Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvards Berkman Center for Internet & Society, joins Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson to discuss.

via How Facebook plans to takeover the developing world | Marketplace.org.

Americans are understandably concerned that their digital privacy may be eroded through the government’s ham-handed approach to foreign surveillance. But fixating on the accidental collection of domestic communications during foreign surveillance risks ignoring the ways that the US government legally and intentionally surveils the digital communications of its citizens. We must be careful that, in our rush to answer questions about Prism, we don’t endanger the gains we have made over the past few years in understanding our domestic surveillance apparatus.

via Tech firms should be allowed to publish more data on US surveillance | Ryan Budish | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society says the death of Google Reader is indicative of the end of an Internet era. He joins Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson to discuss.

via The end of Google Reader, the end of an era | Marketplace.org.

Defence arguments in the trial of former Army private Bradley Manning — who stands accused of a number of crimes for handing over classified documents to WikiLeaks, including a charge of “aiding the enemy” — finished Wednesday with testimony from Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, who faced a number of questions from the judge and the prosecution about whether WikiLeaks is a media entity or not. Benkler’s answers highlighted some of the most contentious aspects of the trial, which in turn raise questions about what journalism and the media consist of in a networked age, and how we protect them.

via The Manning trial grapples with the question of whether WikiLeaks is a media entity — Tech News and Analysis.

Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler, a scholar who wrote a widely cited paper that examined how WikiLeaks fits into what he calls the networked fourth estate, took the stand to testify in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning. The military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, determined he was qualified to testify as an expert on the networked fourth estate and to share his views on the nature of WikiLeaks and how it is a legitimate journalistic organization.

via Government Responsible for Perception WikiLeaks Aided Enemies, Argues Defense in Bradley Manning’s Trial | The Dissenter.

Benkler, who is co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, was accepted by the court as an expert on the future of journalism in the digital age, despite prosecution attempts to have him disqualified. Under defence questioning, according to a transcript of the court proceedings provided by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Benkler roundly dismissed any connection between WikiLeaks and terrorist organisations and damned as “a relatively mediocre effort” a counter-intelligence report titled “Wikileaks.org – An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?”.

via Bradley Manning defence rests after calling just 10 witnesses | World news | guardian.co.uk.

The professor, Yochai Benkler, who wrote a widely cited academic article about WikiLeaks and the evolution of watchdog journalism in the Internet era, testified that at the time of Private Manning’s leaks the group had established itself as playing a reputable and valuable journalistic role by publishing documents about corporate misconduct and government corruption around the world.

via Soldier’s Lawyers Rest Case With a Defense of WikiLeaks’ Journalistic Role – NYTimes.com.

Legal education’s inability to adapt to technology is undermining law schools around the country, argued noted legal scholar Oliver R. Goodenough in a talk Tuesday at Harvard’s Berkman Center for The Internet and Society.

via 14 Reasons Law Schools Must Teach Tech – Education – Instructional IT.

“This is part of a broader political strategy to provide state attorneys general with ammunition to try to amend section 230,” said Jeffrey Hermes, director of the Digital Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “This is a threat to the operability of the Internet of quite significant dimensions. It opens holes to the law that protects the core functionality of the Internet.”

via Web Groups Sue To Block New Jersey Law On Underage Sex Ads « CBS Philly.

Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries. Though you can read a book through, say, Google Books, or on a Nook or Kindle, it’s laborious to save what you see to your computer and truly make the book your own. With cloud-based services, one “master” copy of the book is always online, but that makes it vulnerable to manipulation or even deletion.

Jonathan Zittrain: ‘Digital books are under the control of distributors rather than readers’ Wired UK.