Centre for Internet and Society

Internet Institute Agenda

praskrishna — 2013-06-03T05:42:17Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/agenda-internet-institute.pdf

Internet Governance Round-table at British High Commission

praskrishna — 2014-04-01T10:32:04Z

A Internet Governance Round-table was hosted at the residence of the British High Commissioner in Delhi on March 4, 2014. Geeta Hariharan participated in the round-table.

The event aimed to bring together stakeholders from government, industry and the non-governmental sectors in India to discuss issues of Internet governance, and forms part of the UK’s commitment and interests in cyber-engagement with India.

The panel included the following members:

Julian Evans, the Acting British High Commissioner to India
Jonathan Cook, Second Secretary, Foreign Security Policy Team, British High Commission
Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, Data Security Council of India
Rahul Jain, Principal Consultant, Data Security Council of India
Vikram Tiwathia, Associate Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India
Dr. Govind, Senior Director heading the E-Infrastructure & Internet Governance Division, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India
Narayanan, NIXI
Dr. Sundeep Oberoi, TCS
M.P. Gupta, Professor & Chair, Information Systems and Centre for Excellence in E-Gov, IIT Delhi
Somnath Mitra, Xchanging
Mahima Kaul, Observer Research Foundation

The British government’s views on cyber-engagement and Internet governance were touched upon, voicing their support for a free, open and secure Internet, upholding human rights. The UK supports a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance. However, their position on the Sao Paolo meeting is as yet not officially clear.

Five broad issues were raised for discussion:

Balancing the role of government and non-government stakeholders, and the limits of governmental regulation Internet for development
Free speech and privacy v. security
Practical model of Internet governance (multi-stakeholder or multilateral)
India’s contribution, presence or expectations of the Sao Paolo meeting

The speakers raised concerns about the effectiveness of the multi-stakeholder model in light of international law built on the Westphalian model, where governments are effectively the only real law-makers and regulators. In considering whether non-governmental stakeholders (such as NGOs and think-tanks, industry and corporations, individuals) should have an equal voice in IG, concerns were raised about the representativeness of such actors, and accountability that they would have. In this regard, the future and desirability of the ICANN (and the US’ stake in it), and fora like the IGF and the UN-WGEC as platforms for participation were discussed.

While civil society involvement is imperative, government initiatives are necessary to create access to the Internet, and to ensure that the Internet is made safe and utilized for development. This obviously creates tensions between privacy and liberty, and security concerns; one of the speakers spoke of Snowden as the “elephant in the room”. Not only was a common concept of privacy non-existent at the international level, it would also be difficult to achieve (except a namesake ‘lowest common denominator’ definition), as states must account for their experiences with terrorism as well as cultural differences. For instance, the way the UK deals with privacy/security concerns in comparison with India would be very different. Finally, the possibilities and potential outcomes of the Sao Paolo meeting were touched upon without elaborate discussion on the same.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ig-round-table-british-high-commission

Internet Governance Forum: Participate Remotely

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:09:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invites you to attend the sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a remote participant from Bangalore. The IGF is being held in Nairobi from 27-30 September 2011. CIS has been registered as a remote IGF hub. This will allow many of us who are unable to attend the IGF in person. You can follow the discussion, watch the web cast of the event, follow real-time closed captioning and participate live (via text or video) that will be answered by panelists in the IGF.

The IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum that addresses public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation'. The various themes are as follows:

Internet Governance for Development
Emerging Issues
Managing Critical Internet Resources
Security, Openness and Privacy
Access and Diversity
Taking Stock and the Way Forward

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, will be participating in the following workshops:

Shyam Ponappa, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, will be presenting remotely for the following workshop:

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

Nishant Shah, Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, has organized the following workshop:

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

We are not limited to following specific workshops. Please follow the link for more information on workshops of your interest, program details and the schedule:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/schedule-a-programme-2011

Participation is free. However, we would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by emailing Natasha Vaz “natasha@cis-india.org or Tom Dane at “tjdane@gmail.com”. We hope you will join us to watch the web cast and contribute your own insights on the various workshops.

Looking forward to welcoming you at the workshops!

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/igf-remote-participation

Internet Governance Forum Report 2017

Admin — 2018-01-11T02:03:44Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/internet-governance-forum-report-2017

Internet Governance Forum Poster

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T09:35:20Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-governance-forum.pdf

Internet Governance Forum

anirudh — 2013-12-03T10:29:30Z

Anirudh Sridhar provides an analysis of the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), its structure, and the importance of IGF in this unit.

Introduction

IGF can be best described as the Forum which brings "people together from various stakeholder groups as equals, in discussions on public policy issues relating to the Internet. While there is no negotiated outcome, the IGF informs and inspires those with policy-making power in both the public and private sectors. At their annual meeting delegates discuss, exchange information and share good practices with each other. The IGF facilitates a common understanding of how to maximize internet opportunities and address risks and challenges that arise.

The IGF is also a space that gives developing countries the same opportunity as wealthier nations to engage in the debate on Internet Governance and to facilitate their participation in existing institutions and arrangements. Ultimately, the involvement of all stakeholders, from developed as well as developing countries, is necessary for the future development of the Internet."[1]

Creation of IGF

As it has been mentioned, IGF was first conceived in the Tunis Agenda. Article 72 of the Tunis Agenda laid the foundation of IGF. Article 72 lays down the mandate of the IGF. It asks the UN Secretary General to put in place an open and inclusive process and to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue which would be known as IGF.

Past IGFs

The first IGF was organized in 2006 in Athens. Since then it has been held each year in various locations. In has been held in Rio de Janerio in 2007, Hyderabad in 2008, Sharm El Sheikh in 2009, Vilinius in 2010, Nairobi in 2011 and Baku in 2012. The IGF in 2013 is to be held in Bali.

