Stanford Center for Internet and Society

It's been sort of funny watching Oprah struggle with the meaning of truth, and watching the entire publishing industry on edge waiting to adopt her meaning. But it's really such a sad commentary on our culture. This is another pathetic episode. According to National Journal's Technology Daily:

Aides to New York gubernatorial candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld altered newspaper articles on the his Web site, the New York Times reports. The aides significantly edited published newspaper articles to portray the Republican in a more favorable light. They removed references to his past political problems and to a federal investigation of Decker College, a school in Kentucky he left last year to campaign for governor in New York. The articles were placed in the news section of Weld's site, containing their original bylines and no references to the alterations. Weld's campaign officials have defended the practice. "We don't think using excerpts is uncommon," said Dominick Ianno, a campaign spokesman. "It's regularly in advertising, movie reviews, book reviews and other promotional materials."

A top Entertainment story on googleNews right now is Bond Helmer Busted for Prostitution. Right next to it is a picture of Pierce Brosnan:

When I read this, I thought it was Brosnan who had been arrested for prostitution.

The blurb says Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand filmmaker best known taking the directing reins on the last 007 adventure, Die Another Day, is facing prostitution charges after dressing as a woman and allegedly ... and it links to an article that includes a picture of Lee Tamahori:

Feb 3-4- Presenting paper on teaching privacy and technology to law and computer science students at DATA DEVOLUTION: Corporate Information Security, Consumers and the Future of Regulation, University of Florida Law School.

According to TechWeb News

Under the new rules, Microsoft will remove access to blog content only when it receives a government-issued, legally binding notice indicating that the material violates local laws. ...Under those conditions, the company would remove access to content only in the country issuing the order, leaving it accessible to people in other countries. Microsoft would also notify users prevented from accessing the content that it is unavailable due to government restrictions.

This is interesting because it means the writers may be censored in their home country, but their blog can be accessed from the rest of the world. I wonder if anonymous blogging tools could play an important role here. The Chinese government may be able to use legal process to prevent their citizen's from reading someone blogging anonymously in China but this policy means China could not censor their voice from the rest of their world.

In President Bush's State of the Union he urged citizen's to support his efforts to promote democracy overseas.

But what about democracy at home?

There were two people kicked out of the State of the Union adress because of the tee-shirt they were wearing. Pause. Can you believe this is the "democracy" we are living in.

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom."

I will be speaking at BlogHerCon again this year. This time at a workshop described like this on their website.

So you have this crazy idea: You want to start a community-based blog site, but aren't sure where to start. Susannah Gardner & Lauren Gelman are among those who will help you examine what's out there, define what you can do differently, and create a plan to develop content, promote your efforts and watch your back.

I think Blogher was the best conference I went to last year for a few reasons. First, it had at least 50% participants who had never been to a conference before. So they had real life experience with the technology and weren't just commentators on it. Second-- and this follows on the first reason-- the panelists were mostly people who I had never heard speak before, and on subjects not usually discussed. So I felt like I gained something new from each discussion (though sometimes this aspect was a negative, there are reasons why some speakers are frequently invited back-- they're really good-- and some newbies weren't as seasoned). And finally, it was a conference full of women talking about technology, not talking about women's issues. There were men there, but men tend to fight harder to get their $.02 in, while when the room is filled with mostly women, we are better about making sure all voices get heard.

Monday January 30, 2006
12:30-1:30 PM
Room 280A
Stanford Law School
Open to All
Lunch Served

Computer technologies that I collect under the heading "social software" increase the salience of informal groups. Their salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. I organize analysis of those questions around the concept of governance, and the concept of information governance in particular.

Read the paper.About the Speaker: Michael J. Madison is Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he specializes in copyright law, the law of intellectual property, the Internet, and electronic commerce. He was previously the Director of Pitt’s Certificate Program in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.

January 26, 2006 - "Mastering the News Media to Boost Your Bottom Line." Speaking on: Corporate Blogs: They're here to stay so how do we leverage them? This talk will explore how companies are leveraging blogging tools to impact their corporate image. First we will look at company blogs, and discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls. Next, we will examine employee blogs, how first adopter companies are addressing employees who blog and how to develop a good blogging policy for your employees.

A particularly interesting element of the NSA Spying story is the role of the telecommunications carriers in the actual wiretapping. Why didn't they challenge the government's request? Some may perceive this as asking alot of these companies, but given Google's response when the government requested search data, did the carriers have a duty to go to a judge to confirm the legitimacy of the wiretapping orders?

Representative John Conyers is asking these questions and I look forward to the answers.

CIS Associate Director Lauren Gelman wrote an op-ed for the Wireless Internet Institute urging President Bush to support the Community Broadband Act of 2005 sponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and John McCain (R-AZ) and “network neutrality” provisions in the Telecommunications Act rewrite because they are the keys to his universal broadband goal.