Update from OWS.EU partner projects: Part 2

The OWS.EU Community Programme is an essential part of our work towards a European Open Web Search. The programme helps us to integrate new third-party project teams into the OWS.EU landscape and future R&D activities.

In November 2023 we successfully onboarded six new partner projects looking into technical, legal and economic research topics in support of a European Open Web Index. The projects were selected via our first Third-party call. Information on successful projects selected from our second and third open call will follow soon. This blogpost provides an update from two of the more technical projects from call #1 – LAW4OSAI and Open Console.

LAW4OSAI: License-Aware Web Crawling for Open Search AI 

The LAW4OSAI (License-Aware Web Crawling for Open Search AI) project deals with legal and technical aspects of content crawling and aims to enable license-aware crawling of web content by automatically identifying and retrieving content licenses. The team successfully developed a browser plugin to annotate a dataset for the detection of content licenses on websites and open sourced the code (https://github.com/LAW4OSAI/plugin-license-annotation). Furthermore, an algorithm to detect standard open licenses (like Common Creative licenses) on websites was created and the annotation of a dataset has started. The size of the dataset will increase in the remaining time of the project.

Currently the LAW4OSAI team calls for contributions to an online workshop series for researchers and practitioners that are interested in legal aspects of generative AI (https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/law4osai/workshop/).

More information about the LAW4OSAI project

Open Console: Improving Knowledge about Websites

The Open Console project is implemented by Markov Solutions – a freelance business run by Mark Overmeer and Thao Phuong Nguyen. The goal of the project is to build an infrastructure (called Open Console) to share information about websites and thereby improve the availability and quality of produced knowledge.

In the current version of the Open Console, people can already create an account and log in to the console. They are able to generate their personal identities (to define different roles), as well as group identities (for cooperation or association). From that, ownership of  websites (or email, or domain name) can be verified.

In the remaining project lifetime, the Open Console team works on implementing other types of ownership proof and making the website production ready. Together with the OWS.EU partners University of Passau and SUMA-eV, the first service provided by Open Console will be implemented. This will be a learning path for the Open Web Index logging requirements and the design of the OC-third party interface specification.

More information about the Open Console project.

Update from OWS.EU partner projects: Part 1

In November 2023 OWS.EU successfully onboarded six new partner projects looking into technical, legal and economic research topics in support of the European Open Web Index that is currently in the making. The projects were selected in 2023 following an open call. Currently projects from the second and third calls are being reviewed with updates following soon.

Market potential assessment by Mücke Roth & Company

One of the endeavours from call #1 was the MRC project, dealing with economical questions related to an Open Web Index. The project was initiated by Mücke Roth & Company (MRC) with the goal to assess the market potential of OWS.EU.

The analysis is already fully executed, with a comprehensive study on the market potential of OWS.EU being the major result of the project. The study that has revealed substantial economic and societal benefits of OWS.EU will be presented to the public in autumn 2024.

Key achievements of the MRC work include a cost-benefit analysis, the identification of key customer segments and market dynamics through competitor benchmarking and a quantification of the European search engine market potential.

Figure 1: Share of Benefits & Costs on Net Benefit over time (Market Potential Assessment for OWS.EU by Mücke Roth & Company)

Last but not least, the assessment incorporates additional customer feedback and further interviews validating the findings of the MRC project. Strategic recommendations were provided to OWS.EU by the MRC team based on the results of their work.

Currently implications of the EU AI Act are monitored in order to adapt the strategy in case new regulations may arise.

More about the MRC project

Legal, Intellectual Property & Cyber Security Aspects of Open Web Search

The OWS.EU-Project raises a multitude of highly complex legal questions. LISA (Legal, Intellectual Property and Cyber-Security Aspects) is one of the legal projects that has taken the challenge to determine legal questions, identify relevant legal risks and adequately address them. The goal is to define a legal framework for the development and operation of an Open Web Search Index.

In the first half of the project, the team around Prof. Dr. Matthias Wendland from the University of Oldenburg defined what constitutes illegal content and established the legal duties for operators of an Open Web Index. Legal requirements for takedown requests, including those for criminal content, IP infringements, and data protection were set out. Additionally, the ownership of digital content and of the Open Web Index was clarified and the legal framework necessary for sharing the index was created. Furthermore, the team drafted an End User License Agreement (EULA).

Figure 2: Data Centers & Legal Territoriality in OWS.EU (from the LISA framework)

In the remaining time of the LISA project, the team plans to focus on the design of a comprehensive legal framework for the Open Web Index, including governance structures and guidelines as well as best practices for its operation. Additionally, the End User License Agreement (EULA) to facilitate the sharing and usage of the index will be finalized and European legislative acts that came into force recently, will be monitored closely and incorporated to project’s plans and policies when necessary.

More about the LISA project