Berkman Buzz: December 15, 2014

Indians love the news. Uniquely for any of the world's major nations, their newspaper industry has been growing and TV news ratings are up.

Now, with smartphone sales booming and half of the population—600 million people—under the age of 25, there is a digital news market in India that will surely continue to expand.

But it is also perhaps the most uniquely difficult digital audience to reach in the world. More than a billion people in India still aren't connected to the Internet. Three hundred million don't have electricity and a similar number can't read. For some, other areas of development are a greater priority: half the population doesn't even have a toilet at home.

The first rule of Art Club? Don't talk about how you run Art Club - that is, don't talk about your risks, your losses and definitely don't discuss your eccentric shortcuts or the expenditures that ultimately win you a customer base. You probably want to avoid even calling them "customers", even though that's precisely what your fans are at the point of sale. Even though they may - if you've developed a friendly relationship with them - take pride in their role as buyers of your art.

The mostly-unspoken rule that artists aren't supposed to talk about their businesses reveals plenty about how we tend to think of "art" and "business" as mutually exclusive - and have double (or even triple) standards about what artists are and are not allowed to say about their money and still be considered artists.

Last week, City Controller Scott Stringer and the five borough presidents called upon Mayor de Blasio to substantially revise his plans to transform payphones across the city into wireless hotspots - with their criticism rooted in the notion that the LinkNYC system is somehow unfair to low-income New Yorkers.

This is a deeply misinformed attack on a visionary plan - an attack that, if successful, could widen, not shrink, the digital divide over the long term.

New York City is miles from the global cutting edge when it comes to Internet access: People in Hong Kong pay about $35 a month for Internet access service, with equal download and upload speeds of 500 Mbps.

On Friday the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus letter on behalf of Global Voices Advocacy and the Media Legal Defence Initiative on an important case concerning anti-SLAPP law in California, currently being petitioned for review by the Supreme Court of California. Anti-SLAPP laws exist in numerous states to protect those speaking in government proceedings or on matters of public concern from facing frivilous lawsuits designed to dissuade them from speaking out. ("SLAPP" is an acronym for "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.") In order to quickly remove vexatious lawsuits while allowing valid claims to go through, courts considering an anti-SLAPP motion require plaintiffs to show that a lawsuit has merit before before allowing the litigation go forward. Under California's anti-SLAPP law, this means the plaintiff must state and substantiate all elements of their claim if they want to proceed. When a lawsuit is based on a claim of defamation, this includes proving that the speaker acted with fault, either with negligence or "actual malice."

On Thursday, December 4, members of the Digital Problem-Solving Initiative (DPSI) community gathered to hear from members of the seven DPSI teams. DPSI teams feature a diverse group of learners (students, faculty, fellows, and staff) working on projects addressing problems and opportunities across the university. DPSI participants have had the novel opportunity to enhance and cultivate competency in various digital literacies as teams engage with research, design, and policy relating to the digital world.

Each team had 5 minutes to present and 5 minutes of feedback from the DPSI community audience.

There's a new international survey on Internet security and trust, of "23,376 Internet users in 24 countries," including "Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States." Amongst the findings, 60% of Internet users have heard of Edward Snowden, and 39% of those "have taken steps to protect their online privacy and security as a result of his revelations."

The press is mostly spinning this as evidence that Snowden has not had an effect: "merely 39%," "only 39%," and so on. (Note that these articles are completely misunderstanding the data. It's not 39% of people who are taking steps to protect their privacy post-Snowden, it's 39% of the 60% of Internet users -- which is not everybody -- who have heard of him. So it's much less than 39%.)

Even so, I disagree with the "Edward Snowden Revelations Not Having Much Impact on Internet Users" headline. He's having an enormous impact.

Hacking collectives on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia information war have been instrumental in revealing key facts and documents that some would prefer to remain hidden. The latest leak by Ukrainian hackers purports to reveal new evidence of Russian soldiers' presence in Ukraine.

On Friday, Ukrainian activist Evgeniy Dokukin and Ukrainian Cyber Forces, the hacktivist group he founded earlier this year, released 1.7GB of files taken from the Russian Interior Ministry. Later, Dokukin released an additional 34GB of data from the Interior Ministry servers, most of which has not yet been fully analyzed by journalists.