Omidyar Network has announced a planned grant of up to $1.5M to Herdict -- the Berkman Center's crowdsourcing platform for providing insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of website accessibility.

Omidyar Network's full press release is below. And here's the announcement on the Herdict blog.

Herdict -- brainchild of Professor Jonathan Zittrain -- was built out from the OpenNet Initiative's research on global Internet filtering. The OpenNet Initiative tests Internet filtering through an academic methodology. Herdict Web takes a different approach, crowdsourcing reports to learn about and display a real-time picture of user experiences around the globe. (For more information about the OpenNet Initiative and its latest book, Access Controlled, visit [opennet.net].)

Since its launch in 2009, Herdict has grown in reach and ease of use. It’s now available in a growing number of languages, and there are increasingly more ways for people to report websites as in/accessible and to explore Herdict’s expanding datasets.

The Omidyar Network grant will be used to build Herdict into a standalone non-profit and recruit a CEO, as well as to continue development of the platform.

Hundreds of reports of websites being inaccessible (and accessible) are contributed to Herdict daily from around the world. We invite you to learn more and join in at http://www.herdict.org.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., and WASHINGTON (September 8, 2010) - Omidyar Network today announced a planned grant of up to $1.5M to Herdict, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Herdict is a crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals to contribute real-time data about website accessibility and outages around the globe. Stacy Donohue, Omidyar Network director of investments for government transparency, made the announcement during a presentation at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington D.C. The grant will be used to build Herdict into a standalone non-profit and recruit a CEO. Additionally, Donohue will join Herdict’s board of directors.

Herdict is the brainchild of Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center, and was launched in 2009 under his direction. The platform's name is derived from blending ‘herd’ and ‘verdict.’ Herdict enables Internet users to report web outages and website inaccessibility through the Herdict website, an Internet Explorer or Firefox add-on, or Twitter. The crowdsourced assessment of real-time experiences informs potential reasons for the outages and inaccessible websites. Herdict can be used in five languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian and Russian – and has received reports from nearly every country around the world. Users of Herdict’s data include website operators, activists, journalists, researchers and government agencies that are active in international Internet freedom initiatives.

“Government transparency requires accessible information, which depends on an open, free Internet. Herdict is a powerful tool that exposes regimes intent on preventing citizen access to certain sites,” said Donohue. “Herdict fits strategically within Omidyar Network’s Government Transparency investment area; the platform enables monitoring of open information and communication, both essential ingredients for healthy democratic governments in the 21st Century.”

About the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

About Omidyar Network
Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $363 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, consumer internet, mobile and government transparency. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.

Contact:
Greg Pershall
Omidyar Network
gpershall@omidyar.com

Seth Young
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu

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Come to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s Open House to meet our faculty, fellows, and staff, and to learn about the many ways you can get involved in our dynamic, exciting environment.

As a University-wide research center at Harvard University, our interdisciplinary efforts in the exploration of cyberspace address a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. If you're interested in the Internet’s impact on society and are looking to engage a community of world-class fellows and faculty through events, conversations, research, and more please join us to hear more about our upcoming academic year!

Paid part-time research positions will be available in the fall, and you can visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/getinvolved/internships to see currently available positions.

People from all disciplines, universities, and backgrounds are encouraged to attend the Open House to familiarize yourself with the Berkman Center and explore opportunities to join us in our research.  We look forward to seeing you there!

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Kimberley Isbell asks, "Who's Afraid of the News Aggregators?"
* Jonathan Zittrain considers the FTC's fake iTunes reviews case.
* Doc Searls invites us beyond caveat emptor.
* David Weinberger utopianizes upon the shoulders of William Gibson.
* Christian Sandvig asks for help with an Internet & Innovation Reading List.
* Ethan Zuckerman, puzzling out Crisis Commons' terrain.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Armenia-Azerbaijan: More dialogue through film"
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Objections to the Google Book Settlement"

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The full buzz.

"As anyone who has been following the debate regarding the "future of journalism" knows, there have been a lot of ink (and bytes) spilled arguing over the role news aggregators are playing in the "decline" of traditional journalistic models. Rupert Murdoch has labeled the practice of news aggregation by entities like Google News "theft," and a professor from the Wharton Business School recently called on lawmakers to amend the copyright laws to prevent aggregators from posting any portion of news stories for a full 24 hours after their initial publication. Even the FTC has gotten in on the act, listing "Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators" as the first policy proposal in the Staff Discussion Draft recently released in connection with its workshop series on "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?""
From Kimberley Isbell's blog post for CMLP, Who's Afraid of the News Aggregators?

