John Palfrey

This morning, I cast the 108th ballot in a special election for State Senator at the Dilboy VFW Post in Davis Square, Somerville. Despite a sprinkling rain and the low turnout, the streets outside my polling place were crawling with people holding signs — a wonderful sign of a vibrant local democracy. I got a flyer about keep a divestment measure off the November ballot and saw signs for each of the four candidates — Michael Callahan (Governor’s Councilor), Paul Casey (current state rep, who opposes gay marriage, which knocks him out of the running for me), Patricia Jehlen (current state rep), and Joe Mackey (former state rep).

I cast my ballot for Pat Jehlen. Each of the Democratic candidates (yes, so disclosed, I am a Massachusetts Democrat) in this special election strike me as well-qualified. I am voting for Rep. Jehlen primarily because she, or rather her team, has made the effort to connect with me. I have lived in her district, right on the Somerville/Cambridge line, for the last four or five years, and I’ve enjoyed getting her e-mails to constituents; on the one occasion I’ve contacted her staff they’ve been responsive to my issue; and during the past few frantic months of the campaign, a few door-knockers have rung our bell, including a friend from the political world, Christa Kelleher, a professor and long-time political activist. They hung a “get out the vote” flyer on my doorknob last night. None of the other candidates reached out nearly so successfully. I give Rep. Jehlen a lot of credit for doing the blocking-and-tackling of good old fashioned campaigning both during her term as State Rep and as candidate for the State Senate. (And, of course, her record on the issues is good, too. I like in particular her stances on education, health care, and the environment, on which she has been a leader for many years.)

Every Election Day rocks, on some level. This particular election is tinged with the sadness of the death of former State Senator Charles Shannon. What a privilege to be able to choose his successor in a well-contested election.

This piece
by Nick Langley gives one (very partial, in multiple senses of that
word) telling of the history of RSS.  “There are different
versions of the history of the product, and the following summary is
bound to upset somebody.”  Right, though interesting to call it a
product.  The part the author nails is at the end, in pointing to
RSS’s impending ubiquity and the fact that the vast majority of users
will not know it’s there.

Kaye Trammell’s special hurricane blog has a post on (pushing?) the limits of technology.

Urs Gasser has been back the past few days in the US, his first trip
back since he left for his professorship at the Univ. of St.
Gallen.  (Prof. Dr. Gasser remains a faculty fellow with us at the
Berkman Center.)  Along with summer intern Gabriela Ruiz Begue, he
has released a short, accessible paper on the iTunes Music Store after the 500 millionth song was downloaded.

At the Berkman Center,
we’re gearing up for a busy fall.  Students return shortly, some
as early as this week-end, and new fellows are honing research plans
for the year.  We hope to roll out new ways to expand our reach
and to invite more people into our various initiatives through the use
of technology and some more public events.

One thing I’m particularly focused on and excited about: our co-sponsorship of the State of Play III conference. 
The brainchild of NYLS prof and Berkman partner Beth Noveck, SoP has
been the coolest conference on the cyberlaw/policy circuit for the past
few years — focused on gaming and virtual worlds.  This year’s
version promises to be the best yet.  It’ll be in NY, primarily on
October 8, 2005.  Through this event, we plan to extend our work
on the Digital Media Project into the converged/converging worlds of music, film, images, and games.

I subscribe to a feed of Kaye Trammell’s great blog. 
I met her at the Oxford Internet Institute a few summers ago, we
invited her to a conference at Harvard Law School, and I’ve enjoyed
following her work since then via her blog. 

I’ve noticed
over the past few months much less updating from Kaye — now Prof.
Trammell.  And there, it seems, is the rub.  Prof. Trammell explains:
“So what has changed from the grad student me to the
professor-seeking-tenure me?  I’m not afraid that what I say will
be used against me in a court of tenure.”  This is consistent with
the discussion in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month about
tenure committees and blogging.

Recently, adult publisher Perfect 10 sued Google for copyright
infringement.  (I posted a lightly redacted version of the complaint along with an early analysis of the lawsuit, here).  Now, word is that
Perfect 10 has asked the judge for a preliminary injunction against Google.  Perfect 10 has also sued Amazon.com.

These lawsuits, along with similar claims by AFP, are a big deal in
terms of how they come out.  I believe them to be a bad
idea.  The outcome of this class of lawsuits, based on
intellectual property laws, against general-purpose ervice providers
like search engines, could have a huge impact on the development of the
web.  File it also along with the Grokster and related cases that
have big  potential consequences for innovation.

David Kirkpatrick has a column on RSS and business, which features colleagues Jim Moore and Dave Winer, as well as a vision of the future.

Ethan Zuckerman has a fascinating post on the reach of the recently-launched Global Voices
meta-blog.  As with so many projects, I am super-proud of what EZ,
Rebecca MacKinnon, and co. have going under the Berkman banner.

(Wonder where he’s getting his conclusions?  Much in the commendable media-transparency style of David Berlind, Ethan offers up a sheet on the raw data used in his analysis.)

Here is a bit more on what we are looking for in a managing director of the Berkman Center.  The online application is via this link.