News & Media

Bhuvana Meenakshi elected Mozilla Rep for July 2019

Admin — 2019-09-25T16:33:55Z

Bhuvana Meenakshi was selected as a Rep of the Month (July 2019) by Mozilla for my active contributions.

Reps are community coordinators interested in:

finding and connecting new talent with Mozilla projects they are contributing to
developing communities on a functional or local level
supporting local communities and Mozilla to have an effective and decentralized environment for contribution
creating collaborations with adjacent communities to spread Mozilla’s mission and expand Mozilla’s outreach in the open source ecosystem
collecting local knowledge from Mozilla communities to inform and inspire Mozilla’s strategy, activities and priorities

How is the Rep of the Month nominated?

Every Rep can be nominated by any Reps Mentor to receive this recognition. Therefore it's possible to nominate other Reps, not just the mentor's mentees. This nomination is meant as a recognition for outstanding contributions to Mozilla through the Reps program. Mentors are encouraged to nominate any Reps that have stood out in the past month.

For more see here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhuvana-meenakshi-elected-mozilla-rep-for-july-2019-1

# NAMA Community Meet | Global Payments Ecosystem

Admin — 2019-08-19T14:29:41Z

Anubha Sinha attended the event organized by Medianama in Delhi on July 31, 2019.

Click to view the agenda.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/nama-community-meet-global-payments-ecosystem

Project Tiger: Wikipedia ropes in locals to contribute articles in Indian languages

praskrishna — 2019-06-05T06:37:55Z

The project has generated content in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odiya and Gujarati.

The article by Tushar Kaushik was published in Economic Times on May 29, 2019.

Hundreds of people from across the country are generating online content in local Indian languages and are even competing in ‘editathons’ that pit contributors of different languages against each other.

While online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s content might be exhaustive in English, its content in Indian languages is limited. Keeping this in mind, Wikipedia’s parent organization Wikimedia Foundation, and Google, roped in Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) - Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Wikimedia India Chapter in 2017 and started ‘Project Tiger’ aimed at generating more content in Indian languages. A pilot project was held from December 2017 to May 2018 and another phase of the competition is set to begin next month. The project has generated content in major languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odia and Gujarati.

The contributors are from varied age groups, some are also from remote, rural areas and they worked from different cities across the country. Two years ago, Durga Prasanna, a journalism student at Alva’s college in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, joined a group of contributors to Wikipedia as part of a requirement from the college. She got an opportunity to participate in ‘Project Tiger’ last year. She generated Wikipedia entries in Kannada and also in the regional languages of Tulu and Konkani. Apart from Durga, seven other students of her college together contributed over 70 articles in Kannada, and a few in Tulu and Konkani, during the ‘editathon’. “We were provided a long list of topics on which not much literature existed in the local languages and among them, we chose topics based on our interests. For example, I wrote articles on ‘psychologist’ and ‘medicinal plants’,” she said.

Another participant, Charan Gill, a 65-year-old former social worker from Patiala, Punjab, was the top contributor in Punjabi. “I wrote 432 articles in a span of two-and-a-half months.However, contributing is not new to me as I have written over 10,000 Wikipedia entries in Punjabi since 2012,” he says.

Gill now works with another Wikimedia project, translating literary classics into Punjabi. He is currently translating some works of 19th century Russian author Ivan Turgenev. Thanksto Gill’s contributions, the Punjabi community of contributors won the prize for producing the most articles — 1,320. In Tamil, 1,241 articles were contributed. A total of 78 articleswere produced in Kannada by eight members.

Gopalakrishna A, community advocate for Kannada language, CIS-A2K, said all written articles were evaluated by a Wikimedia team jury to check if they fulfilled all criteria beforebeing uploaded on Wikipedia set for the contest. Once they fulfil the criteria, the articles are eligible for the prizes. “The main idea was to create content in Indian languages. Thethings most Indian contributors required were internet and hardware support. So participants who had made significant contributions prior to the competition Wikimediaprojects were provided internet connections or laptops Chromebooks,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-may-29-2019-tushar-kaushik-project-tiger

Wikipedia looks to ramp up its Indian language content

Tushar Kaushik — 2019-06-05T07:20:17Z

Wikipedia is generating more content in major Indian languages with the help of Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society.

The article by Tushar Kaushik was published in Economic Times on May 28, 2019.

