Berkman Center Events & Webcasts

Guest: Alexander Heffner, Founder of Scoop08
Topic: “Scoop08: Political Newcomers Welcome”

Tuesday, March 11, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center Conference Room
23 Everett St., 2nd Floor, Cambridge MA

Alexander Heffner will discuss Scoop08.com, a startup non-partisan student publication he co-founded to offer fresh coverage of the 2008 presidential election through a national network of student journalists. Scoop08 strives to offer distinctive youth perspectives on the race, with innovative and unconventional beats such as “Independent Candidate,” “Rhetoric,” and “Arts” Correspondents as well as a diverse array of columnists. With a full-fledged editorial board and committed staff writers and copy editors, the Website operates like any professional electronic or print magazine. Presently, Scoop08 has a network of several hundred student journalists across the country and abroad, and actively continues to recruit new editors and writers. Its staff hails from colleges and high schools across America, from Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard to Ohio University, Arizona State, Washington University in St. Louis to Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California.

Scoop08 welcomes veteran student journalists to join its staff, and encourages first-time writers to submit freelance articles and posts to gain experience. Between academic and extracurricular activities, keeping the Website updated daily has been a demanding task, one enthusiastically embraced by its editors and writers. As the 2008 primary campaign takes us into the general election, Scoop08 continues to accept submissions and to publish long-term features and investigative reports delving ever more deeply into the presidential frontrunners, their policy positions and initiatives, and the implications of their would-be presidencies.

Since its birth in November 2007, Scoop08 has grappled with the myriad questions facing online news outlets and virtual newsrooms. Beyond print, how should multimedia be integrated into a news Website? How can journalism—traditional ink as well as new technologies—arouse student interest in public affairs and combat voter apathy? Which tactics work—and which don’t? Without horse race-centered coverage, how can a Website report and present thoughtful, even academic, ideas and still generate buzz in the mainstream media and the blogosphere? How can responsible young people (and adults too) participate in a two-way conversation with the news gatherers and pundits? How can well-informed readers of all ages evolve into trustworthy citizen journalists and writers, upholding lasting principles of “good journalism?” Indeed, can we agree on what makes sound journalistic practices and an informative, truly meaningful story? Join us to discuss Scoop08.com, as old-school meets new-school in the world of online journalism.

About Alexander

Alexander Heffner is a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Scoop08.com, an online national student newspaper dedicated to coverage of the 2008 presidential election. Its advisory board includes former U.S. Senators Gary Hart and Alan Simpson as well as journalists Jonathan Alter, Frank Rich, and Judy Woodruff. Heffner is general manager of WPAA, the Academy’s radio station, and founder of The Political Arena with Alexander Heffner, a public affairs program for which he has interviewed prominent figures in politics, journalism, and academic life, including Douglas Brinkley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, James Leach, Bob Kerrey, Jim Lehrer, Helen Thomas, John Zogby, and Mort Zuckerman, among others. This past summer, Heffner served as an online writer for Columbia Journalism Review. For his work in journalism and politics, he was recently named a “Young Person Who Rocks” by CNN.

Links to Scoop08

To join Scoop08’s staff
Scoop08 Trailer
Scoop08 on CNN
Scoop08 on “Young People Who Rock”
Scoop08 on History News Network

For coverage of Scoop08, please visit the following articles

McClatchy Company Newspapers
The Boston Globe
The Washington Post
Reuters
BBC
The New York Times

Webcast

This event will be webcast live. Webcast viewers can join the discussion through IRC text chat or in the virtual world Second Life. If you miss the live chat, catch the podcast audio & video at MediaBerkman.

Special Berkman Webcast Event with Jesse Dylan and Rob Holzer, Thursday 3/6 at 10:30AM

Jesse Dylan, the director behind will.i.am’s Yes We Can video, and Rob Holzer, CEO of Syrup NYC, will discuss the next stage of their attempt to build a movement geared around the Hope|Act|Change web site (hopeactchange.com) in a special Berkman webcast event this Thursday (3/6) at 10:30AM ET. This is meant to be a discussion on how they can further develop their website, and through the Net, engage Americans in the process of political change. (The Hope|Act|Change site is not affiliated with the Obama Campaign and does not promote the candidate.)