Overarching themes at IGFs so far:

2006 and 2007 – Internet for development"
2008 – Internet for All
2009 – Internet Governance and creating opportunities for all
2010 – Developing the Future together
2011 – Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation 2012 – "Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic and Social Development".

The 2013 IGF has found strong support for two themes, "Building Bridges" and "Enhancing Multi-stakeholder Cooperation for Growth, Development and Human Rights".

Apart from the over-arching themes, it focuses on certain themes which have been discussed across all the IGFs:

Human Rights/ Freedom of speech
Security, Cybercrimes
Spam
Data protection and privacy
Consumers Rights, Network Neutrality
Intellectual Property Rights
Development (issues related to digital divide)
Open Standards
Capacity Building
Issues related processes and principles
E-commerce and e-governance

Structure of the IGF

The Secretariat of the IGF is based in the United Nations. The main function of the IGF is to coordinate with and assist the work of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG). The MAG was first set up by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of UN in 2006. The main function of the MAG is to decide upon issues and themes which need to be addressed in each IGF. The MAG comprises of representation from all stakeholders and all regions.

The forum organizes and accommodates plenary sessions, workshops, open forums and best practices forums.

Dynamic Coalitions: The concept of dynamic coalitions was conceived in the first IGF in Athens, which are informal and issue-specific. It comprises of members from different stake holder groups. Currently there are ten active dynamic coalitions, for example, Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability, Internet Rights and Principles, and Child Online Safety, etc.

Importance of IGF

One of the main critiques of the IGF is that the outcomes of the IGF do not have any binding effect on the participating governments, industry, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations. But such a process is said to discard the involvement of multi-stakeholder through use of coercive power which is the main feature of government regulation. In this regard, Jeremy Malcolm notes:

"The IGF’s output is explicitly “non-binding,” which means that the participation of states in the IGF process does not involve the use of coercive power as is a typical feature of government regulation. In fact since the process is to be “multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent” with “full involvement” of “all stakeholders involved in this process,” governments do not, at least in principle, enjoy any position of pre-eminence in policy formation through the IGF. Neither should they, if the IGF’s legitimacy and effectiveness are to be assured."[2]

[1]. What is Internet Governance Forun available at http://bit.ly/IIwXNu.

[2]. Jeremy Malcolm, Multi-stakeholder Governance and the Internet Governance Forum, Terminus Press, 2008 at pp. 3.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/internet-governance-forum

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T03:59:50Z

Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), IT for Change, and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.

Internet governance has significant impact on human rights. This is reflected by the inclusion of human rights considerations in the Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Tunis Agenda, which gave the IGF its mandate. However, human rights discussions have not featured prominently at the IGF. What discussions there have been tended to focus on civil and political rights without also sufficiently considering how the internet relates to cultural, social and economic rights. The indivisibility of rights has not received the attention it requires.

The Internet governance and human rights communities work in different spaces and rarely have the opportunity to interact. The presence of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank la Rue at the 2009 IGF and again at the 2010 IGF shows that this is beginning to change. The 2010 IGF presents a valuable opportunity to place human rights more firmly on the Internet governance map and to identify opportunities for collaboration with mainstream human rights communities.

With an increasing emphasis on the development agenda in the IGF it is also a good opportunity to look at the links between human rights, development and the Internet.

Join the conversation with human rights, Internet governance and development activists as we review pressing IG issues such as access, diversity, equality, freedom, openness and development with a view to strengthening the human rights agenda at the IGF.

More concretely, we hope to:

continue building effective collaborations promoting human rights in Internet governance, and,
identify appropriate spaces for intervention in the 2010 IGF.

Agenda:

Moderator: Chad Lubelsky. Global Networking, Policy & Advocacy Coordinator,

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

14:00 Introduction: Background and rationale of the session, aims and objectives. Anriette Esterhuysen (APC)

Keynote speaker : Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

Keynote speaker: Arvind Ganesan, Director or Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch.

14:45 Questions

15:00 Open discussion session on 'Human rights and internet policy: the interconnectedness of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights'. Moderated by Lisa Horner (Global Partners) and Anja Kovacs (the Centre for Internet and Society).

15:40 Coffee/tea break

16:00 Breakout group discussions

16:40 Report Backs

17:00 Plenary discussion on the way forward (Anriette Esterhuysen, APC and Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change)

17:20 Closing remarks

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/internet-governance-human-rights

Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T10:45:56Z

In the aftermath of an Index on Censorship debate in New Delhi, Kirsty Hughes says India’s web users are standing at a crossroads

This article by Kirsty Hughes was published in Index on Censorship. CIS's research on censorship is quoted.

If debate is a sign of a positive environment for internet freedom, then India scores highly. From debates in parliament, and panel discussions (including Index’s own recent event) to newspaper editorials, blogs and tweets on the rights and wrongs of internet freedom, controls on the web, and India’s position in the international debate, there is no shortage of voices and views.

India has around 120 million web users — a large number but still only about 10 per cent of the country’s population. As cheaper smart phones enable millions more to access the net on their mobiles, India’s net savvy population is set to soar in the next few years. But what sort of online environment they will find is open to question — and to wide debate.

India has some very broad laws that could apply to a wide range of online speech, comment and criticism. These laws have been so far rather randomly applied. But the cases that have arisen — from individuals criticising politicians by email, Facebook or Twitter to some of the big web companies such as Google and Facebook (both facing numerous takedown requests and court cases in India) — show just why India needs to look at limiting both the range of some of its net laws, and to stop these laws criminalising a range of speech.

In 2012, there was widespread outcry in India when two women were arrested for complaining on Facebook about the disruption caused by the funeral of Bal Thackeray, leader of the right wing Hindu party, Shiv Sena. They were arrested under the infamous section 66A of India’s IT Act (2008) which criminalises “grossly offensive” and “menacing” messages sent by electronic means, but also “false” messages sent to cheat, deceive, mislead or annoy, taking online censorship beyond offline laws.

