July 2013 Bulletin

by Prasad Krishna last modified Aug 21, 2013 09:30 AM
Our newsletter for the month of July 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the seventh issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you a report on the Institute on Internet and Society held in the month of June, comments submitted by us to the Office of the Controller General of Patents Designs and Trademarks on the draft guidelines on computer related inventions, report from the fifth privacy roundtable meeting held in Kolkata,  updates from Kannada Wikipedia workshops held in Hubli and Sagara, a report on Digital Humanities for higher education, media coverage, and information on our forthcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan ([email protected]). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham ([email protected]) and Pranesh Prakash ([email protected]).

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS and the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Punjab, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Chandigarh:

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation has given a grant to CIS to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)

Comments

Event Participated

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)
The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one team member Nitika Tandon who is working from Delhi office.

Event Organised

  • A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K team, July 21, 2013, Hubli). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave training to the participants on Wikipedia. Leading newspapers like the Times of India, Vijaya Karnataka, Deccan Herald, VijayaVani, Prajavani, Samyukta Karnataka and HosaDiganta covered the event. Scanned versions of the published articles can be viewed here.
  • A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara (organized by CIS-A2K team, Sagara, July 28, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia.

Event Co-organised

Note: The event was organized in April but report got published only in July.

Event Participated

  • Free Software (organized by Free Software Movement of Karnataka in partnership with Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology, Bidadi, July 24, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja made a presentation on Wikipedia.

Ongoing Event

Press Coverage

Openness

Events Organised

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project
Events Organised

Events Participated In

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Columns

Blog Entries

Interview

Media Coverage

DNA Profiling Bill
A sub-committee has been constituted as per the recommendations of the Expert Committee of DNA Profiling Bill. The sub-committee will have a meeting in Hyderabad on August 6, 2013. Sunil Abraham is one of the members of the sub-committee.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interviews

Cyber Security
Blog Entries

Free Speech, Expression and Censorship
Column

Event Participated In

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at www.internet-institute.in.

Event Organised

  • Institute on Internet and Society: Event Report (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Bernadette Längle, Vir Kamal Chopra, AK Bhargava, Ananth Guruswamy, Archana Gulati, Chakshu Roy, Elonnai Hickok, Gaurab Raj Upadhaya, Helani Galpaya, Michael Ginguld, Dr. Nadeem Akhtar, C. Nandini, Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, Dr. Nishant Shah, Parminder Jeet Singh, Ravikiran Annaswamy, Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Satyen Gupta, Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam, Sunil Abraham, Tulika Pandey and T. Vishnu Vardhan were speakers at the event. The presentations and videos can now be accessed in this report.

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

  • Building Up vs Tearing Down (by Shyam Ponappa, July 3, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot).

Digital Humanities

We are building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Event Co-organised

Event Organised

  • Digital Humanities Talk (CIS, Bangalore, July 31, 2013). Sara Morais gave a talk on the advantages and problems in doing digital humanities work.

Event Participated In

Blog Entries

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

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Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at [email protected] or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at [email protected]

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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