"There was some handwringing over this — would the government be going after any blogger who says something good about something and might have a financial interest in it? It is not particularly easy to predict, especially since the FTC, unlike other Federal agencies, does not do formal rulemakings — it can only announce guidelines and then bring one enforcement action at a time under its general charter to combat unfair or deceptive trade practices. The Reverb case provides a good example of how the FTC is thinking about applying its limited staff power: to professional organizations working to subvert ratings schemes."
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post FTC goes after astroturfing

"Today advertising on the Web is also normative to an extreme that is beginning to feel metastatic. In efforts to improve advertising, “beacons” and flash cookies have been added to the HTTP variety, and all are now also used to track users on the Web. The Wall Street Journal has been following this in its What They Know series, and you can find out more there. Improvement, in the new advertising business, is now about personalization. “It is a sea change in the way the industry works,” Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai, told the Wall Street Journal. “Advertisers want to buy access to people, not Web pages.” Talk about asymmetry. You are no longer just a client to a server. You are a target with crosshairs on your wallet."
From Doc Searls' blog post Beyond caveat emptor

(Bonus: Doc rounds up the roundups of CRM+VRM 2010.)

"William Gibson has an brilliant op-ed in the NYT about our inability to make sense of an entity like Google. “Google is not ours. Which feels confusing…,” he says. Exactly. But then I think Gibson misidentifies the cause of the confusion. He continues: “Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another.” He says our “every search” is “a miniscule contribution.” But, that’s not why were confused. I’d venture that very few people realize that Google uses our searches to refine future results. And if they did know, I doubt they’d care. Who would expect to be paid for that, any more than we expect any company to pay us for learning from its logs?"
From David Weinberger's blog post What’s ours in the Age of Google?

"(...An Internet and Innovation Reading List for You.) Recently I’ve been ginning up a reading list about the title given in this blog post, and I wondered if I could try to crowdsource some of this bad boy. If you had a semester and you wanted a graduate-level someone to learn all of the basics and some of the more advanced and interesting stuff about the broad topic “the Internet and innovation,” what would you tell them to read? My interest here is public policy and not so much on other areas (economics, law — though they’re in here)..."
From Christian Sandvig's blog post Internet Innovation: The Big Read

"Perhaps the most impressive collaboration to come from the Crisis Camps was work on OpenStreetMap for Port au Prince. Using satellite imagery released by the UN, a team created a highly detailed map, leveraging the work of non-programmers to trace roads on the satellite images and diasporans to identify and name landmarks and streets. As the map improved in quality, the volunteers were eventually able to offer routing information for relief trucks, based on road damage that was visible on the satellite imagery. A convoy would request a route for a 4-ton water truck, and volunteers would use their bird’s eye view of the situation – from half a continent away – to suggest the safest route. Ultimately, the government of Haiti requested access to the information, and Crisis Camps provided not only the data, but training in using it."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Crisis Commons, and the challenges of distributed disaster response

"With national television in Armenia and Azerbaijan controlled directly or indirectly by the authorities or government-linked individuals, there is little opportunity for independent reporting. This is especially true in the case of the simmering conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. The war, fought in the early 1990s, left 25,000 dead and forced a million to flee their homes. Few ethnic Armenians remain in Azerbaijan, and ethnic Azeris also left Armenia, while attempts to negotiate a lasting peace continue to falter. Skirmishes, however, still occur on the front line despite a 1994 ceasefire agreement. Communication between the two sides is also discouraged and, for most citizens, impossible. Even so, new and social media is slowly starting to fill the information void and circumvent official or self-imposed restrictions in place on objective reporting free from negative stereotyping, propaganda and occasional misinformation."
From Onnik Krikorian's blog post for Global Voices, Armenia-Azerbaijan: More dialogue through film

"As an author I am also a reader, a user of libraries, and a beneficiary of the public domain. I say this because I believe that the settlement in question amounts to a major intervention in our national cultural policy, one that will affect the U.S. knowledge ecology for generations to come. It therefore should not be adjudicated upon the assumption that we authors (and our publishers) are rights holders only. We are cultural citizens as well; our copyrights matter to us, but so do larger questions of how literature and knowledge circulate among us."
Lewis Hyde, from Harry Lewis' blog post Objections to the Google Book Settlement [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in August 2009]

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The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects: [cyber.law.harvard.edu]

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Cambridge, MA – August 31, 2010 – The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University are co‐hosting a conference on September 25, 2010 entitled Media Law in the Digital Age: The Rules Have Changed, Have You? in Atlanta, Georgia.

Designed for journalists, bloggers, and lawyers who work with media clients, the conference will be an opportunity to learn first‐hand the latest legal developments and to get your questions answered by experts in the field.

The program will bring together legal practitioners, journalists, and academics to discuss the latest legal issues facing online media ventures. Topics will include: libel law, copyright law, newsgathering law, and advertising law, as well as the legal issues arising from news aggregation, managing online communities, and business law considerations for start‐up online media organizations. Small‐group workshops will focus on strategies for accessing government information and understanding legal terms in content licenses, freelancer contracts, and website terms of service and privacy policies.

If you need personalized legal assistance before or after the conference, contact the Online Media Legal Network, a legal referral network for independent online media administered by the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center. For more information about the network, please visit its website: http://www.omln.org.