India’s telecom minister Kapil Sibal spoke out against the arrests. And as part of the fallout, guidelines were announced that in future any such charges could only be brought by senior police. But how effective such a restriction might be was challenged, with aTimes of India editorial suggesting “rampant political interference in law enforcement is itself a burning issue…so to argue that senior police officers will always resist mob pressure or political diktats isn’t persuasive.”

Other parts of the IT Act (2008) are also causing a chilling atmosphere in India’s cyber sphere — with new regulations introduced in 2011 obliging internet service providers to take down content within 36 of a complaint (whether an individual, organisation, government body or anyone else) or face prosecution. The law covers a sweeping range of grounds for complaint, including “grossly harmful”, “harassing, “blasphemous” and more. It also is confused on liability – holding intermediaries large and small responsible for content on websites and platforms.

One of India’s leading policy centres on digital issues, the Centre for Internet and Society, decided to test how this 36-hour takedown rule could result in censorship of innocuous and legal content on web sites. They sent complaints to four main search engines across a range of content — and as a result got thousands of innocuous posts removed; a censor’s dream outcome.

Despite a debate in parliament calling for repeal of the 2011 rules, for now they remain.

Some observers suggest the Indian government is catch-up mode, not fully understanding the reach or nature of social media or how to deal with the international range and speed of the web today — something plenty of other governments around the world are showing some confusion about. Some think the lively debate on net freedom in India reflects the voice and demands of the growing Indian middle class. But whether those demands remain pro-freedom is yet to be seen as internet penetration grows apace.

There are some other encouraging signs. While many in India are not keen at US dominance of key parts of internet regulation, there was concern from business and civil society ahead of the International Telecommunications Union summit in December 2012, when the Indian government looked like it might advocate some form of top down control of the web as an alternative. In the event, India, like the EU and US, did not go along with Russia, China and others keen to include net governance into the ITU’s remit.

India is going to be an increasingly influential voice in global internet debates — with its rapidly growing number of netizens and its increasing clout more widely in a multipolar world.

Its healthy and lively debate about digital freedom stands as a beacon of hope in the face of some of its more disturbing laws. But the laws will need to change, if India is to be a country that stands for internet freedom.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/index-on-censorship-kirsty-hughes-january-22-2013-internet-freedom-in-india

Internet Freedom

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — 2016-02-15T02:51:10Z

The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom.

The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by Asian Age on February 14, 2016.

What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.

Possible impact on elections

Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.

What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.

Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?

In times of disasters

Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.

This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.

Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.

Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.

During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.

Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.

Content and carriage converge

Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

What is Net neutrality?

According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.

2006: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholdersFeb. 2012: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway
July 2012: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.
August 2012: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent
Feb. 2013: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype
June 2013: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data
Feb. 2014: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated
August 2014: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government
Nov. 2014: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates
Dec. 2014: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.
Feb. 2015: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app
March 2015: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback
April 2015: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news
April 2015: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country
23 April 2015: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators
27 April 2015: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm
Sept. 2015: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public
Feb. 2016: Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.

The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom

Internet Engineering Task Force

anirudh — 2013-12-01T02:34:23Z

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open standards body with no requirements for membership and does not have a formal membership process either.

It is responsible for developing and promoting Internet Standards. Internet Standards are technological specifications which are applicable to the internet and internet access. The IETF also closely works with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standard setting bodies. It mainly deals with the standards of the Internet Protocol suite (TCP/IP) which is a communication protocol used for the internet.

The mission of the IETF is to, "produce high quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the internet in such a way as to make the internet work better."[1]

Structure

The IETF consists of working groups and informal discussion groups. The subject areas of the working group can be broadly divided into the following categories:

Applications
General Internet
Operations and Management,
Real-time Applications and Infrastructure,
Routing,
Security, and
Transport

The working groups are divided into, areas as mentioned above and they are managed by area directors.

IETF Standards Process

The process of developing Standards at the IETF looks simple but faces certain complications when put into practice.

A specification for a internet standards goes through a period of development followed by reviews by the community at large. Based upon the reviews and experiences, the specifications are revised and then the standards are adopted by an appropriate body after which it is published.

"In practice, the process is more complicated, due to (1) the difficulty of creating specifications of high technical quality; (2) the need to consider the interests of all of the affected parties; (3) the importance of establishing widespread community consensus; and (4) the difficulty of evaluating the utility of a particular specification for the internet community."[2]

The main goals of the Internet Standards Process are:

Technical Excellence;
Prior Implementation and Testing;
Clear, Concise, and Easily Understood Documentation;
Openness and Fairness; and
Timeliness[3]

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

W3C is a multi-stakeholder organization that involves groups from various sectors including multi nationals. W3C is also an international community dedicated to developing an open standard, "to ensure the long term growth of the web". It is led by the inventor of the web — Tim Berners-Lee.

The guiding principles of W3C"[4] are:

Web for All
The W3C recognizes the social value of the internet as it enables communication, commerce and opportunities to share knowledge. One of their main goals is to make available these benefits to all irrespective of the hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.
Web on Everything
The second guiding principle is to ensure that all devices are able to access the web. With the proliferation of the mobile device and smart phones; it has become more important to ensure access to the web irrespective the type of device.
Web for Rich Interaction
The W3C Standards support and recognizes that the web was created as tool to share information and it has become more significant with the increasing demand for platforms such as Wikipedia and social networking platforms.
Web of Data and Services
Web is often viewed as a giant repository or data and information but it is also seen as a set of services which includes exchange of messages. The two views complement each other and how web is perceived depends on the application.
Web of Trust
Interaction on the web has increased and people ‘meet on the web’ and carry out commercial as well as social relationships. "W3C recognizes that trust is a social phenomenon, but technology design can foster trust and confidence.""[5]

[1]. Mission Statement for the IETF available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3935.txt

[2]. http://www.ietf.org/about/standards-process.html

[3]. http://www.ietf.org/about/standards-process.html

[4].http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission

[5].http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/internet-engineering-task-force

Internet becomes vernacular with relaunch of e-bhasha

praskrishna — 2015-04-03T05:49:42Z

With the relaunch of e-bhasha as a mission mode project, there is a fresh urgency to create content and technical solutions in Indian languages.

