signal traceable to the stroke of a judge’s quill in Marshall, Texas..."
Jonathan Zittrain, "The EchoStar DVR’s last hours?"


"I’m in Turkey this week participating in a Berkman conference on internet and democracy - it’s a meeting of activists from almost twenty countries, talking about ways that activists can use the internet to promote democratic movements. Many of the sessions are off the record or under Chatham Rules, to protect the identity of people speaking here. But the first speaker this morning is Sami ben Gharbia, the leader of Global Voices Advocacy and a leading Tunisian free speech advocate, and he’s not exactly a shy guy. :-)  Sami’s presentation is on video advocacy and mashups, with a focus on advocacy in Tunisia. While Sami and other Tunisian activists have worked hard on other free speech campaigns around the world, this presentation focuses specifically on activism in Tunisia, specifically around the legislative and presidential elections of 2004 and the World Summit on Internet and Society in 2005...."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Sami ben Gharbia and video activism..."

- continued -

"The economy around academic journals is crumbling. Libraries are running out of space to put the physical copies and money to subscribe to journals that are read by few. No academic can afford to buy the journal articles, either in print or as single copies. The underground economy of articles is making another dent into the picture as scholars swap articles on the black market. "I'll give you Jenkins if you give me Ito." No one else is buying the journals because they are god-awful expensive and no one outside of a niche market knows what's in them. To cope, most academic publishers are going psycho conservative. Digital copies of the articles have intense DRM protection, often with expiration dates and restrictions on saving/copying/printing. Authors must sign contracts vowing not to put the articles or even drafts online. (Sage -allows- you to posts articles one year following publication.) Academic publishers try to restrict you from making copies for colleagues, let alone for classroom use..."
danah boyd, "open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals"


"What if Yahoo's main value isn't its search engine or its advertising business, but the openness that makes it more Net-native and hacker-friendly than Microsoft? Does Microsoft understand that this same kind of openness plays a large role in Google's success as well?  You don't find any sign of that understaning either in Steve Ballmer's offer to Yahoo, or in mainstream media coverage of the topic.  Google, on the other hand, gets it... to some extent. That's my take-away fromYahoo and the future of the Internet, a post the company put up on its own blog..."
Doc Searls, "Yahoo's Openness Asset"


"For the election audio project, we will help bubble up stories that otherwise might get lost in the shuffle, create an collection for timely use during the campaign season as well as a helpful archive for further evergreen and 'long tail' opportunities in the future.  With the proliferation of audio on-air and online there's a critical role to play in sifting, sorting, curating and promoting the best of what's available. The PRX campaign collection will be a vital resource for public broadcasting stations, partners and the public..."
Public Radio Exchange, "Introducing thr PRX campaign curators"


"Well, that was quick. Mere weeks after signing the 'OPEN Government Act of 2007' on December 31, 2007, which significantly reformed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), President Bush is now attempting to cut out the heart of the OPEN Government Act by refusing to fund the newly created FOIA ombudsman's office.  As I noted when President Bush signed the Act, the legislation substantially reforms FOIA and expands the definition of who is a 'representative of the news media.' This change would significantly benefit bloggers and non-traditional journalists by making them eligible for reduced processing and duplication fees that are available to 'representatives of the news media...'"
David Ardia, "Bush Refuses to Fund New FOIA Ombudsman, Takes the Heart Out of Open Government Reform Law"


"NPR’s Ari Shapiro did two great stories today continuing his investigation into a report that Army officials told the VA hospital at Fort Drum last year to stop giving veterans advice on filling out their disability forms, with the result that many didn’t get the benefits they deserve. And (statistically speaking), no one (in vast, multifaceted, all-powerful cyberspace) noticed.  Today’s stories in Morning Edition and All Things Considered follow up the Jan. 29th Morning Edition story on the same event, with the Army denying flatly that it was true. Today, they produced a memo describing the meeting at which the Army “tiger team” told the VA to stop advising vets. Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker was forced to go on record saying there had been a 'miscommunication...'"
Persephone Miel, "Where in the (online) world is the NPR story on VA hospital scandal?"


"Foko has many diversified projects and one of them is the Foko Blog Club, which started last August to teach blogging skills to young people in Madagascar. In a society where elders are given preference, people are not used to listening to the younger generation, although they represent 75% of the population. Foko wants to encourage more Malagasy youngsters to share their stories and integrate blogging into their educational and professional development. FOKO also hosted the Best of Malagasy Blogs competition contest in November 2007 and organizes monthly blogger meetups..."
Rezwan, "Blog Outreach in Madagascar"