CopyrightX, an online course run out of Harvard this spring as part of the EdX program, was unusual in a couple of ways. It might not strictly be called a MOOC—a massive open online course—because it wasn’t open. More than four thousand people applied, and enrollment was capped at 500. Half of the selected students were women. There were equal number of students from the United States and from other countries. Students outside the US came from 70 different countries, in total. The youngest student was 13, the oldest 83. Although CopyrightX was a class about copyright law, only thirty of the 500 students were lawyers.

via Copyright 101.2 : Columbia Journalism Review.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project and Harvards Berkman Center for Internet & Society has mostly good news about how teens approach privacy issues on social-networking services.

via Survey: Most teens take steps to protect their privacy podcast | Safe and Secure – CNET News.

In selecting the Nieman class of 2014, Ann Marie Lipinski, NF ’90, curator of the Nieman Foundation, was joined by Amanda Bennett, executive editor of the Projects and Investigations Unit, Bloomberg News; David Joyner, NF ’12, vice president for content, Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. in Birmingham, Alabama; Nicco Mele, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath”; the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s managing director Colin Maclay, research director Robert Faris and manager of community programs Rebecca Tabasky; and Nieman deputy curator James Geary, NF ’12, and Joshua Benton, NF ’08, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab.

via News Article.

It’s hard not to get hepped up about education technology. The combination of perceived need for an immense rethink of public education and our belief in the huge potential of technology seem made for each other. But there’s a dark side to the hype, warned Justin Reich, co-founder of EdTechTeacher and a Berkman Center Fellow conducting research on the field.

via Beware Batch Processing Of Kids: Ed Tech Expert – Education – Online.

The greatest strength of Wikipedia is that its contributors can chose which area they want to write about, which, in theory, means they only produce content where they are most qualified to do so. Harvard University’s Professor Yochai Benkler says this explains why Wikipedia has succeeded where other more traditional business models like Microsoft Encarta and Encyclopaedia Britannica have failed.

via Should university students use Wikipedia? | Education | guardian.co.uk.

Stanford Law School today announced the appointment of Phillip Malone as professor of law and director of the new Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic of the Mills Legal Clinic. Malone will join Stanford in July 2013 from the Harvard Law School, where he is currently clinical professor of law and the director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

via SLS News | Phillip Malone to Direct New Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law School.

William W. Fisher III, a professor at Harvard Law School, has been experimenting with ways to split the difference. This spring, Fisher is teaching his first online course, CopyrightX, through edX. But he’s also a casual student of the medium. Fisher’s field is intellectual-property law—he was among those to represent Shepard Fairey and his “Hope” poster—and he works a lot on rights in the digital age. I met him one morning in his office, which had a standing desk and an ergonomic keyboard in one corner. At one point, Fisher’s Portuguese water dog, Nica, wandered in. He explained to me that he has reservations about MOOCs.

via Nathan Heller: Is College Moving Online? : The New Yorker.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointment of Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as a Professor of Practice.

via Gasser appointed professor of practice.

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Law at Harvard University, thinks that one solution would be to create a new type of “mesh network” – where phones find a way to connect to each other when regular connections go down. Apps could be built in these networks, which allow civilians with resources that connect with and help others.

via BBC – Future – Technology – Phone-powered mesh networks to connect in a crisis.

Regular contributor and Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to explain his take on drones and their unintended consequences.

via Measuring the unintended consequences of drones | Marketplace.org.