While online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s content might be exhaustive in English, its content in Indian languages is limited. Keeping this in mind, Wikipedia’s parent organization Wikimedia roped in Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in 2017 and started ‘Project Tiger’ aimed at generating more content in Indian languages.

A pilot project was held from December 2017 to May 2018 and another phase of the competition is set to begin next month. The project has generated content in major languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odiya and Gujarati.

The contributors are from varied age groups, some are also from remote, rural areas and they worked from different cities across the country. Two years ago, Durga Prasanna, a journalism student at Alva’s college in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, joined a group of contributors to Wikipedia as part of a requirement from the college.

She got an opportunity to participate in ‘Project Tiger’ last year. She generated Wikipedia entries in Kannada and also in the regional languages of Tulu and Konkani. Apart from Durga, seven other students of her college together contributed over 70 articles in Kannada, and a few in Tulu and Konkani, during the ‘editathon’. “We were provided a long list of topics on which not much literature existed in the local languages and among them, we chose topics based on our interests. For example, I wrote articles on ‘psychologist’ and ‘medicinal plants’,” she said.

Another participant, Charan Gill, a 65-year-old former social worker from Patiala, Punjab, was the top contributor in Punjabi. “I wrote 432 articles in a span of two-and-a-half months. However, contributing is not new to me as I have written over 10,000 Wikipedia entries in Punjabi since 2012,” he says.

Gill now works with another Wikimedia project, translating literary classics into Punjabi. He is currently translating some works of 19th century Russian author Ivan Turgenev. Thanks to Gill’s contributions, the Punjabi community of contributors won the prize for producing the most articles — 1,320. In Tamil, 1,241 articles were contributed. A total of 78 articles were produced in Kannada by eight members.

A Gopalkrishna, community advocate for Kannada language, CIS, said all written articles were evaluated by a Wikimedia team to check if they fulfilled all criteria before being uploaded on Wikipedia. “The main idea was to create content in Indian languages. The things most Indian contributors required were internet and hardware support. So participants who had made significant contributions prior to the competition were provided internet connections or laptops,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-tushar-kaushik-may-28-2019-wikipedia-looks-to-ramp-up-its-indian-language-content

Youths come forward to augment Assamese Wikisource project

NE NOW NEWS — 2019-05-21T16:03:43Z

Assamese Wikisource is a sister-project of Assamese Wikipedia, where Assamese books with expired copyrights are available.

The blog post was published in NE NOW NEWS on May 17, 2019.

In order to take the Assamese Wikisource project forward, few young men and women of the state involving in different fields, recently gathered in Guwahati to attend a workshop.

Assamese Wikisource is a sister-project of Assamese Wikipedia, where Assamese books with expired copyrights are available. The project owned by Wikimedia Foundation was launched in 2013.

A total of 14 volunteers from across the state participated in the workshop hosted by Centre for Internet and Society-Access to knowledge (CIS-A2K) in a city hotel.

Two experts–Jayanta Nath from Kolkata and Tito Dutta from Bangalore–were present as trainers for the workshop, say organisers.

The two-day event was coordinated by Gitartha Bordoloi, a physician based in Silchar and the administrator of Assamese Wikipedia and Wikisource.

“Wikisource sources hosts books, plays, lyrics, letters etc which are available in open source,” says an organiser.

PDF or similar files are added to Wikisource which are then converted to unicode form so that every information becomes searchable on the internet.

In addition to books that are hitherto copyright free, new books can also be donated by authors and can be added to the field.

Everyone can access and contribute to this collaborative project. Presently, Assamese Wikisource stands at ninth position out of eleven Indic languages. This can be due to less Wikisource projects and also lack of contributors.

In addition to the basic navigation on Wikisource, the participants learnt searching and uploading public domain works, using OCR to get the texts, correcting errors and creating final product for the readers, he says.

As a part of the workshop, the participants fully digitised three old Assamese books within a few hours. They also discussed the future aims, perspectives and goals of Assamese Wikipedia and Wikisource.

As a result of their persistent efforts, works of Srimanta Sankardev and Madhabdev, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Rajanikanta Bordoloi, Hiteshwar Barbarua and some others are now available on Assamese Wikisource.

