[Seth Finkelstein has left a new comment on your post "(aside) zittrain & Harvard's Berkman Center: there...":

Seth,

in case you are reading this, I continue to be stupefied by the way search engines work (google in particular); I thought I was doing everything wrong! I mean... I only post when I feel like it and that ends up leaving weeks if not months with no posts, so how could a post on this blog (an off-topic one at that) rank so high in the google search? (middle of the 2nd page of hits) there must have been loads of people who wrote about the zittrain-berkman-brill-thing! what's really crazy is that *zittain's answer*, addressing Brill's story, ranks *lower* than the entry on my blog... let me know what you think if you get a chance! Thanks! D.

Delia: will be away for a few days; any further comments will be posted here (in the body of the entry) -- will be back Sunday night! D.

STILL MORE:
(http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2010/07/07/jonathan-zittrains-conflict-of-interest/comment-page-1/#comment-24158)

Richard, I think you are one of the people that could do a really good job at this!

Delia

re: http://craigslistcriticism.blogspot.com/2010/07/aside-zittrain-harvards-berkman-center.html

EVEN MORE Delia: the worst situation that I can imagine is that it might have really been a *quid pro quo* (hefty funding for academic appointment) and Lessig got the 1st endowed professorship just to mask this exchange. Daniel Golden's "The Price of Admission; How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates" gives good background on how something like this might have worked out. D.

MORE: Seth's follow up post

Of course Zittrain is not naive - I'd say he's one of the most sophisticated and savvy people I've ever met. And someone does not become a professor at Harvard AND Oxford without being able to swim with sharks in some deep very waters indeed. His personal story would be interesting in a certain way, but Emily Brill didn't tell it. The article had much of a petty individual scandal tone against him, which I don't think was justified - and parts of that didn't even seem to be accurate. Again, the broader institutional issues, mentioned later on, are a different matter. Those are orders of magnitude more meaningful.

The fact that the Berkman Center gets plenty of publicity doesn't translate into support for a thorough analysis of it. Remember, journalism is basically gone - it's been replaced by attention-mongering, err, the link economy.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein to craigslist criticism at July 26, 2010 2:05 AM

I agree that she didn't do a very good job at it (and already said that) but I don't know about having necessarily been against him *personally*, rather than against his involvement with the Berkman center.

She *had* to say how she stumbled on the issues in the first place and that was as much of her own personal story (if you want to look at it that way) as it was Zittrain's. To me, her story sounds pretty mundane, I just don't see the scandal in it... : she applied for a job, was invited to sit in one of his classes and started wondering...

I wouldn't be surprised if she lost her chance to get the job once she started asking Zittrain questions about the inside workings of the Berkman center (things like where does the funding come from, which I believe she was entitled to know so she could make an informed decision on whether or not to accept the job if offered). And this is definitely relevant to the story that's worth telling.

Zittrain is by no means dumb but I'm not convinced that he would have become a Harvard Law Professor and had the academic career he ended-up having if he wouldn't have been a major player in setting up the Berkman center. One of the things to look into would be whether or not he had personal ties to the Berkmans and might have talked them into donating money to Harvard for this particular project. I suspect that was the case... I also suspect the Berkmans ended-up giving even *more* money to Harvard for other things and Harvard was grateful for Zitttrain's helping out with fund raising.

And yeah, the institutional level *is* the ultimate concern but it wouldn't have gotten to that point would Harvard had not allowed the Berkman center to be created in the first place. The way it *looks like* to me (and, of course, these are ALL just *my suspicions* -- it would have to be all checked) is that Harvard allowed itself to be corrupted and Zittrain was the one who ultimately made it happen.

Delia

P.S. I meant to say that *Emily Brill's story* got plenty of publicity (not just the Berkman center). So now plenty of people are aware of the issues. I believe there are still some decent journalists out there although their numbers do seem to be dwindling. D.

....

I agree, there's a story, but I'd say Jonathan Zittrain ended up personally scapegoated for what's broad institutional sins. The problem is that the overall story is a lot of research and work, plus one would have to deal with the inevitable push-back from the Berkman Center and allies. It's not an easy topic to write about.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein to craigslist criticism at July 25, 2010 1:31 PM

Seth,

The way I see it, Zittrain MUST have known what he was doing... Heck, he co-founded the monstrosity and served as it's 1st director from 1997 to 2000! Only *after* that period was he made Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard. So you gotta wonder if that was his ticket to getting an academic appointment at Harvard Law School.

The other major players in this (Nesson -- the other co-founder and Lessig -- who held the 1st endowed professorship) were already established academically prior to their involvement with the "academic based" advocacy center.

I do believe this is a story well worth telling and I'd be really surprised if Zittrain would show to have been merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I suspect that as time passed there were some significant changes made to counter the appearance (and the actual wrong doing) related to the center. And yeah... it wouldn't be easy and anybody even remotely associated with it would probably try to stop it/detract from it/etc.-- doesn't mean it wouldn't be worth doing! on the contrary...