This event will be webcast live at 10:30 AM ET on this page. Webcast viewers can join the discussion through IRC text chat or in the virtual world Second Life on Berkman Island.

Links

+ will.i.am’s Video

+ Jesse’s Page on Wikipedia

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering is now on bookshelves! To celebrate the release of the OpenNet Initiative’s new book, Berkman will host a release party on Friday March 14th at 6:30 PM at Harvard, and we welcome you to join us. This event follows the Journal of Law and Technology Symposium, which will feature a day of wonderful discussions.

Edited by the Principal Investigators of the OpenNet Initiative, Access Denied explores the landscape of censorship-oriented controls on Internet content, from the technology behind it to the policy that supports it and the social implications of it.

Access Denied documents the increasing fragmentation of the Net, to the detriment of all who value the free flow of information. “No one had a clear sense of the nature of Internet censorship until now. This extraordinary work maps the unfreedom of the Net. Unfortunately, that state is becoming the norm,” wrote Larry Lessig about the book.

We hope to see you on the 14th. In the meantime, keep an eye out for all of ONI’s continually updated research and insights.

Video from Clay’s book talk has been posted here.

Yesterday, internet luminary and writer Clay Shirky joined us for a special day of Berkman@10 events at the Berkman Center and Harvard Law School. In the afternoon, Clay lead an intimate conversation at the Berkman Center on “protest culture,” which we’ll be releasing the video of through MediaBerkman in the upcoming weeks. Clay also gave a book talk at Harvard Law School, on the very first day his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations was released, and shot to the #1 for the Computers and Internet category on Amazon.com. David Weinberger liveblogged by the afternoon as well as the evening talks. Mary Joyce of the Internet & Democracy project offers her thoughts on the book talk as well. Cory Doctrow calls the book a “masterpiece” and reviews the book for boingboing.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations is now available at your local bookseller and online, so be sure to buy your copy today! To learn more about Clay Shirky’s work, visit his homepage.

More pictures have been posted to our flickr stream.

Berkman Center Luncheon Series
Guest: Jim Bessen, Lecturer in Law at Boston University School of Law
Topic: Patent Failure

Tuesday, March 4, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center Conference Room
23 Everett St., 2nd Floor, Cambridge MA

Is the U.S. patent system broken? Recently, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today’s patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. James Bessen will discuss a broad range of evidence on the economic performance of the patent system. He finds that patents provide strong incentives for firms in a few industries, but for most firms today, patents actually discourage innovation because they fail to perform as well-defined property rights. This analysis provides a guide to policy reform.

About Jim

James Bessen is recognized as an innovator in the electronic publishing industry, having developed one of the first commercially-successful desktop publishing programs. As both an economics researcher and a hands-on industry participant at different levels, he brings a unique perspective to the study of innovation.

Bessen wrote the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) PC publishing software in 1983 and founded a company, Bestinfo, in 1984 to market desktop publishing solutions to commercial publishers. Over the next few years, Bestinfo developed the first system to support PC publishing networks and the first single-source system for commercial-quality page makeup and color imaging. Over 1,000 commercial publishers purchased Bestinfo systems ranging from the Sears Catalogue to Prosveshcheniye (the largest Russian book publisher), from Cahners and Reed (the largest trade magazine publishers in the U.S. and U.K.) to Inc. magazine and TV Guide.

In 1986 Bestinfo received funding from Sevin Rosen Venture Capital with Ben Rosen and Dennis Gorman serving on the Board. In 1993 Bestinfo was acquired by Intergraph.

Bessen is currently Lecturer in Law at Boston University School of Law and he contributes to the Technological Innovation and Intellectual Property newsletter/blog.