With the target of digitizing the books by an author in every one or two months, the volunteers have mulled to digitize the works of Padmanath Gohain Baruah, a luminary of Assamese literature.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/northeast-now-may-17-2019-youths-come-forward-to-augment-assamese-wikisource-project

Ahmedabad Wikisource Workshop

Admin — 2019-05-13T01:38:31Z

Report of the Ahmedabad Wikisource workshop published in Vishwavihar.

Above: Report of the Ahmedabad Wikisource workshop published in Vishwavihar, a mouthpiece of Gujarat Vishwakosh Trust

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/vishwavihar-may-13-2019-ahmedabad-wikisource-workshop

WIPO Regional Seminar on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions

Admin — 2019-06-05T13:34:54Z

For more info about the event, click here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/wipo-regional-seminar-on-copyright-limitations-and-exceptions-1

WIPO Regional Seminar on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions

Admin — 2019-05-04T02:23:57Z

Anubha Sinha participated in the WIPO “Regional Seminar for the Asia Pacific Group on Libraries, Archives, Museums and Educational & Research Institutions in the Field of Copyright”, which was held on April 29 and 30, 2019, in Singapore. The event was co-organized by Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, Singapore Cooperation Programme and WIPO.

More info on the programme here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/wipo-regional-seminar-on-copyright-limitations-and-exceptions

Goa University students update ‘Goa’ Marathi articles on Wikipedia

Admin — 2019-02-22T02:27:14Z

Faculty and students of Goa University’s Marathi department have updated 164 Marathi articles on Wikipedia related to Goa recently.

The article was published in the Times of India on February 20, 2019.

They have also added information related to the state focused on freedom fighters, Marathi literature and cultural heritage, tourism, biodiversity and the environment.

The two-day effort was carried out under the supervision of Subodh Kulkarni from the Centre for Internet and Society, the Indian partner of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The history of Goan villages collected by students was uploaded on Wikipedia in Marathi Devanagari Unicode. They also participated in #1Lib1Ref campaign supported by Wikipedia Library and uploaded new articles and 25 photos.

Other than editing the 164 Marathi articles, the faculty and students also edited reference for articles on Wikipedia and contributed to important facts about Goa.

Kulkarni served as the resource person for the session, while director of digital learning and initiative at Goa University Prof Ramrao Wagh, head of department of Hindi Vrushali Mandrekar; librarian at GU library Gopakumar, head of department of Marathi Sunita Umraskar, and coordinator of the workshop Vinay Madgaonkar, oversaw the effort.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-february-20-2019-goa-university-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wikipedia

Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools

Admin — 2019-02-02T12:52:37Z

Google is pouring an additional $3.1 million into Wikipedia, bringing its total contribution to the free encyclopedia over the past decade to more than $7.5 million, the company announced at the World Economic Forum Tuesday.

The article was published by WIRED on January 22, 2019.

A little over a third of those funds will go toward sustaining current efforts at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, and the remaining $2 million will focus on long-term viability through the organization’s endowment.

Google will also begin allowing Wikipedia editors to use several of its machine learning tools for free, the tech giant said. What's more, Wikimedia and Google will soon broaden Project Tiger, a joint initiative they launched in 2017 to increase the number of Wikipedia articles written in underrepresented languages in India, and to include 10 new languages in a handful of countries and regions. It will now be called GLOW, Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.

It’s certainly positive that Google is investing more in Wikipedia, one of the most popular and generally trustworthy online resources in the world. But the decision isn’t altruistic: Supporting Wikipedia is also a shrewd business decision that will likely benefit Google for years to come. Like other tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, Google already uses Wikipedia content in a number of its own products. When you search Google for “Paris,” a “knowledge panel” of information about the city will appear, some of which is sourced from Wikipedia. The company also has used Wikipedia articles to train machine learning algorithms, as well as fight misinformation on YouTube.

Even efforts like GLOW—which will now expand to Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria, as well as the Middle East and North Africa—can help Google’s own bottom line. When the initiative first launched in India, Google provided Chromebooks and internet access to editors, while the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikimedia India Chapter organized a three-month article writing competition that resulted in nearly 4,500 new Wikipedia articles in 12 different Indic languages. Smartphone penetration in India is only around 27 percent; as more people in the country start using Android smartphones and Google Search, those articles will make the tech giant’s products more useful. Wikipedia’s blog post announcing Google’s new investment makes this strategy fairly clear, noting that the company also provided Project Tiger with “insights into popular search topics on Google for which no or limited local language content exists on Wikipedia.”