The article by Ankita Lahiri was published in Governance Now on March 23, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Computer literacy is often linked to the knowledge of English. With the launch of the e-bhasha project, the government is hoping to make the internet more accessible. The project aims at providing computing tools in Indian languages, thus making government services available to a substantial part of India. These tools were developed more than a decade ago, but sadly remained non-utilised. However, the government has now decided to bring in the e-bhasha project under the umbrella of the national e-governance plan (NeGP) as a mission mode project (MMP).

The project that is being jointly driven by the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) and technology development for Indian languages (TDIL), will be implemented in all departments across states and promises to provide all government services in 22 scheduled Indian languages. It will also provide a range of technical solutions, browsers and content in local languages. The multilingual aspect will ensure that government services have a wider reach and are accessible to citizens in local languages. The department hopes to get approval for the MMP by early next year.

Although TDIL has been finalised as the nodal implementing agency, the idea is to create a separate body, the centre of excellence (CoE) for localisation of Indian languages that will do the actual implementation on the ground level. Discussing the wing’s role, Swaran Lata, officer-in-charge, human-centred computing division, TDIL, told Governance Now: “We are like the backbone MMP. We will provide tools and solutions that can be used to generate the content in Indian languages. We will also provide standards and guidelines for the electronic governance domain. The final service delivery will be the responsibility of the various departments.”

Elaborating on how this platform can potentially transform the lives of the common citizen, Rajat Moona, director general, centre for development of advanced computing (C-DAC), said, “More people will get connected to government services now. It will bring the government closer to the citizen. The platform will change the way people carry out government services.” C-DAC has been working on local language computing and has been a key player driving the initiative on the technology front.

As an MMP, e-bhasha will have two main components: productisation and capacity building. The first step towards creating the e-bhasha platform will be the productisation. As Rajendra Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY, pointed out, “E-bhasha is all about the use of computing tools in Indic languages. It is about the productisation of these software tools, which means the ultimate utilisation of these tools for the end user.” In order to fully implement the MMP, proper training as to how to implement it at the ground level has to be given. The capacity building module of the MMP aims to train both the government departments as well as their technical teams. The training will be implemented jointly by DeitY and TDIL.

Commenting on the need for capacity building Lata said, “People still don’t have the skills to develop applications in multilingual or bilingual languages.” The training will be given through classroom sessions and various trouble shooting groups. Lata explained that applications will be classified in two groups – new projects and continuing projects. For each group the challenges will be different. For pre-existing applications, the entire application might have to be rewritten since the application as such might not have any provision for local languages. “The localisation of applications will vary according to the existing applications,” she said.

After this, content in these languages will be generated by various institutes and research and development organisations. Explaining that the service delivery framework for the MMP has already been designed, Rajendra Kumar said that the centre will extend total support to all the states in implementing the project.

Where India stands

Work to provide support in the form of tools and content in Indic languages has been going on in the country for more than two decades. C-DAC has been involved in this since 1988. The centre has been working towards developing tools that support Indic languages. Moona said, “We have been supporting Indic languages since 1988, whether it is from left to right or vice versa and languages with multiple fonts, like Konkani.

“As an integral part of the e-bhasha MMP, the centre will provide software tools that will facilitate the citizen in accessing government services in the local languages,” Moona said adding that, “Through the tools, we provide localisation support of government services. We provide government frontend in local languages. That is what the e-bhasha MMP is all about.”

C-DAC has already developed a number of solutions that support the Indic languages including a mobile touch keypad that can be downloaded from its website. Further a screen reader and various templates are also available. “The keyboard is slowly disappearing. We have a touchscreen that supports 27 Indic languages,” Moona said.

One of the key initiatives by TDIL has been in the form of the Sakal Bharti font, a type of open font format (OFF). It is a standard font, applicable to all the 22 schedule languages, irrespective of the platform, programme and language. It allows one to view and edit any document without any loss of data. Similar efforts have also been made by private players in creating the required tools to increase the reach the Indian languages. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has launched several initiatives, including translating Wikipedia in regional languages and creating screen readers that support indigenous languages.

With the increase in internet penetration and the resulting increase in demand, private players, including digital giants Google and Microsoft, have joined hands to promote content in Indian languages. The initiative called the Indian languages Internet Alliance (ILIA) was launched by Google to cater to the Hindi-speaking population by providing content and solutions. Launched around the same time as the e-bhasha project, the two projects are expected to complement each other.

“It is heartening to see support from the government for this initiative. The initiative would shape the thinking around the government’s e-bhasha initiative and we are happy to partner with the government around the three pillars of e-bhasha: e-governance, e-education and culture,” said a Google spokesperson.

In support of the private initiatives that are coming up, Lata explained that an ecosystem has been built. “What happens is that in areas where it is not commercially beneficial, it has to be the government which steps in first. I think the government has received a wake-up call in terms of both e-governance as well as languages.”

The chicken or the egg?

The resources have been available with the government for the last two decades, yet it is only now that the push for local languages has got the attention it much needed. According to Kumar, while C-DAC has been involved in developing these tools and their language department, GIST, has been around for at least 15 years the implementation in e-governance did not happen.

Lata further elaborated, “It is not the correct perspective to say that the localisation of languages is just a frontend issue. It is an architectural issue and a language solution should enable people to search access and retrieve data in the local languages.”

