In this week’s Radio Berkman podcast, I interview Stephen Schultze about the FCC’s auctioning off spectrum to a national provider who would be required to use 25% of it for free, nationwide wifi. There’s only one catch: That wifi would have to only connect to sites and services that are safe for minors (defined as people between 5 and 18).

After we had recorded this interview last week, the FCC postponed voting on the proposal, and since it’s the baby of the outgoing Chair, it’s probably postponed forever. Still, the idea raises some really interesting issues. Steve and I focus on the free speech considerations, although the opposition from other spectrum-holders certainly could not have encouraged the FCC.

[Tags: berkman fcc wifi wi-fi spectrum free_speech censorship kevin_martin podcast stephen_schultze ]

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In the latest Radio Berkman podcast, Prof. Charles Nesson and Joel Tennenbaum explain their countersuit against the RIAA, claiming that the RIAA should be forbidden on Constitutional grounds from suing people for sharing music files. Charlie’s analogy is to Congress passing a law that charges $750-$150,000 for each mile we go over the speed limit, and then allows a private company to fund itself by enforcing the law, and allows them to take bribes (“settlements”). He says the RIAA is using the federal courts as a collection agency. If the law is a criminal statute, which Charlie argues it in effect is, then private parties should not be able to pursue civil suits to enforce it.

If Charlie and Joel win, it would shut down the RIAA’s hyper-aggressive tactics. And, although Charlie does not say this, it seems to me that it might open up some interesting class action suits from those who have had to pay up.[Tags: podcasts radio_berkman charlie_nesson charles_nesson joel_tennenbaum riaa copyright copyleft ]

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We’re rebooting Radio Berkman, the Berkman Center’s podcast series. First up is an interview with Chris Saghoian about why you get zero hits on some celebrities when you search using Argentina’s Google or Yahoo. There’s also a two-question interview with Craig Newmark about the effect of “nerd culture.”

[Tags: berkman podcasts argentina google yahoo craigslist craig_newmark radio_berkman ]

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In July, I blogged an idea for a system that would make it much easier to do quick an dirty edits of podcasts. The basic idea was that the software would convert the speech to text and then let you edit the text, using the revised text (with hidden time-codes) to cut and paste the original recording. I thought it was a good idea.

So did Ryan Shaw and Dan Perkel … three years ago. I just got an email from Ryan (responding to my talking about this idea in the issue of my newsletter I just sent out) saying that he and Dan put together a prototype for a class at Berkeley. He points us to a brief description, some slides, and a prototype that he says is “probably broken.” The description describes a different, and interesting, facet of the project, but, Ryan writes in his email, “Edits to a transcription text in a browser-based editor were translated into edits to an underlying audio SMIL file, playable in RealPlayer.”

[Tags: audio podcasts ]

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Here’s an interview with Dr. Jo Groebel (director of the German Digital Institute) and then with me, from the DMMK German multimedia conference a month ago… [Tags: ]

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Jon Udell talks about his interview of Dan Bricklin in which about Dan talks about his experience entering the world of audio. Jon says:

When I embarked on my personal audio adventure a few years ago, I naively thought that our fancy new digital technologies would make the whole process very simple. Boy, was I wrong about that.

As a coda, Jon uses the story of the production of of that very interview as an example of the routine complexities of audio.

Too true. I’m often tempted to record an interview but then I remember just what a pain in the butt it would be to edit it, even with my very low standards for audio quality.

So, is there something wrong with the idea of writing software that:

1. Converts spoken audio into text (presumably using existing tools)

2. Lets you use an editor to delete pieces of the text and move other pieces around, as you would with a low-end word processor

3. Uses the edited text to edit and output the audio

Even if Step 1 worked only moderately well, this application would turn editing spoken audio into a trivial task, no harder than (in fact, exactly the same as) editing a text file.

Does this software exist? Is there a good reason why it doesn’t, shouldn’t or couldn’t?

[Tags: jon_udell dan_bricklin podcasting ]

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A new magazine, WE, is kicking off its live chat series with a discussion with, well, me on Sunday, June 15, 5-6pm German time (= 11am to noon EDT, I believe), live from Hamburg. Ulrike Reinhart, Steffen Bueffel, and Soeren Stamer will lead the discussion. You can see it here.

Note: I arrive in Germany mid-morning that Sunday, so this will be a good opportunity to see my inner crankiness break through.

[Tags: podcasts vidcasts we_magazine everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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The Conversations Network has added a new “channel” that does for the 2008 US presidential campaign what IT Conversations does for tech: Lots of good talk by interesting, informed people. It’s a joint project with the equally estimable PRX.org. [Disclosure: I’m on The CN board of directors. It’s a non-profit.]Disclosure

[Tags: politics conversationsnetwork prx ]

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Ulrike Reinhard, of WhoIsWho, video-interviewed me on our back porch last week. She asked me about the need for serendipity, what an “open” Internet means, the costs of social networks, the new sense of privacy, user-controlled identity systems, Web 3.0, market conversations, categorization and control, Twitter, Obama… (I did notice one huge misstatement. In it I say that the percentage of US households with broadband access is falling, which isn’t at all what I meant. Rather, our ranking in the list of nations is falling. Ack.)

[Tags: ulrike_reinhard ]

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The eighth and last in my series of Miscellaneous interviews, sponsored by the Berkman Center and Wired, is up. I talk with Richard Sambrook, head of the BBC World Service and blogger. We talk not so much about citizens as journalists as about citizens as those who exercise editorial judgment. How will the BBC compete in a world where we’re busily telling one another what we ought to read…especially as content gets pulled out of the sites themselves? [Tags: richard_sambrook bbc news journalism citizen_journalism everything_is_miscellaneous berkman wired]

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