Google is also providing Wikipedia free access to its Custom Search API and its Cloud Vision API, which will help the encyclopedia’s volunteer editors more easily cite the facts they use. Each time a Wikipedia editor adds a new piece of information to an article, they need to cite the source where they learned it. The Search API will allow them quickly look up sources on the web without having to leave Wikipedia, while the vision tool will let editors automatically digitize books so they can be used to support Wikipedia articles too. Earlier this month, Wikimedia also announced Google Translate was coming to Wikipedia, allowing editors to convert content into 15 additional languages, bringing the total available to 121.

These machine learning tools will absolutely make it easier for Wikipedia to reach people who speak languages currently underrepresented on the web. But the encyclopedia is also the reason many AI programs exist in the first place. For example, Google-owned Jigsaw has used Wikipedia, in part, to train its open source troll-fighting AI. The encyclopedia is also used by hundreds of other AI platforms, particularly because every Wikipedia article is under Creative Commons—meaning it can be reproduced for free without copyright restrictions. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa smart assistants use information from Wikipedia to answer questions, for instance. (Both companies also have donated to the Wikimedia Foundation as well.)

Google’s new investments in Wikipedia, specifically in GLOW, will address a genuine problem. The majority of Wikipedia’s tens of millions of articles are in English or European languages like French, German, and Russian. (There are also lots of articles in Swedish and two versions of Filipino, but most of these pages were created by a prolific bot). As the estimated half of Earth’s population that still lacks an internet connection comes online, it will be important that reliable information is available in the native languages people speak. That doesn’t mean, though, that in helping solve these issues companies like Google—or Facebook—don’t also have something to gain.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/wired-january-22-2019-google-wikipedia-machine-learning-glow-languages

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

jayanta — 2018-12-10T15:08:56Z

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

Volunteers from various Indic Wikisource projects took part in a discussion organized by Centre for Internet and society: access to knowledge (CIS:A2K) in Kolkata recently. Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi participated in this consultation on behalf of the Assamese Wikisource which included other Indic languages like Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Sanskrit. It is worth mentioning here that Wikisource is another important project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc operated by Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can contribute to this wikisource project which stores copyright-free books, plays, lyrics, speeches, translated works etc. Such works are first scanned and digitalized and then converted to unicode so that everything becomes searchable. Assamese Wikisource (as.wikisource.org), started in 2013, so far includes various literary works of Guru Sankardeva and Madhavdev, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Padmanath Gogain Baruah, Chandraprasad Agarwala, Amulya Barua, Dandinath Kalita etc. Measures to popularize Wikisource among masses, increasing numbers of readers and contributors, correct techniques to digitalize a book etc were discussed at the event in Kolkata.

Translated from Assamese by Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018-report-at-asomiya-pratidin-epaper-highest-circulated-assamese-daily

Lecture on Open Access and Open Content Licensing at ICAR (short course)

Admin — 2018-12-05T16:19:56Z

The ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) a constituent establishment of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) organised a short course on 'ICTs for Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Agricultural Research, Education and Extension of NARES' during November 13-22, 2018 in Bangalore. Anubha Sinha delivered a lecture to the participants.

Read for more information about the programme.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course

5th Global Congress On IP And The Public Interest: Successes, Strategies Highlighted

Admin — 2018-10-31T01:57:59Z

More than 400 activists, academics and practitioners from over 50 countries gathered at this year’s Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, according to organisers.

The story by David Branigan was published in Intellectual Property Watch on October 3, 2018.

At the Congress, participants shared success stories, developed strategies, and engaged in critical dialogue to re-think and re-invent intellectual property systems that serve the public interest.

The 5th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and The Public Interest was hosted by American University Washington College of Law in Washington, DC from 27-29 September. The core goal of the Congress, according to the website, is “to promote evidence-based policy-making by fostering partnerships between academics and policy advocates from around the world.”

The Congress featured three concurrent, but interconnected, tracks centred around copyright user rights, access to medicines, and trade. A list of the many panels, workshops and other events of the Congress can be found in the event agenda.

Key themes that emerged from the plenary sessions of the Congress include the need to take a critical look at the association between intellectual property and development, the important roles that both IP activism and academic research play in shifting practice, and the complex tension between pursuing incremental IP reform in the short-term, while envisioning and building toward IP system change in the long-term.

