Berkman Buzz: Week of October 19, 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.

* StopBadware has two shiny new data reports.
* Chilling Effects discusses the Unity Day softball game of '79.
* Ethan Zuckerman hears syncretic xenophily.
* Dan Gillmor critiques Downie and Schudson.
* CMLP encounters the undead, again.
* David Weinberger isn't sure which droids he's looking for.
* Christian Sandvig, licensed to conform.
* Harry Lewis comments on the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on "the free and open Internet."
* Internet & Democracy considers Internet penetration and censorship in Sub-Saharan Africa.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Mexico: The Internet as a Necessity, not a Luxury"
* Micro-post of the week: Doc Searls seeking search
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere)"

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The full buzz.

"We are pleased to unveil two new data reports, based on the data provided by Google and Sunbelt Software to our Badware Website Clearinghouse and information that we’ve pulled from Team Cymru’s public IP to ASN mapping service....Both reports are updated daily and offer the ability to download the data in CSV format. We also wrote up a brief explanation of how to interpret the data in the reports. We hope that both reports will be valuable to researchers, network operators, and others interested in observing web-based malware trends."
From Maxim Weinstein's blog post for StopBadware, New StopBadware data reports

"After announcing that Philadelphia radio station WDAS would not be able to sponsor the Unity Day festival for the first time in 30 years, Clear Channel has used an allegation of trademark rights in the name 'Unity Day' to prevent citizens from raising funds and obtaining city permits to keep the tradition going."
From the Chilling Effects blog post Trademark Disunity: Clear Channel Zaps "Unity Day"

"For those of you who don’t follow hiphop, Wu Tang revived the fortunes of east coast hiphop in the early 1990s – the center of gravity in the rap world had moved from the outer boroughs of NYC to the West Coast and Dr. Dre’s project – with an astoundingly fine album. 'Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers)' featured nine skilled MCs, dark and sinister beats, and wonderfully cheezy samples from Hong Kong kung fu films. It sounded like nothing anyone had heard before, and it sounds remarkably fresh almost two decades later."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Wu Tang and a wider world

"The sentiments behind this executive summary of a new report are fine ones. No one wants to see journalism disappear whether or not newspapers do. But the authors’ solution is, in part, another example of asking taxpayers to fix problems we can solve ourselves. [...] In fact, their wide-ranging look at the new entrants — people and institutions trying journalism and business experiments amid the failure of newspapers — could well have been the basis for an entirely different conclusion, namely that we’re making wonderful progress, than the recommendations they come up with."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post Solutions for Journalism, or Re-Creating a Priesthood?

"Between sparkling vampires and slobbering zombies, the Undead have found new life at the box office these days. So it makes sense that the MPAA, inspired by the success of the long deceased, has decided to resurrect the odorous, oft-defeated idea of “selectable output control.” We can only hope and pray that the FCC will shoot this idiotic (but dangerous) idea in the head, and grant consumers a brief respite (before the inevitable sequel). For those of you who are unaware of the movie industry’s idiotic plan to castrate and consume your DVR, allow me to shine a light on the lumbering terror."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the CMLP, NEEEEEDDDD BRAAAAINNS: MPAA Resurrects Plan to Take the R Out of DVRs

"My Blackberry 8830 does what it needs to do. I can type on it. I can take it to Europe. With the Gmail app installed, I can read and delete emails and have them deleted from my gmail inbox. I an view web pages through a keyhole. I can recharge it off of my laptop. I can run the vaguely accurate Verizon GPS on it. I can fit a couple of downloads on it. But I don’t love. I’m very glad to have it. But it does nothing for my hormone levels."
From David Weinberger's blog post Tales of technolust: the appStoreless Droid

"I was recently having a conversation about unlicensed wireless devices. That is: radio transmitters that don’t require advance permission from the government to operate (a license). Examples of unlicensed devices are baby monitors and cordless phones. You can buy them at Best Buy and you don’t need to have your own radio station call letters or pass a test. One reason that people find unlicensed devices interesting is that they often have a lot of them sitting around their house or office. Some questions came up in the conversation and they are hard for me to answer. I’m putting them up here as a way to document my attempts."
From Christian Sandvig's blog post Declaration of Conformity: Three Questions About Unlicensed Wireless Devices

"The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking...to guarantee that the Internet would remain open, predictable, and transparent, as its architects intended it. The Commission had previously endorsed four Internet principles...These principles get at a lot of what has made the Internet succeed, but fail to address the problems that arise when the carriers enter the content industry. The conflicted interests became most apparent when Comcast began to introduce fraudulent packets to slow down the Internet delivery of movies–raising the suspicion that it might be doing so to encourage its Internet subscribers to buy movies from its pay per view cable service instead."
From Harry Lewis' blog post A Step Forward for Net Neutrality

"Internet penetration in Africa remains undeniably low. According to the 2008 International Telecommunications Union, only five Sub-Saharan African countries had Internet penetration above 10 percent, and four of those were island nations. While Internet at five-star hotels in the Seychelles might be widely available, at the other end of the spectrum, Sierra Leone can hardly boast over its 0.2 percent. In fact, Zimbabwe is the only continental nation with greater than 10 percent penetration. Perhaps not surprising on a continent where only 17 percent of Sub-Saharan Africans have access to electricity, there is evidence of forthcoming change."
From Scott Hartley's blog post for Internet & Democracy, Internet Filtration in Sub-Saharan Africa

"An increase in taxes was approved by the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico to be enforced in 2010, which will include the Special Tax on Products and Services (or IESPS for its initials in Spanish) that will add a 3% tax to Internet and cable services. A month earlier, as part of the discussions of the IESPS taxes, the Public Tax Administration Secretary, Agustín Cartens, recognized that half of the money spent on telecommunications belonged to 20% of the richest households in the country, according to a story by Mexican magazine Proceso. He stated that since rural and public telephony services are exempt from the IESPS, citizens in difficult economic situations would not be affected by the tax. However, those low-income families that do use these services at home will be hit harder because of the assumption that the Internet is a luxury only used by those able to afford the service."
From Issa Villarreal's blog post for Global Voices, Mexico: The Internet as a Necessity, not a Luxury

"Liking #IceRocket http://bit.ly/2WBnX7 Twitter search too! Props to @EthanZ for getting back into blogsearch. @mcuban, you still involved?" [6:51 PM Oct 21st]
Doc Searls stirring the pot on blog search

"A few days ago, Gilad's eyes opened wide and he called me over to look at his computer. He was on Facebook and he had just discovered a privacy loophole. He had maximized his newsfeed to get as many photo-related bits as possible. As a result, he was regularly informed when his Friends commented on other people's photos, including photos of people with whom he was not Friends or in the same network as. This is all fine and well. Yet, he found that he could click on those photos and, from there, see the entire photo albums of Friends-of-Friends."
From danah boyd's blog post Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere) [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in October 2008]