The surge in the number of users as well as the new government’s heightened interest in electronic governance has created an increased demand. “The push for Indian languages has been there for a long time. Many government websites are bilingual (English and Hindi). However, with the introduction of electronic governance a lot of activities have been happening. The need for Indian languages has become much higher,” Moona said. “It is an evolutionary process. Internet governance is still a new thing in India, it is only after its introduction that the tools and support for local languages has been required.”

Sunil Abraham, executive director, CIS, said, “Creation of Indic content cannot be left to a single government entity. It needs massive effort from all concerned stakeholders. The reason that there is very little Indic content online is because most internet users today either are comfortable using English or don’t have sufficient purchasing power to sustain different business models. As more and more Indians come online, more and more businesses will begin to leverage Indic content. However, focused and enlightened investments by the government would be very useful in helping Indic languages catch up on the internet.”

With Indic languages receiving a push from both the government and private players, it might just be time that the internet really becomes a tool for everyone.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-march-23-2015-ankita-lahiri-internet-becomes-vernacular-with-relaunch-of-e-bhasha

Internet and Society in Asia: Challenges and Next Steps

nishant — 2011-12-23T05:56:15Z

The ubiquitous presence of internet technologies, in our age of digital revolution, has demanded the attention of various disciplines of study and movements for change around the globe. As more of our environment gets connected to the circuits of the World Wide Web, we witness a significant transformation in the way we understand the politics, mechanics and aesthetics of the world we live in, says Nishant Shah in this peer reviewed essay published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, March 2010.

Traces of digital environments and internet technologies are all around us – we can see them in the rise of Digital Natives who are increasingly experiencing and living their lives mediated by digital technologies; we can see them in new forms of social interactions, such as blogs, peer-to-peer networks, internet relay chat, podcasts and so on, which are progressively becoming the primary points of information dissemination and production; we experience them in the tools and techniques of political mobilisation in large scale democratic elections and also in sub-cultural and smaller phenomena, such as flash-mobs and viral networking; we are incessantly reminded of them in the discourse around questions of safety and danger, especially with reference to activities such as internet pornography, child sexual abuse, piracy, identity theft, etc.

Internet technologies have become so intricately entwined with our daily practices and experiences that it is necessary to seriously look at these technologised circuits and the technology mediated identities thus produced. Increasingly, we see many different disciplines extending their methodologies and perspectives to include cyberspaces and digital behaviour in their purview. We already have a new breed of cyber-psychologists who are looking at the interaction between the human mind, the sense of the self and digital environments. The law, perhaps most concerned with questions of property, trade and commerce, is also examining questions of what it means to be human, with the emergence of post-human categories like cyborgs, cybrids, and genetically modified life forms. Anthropologists and sociologists have discovered cyberspace as a site that significantly influences the behaviour and thought of individuals as well as communities that come into being in the digital deliriums of the networked world. Feminism and Gender and Sexuality Studies have found great theoretical and political interest in the ways in which the internet technologies change the way we understand our bodies and practices. New disciplines like Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetiques, Cyborg Studies, etc. are slowly garnering importance and evolving as the spread of digital technologies increases exponentially. Cybercultures, a discipline (or perhaps, rather, a combination of various disciplines interested in studying cyberspaces) that comes into being because of the rise of Internet Technologies, is now already institutionalised in many universities and research spaces, concentrating on understanding the complex forms of interaction, representation and negotiation that happen in the fluid and rapidly changing landscape of digital cyberspaces.

As Internet Technologies continue to grow and become a more integral part of our lifestyles, cultural production, and forms of social transformation and political mobilisation, there are a few challenges that we face, especially when writing from and about Asia.

Following the trajectory of the development and spread of internet technologies, academic attention and research has primarily emerged in the North-West and slowly penetrated through disciplines and contexts in other parts of the world. It was only after the 1990s, once the digital revolution reached the ‘rest of the world’, that interest in and research on the phenomenon started to feature in studies in Asia. However, the initial research on and the major interest in the relationship between internet technologies and society has been dependent upon the theoretical categories, examples or ideas produced in primarily Western contexts. This has led to the production of a narrative where the digital technologies of information and communication (like the internet) are looked at as being seamlessly exported from the West to the East, without any attention given to the geo-political contexts and socio-cultural changes that accompany this penetration of technologies. There has been a blindsiding of the role that the State, educational institutions and globalised economic powers have played in the introduction, the proliferation and the acceptance of the internet technologies and digitally mediated lifestyles that have become so commonplace in developing Asia today. Research is oblivious to the context within which these technologies emerge and the kind of negotiations and interactions they have with the larger social and cultural fabric of the region.

One of the main reasons why such a narrative gains currency is that we have no vocabulary but that granted by Western scholars and practitioners to talk of the technologies and the technologised socio-cultural productions that emerge in our own local and regional contexts. With the rhetoric of globalisation and homogenisation on the one hand and the logic of the universalising nature of internet technologies on the other, there has been an un-reflexive theorising of digital identities, productions and interactions; this makes Asia more an exemplar for the existing Western ideas and hypotheses than a site where the drama of these technologies is still unfolding. This process is aided and abetted by the accelerated urbanisation that seeks to create nondescript and sterile spaces of consumption and lifestyle that subscribe to the idea of ‘Global’ or ‘Mega’ cities. Hence, across Asia, we see the mushrooming of cities and city-states – Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, Taipei, Bangalore – that work at actively erasing histories and producing these bubbles of consumption and globalisation that are disturbingly similar to each other.