Participants were asked by organisers to contribute statements and to vote in an online poll to chart and map participant perspectives at this year’s Congress. The interactive results of the poll can be viewed here.

Access to Medicines Track

Intellectual Property Watch followed the access to medicines track throughout the Congress, to develop a broad picture of the persistent challenges and new strategies in this field, and to identify key initiatives to feature in the coming months. Below are some of the themes that emerged over the course of the sessions, along with key highlights.

Compulsory Licensing

Some participants highlighted their countries’ use of compulsory licensing to reduce drug prices and to maximise health budget capacity, with notable examples from Ecuador, Chile and Malaysia. Participants identified that many other countries, however, are not taking full advantage of these flexibilities, which can be partly attributable to a lack of awareness regarding these flexibilities, and a lack of systems to employ them. They noted that this is often compounded by IP-centric technical assistance that frames strong IP systems as necessary for development. Many participants argued that compulsory licensing, along with other intellectual property flexibilities, should be fully normalised, and that IP law should be structured to maximize the use of these flexibilities, rather than treat them as exceptions. Some also argued for the institution of international or regional coordination mechanisms for compulsory licensing.

Competition Law

Many participants, representing activist organisations working for access to medicines, noted that their campaigns were largely focused on the price of a particular drug in a particular country. Pursuing access to medicines on such a piecemeal basis, they explained, does not produce sustainable change within the IP system itself. This, they noted, is a similar challenge faced when issuing compulsory licences. Participants explained that pursuing strategies based in competition law could perhaps offer a more sustainable solution to address excessive pricing across a range of drugs. This strategy, they explained, could move forward key legal reforms to systemically challenge pharmaceutical monopolies and bring about more competitive drug pricing.

Innovation

According to participants, the term innovation infers a particular narrative, similar to “intellectual property,” and has been used by industry to justify the pharmaceutical patent system. One participant explained that patents are currently being granted on the basis of utility, rather than real inventiveness. He explained that the term innovation has come to represent the industry-led process of shaping markets and cycles of consumption, and that therefore, we need to reconsider our use of the term.

Research and Development

Many participants highlighted the dysfunction of the current monopoly incentive system for pharmaceutical research and development, and advocated for other systems such as delinking the price of pharmaceuticals from the cost of research and development and the volume of sales. Others highlighted examples of how drugs for neglected diseases can be developed and manufactured without intellectual property incentives, and still others how drug licences can be efficiently pooled to facilitate widespread generic drug production. Another participant further illustrated the dysfunction of the current system, noting that much of the research and development of patented pharmaceuticals was publicly funded, and that there needs to be greater public accountability in drug pricing.

Medicines as Non-Patentable

One important perspective, expressed by participants across tracks, is simply that medicines should be non-patentable and accessible to all people, without restriction.

Intellectual Property Watch will feature some of the key access to medicines initiatives highlighted at the Congress in greater depth and detail in the coming months.

Background of the Global Congress

The First Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was held in 2011 at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, DC, and the specific policy goals of the Congress were summarized in the 2011 Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest.

The Congress was subsequently hosted in 2012 by Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade of FGV Direito, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2013 by University of Cape Town IP Unit, in Cape Town, South Africa, and in 2015 by the Centre for Internet and Society, in New Delhi, India. Intellectual Property Watch has attended them all.

More background information on the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest can be found at infojustice.org.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/5th-global-congress-on-ip-and-the-public-interest-successes-strategies-highlighted

KEI Seminar on "Appraising the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and its Implications on Access to Culture"

Admin — 2018-10-31T01:53:27Z

Anubha Sinha participated in a seminar organized by KEI on October 3 and 4, 2018 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Anubha spoke on the panel titled "Rationale, Beneficiaries and Scope (of the Treaty)".

Links to the webcast can be found here:

October 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYcvaeyS04k

October 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC5AdokTF2o

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/kei-seminar-on-appraising-the-wipo-broadcast-treaty-and-its-implications-on-access-to-culture

Community Toolkit for Greater Diversity

Admin — 2018-10-30T02:08:31Z

P.P. Sneha participated in a 3 day programme organized by Wikipedia community in Mandrem, Goa from October 5 - 7, 2018. The event was a peer training programmeto strengthen the work in the direction of building greater diversity and inclusion in the Wikimedia community.

Click to see the agenda of the event

More info of the programme can be accessed here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/community-toolkit-for-greater-diversity