Links

+ Bio

+ Book Page (includes several chapters)

Webcast

This event will be webcast live. Webcast viewers can join the discussion through IRC text chat or in the virtual world Second Life. For information about our event webcasts and remote participation, see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/webcast. If you miss the live chat, catch the podcast audio & video at MediaBerkman, at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman.

RSVP is required, as space is limited. To RSVP, please send an email to Amar Ashar at rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu by March 3 at 12:00PM

Berkman@10: Clay Shirky on “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”

Thursday, February 28, 6:00 PM
Austin West Classroom, Austin Hall
Harvard Law School
No RSVP Required - This Event is Free and Open to The Public

Map

“Here Comes Everybody” is about the social changes coming as a result of the internet’s power to support group action. Sharing, conversation, collaboration, collective action; all of these forms of group effort have been hampered by the myriad real-world difficulties of finding and coordinating with others. Our new group-forming media have removed many of those difficulties, and we are in the middle of a transformation of all kinds of group action.

About Clay

Clay Shirky studies the way communications tools alter or amplify social life; his current work is on large-scale collaborative networks. Mr. Shirky is on the faculty at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, and has worked as an advisor or consultant to many organizations, including Yahoo, Microsoft, the U.S. Navy, the BBC, and Lego. He has also been an advisor to many social startups, including Meetup, Social Text, del.icio.us, Flickr, and Dodgeball. Mr. Shirky is the author of the forthcoming book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”, which examines the ways in which new forms of social media are allowing for new kinds of collaborative action.

Links

+ Buy the book on Amazon

+ Clay’s Homepage

Berkman@10
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is proud to celebrate its tenth year as a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Through research, events, and discussion, Berkman@10 considers “The Future of the Internet” - to celebrate the work we have done together over the past decade, and to look ahead to what we hope to accomplish collectively in the next. Visit http://www.berkmanat10.org for more information.

(Image via Joi Ito and licensed under Creative Commons)

Today at 12:30pm, we’ll have an open lunch at the Berkman Center. Please feel free to bring topics for discussion and/or questions. We’ll be running the question tool and the IRC Chat, as well. Please note that today’s scheduled luncheon guest, Alex Heffner, will not be presenting today, and will be rescheduled for a later date this semester. If you plan to attend the lunch in person today, please send an email to rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu

David Weinberger is liveblogging the event.

Kevin Parker is liveblogging the event.

Wendy Seltzer is liveblogging the event.

Drew Clark is liveblogging the event.

Join the live IRC Chat in the room.

Post a question for discussion here.

Listen to the live webcast here.

FCCBoston08 Del.icio.us Tag Stream

Statement from Copps (PDF)

Statement from Adelstein (PDF)

(These notes are by no means complete and comprehensive - and represent a summary, not a transcript, of the event)

4:00: Kevin Parker writes:

“Back to questions…

C. Martin: Should we investigate usage caps over time? P. Clark: Yes, you need to be careful, but we should recognize that there are costs associated with usage. This allows ISPs to have a postive engagement with customers instead of a negative one. This is simillar to the way things work in wireless.

P. Clark: The models don’t work very well. How do we quantify what is acceptable congestion? This is hard and Comcast has tried to say that it is what doesn’t interfere with others. How do we impose fairness among users? Nobody can send bits faster than anyone else at the same time (this is the historical approach). There has to be some way to deal with congestion.”

3:50: Playback of submitted selected video comments from the public

3:30: Via David Weinberger:

“Daniel Weitzner of MIT says the entire Web is peer-to-peer, although not technically. People use the Net in a synchronous, P2P manner. E.g., pages are pulled together from info all over. We depend on the open nature of the Web to enable that.