Such theorising also reinforces the disconnect that Western Cybercultures has been encouraging between the networked worlds and ‘reality’, which, though affected and changed by the rise of these technologies, still remains strangely continuous and coherent in the midst of transformations. Moreover, it contains most theoretical and political interventions within the zones of urban consumption and change, thus producing a certain middle-class, self-referential work that concentrates on these areas, forgetting other crises and problems that still need attention. It also encourages a view of Asia as a docile, non-agential site upon which technologies are mapped, despite the fact that every year in this new century has seen Asian countries emerging as substantial stake-holders and players in production, proliferation and consumption of internet technologies. Along with the liberalisation of markets, the global digital revolution has also seen boundaries in social norms, cultural mores and political processes being pushed. We have been witness to formerly closed governments attempting to restructure themselves in the global world and to an unprecedented inflation and consumption in the developing Asian countries. We are in the middle of radical reconstruction of academic processes and market economies as public private partnerships become the norm. However, these landmark changes are often ignored or explored from a West-centric view-point, producing extreme and polarised reactions to the spread of Internet Technologies and the changes it entails.

Beyond Euphoria and Fear

Most responses to the widespread reach of internet technologies and digital forms have been grounded in euphoria or fear. There is a certain boundless celebration on the one hand, that proclaims the internet as forming the new public sphere, heralding the democratic potential and transparent structures that these networks have within them. The gurus have looked upon the internet in a ‘convergence theory’ mode where they announce, severally and variously, the death of earlier cultural productions like books, movies and music. The ability of digital technologies to aid innovation and creativity, as well as new forms of employment and entrepreneurship, has spurred the writing of many books and essays documenting the process. The roles that internet technologies have played in granting voice, visibility, and expression to many underprivileged communities, and the way they offer social and economic mobility in developing countries, have been unabashedly celebrated. Governments, civil society practitioners and theoreticians have all looked upon the internet as the panacea that will help level the landscape of social justice and political participation around the world.

Simultaneously, there has also been a construction of ‘ecology of fear’ around the rise and spread of internet technologies. Massive global alarm exists around questions of easy access to pornography and other sexual behaviours online, not only for young adults but also for mature audiences of potential behaviour addicts. Online gambling has emerged as a huge concern and has been at the centre of much debate. Cyber-bullying on social networking systems, and cyber-terrorism on a much larger scale, have shocked us as new technologies get implicated in actions that have disastrous results both at the individual and the community level. With the tightening Intellectual Property regimes, there has also been great debate around digital piracy and the ability of the internet peer-to-peer networks to encourage acts of theft and copyright infringement. As the world becomes more digitised, attacks on sensitive information by crackers and scammers are also on the increase in various forms. The internet has been looked at with growing concern and alarm by parents, educators, policy-makers and corporate entities, who are all deeply involved in assuring safety, creating opportunities and catering to the needs of citizens and consumers.

This simultaneously celebratory and pathologised approach often cripples research in the field of Internet and Society, because it constructs technology mediated practices and identities as at once universal (hence general) and unique (hence particular). Research that emerges is, consequently, confined to producing case-studies explaining what happens in each particular incident online and is unable to examine either the conditions within which the technologies emerge or the contexts that circumscribe certain socio-cultural behaviour. Such research, instead of examining the aesthetics and politics of technology mediated identities and practices, keeps on documenting the extremely fluid and rapidly changing landscape of the digital world – documenting fads, evolutions, innovations and the smaller changes therein – thus missing the forest for the leaf; the research ends up in concentrating on the ‘what happened’ rather than treating these happenings as symptomatic of larger paradigmatic changes that they often hint at.

Internet and the Convergence Theory

This is further complicated by the fact that many theorists and analysts seem to treat the internet more as a platform for convergence of old media forms in new digital packages. Such a view of internet technologies and digital cyberspaces leads to the populist descriptions of blogs as extensions of personal diaries, of digital cinema as a continuation of the celluloid image, of digitally morphed pictures as more sophisticated versions of earlier experiments with still images, of social networking systems as evolution of pre-existing social structures, of MMORPGs (Massive Multiple Online Role Playing Games) as merely complex forms of gaming. These descriptions fail to take into account that internet technologies, especially digital cyberspaces, while indeed affecting and transforming existing forms of media and cultural production, also lead to the emergence of new and interesting forms of expression, consumption and interaction.

Just as the field of Cybercultures has only a vocabulary granted by the West, it also lacks a vocabulary that is its own – most research in Cybercultures, especially in emerging information societies, relies on categories, concepts and ideas that were relevant for earlier popular cultural forms like books and movies. Transplanting categories of authorship, production, consumption, distribution, etc., and trying to map them onto the digital world leads to severe confusion and is a futile exercise. For example, if we look at the discourse around the online user generated encyclopaedia – Wikipedia - and use the earlier existing categories of an author, a reader, an editor and an institutional structure of producing knowledge, we immediately realise that the discussion cannot be sustained; the categories presuppose other forms of writing and production which are not as relevant in the digital worlds. Similarly, legal categories like possession, ownership, labour and copying are also being made redundant by the advent of the internet. As these categories fail to capture the new digital worlds, they also fail to explain the human-technology relationship that the field of Internet and Society seeks to explore. Despite investment in terms of efforts, time and money, much of the research becomes redundant because it does not have the vocabulary or the idea that analysis of these new digital spaces entails.

The imagination of the convergent multimedia internet distracts from the fact that what appear to be earlier historic forms like text and moving images are, in the context of cyberspace and the Web 2.0 revolution, actually new forms that need their own vocabulary that does not carry the baggage of earlier popular technologies. It is time to move away from talking about the Internet and its effects in analogies and to seek and create an independent and effective language that takes into account the mechanics and the potentials of the Internet revolution.

Institutional Spaces: Internet & Society

It is within such contexts and to address questions like these that institutional spaces emerge in the field of Internet and Society. As more and more disciplines start focusing on internet technologies and their intersections with areas as diverse as identity, sexuality, governance, cultural production, political mobilisation and social transformation, institutions in this space are faced with the daunting question of what to concentrate on and how to define the scope of their activities. Many global organisations and interventions narrowly define the field through their own disciplinary positions and perspectives. The Berkman Centre of Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, for example, examines the law and its intersections with the new internet technologies and practices. Sarai - a new media organisation in India - concentrates on art and cultural production as affected by digital technologies and practices. The Association of Internet Researchers builds a network of multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners across the globe to meet annually for workshops and conferences and also share ideas through a mailing list, concentrating on existing phenomena on the World Wide Web. Several Communications and Media Studies schools also have established labs and workshops that focus on the internet technologies from their disciplinary grounding.

