Shoot First
May 11 '08 Internet Safety - Beyond Children
Apr 18 '08 Spring 2008 Conference Preparation
Mar 13 '08 Rudolf Elmer Launches SwissWhistleblower.com website
Ask Questions
May 11 '08 Who moved my book?
Feb 3 '08 Why can't search engines make it easier to find icons?
Out Sourcing
Apr 2 '08 Thomas Paine on Copyright, 225 years ago today
Mar 13 '08 Presenting some sloggership at the Berkman Blog Group tonight, 3/13/2008
Word Play
Mar 11 '08 Breaking news from Wikileaks you might have missed!
Course Corrections
Feb 19 '08 CampaignTrails.org launched (Ye olde text campaign archives)
Feb 7 '08 Now Using OpenID
Feb 3 '08 Restored and redrawn!
Responses & Reviews

Oppressiveness by Software

Mar 21 '08

The engineer looks at the law and asks, why is it so sloppy? Take the DMCA-CDA disparity, or the fact that anonynous political robocalls are legal in many states while anonymous political commercials are not. The software engineer wonders why this all can't be straightened out.

Wikileaks is a little dangerous

Mar 3 '08

I've recently spent many hours using the data on Wikileaks to produce some original analysis on the Bank Julius Baer story.

How an FCC regulation allows anonymous political robocalls

Feb 5 '08

Communications law in the United States is a little peculiar at times. If I buy time on for an advertisement on television or radio to reach thousands of people over the public airwaves, I have to abide by one set of rules. If. If I use an auto-dialer to reach thousands of people in their homes over the telephone (“robocalls”), I abide by a different set of rules.

Ideas & Proposals

PONAR: Icons

May 11 '08

[Note: this was originally on the cover page of this series; it was split off to add new information.]

Genre Classifications for News Content

May 8 '08

Newspapers have sections; magazines have departments; weblogs have neither. All of these publishing forms carry content of interest to readers, yet none use the same name to describe the essential nature of that content.

Truth or Swear: the Notary Internet

Mar 7 '08

Two updates in the jurisprudence of free speech online this week help shed light on one of our favorite pastimes, the search for truth. The lawsuit against Wikileaks (that "entity of unknown form" according to the district court) was dropped.

Series

The Wikileaks Reader

Mar 12 '08

This is a collection of pieces I've written recently on Wikileaks, the anonymous document dump website. There are interesting documents being made available on the site; I don't dispute that. I merely wanted to cover some of their foibles along the way.

Analyses & Summaries

Offshore Investigating: on Bank Julius Baer and Wikileaks

Mar 2 '08

Now that a federal judge has cleared Wikileaks.org to have its domain restored, it perhaps might behoove the free information zealots to actually look into the substance of the story which instigated the takedown. Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank, has a Cayman Island subidiary apparently serving as a tax shelter for the rich: Perhaps top reporters are working on it?

Definitions & Explanations

Categories of Harmful Speech Online

May 19 '08

The Free Speech Balancers

Mar 4 '08

[A work in progress]

In the realm of Free Speech, there are the Absolutists and the Balancers. The abolutists read the First Amendment literally and without qualification: Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." As for the balancers, well, it's not universally clear that they have been represented by a cohesive philosophy.

Post Facto Editing

Jan 16 '08

In September 2002, Clay Shirky sent an essay to his mailing list titled Broadcast Institutions, Community Values. He suggested how the former could employ the latter, and in doing so, explained the difference between the two.