Funding for the conference is being provided by the Harnisch Foundation, which has been a long‐time sponsor of the Center for Sustainable Journalism and recently provided a grant to the Berkman Center to support media law education.

Visit the conference website for more information on the conference agenda, registration and logistics: [csjconferences.org].

About the Citizen Media Law Project
The Citizen Media Law Project, which began operations in May 2007, provides assistance, training, research, and other resources for individuals and organizations involved in online and citizen media. CMLP endeavors to serve as a catalyst for creative thinking about the intersection of law and journalism on the Internet. Through the project’s website, the active engagement of lawyers and scholars, and occasional sponsored conferences, project staff are working to build a community of lawyers, academics, and others who are interested in facilitating citizen participation in online media and protecting the legal rights of those engaged in speech on the Internet. For more information, visit http://www.citmedialaw.org.

About the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is home to an ever‐growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

About the Center for Sustainable Journalism
The Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University aims to ensure that high quality, ethically sound journalism continues to have a vibrant place in our democracy. For more information, visit http://sustainablejournalism.org/.

About the Harnisch Foundation
The Harnisch Foundation has been a catalyst for sustainable social change since 1998, funding and implementing innovation in the fields of philanthropy, coaching and journalism. For more information, visit http://thehf.org/.

Contact:
Seth Young
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
617-384-9135
syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Doc Searls might be wrong about the future of the Internet.
* Jonathan Zittrain gets to the core of net neutrality.
* CMLP warns against three-strikes Internet laws.
* David Weinberger wonders if Google ever really loved him in the first place.
* Herdict discusses Australian Internet filtering.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Rwanda: Bloggers Discuss Presidential Election 2010"

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The full buzz.

"I think the Net will get worse before it gets better. But I think we need to consider seriously whether it will get better at all. Recent defeats of the FCC by carriers make clear who holds the cards. (And I'm not saying that the FCC was right. I've always felt that 'Net Neutrality' was more effective as a red flag for carriers than for helping its proponents' legislative and regulatory agendas.) Here's what I believe, at least for now. The Internet, as the open and generative thing its protocols like to support, is good for humanity, for human evolution, for society and for business. I would like that to be right, but it might be wrong, and I'm open to hearing that."
From Doc Searls' blog post On being wrong

"It's hard to know what to make of the Google/Verizon deal since until earlier today both companies have denied that there is one. And it’s hard to argue about net neutrality because it means so many different things to different people. I've got lots of reading to do to catch up on the newly released set of principles from the companies, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts on the topic. The core question is this: when Internet Service Providers turn out to have captive audiences of subscribers -- either because their customers have few if any alternatives for broadband, or because switching is complicated and cumbersome, or because ISP practices are obscure and thus hard for customers to adapt to -- how far should they be allowed to leverage that captivity?"
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post What matters in net neutrality

"One of our allies, New Zealand, is considering a three strikes Internet termination plan. Another ally, France, has already passed such a measure -- HADOPI, but can't seem to enforce it (legally). While I've written about the lunacy that is HADOPI, I thought our friends down under might be interested to learn of the hideous side effects of swallowing the Internet Execution program."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the CMLP, Hey, When Did This Slope Get so Slippery? The Danger of Self-Surveillance in Three-Strikes Internet Laws

"There is no denying that I am a Google fanboy. I postponed my technolust for an iPhone until I could get a Droid. I switched from the Firefox browser to Google's Chrome. I use Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, and Google Maps, and I’d probably use Google Bugle and Google Tattoogle, if such things existed. I bought into Google products in large part because they tend to kick butt, but I have put up with some frustrations because I believed that Google was on my side. Our side.'Where are the other big companies that are standing up for the open Internet?' I have asked in public more than once. So, Google's joint proposal with Verizon hurt. Has Google cheated on me? Were there others before Verizon? Did Google ever really love me in the first place?"
From David Weinberger's blog post for APM's Future Tense, Notes from a Disappointed Fanboy

"The controversial plan to filter the Internet could be dead in the water after the Liberal-National Coalition, the main opposition group in the Australian parliament, declared it opposed the policy. The current Australian Government announced the filter two years ago as part of its cyber safety program to protect children from pornography and offensive material. With little over a week to go until the elections, the Internet filter has become a controversial issue that is dividing the political parties in Australia."
From Stefan Kulk's blog post for Herdict, Internet filter becomes an issue in Australian election campaign

"Rwandan presidential election was held in Rwanda on 9 August 2010. Preliminary results released by the National Electoral Commission show that President Kagame has won by a landslide. What does Kagame's victory mean to Rwanda? Was the election free and fair? What are the real challenges facing Rwanda now that the election is over? These are some of the issues that bloggers are discussing following the release of preliminary results."
From Ndesanjo Macha's blog post for Global Voices, Rwanda: Bloggers Discuss Presidential Election 2010

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The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects: [cyber.law.harvard.edu]

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu