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Berkman Buzz: Week of September 14, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* David Weinberger roots for Rousseau.
* The CMLP encounters the Judgment of Solomon in an online anonymity case.
* Wendy Seltzer is compelled to blog the Register of Copyrights’ statement on the Google Books settlement.
* Stuart Shieber introduces a university "compact for open-access publishing equity."
* Dan Gillmor reconstitutes a recent New York Times-General Electric conversation.
* The Internet & Democracy project tracks Medvedev's "Forward, Russia!" through the Russian Internet.
* Ethan Zuckerman brings us Calestous Juma's talk on broadband in Eastern Africa.
* Yochai Benkler adds Capital, Power, and the Next Step in Decentralization to Publius.cc.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Peru: Looming Problem of the Inambari Hydroelectric Power Station"
* NEW! Micro-post of the week: Prof. Zittrain's crystal ball.

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The full buzz.

"I heard a speaker recently (he wants to remain anonymous) argue that because the Internet makes public our every regrettable photo and expression, we will see each other at our worst, and thus the Internet -- and then the real-world social world -- will become a Hobbesian struggle of self-centered individuals in a war of all against all. Nasty, brutish, short, and did I mention nasty?"
From David Weinberger's blog post Is Hobbes the inevitable outcome of the Internet?

"It's amazing how many times you can hear a phrase without really understanding it. Take 'splitting the baby' for instance. Excuse my ignorance, but I'd always thought it had a more-or-less neutral connotation, suggesting a pragmatic compromise to a question or problem. But consider the Solomonic origins of the phrase, and you get quite a different picture. Split the baby and you kill it, and nobody likes a dead baby. So, I have to apologize up front for the title of this post -- I haven't decided yet whether the approach to unmasking online commenters described below deserves praise or blame, but I couldn't resist this awesome wikicommons reproduction of Guissepe Cades' Judgment of Solomon."
From Sam Bayard's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, Splitting the Digital Baby: California Court Creates New Procedure for Uncovering Anonymous Commenters

"Perhaps the strangest reports out of last week’s hearing were those on the Register of Copyrights's statement, in which she asserted that the settlement 'is tantamount to creating a private compulsory license through the judiciary [and that] such decisions are the domain of Congress.' The Register urged that courts shouldn’t endorse 'settlements that come so close to encroaching on the legislative function.'"
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post Compelling Silliness: Register on Google Book Settlement

"Five universities--Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley--have now expressly stated their commitment to the importance of supporting the processing-fee business model for open-access journals just as the subscription-fee business model used by closed-access journals has traditionally been supported. These universities are the initial signatories of a 'compact for open-access publishing equity' (COPE)..."
From Stuart Shieber's blog post Five universities commit to the open-access compact

"Conversation comes slowly to major media organizations, but even when it does, it can be difficult to follow. Consider the following sequence: On August 7, the New York Times published a Floyd Norris column criticizing General Electric for financial shenanigans that Norris called Enron-like in some respects. The piece was another bit of the accumulating evidence that the tenure of former CEO Jack Welch had sufficiently sleazy elements to call into question, to put it mildly, Welch’s super-duper-elite reputation. GE, like most other big companies, pays legions of people to make bad news go away or at least be less bad. In a letter to the editor published Sept. 9 (the one-month delay is curious), the company’s 'Executive Director, Communications and Public Affairs' objected to Norris’ column."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post A NY Times Conversation Thread, Recreated

"On the morning of Sept 10, Dmitri Medvedev published an astonishing article entitled 'Forward, Russia!' describing his vision for Russia’s future. Open Democracy’s Dmitri Travin provides an interesting analysis of the article, comparing it with some of Gorbachev’s first steps under Perestroika. What is significant about the article – in addition to it’s content of course – is that it did not premier in the morning papers. And there was no mention of it on television before it went 'live'. Rather, Medvedev chose to address Russia’s citizens via the online newspaper 'Gazeta.ru'. In addition to being known as a venue for criticism of the Kremlin and commentary by opposition members., Gazeta.ru is a 'webnative' publication, meaning that it has no print version and doesn’t exist outside the internet."
From Karina Alexanyan's blog post for the Internet & Democracy project, Perestroika II Begins Online?

"Professor Calestous Juma from Harvard’s Kennedy School leads off the annual luncheon series at the Berkman Center with an overview of policy issues surrounding broadband internet in eastern Africa. Professor Juma has been a pioneer on issues around education and technology on the continent, and we’re lucky to have him here, thinking about ways in which broadband technology is and isn’t transforming East Africa. To contextualize our conversation, Juma reminds us that the continent is large enough to fit in the US, China, India, Western Europe and Argentina, and to squeeze in the UK."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Calestous Juma and the future of African communications

"The core attribute of the networked information environment has been the radical decentralization of the capital structure of information, knowledge, and cultural production. Beginning in the second quarter of the 19th century, the expansion of markets and polities combined with the development of capital intensive information production technologies like mechanical presses and processes like the professionalized press, to drive effective engagement in information production and exchange toward an industrial model. From double-entry bookkeeping to the major accounting firms; from the telegraph to the mainframe; and from the phonograph to 24 hour cable channel; information production and exchange centered around an industrial model, driven by the need to secure and sustain substantial, concentrated funding. The personal computer connected to the Internet changed the basic model of capitalization of information, knowledge, and cultural production."
From Yochai Benkler's essay on Publius.cc, Capital, Power, and the Next Step in Decentralization

"The name Inambari does not mean very much to Peruvians. Some of them may think of it in relation to the Inambari River, which flows through the Cuzco, Puno and Madre de Dios regions. Others may think of the Alto Inambari district in the Puno region of Sandia or the Inambari district in the province of Tambopata in the Madre de Dios region. In fact, this far off area of the country has almost been completely forgotten. However, recently there has been news about Inambari and all of it is about the hydroelectric power station."
From Juan Arellano's blog post for Global Voices, Peru: Looming Problem of the Inambari Hydroelectric Power Station

"Surfing the Web is as iffy as cheap hamburgers: http://bit.ly/uVV4g saw http://bit.ly/3D8M6 coming" [12:23 AM Sep 14th]
Jonathan Zittrain commenting on the NYTimes.com virus pop-up snafu