Apple vs the iPad Bedwetters

I'd also have more faith in the Berkmanites if they didn't cosy up to some of the creepiest cults going. - from ICANN (the unaccountable domain name quango birthed at Berkman) via Google, to the cult of Wikipedia, another shrine to top-down control and the world's most bureaucratic disinformation factory. (Fact: Jimmy Wales once played house-sitter for Lawrence Lessig, which is surely the oddest couple since Harold and Maude).

Zittrain once threw a hissy fit when he discovered a panel discussion planned by the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts in London would include Professor Richard Barbrook - author of The Californian Ideology - and myself. He demanded the panel instead include fawning acolytes, mini-Zitts, that he could hand pick. To its credit, the ICA cancelled the event rather than let this overgrown schoolboy take the Mick.

Control-freakery? They've heard of it!

The Preznit and your iPhone

It's not the last you'll hear of the Berkmanites, but their influence is waning faster than anyone could have imagined.

A year ago you could find many a top law school professor boasting they were just a phone call away from the Preznit himself. Barack Obama, you'll recall, was straight outta Harvard Law. He was one of "us". The cyberlaw crowd were his policy angels. So you might expect Berkman to be running tech policy by now - but they seem more remote than ever. Obama told them to get busy studying "Net Neutrality" - another of their manufactured scares - but dumped their proposals in the bin. When Google execs sponsor the coronation inauguration, why need the Gofer inbetween?

This latest Bedwetting campaign is doomed because the President may be a dull bureaucrat, but he is not stupid. Goading large telcos is one thing, but he'll not be the President who breaks up the love affair between Americans and their iPhones. ®