Berkman Buzz: Week of February 9, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, sign up here.

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*Eszter Hargittai asks, "How free is free?"
*The Internet & Democracy project maps changes in the Iranian blogosphere
*Doc Searls has some Q's about the Stimulus Bill and is looking to you for the A's
*The OpenNet Initiative looks at Google Earth and the Mumbai terror attacks
*Publius Essay: "(not) Newmark's Law" by Craig Newmark
*Weekly Global Voices: "Israel: 'Strange' and 'Complicated' Elections"

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"One of the many perks of being at the Berkman Center this year has been to learn about all sorts of interesting and important legal matters that otherwise would either not make it on my radar or would be hard for me to understand without background and context. The New York Times now reports on an issue that Berkman fellow Steve Schultze first introduced me to last Fall: the complexity involved in accessing unclassified government documents online that are theoretically free to the public, but in reality can be quite hard to access..."
From Eszter Hargittai's blog post, "How free is free?"

"A number of recent international anecdotes indicate increased online activism by governments. A perfect example of this ’state-engagement’ in cyberspace is found in Hamid Tehrani’s recent post about the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ plan to recruit 10,000 Basij bloggers. This may help explain some changes we’ve seen in the Iranian blogosphere, and is a good opportunity to share an updated Iranian blogosphere map created by John Kelly at Morningside Analytics, Berkman’s partner on our foreign language blog studies..."
From the Internet & Democracy Project blog post, "Mapping Change in the Iranian Blogosphere"

"I am confused beyond endurance by whatever-the-hell is going on (or went on) with the 'final Stimulus Bill'. So maybe some of ya’ll can provide some A’s to the following Qs: Where can one see a copy of the final bill? How about in .html, rather than .pdf form? Earth to Newspapers (and hell, bloggers): Give us some links to some goddam hard facts on this thing. Even the @#$% New York Times story on the Plan’s passage offers no links at all to the bill. Or whatever got passed..."
From Doc Searls' blog post, "Stimulus Bill Qs"

"In early December 2008, an Indian court was convened to ban Google Earth amid suggestions that the online satellite imaging was used to aid terrorists in planning the November terror attacks in Mumbai. According to late January reports in the Times of London, Google has dismissed concerns that terrorists are using its mapping technology to aid them in plotting and carrying out attacks. John Hanke, the head of Google Earth and Google Maps said that advances in technology could always be ill-used and that it was impossible to say that any attack would not have taken place if Google Earth hadn’t existed..."
From the OpenNet Initiative blog post, "Update: Google Earth and the Mumbai Terror Attacks"

"Jeff Jarvis recently wrote a great book, What Would Google Do?, and in an article on The Daily Beast, he makes a very kind allusion to the part of the craigslist philosophy: Get out of the way. This is actually Craig Newmark's law. As Google built the most powerful tool imaginable—the entire world of digital knowledge revealed behind a simple search box—so did Craig build a simple tool that changed society (and newspapers and real estate and more) without prescribing how we should use it. They create platforms to enable us to do what we want to do and then, instead of giving us rules about their use, then they stand back and put us in charge..."
From Craig Newmark's Publius essay, "(not) Newmark's Law"

"Two former Prime Ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, and Foreign Affairs Minister and Acting Prime Minister Tzipi Livni ran a tight race to win the votes of Israelis. The result is a 'nail-biting poll' and an election cliff hanger, which sees Livni as a forerunner and Netanyahu a very close second. And while the election results will not be announced for days, Israeli bloggers share their thoughts on this 'strange,' and 'complicated' elections in this post..."
From Amira Al Hussaini's blog post for Global Voices, "Israel: 'Strange' and 'Complicated' Elections"