Up for debate today in the Digital Democracy class on Indigenous Knowledge and IP law at HLS: Is it wrong for Avant Records to distribute for profit in the United States the allegedly pirated sound recording “Live at the Pito Bar,” performed by Bernard Woma in Ghana?  The case gets to lots of complex cross-border…

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The Berkman Center has just formally launched its Digital Media in Cyberspace project, designed to examine a series of possible future scenarios for the digital media crisis.  Our initial five scenarios — subject to further refinement as we move ahead — are: 1) no change in the law, but the technology continues to advance; 2)…

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Another blog-related dismissal, complete with photographs of G5s in a loading dock at MSFT, as reported by MSNBC.

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I had the good fortune to present this morning on a panel at MIT on the issue of how to create a local “habitat” in developing countries for the successful growth of entrepreneurial activity in the information and communications technologies sector.  (The event is called “Workshop on Global ICT Education Program,” with a stellar list…

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One of the things I’m most excited about at the Berkman Center is the largely informal speaker series that we’ve been running.  Most sessions take place at lunchtime in Baker House and are quite informal in nature.  Occasionally, the lectures are on a larger stage, as when Yossi Vardi visited us last week.  For instance,…

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Ben Adida says, “It’s going to take more than a makeup job to fix” the current state of politics in our society, in a riff off an Aaron Swartz post about the possibilities of rebranding.

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We’re very fortunate to have Bill Ury and several of his colleagues from the Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation here at the Berkman Center today.   Bill Ury’s focused on the idea of “e-Parliament,” a means of “helping humanity get to YES.”  Ury knows a lot about this topic: he’s co-author of the long-time bestseller, “Getting…

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[Update: mp3, stream, wav file of Yossi Vardi’s lecture available here.  Also, see Turmis’s Musings for additional color.] “People are interested in a good story,” Yossi Vardi says, “and not in the facts.”  So take his lecture today at Harvard Law School, sponsored by the Berkman Center, on its own terms. Yossi Vardi says the most…

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US lawmakers have their eye on piracy of music, movies and software on a global level.  The “worst offenders,” according to a member of the newly-formed Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus, include Brazil, China, Pakistan, Russia and Taiwan.  Maybe so.  But the US Congress should take care in this matter to see the subtleties on this complex topic…

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JJ Disini is exploring “the upper limit of human capacity for processing information — human throughput.”  He surmises: “This probably explains why we will always need intermediaries to perform sorting functions for the Web or highlighting information we need to know (ah, the ever-enduring demand for advertising).  In the context of online democracy, this means that there’s…

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From Scripting News, a fun way to be driven crazy.  Watch out: it could happen to you.

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If you’re not in 02138 today from 5 – 7 p.m., but would like to be there virtually, tune in to the webcast of Yossi Vardi’s lecture, “The Edge against the Hub: The Struggle for Dominance on the Internet.”  We had a spirited breakfast this morning.  I’m confident that this evening’s talk will be lively…

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