Berkman Buzz: June 1, 2012

Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society for Internet & Society has developed a Cybersecurity Wiki that is designed to be a curated, comprehensive, evolving, and interactive collection of resources for researchers (not just legal researchers), technologists, policy-makers, judges, students, and others interested in cybersecurity issues, broadly conceived. The general aim of the wiki is to collect in one place, and organize intelligently, every important document related to cybersecurity. At present the wiki has an annotated list of almost 100 documents. We obviously have a long way to go; both the organization and the materials collected thus far (which only extend through 2011) are incomplete. But we are excited about our progress thus far.

Congratulations to Berkman Center Director Jonathan Zittrain, who was appointed Chair of the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC) this past week. From the FCC:

The OIAC is a Federal Advisory Committee. Called for by the Commission in the Open Internet Order, its mission is to track and evaluate the effects of the FCC’s Open Internet rules, and to provide any recommendations it deems appropriate to the FCC regarding policies and practices related to preserving the open Internet. The OIAC will observe market developments regarding the freedom and openness of the Internet and will focus in particular on issues addressed in the FCC’s Open Internet rules, such as transparency, reasonable network management practices, differences in treatment of fixed and mobile broadband services, specialized services, and technical standards.

FT.com opinion piece/review re: ?#Interop? and @Facebook: Into the cloud, away with our property rights http://on.ft.com/K30l9V
—John Palfrey (@jpalfrey)

What is Interoperability? Palfrey calls it the art and science of working together. He shares several examples of how interoperability explains far more issues than innovation: Why is Facebook worth so much? How can we understand the value of LinkedIn? Wiring your company into the nature of relationships offers great benefits for business but also challenges of privacy. Computer viruses are one example of the possible perils of highly connected computing systems. Transportation and currency systems are great examples of interoperating systems that have offered great opportunities for growth. At the same time, the Greek banking crisis illustrates the perils of increasing interdependence. More case studies can be found on the website for their 2005 study: Breaking Down Digital Barriers.

Today another incident casts into relief the contingent nature of electronic books — how readily they are not only deleted or censored, but altered. A company called Superior Formatting Publishing offers a $.99 version of the now-public-domain War and Peace through Barnes and Noble’s Nook store — the lowest price version to be found there. When a blogger named Philip of the Ocracoke Island Journal read his copy, he noticed something quite odd:

"As I was reading, I came across this sentence: 'It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….'"

Have a look at the enigmatic Point Cloud, described by its creator James Leng as “an attempt to reimagine our daily interaction with weather data.” Leng, who was a student in the metaLAB-affiliated GSD course Mixed-Reality City this past Spring, observes that weather is “the intangible context within which we build our lives and our cities, but it is also the physical element against which we create protective shelter.”

"If you use [Facebook]... you should be prepared to be used. It’s the nature of the beast that is Facebook" - http://nyti.ms/N45Tr5
—danah boyd (@zephoria)

As I write this post, I read a piece of news about a teenager who was shot dead on the city streets of Maceio, Brazil, on the night of Tuesday May 29, 2012, while at least three other bodies of victims of violence were received at the capital's institute of forensic medicine. Just a few hours before these recent crimes, thousands of people - mobilised through social networks - took the streets in the “Walk for Peace”, an appeal to end violence in the city's coastal state of Alagoas.