Centre for Internet and Society

Workshop for Web Developers on Web Accessibility

royson — 2011-08-23T22:52:40Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/workshop

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T13:36:41Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/03.%20Prabir%20Purkayastha.ogg

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T13:25:03Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/03.%20Prabir%20Purkayastha.mp3

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T13:16:31Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/02.%20Sudhir%20Krishnaswamy.ogg

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T13:02:37Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/02.%20Sudhir%20Krishnaswamy.mp3

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T12:54:48Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/04.%20Nagarjuna%20G..ogg

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

royson — 2008-10-20T12:39:44Z

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/04.%20Nagarjuna%20G..mp3

Surveillance

royson — 2008-09-21T14:57:53Z

Context

Technology and Surveillance have always been comfortable bed-partners. Each new technology has led to new and more ubiquitous form of surveillance practices premised on intensive data-mining and centralisation of data. In the age of Information Technologies, where Information is the new capital, Surveillance, as a theoretical concept and as practice takes on an unprecedented everydayness. The experience of the urban is necessarily one of being an object of surveillance. Everyday practices are now structured around models of surveillance—from CCTV in areas of consumption to physical surveillance at areas of transit—such that surveillance has become almost value neutral in its presence around us.

This overwhelming sense of being watched has led to two distinct forms of manifestation in the last four decades. The first is the sense of paranoia—the Big Brother syndrome—which has found many proponents lamenting the loss of privacy and the abduction of the personal by the State and the market. The second is in the anti-surveillance stance which demands either for an abolishing of the surveillance practices or for an ethical use of the data. While both these forms have their own merits, the debate and the stakes change considerably once we enter the digital domains.

Especially within the digital spaces, where ‘presence’, a ‘record of the presence’, and an archiving of the records are inescapable, surveillance becomes more than just a practice; it becomes an inescapable condition of being online. To be online is to leave traces, physical and digital, personal and pseudonymous. In such a case, instead of taking an either-or position around surveillance, we are now looking at what surveillance enables and what are the ways in which it mediates the complex mechanics of urban survival.

Research Agenda

What are the various forms of surveillance that we encounter in the digital world? How do we understand being subject to surveillance as a part of being online?
What are the ways to negotiate, mediate, and surpass the various forms of surveillance that are a part of cyberspaces? Who are the agents of surveillance?
What does surveillance enable for the different actors within a given space? For example, for the agent conducting the surveillance, it might be a question of collecting data. For the actor being watched, it might be a narrative condition where s/he can manifest him/her self in the process of surveillance. For the audience that becomes witness to the surveillance, a new set of relationships might emerge with the object being manifest and the practice of surveillance.
How does surveillance become a threat when it is especially conducted in the promotion of safety and security? What are the paradoxes it generates and how do we negotiate with them?
With the proliferation of portable media capture devices, what is the value of surveillance? What are the new forms of authorship that it creates? Can we look upon surveillance—the process of being watched, the knowledge of being watched, and the incessant historicisation of the present—as an aesthetic paradigm?

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/substantive-areas/digital-pluralism/surveillance

Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual

royson — 2008-10-21T07:36:12Z

Software patents in India-The Indian patent Act and the Draft Patent manual

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/06.%20Venkatesh%20Hariharan.ogg

Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual

royson — 2008-10-21T07:16:10Z

Software patents in India-The Indian patent Act and the Draft patent manual

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/06.%20Venkatesh%20Hariharan.mp3

Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual

royson — 2008-10-21T06:32:48Z

Software patents in India-The Indian patent Act and the draft patent manual

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/05.%20Prashant%20Iyengar.ogg

Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual

royson — 2008-10-20T13:48:01Z

Software patents in India-The Indian patent Act and the draft patent Manual

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/05.%20Prashant%20Iyengar.mp3

Sexual Practices

royson — 2008-09-21T14:57:53Z

Context

One of the biggest crises that the digital worlds introduced was in debates around body, gender, and sexuality. Apart from the often demonised world of pornography and fundamental responses to sexual freedom, there have been various philosophical and practical issues that emerge with the cyberspaces.

Different disciplines have embraced the digital spaces as spaces of reflection, research and political mobilisation around questions of gendered sexual practices. The digital interactions have also led to new forms of sexual interaction and practices which have found some academic attention. It is necessary to disassociate questions of sexuality and sexual practices from notions of obscenity or demonised public discourse.

Contemporary scholarly work from gender and sexuality theorists and practitioners engages with how the traditional notions of what it means to be human, to be gendered and to appropriate sexuality, have been challenged by the virtual worlds. As we move towards a post-human existence, the fixed structures that were used to definitively define the normal, the regulated, the contained and the chastised, get deconstructed. Within such a fluid world where relative norms and normative relativity are a way of being, it is imperative to focus on questions of gender and sexuality as they get mediated, constructed and inflected by new digital cyberspaces.

Research Agenda

How do different gendered and sexual minorities find their voice, agency and ability for political mobilisation through the cyberspaces?
What are the prejudices and discriminations that internet technologies inherit despite their avowed neutral nature and potential for larger inclusivity?
What are the challenges that the new digital technologies pose to our understanding of what it means to be human, to be gendered, and to be sexual?
As digital sexuality becomes a part of our larger techno-narratives, what are the spaces of liberation and celebration that it opens up for the individual?
How do we escape the populist media sensationalism around cyberspace and sexual practices to engage more fruitfully with the new paradigms and practices that emerge with digital interactions?
As we move from representation to simulation, how do varied sexual practices offer new pedagogic ways of understanding the body and its social dynamics?
What is being sought in the demonization and horror that gets constructed around cyberspaces and sexuality?
In the post-human world, how do we understand questions of sexual practices? How do we gender these new narratives and forms that emerge in digital spaces? What are the aesthetics and politics of online sexual practices and how do they help us re-think existing notions of human sexuality?
What are the political mobilisations that challenge the normative world of sexuality? How do processes of regulation, monitoring and governance get inflected by introducing questions of sexual practices online?

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/substantive-areas/digital-pluralism/sexual-practices

Presentation on Software Patents Applied for in India

royson — 2008-10-21T06:42:18Z

Presentation on software patents applied for in India

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/07.%20Pranesh%20Prakash.mp3

Presentation on Software Patents Applied for in India

royson — 2008-10-21T06:09:08Z

Presentation on software patents applied for in India

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/projects/a-series-of-podcasts-on-sofware-patents/07.%20Pranesh%20Prakash.ogg