The Centre for Internet and Society, a newly established research and advocacy centre founded in Bangalore, India, makes a shift from these discipline-bound approaches to Internet and Society, and inaugurates a multi-disciplinary, interactive space for theorists, researchers, students, practitioners, activists, artists and the larger public to initiate a dialogue in the field of Internet and Society. Rather than adopting a disciplinary framework, it takes the model of Asian Cultural Studies, seeking to produce a sustainable scholarship and methodology to talk of the relationship between emergent Internet technologies and the changes they produce in the Global South. It sets out to critically engage with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and new pedagogic practices through multidisciplinary research, intervention and collaboration, to understand and affect the shape and form of the internet and its relationship with the political, cultural, and social milieu of our times.

At CIS, we recognise the contexts within which this field has developed and emerged and have initiated many programmes, projects and structures to deal with the questions that this essay has charted. Drawing from the pedagogy and frameworks developed within Cultural Studies in Asia, the research at CIS investigates the local, the contextual, the emergent and the negotiated nature of digital spaces and internet technologies at three levels – At the national level, looking to produce models of research by examining the history, the politics, the growth and the significance of internet technologies in the context of globalised India; At the regional level, focusing on the similarities that global urbanisation and digitisation are bringing to the emerging information societies in Asia and the acknowledging the dissimilarities that need to be addressed in each of these societies; At the global level, engaging with a much larger South-South discourse that strengthens the move to approach internet technologies as integral to our ways of living rather than of foreign import. Such an approach allows us to escape the often restrictive constraints of cybercultures discourse that stays within the domains of internet technologies and produces disconnect between Internet and Society. Instead, we expand the scope of internet technologies to see their relationships with larger political, social and cultural economies, lifestyles and consumption patterns, and identity and transformation structures in the rapidly changing world. In the first two years, for example, we are investing a large part of our research energies into producing the Histories of the Internets in India – inviting different disciplines and standpoints to trace the diverse historically important and culturally significant growth of Internet Technologies in India, thus de-homogenising the internet as well as the discourse within cybercultures.

The policy and advocacy work at the Centre for Internet and Society, also contributes hugely to this localisation and narrativisation of the internet in India, by recognising the law and the State as the largest stakeholders in the growth and proliferation of these technologies. We have initiated campaigns and projects examining national laws regarding intellectual property rights regimes, piracy, e-commerce and security, accessibility and disability, to see how they are subject to modification with the growth of digital technologies. Original field work and ethnography with the consumers, practitioners, stakeholders and law enforcers about the nature of technology, its role in the larger imagination of the globalised Indian State, and the need to make sensitive and informed decisions, has already been initiated, along with dissemination platforms like workshops, seminars, meetings and conferences.

Keeping in tune with our model of collaboration and consultation, the Society Members have also helped us generate a healthy momentum by representing us and helping us find resources around the globe. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam has been travelling across Asia, Europe and North America, at international policy and activist forums, promoting Open Access to information and knowledge. Lawrence Liang has been involved in teaching both at the local and international levels, apart from presenting original and influential research examining the relationship that internet technologies have with questions of knowledge production, ownership and the law. Achal Prabala has been actively working with the Wikimedia foundation to facilitate user participation in knowledge production online. Atul Ramachandran has been working on developing mobile internet platforms for sharing news and information within the underprivileged communities in India. Vibodh Parthsarthy has been designing academic courses and encouraging research in the fields of internet technologies, governance and democracy.

Because these questions have a much larger regional relevance – with the increasing description of Asia as the Mecca of piracy and digital infractions – we are also in the process of starting projects that do a survey of the laws around intellectual property rights, innovation and access in the Asian region, with Sunil Abraham (Director – Policy) guiding a team of in-house researchers and external collaborators. Cross-boundary research and analysis has also been initiated in terms of dialogues and comparative study of technology, space and globalisation, initiated by my seven month residential project in Shanghai, where we are examining the conditions of technologisation that make global spaces possible, in countries like China and India. Apart from these, the team of seven people has been making interventions in international workshops, conferences and forums, to start dialogues and discussions in the field of Internet and Society.

A significant effort has been spent in starting awareness for the public – from the first documentation on our website of work in progress by our research and policy collaborators to regular contributions to local media sources to organisation of public talks and events – which is aimed at demystifying the internet technologies and giving more ownership and assurance to a larger public. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, gave a public talk on freedom, expression and the internet, citing anecdotes and examples from the phenomenal success and growth of Wikipedia. In a different media, independent film maker Jamie King screened his movies on the piracy cultures and innovation, in Bangalore, sparking conversations and debates about copyright, creative commons and the domain of cultural expression. Students and visiting artists from different countries, through the Shrishti School of Art Design and the efforts of Zeenath Hassan, came together at CIS for a discussion on fear and gender in public space and how digital technologies contribute to it. The discussion feels timely because only a month later, India saw the right wing cultural police tyrannising Bangalore and other parts of Karnataka, by perpetrating acts of brutal violence against women who they saw as progressive or in defiance of the right wing codes of decorum and behaviour. CIS was an active part of the ‘Pink Chaddi’ and ‘Reclaim the Night’ campaigneering, mobilising and participation at a local and national level, as a response to these acts of regressive violence, using digital environments and platforms to garner support and ‘recruit’ people into showing their protest against such fundamental ideas and practices.

