First POST: Not Ron Paul's Ad
Friday, January 27 2012
In today's First POST:
- Ron Paul's presidential campaign still doesn't know who floated an anti-Jon Huntsman ad on YouTube using an account that bore his name.
- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's finger-pointing at President Barack Obama has gone viral.
- The FBI could soon be watching your tweets online.
Why Nobody's Mad at Twitter's International Censorship Move
BY Nick Judd | Friday, January 27 2012
Yesterday, to the howls of many, Twitter announced that is launching country-specific versions of its platform, and with them the ability to selectively censor tweets based on the laws of a given country. Observers may have noticed, however, that there were some pretty prominent voices not howling at Twitter. At Marketingland, Danny Sullivan — emperor of the Search Engine Land empire — told people "not to worry." ReadWriteWeb notes that it seems pretty easy to get around this censorship — in theory, users should be able to just change their country settings. Earlier this morning, Andy Carvin noted that Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube have all gone through the same situation. Read More
Twitter Announces It May Now "Withhold" Different Tweets In Different Countries
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 26 2012
Twitter announced on its blog Thursday that it has built for itself the ability to change what messages appear in your Twitter feed depending on what country you're in. The result is a selectively censored Twitter experience, based on the laws of the user's country. It comes nearly one year ago to the day since Twitter announced, "Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed." Twitter frames the move as an effort to comply with local laws, retain the ability to stay up in a given country and be as open and transparent as possible about the process. "In the face of a valid and applicable legal order," Twitter spokeswoman Jodi Olson wrote to me in an email, "the choice facing services is between global removal of content with no notice to the user, or a transparent, targeted approach where the content is removed only in the country in question." Read More
In Germany, SOPA, PIPA and Megaupload Spark Debate in Merkel's Party
BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, January 26 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's political party is split internally over a recent statement in support of controversial American anti-piracy legislation — and the fight is playing out on Twitter. Two officials in Merkel's conservative CDU Party recently released a statement with a title that translates from the German as "The American SOPA-legislation points in the right direction." Then, several members of the same party took to Twitter to voice their disagreement with the statement. The statement references the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation stalled in the U.S. House, and related legislation in the Senate, called the Protect IP Act and further shortened to PIPA in favor of an even longer and more unwieldy name. Those bills were put on hold last week after widespread protest spurred by a nationwide coalition of online businesses. Read More
Post-Megaupload, Unrest Over ACTA, and a Call for Something Better
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 26 2012
The Megaupload case lends further urgency to what many agree is a much-needed, global overhaul of how we understand intellectual property in the Internet age. The chief disagreement here is over who should get the most preferential treatment — old-guard companies seeking control of distribution methods on the Internet as a means of protecting their property, consumers, or new-age content creators who need the ability to remix, reuse and share in order to build the information economy. But there's another issue at stake that Megaupload has brought to the fore: the United States' position as a champion of Hollywood's intellectual property rights around the globe, and the asymmetry of that relationship with respect to other countries' own expectations around content. Read More
Seven Ideas to Reboot Government Innovation In San Francisco
BY Luke Fretwell | Thursday, January 26 2012
Luke Fretwell writes:
"There’s been a great deal of discussion lately around the topic of government innovation, especially here in San Francisco, with the appointment of a new chief innovation officer, a new “civic accelerator,” a new venture with a consortium of Bay Area technology companies and a new technology and innovation task force led by SF Mayor Ed Lee.
All signs point to a bright gov 2.0 future for SF but, before we get too excited, let’s look back so we can learn how to best overcome the past two years of innovation inertia."
Read More
ThePirateBay Dancing is one example of an innovation in "circumvention technology," or, for some, in piracy.
Megaupload: Will Anti-Piracy Efforts Have a "Chilling Effect" on Innovation?
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 26 2012
With the founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, denied bail in a New Zealand court, it's a tough time to be in the file-sharing business. Read More
First POST: Parodies
BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, January 26 2012
In today's First POST:
- How much has Mitt Romney made, as of right this minute? A Florida progressive group creates a website to take an educated guess.
- Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) takes to YouTube to make a point to President Barack Obama.
- The leading challenger for his Senate seat, Elizabeth Warren, released an "It Gets Better" video.
San Francisco's Plan: Open Government, Open Data, Open Doors to New Business and Better Services
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, January 24 2012
In San Francisco, city officials have pulled together a core nexus of driven leaders, civic hackers, and big-name investors in the hopes that greater access to the city's inner workings can spur more web 2.0-style startups that solve problems government has, or maybe that citizens have because of government. Is this enough to make local government work better? Read More
Yochai Benkler photo by Joichi Ito, CC-BY 2.0
Seven Lessons from SOPA/PIPA/Megaupload and Four Proposals on Where We Go From Here
BY Yochai Benkler | Wednesday, January 25 2012
A guest post from Yochai Benkler, who writes: "On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, a new model of politics succeeded in bringing to a halt legislation that had been pushed by some of the most powerful industry lobbies in Washington, which began its life with broad bi-partisan support in both chambers of Congress. The political calculus seems to have changed drastically this week, and we need to understand how to exploit and harness the changing winds to expand and lock in this initial victory." Read More
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