And I do hope somebody will do a great job at it! (it's got plenty of publicity -- there must be *somebody* out there willing and able to do it)

Delia

the hazards of mixing non-profit with for profit

Dan,

I'd give the article Seth linked serious thought -- it brings up the kind of issues (IRS issues when you mix non-profit with for profit) I was concerned about when you chose to be adviser for Spot.us -- could be a dangerous thing to have your name associated with.

Delia

people are waking up!

great post by Dan Gillmor:

"If you are generous enough to do this kind of work for free, please consider doing instead it for a nonprofit site of some sort. Please don’t be giving away your time to mega-wealthy media barons." (last paragraph)

(he is not naming names but... we all know them...)

Delia

P.S. also a great comment on Seth's blog (5th comment):

Joe Beaudoin Jr.: "Frankly, I find that reprehensible. I can understand people donating their time to a non-profit organization like Wikipedia.... fine. But when people up at the top are rolling in the dough on unpaid labor?

Since Wikia is a for-profit organization, it stands to reason that their workers (contributors, admins, and the like) are all "off-the-clock", unpaid labor... Frankly, were it any other company, such acts would be illegal and the Department of Labor would be on them like vultures on a rotting carcass."

How did Google do it?

EVEN MORE: we'll see if Seth comes up with something... (3rd comment)

MORE: thanks for the comment, Seth! sorry for the delay... I didn't expect you to answer here but this is good!

here's the page

here's my comment

here's my thank-you-note-to-Google when I noticed the change (it may have happened earlier)

that page is still the third Google hit for "craigslist criticism"

that page is still at the bottom of the fist page of yahoo hits for "craigslist criticism" (well... worse than that, it's currently only the second hit on the second page of top hits -- it actually went down)

Thanks, Seth!

...

let's see if Seth has an idea... D.

Seth,

here's another one for you:

-- there was a page -- not mine -- that I thought should have a higher rank than it did (it was barely on the bottom of the first page of results)

-- I *said so* on my blog...

-- a couple of days later, I noticed that the rank for that result increased significantly (got to third) and continues to stay the same

-- I just checked and "craigslist criticism" is NOT on Google's Open Directory (the article you linked to said that was the "human component" to Google search)

-- other search engines, such as yahoo and altavista kept the old (flawed, as far as I see it) order

Delia

P.S. I don't really NEED to know how it all happened but it would be interesting... if you have an idea. I just thought it was *way* cool!:) and made me love Google web search even more... D.

(Net Neutrality) Craig keeps misrepresenting...

... the issue and Seth's got it right!

Delia

P.S. left a comment for Seth, to that blog entry:

Seth,

I'm with you on this one... actually, it reminds me of one of my comments on Jeff Jarvis' blog (the seeking compensation as a PR person part)

Delia

P.S. BTW, I sent you an email yesterday with a little request... (don't worry if you just didn't have the time for it -- just wanted to make sure you got it) D.

Owen's story

just so you don't get distracted by the last comments by Seth on Dan Gillmor's blog, here's a good summary of Owen's story (the opinion is a bit off, I'll explain later):

"My only point was to mention that they lied, outright lied, when they said they didn't benefit financially from the eBay transaction, and that they acted in poor character when they decided to malign the co-founded Phillip Knowlton, who did nothing to deserve this treatment. Phillip walked away with a lot of money, but he was also demonized, by people whom he had formerly trusted. And again, as was reported above, the only reason he sold was because he was being squeezed out." (comment by Valleygurl in Valleywag)

the thing is that, as I said on Dan Gillmor's blog... if we go by what Craig said on his blog, on the issue of having profited from the transaction, he didn't straight out lie... was he vague and ambiguous, which resulted in having even seasoned journalists believe he didn't profit financially? -- absolutely! and that's nothing new for Craig...(it seems to be his trademark -- he appears to be extremely good with ambiguity: things just "happen" to click in his interest, over and over and over... the chance that would just happen seems to be minute) ... that's another reason why I found Owen's story quite plausible...

however, on the issue of Phillip Knowlton's part in the affair, Vallygurl would be correct... craigslist was way more than just vague and ambiguous: it demonised somebody they temselves squeezed out, somebody that as a consequence had no choice but to sell...

and the real straight out lie seems to be the "symbolic ownership" (no dollar value) Craig talks about... which is at the crux of Craig's whole story (as we know today, craigslist was profitable at the time -- I don't think that was publicly known in 2004 when Craig told his story)

Delia

P.S. keep in mind that Owen's story does NOT come with proof attached (but then, neither does Craig's ...)

P.P.S. also, as far as I'm concerned, bringing to light the truth about things other publications got wrong is the redeeming value of tabloids such as Valleywag... D.

alright... I'm back!

here's some commentary D.