Sunday 1 March 2009

Herdict - a way to dob in Conroy's filter?

From The Future of the Internet and how to stop it a new feature was launched last week:

Jonathan Zittrain’s brainchild Herdict was officially released today. (Watch the project’s mascot — a sheep — demonstrate “the verdict of the herd” in a short video… does its voice sound familiar?)
Herdict is a tool that employs the distributed power of the Internet community to provide insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility.
People can participate by reporting websites that they cannot access, testing sites that others have reported, or downloading the browser add-on for reporting sites on the fly.
Herdict is a portmanteau of ‘herd’ and ‘verdict.’ Using Herdict Web, anyone anywhere can report websites as accessible or inaccessible. Herdict Web aggregates reports in real time, permitting participants to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem, giving them a better sense of potential reasons for why a site is inaccessible. Trends can be viewed over time, by site and by country.
Herdict Web builds 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.
Watch Prof. Z discussing Herdict Web at a recent Berkman luncheon, or listen to a podcast of Herdict on Radio Berkman.

Try Herdict Web courtesy of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University).

Report that Senator Xenophon may be changing his support for the national Internet censorship plan.

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