Richard Bennett (network architect): Does free speech require abandoning the active mgt of net traffic? If so, then we have to shut down the Internet. Is it legit to manage the Net by discriminating by application? The Net and its constituent nets serve different apps. E.g., VOIP needs to avoid jitter. It makes sense to move apps that don’t care about jitter (e.g., email) to the back of the queue. BitTorrent is insensitive to jitter; you care about the time between first and last packet, but not jitter of individual packets….except for apps like Vuze, but RB doubts Vuze’s business viability. If we abandon app discriminatory we have to get rid of IP because it includes info about the app in the packets. Get rid of Wifi because QoS discriminates among apps. Get rid of difference between UDP and TCP. We have to get rid of discrimination within their own homes. Even on Ethernet we have to discriminate among apps, e.g., WoS for audio systems to avoid lipsynching issues If you add capacity to a network, you’ve only moved the bottleneck from the first hop to the second hop. NN would inhibit rural delivery since it depends on wifi. So, sit back. We’ll solve it with more bandwidth and with revisions of the apps that use it, like BitTorrent.

David Clark says that TV is central here because it increases the traffic and it’s a collision of pricing models. We should be partnering, not fighting. Let’s talk about business model. The usage cost to Comcast for a month of user usage might be around $0.50. TV usage is 40 times as much (taking reasonable estimates), i.e., $20/month to cover your user costs. What’s going to give is the all you can eat flat rate pricing. We have to find a way that will be acceptable to the user. David likes selling tiers of consumption.”

Here are a few photos from the morning session:

Tim Wu on the big screen in front of the FCC commissioners

Yochai Benkler and Marvin Ammori sitting on panel

The whole panel

David Weinberger live blogs the event

Berkfolks watch the morning session

More as the day goes on!

David Weinberger is liveblogging the event.

Kevin Parker is liveblogging the event.

Wendy Seltzer is liveblogging the event.

Drew Clark is liveblogging the event.

Join the live IRC Chat in the room.

Post a question for discussion here.

Listen to the live webcast here.

FCCBoston08 Del.icio.us Tag Stream

(These notes are by no means complete and comprehensive - and represent a summary, not a transcript, of the event)

1:20: Kevin Parker on the Q + A portion of the panel

1:15: Drew Clark posts on the hearing

12:50: Professor Yoo: There’s no question that network providers must add capacity. In this world, the network owners have to make decision on how they’re going to configure their bandwidth. We’re now in world where we have many different transmission technologies and are susceptible to traffic problems. One suggestion: We need to build more bandwidth, but it’s expensive and difficult to predict about.

12:45: Tim Wu: I hope the commission takes the time to clarify one thing: To arrive at a very simple kind of rule. Whatever we think reasonable network management is, it should not include blocking lawful applications. I’ve been interested in this issue since my time in Silicon Valley, and I use to be on the other side of this debate. One of the things that always bothered me about selling the products I did, was selling these products to oppressive regimes. In these technologies, and in searching deep packet inspections, you have the tech of censorship being built into the system. We should think very carefully about allowing America - the home of the free and open internet - becoming a place that has a reputation for a filtered and closed internet.

Let me discuss how this intersects with policy. America has spent a lot of time advertising itself as the home of a free press and a free internet. We advertise ourselves as the model of free speech and open networks. Keeping the internet as the American internet. What happens here will be followed everywhere.

12:30: From Kevin Parker:

“Panelist 3 - Judge Bosley. In western Mass broadband is important for economic development. Small businesses need bandwidth. Who gets to say what we need? (Nobody should.) This sounds like slotting fees at supermarket, pay for the end of the aisle. But this has become anticompetitive.

Issue isn’t content, it is capacity. ISPs have a point here, but we need to have an open net to find the most creative and innovative solutions. What we need is a national broadband plan. As is, ISPs have no incentives to increase average speeds, etc.

Panelist 4 - David Cohen, EVP Comcast. Wants to be a participant and not the main course for the meal. Comcast wants to give customers a superior internet experience. 92% of the country has broadband availble through cable. What is the key to success? Market forces and a lack of gov’t regulation.

There is nothing wrong with network management. This must happen. We have to fight congestion, spam, and viruses. Bandwidth consumption is a real concern. Goal is to have a minimal impact on a small number of users. We don’t block any websites or applications (but HMS does!).”

12:20: David Weinberger on Yochai Benkler’s testimony

12:11: Panels Begin: Marvin Ammori: This is about the future of the internet. Comcast is deliberately targeting and interfering with p2p technologies, including Bittorrent and others. These technologies help to distribute open source software, high resolution photos, and video. Video services, like Bittorrent and Miro, threaten Comcast. By targeting p2p, Comcast is threatening innovation.

12:04: Gilles: We only provide distribution to licensed content and have agreements with the content providers on our network.

11:53: Technology demonstration of Vuze. Gilles BianRosa. The reason I am here is to foster transparency and openness. Vuze is one of the fastest growing video distribution platforms - we offer a high resolution experience, comparable to watching a DVD. There have been 20 million downloads of our application. We have more than 150 content partners, including PBS, BBC, Showtime, History Channel. The absence of enforceable ground rules threatens the openness of the internet. And we only have promises of good faith to protect us. Make the rules relevant and transparent, so innovators like Vuze can deliver - the future of the internet depends on it.

11:45: McDowell: Today we focus on the positive and constructive economic destruction caused by the vibrancy of new media. The new media economy is working through growing pains. In fact, Comscore reported that American viewed an eye-popping 10 billion online videos in December alone.

11:35: Adelstein: Our colleagues at the FTC, held their own hearing on net neutrality over 8 months ago. I’m glad we’re doing this now. We need to establish an effective internet bill of rights that will secure rights for generations to come. We must preserve the open and neutral character of the internet that’s been it’s hallmark from the very beginning. Right now we’re seeing a broadband market where telephone/isps control 93% of the broadband market… Consumers don’t want the internet to become another version of old media. We face a major challenge in this country making sure we deploy affordable broadband connection everywhere. I think that preserving the vibrant quality of the internet, and having high speed access, are issues that go hand in hand. Access translates into opportunity.

11:32: If we don’t get this right, we will have squandered a technology and an opportunity.

11:30: Now we have allegations that an operator is degrading/blocking p2p file programs. I am not saying that all of these services are unlawful. But the affect our choices in the future - what we say, where we can go, what info we can encounter, and how we can access it. How all of this turns out is a very big deal for each and every one of us. I keep saying: The time has come that the specific enforceable principle of non-discrimination at the FCC… should be added to the FCC’s internet policy statement.

11:25: Copps: I have long advocated that the commission get away from the beltway to hear from the people about these issues - and the future of the internet is one such issue. I see no reason for us to wait on a new law to get this going… Before we begin hearing from our panelists, consider for a moment where we are in chartering the future of the internet. Right now, network operators are making choices that will determine how Americans will communicate now and in the future. Some of their choices may be right, some of their choices may be wrong. These are hard and complex questions. But these critical questions are indeed being made, and they were being made in a virtual black box that the American public had little opportunity to peek into. If anyone is uncertain that these choices are indeed being made right now, let’s take a quicklook at what we learned in 2007. That was the year that one of the nation’s wireless providers rejected a pro-choice text message as too controversial.

11:18: Martin: Review of the FCC’s internet policy statement

11:16: Marky: Finally, the commission should examine these issues not only to discern corporate practice, but also to ascertain whether these actions are temporary - “managerial creations of the moment” that the carriers may find useful and make permanent for non-networking reasons. The beauty of the internet is its wonderful, chaotic, evolving nature, and it’s ability to reinvent itself every year.

11:13: Marky: I am pleased that the commission has returned to MA in exploring contemporary issues in the development of the internet. We should keep in mind (1) The internet is as much mine and yours as it is Verizons, AT&T’s, and Comast’s, (2) The nature of the net is really not about services provided by carriers themselves - they don’t provide internet services, they provide broadband access to the internet. This distinction is vital in my view.

11:07: We’re fortunate and delighted to say that Chairman Ed Markey could attend, and we want to welcome him to open with remarks.