Moreover, in order to develop and establish a more accessible vocabulary and understanding both within research, higher education and practice of internet and society questions, CIS has been investing in building national and regional networks of scholars, students and theorists in different disciplines to come and discuss the area. Courses have been designed and administered for undergraduate, post graduate and research students, in the disciplines of social sciences, management and media studies, journalism and communication studies, cultural studies etc. Networking with institutional and university spaces like the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, Christ University, Bangalore, Centre for Media and Culture Studies, at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. We are also in conversation with regional spaces like the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the Shanghai University, The Open Source Initiative, International Development Research Centre, Hivos and the Asia Scholarship Foundation in Thailand, for extending our regional and global networks.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, is less than a year old and has already embarked upon so many different projects, found a wide range of collaborations, initiated diverse enquiries and has received the support and interest of a varied and credible list of organisations. This warm reception and enthused interest, is as much a sign of the evolving and dynamic nature of collaboration and consultation in Asia, as it is of the need for interdisciplinary spaces like The Centre for Internet and Society, in our times. We see our rapid progress as symptomatic of a much larger need to establish more institutional spaces that can cater to the widely expanding horizon of the field of Internet and Society. While it is indeed laudable that different disciplines have already started showing interest in studying and analysing these often invisible links between Internet and Society, it is also now time, to start looking at technology as more than just an object or platform of study. We can already see how, in the foreseeable future, the internet technologies are only going to become more ubiquitous and central to the crucial mechanics of survival and living. Spaces like CIS help us look at technologies like the internet, as not merely tools and techniques, but as entwined in the politics, aesthetics and economies of the time and spaces we live in.

About the Author

Nishant Shah is the co-founder and Director for Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. Nishant’s doctoral work examines the construction of technosocial subjectivities in India, at the intersections of digital technology, cyborg identities and globalised spaces. Nishant is the recipient of the Asia Scholarship Foundation’s grant which places him in Shanghai for a project on IT and the globalisation of Asian cities.

Read the original published by Inter-Asia Cultural Studies here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/internet-society-challenges-next-steps

Internet and Open Public Data

praskrishna — 2013-07-03T04:53:25Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/internet-and-open-public-data-ppp.pdf

International Repository Infrastructure Workshop, Amsterdam, 16-17 March 2009: A Report

sachia — 2011-08-18T05:01:34Z

Open Access activist Madhan Muthu recently attended the International Repository Infrastructure Workshop, held in Amsterdam, 16-17 March 2009, in company with CIS Distinguished Fellow Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam. In this entry, as a guest blogger for CIS, he files a report on the proceedings at the workshop.

I was in Amsterdam for the International Repository Infrastructure Workshop, with Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam of CIS and other participants from UK, USA, Japan, and Australia. The workshop was funded by JISC, SURF and DRIVER Project. The aim of the workshop was to draft plans for the future course of international repositories’ action.

The workshop started with a keynote speech by Norbert Lossau of the DRIVER project. Much of his talk focused on DRIVER experience. Beyond individual repositories and related services, he explained the need for an internationally coordinated repositories infrastructure. Soon after the keynote, participants were divided into four breakout groups to enage in parallel discussion and to draft action plans on the following topics:

International Organization
Identifier Infrastructure
Citation Services
Repositories Handshake

I participated in the Repositories ‘handshake’ group. The handshake group, which consisted of mostly repository practitioners and service providers, was moderated by Peter Burnhill of EDINA, University of Edinburgh. Initially, there was a bit of effort in reaching the definition of ‘repositories handshake’ and what it was actually intended for. After deliberations on service requirements, ingest support services, machine interoperability and workflow enhancement, the group settled on 'deposit opportunities' as its focus. Two-side handshakes were considered: one with authors, where the handshake action naturally twisted to a ‘begging’ action (in the present global repository scenario) and on the other side, handshakes with service developers by ensuring (minimally sufficient) quality metadata and interoperability.

On the second day, our group continued its discussions on creating conducive 'deposit opportunities' on the principles of more (content), better (quality metadata), easy (uploading) and rewarding (for depositor). The group agreed upon eight purposeful handshake use cases and multiphase action plan. There was a consensus on a first phase work plan which would achieve, in six months' time, at least a few key use cases like:

Easy deposit method for multi-authored papers, with different affiliations from different countries, in multiple repositories
Communication between institutional, subject and funding repositories
Publisher deposits in repositories (IR/SR)
Institute induced deposits

We had two breakout group presentations during the course of the workshop, in which moderators discussed the progress made by each group. This helped members of the groups to understand what the other groups were doing.

Finally, all participants assembled at the plenary session of the workshop, at which moderators of each breakout group presented the product of the one and a half day deliberations. In my view, there was considerable progress made by the Citation Services group. Leslie Carr, who was the moderator of the group, talked about the plan of setting up a repository based citation test bed and developing a competitive text mining algorithm to cull references from a document in repositories.

The next impressive development came from the Repository Identifiers group. The moderator of the group talked about strategies of using existing resources to build identifiers for people, repositories, organisations and objects (see presentation here). Dale Peters acknowledged the contribution of Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam at the ‘International Organisation’ group’s final presentation.

Clifford Lynch of CNI summed up of the outcomes of the break out groups in his closing remarks. He envisioned repositories as a component of a larger knowledge sharing infrastructure rather than as mere archives of institutional outputs. He also prioritised 'Identifier Infrastructure' as the need of the moment and asked for a quick action on it.

There was a funders' meeting after the workshop, the outcomes of which are yet to surface. With pre-workshop wiki discussions on repository use cases and tweets (Twitter messages) during the program, the very form of the workshop was different from anything I had previously experienced.

During the workshop, I met a few key people involved in the DRIVER project, particularly Dr Paolo Manghi from ISTI-CNR, Italy, an organisation that takes care of repository validation. I learned a little about DRIVER, which has come up with a set of crisp metadata and interoperability guidelines to ensure smooth exchange of data between European repositories and service providers. The guidelines have been translated into three other languages, showing their international acceptance. To streamline repository developments in India, the time is right (since the number of repositories are small) to start a DRIVER-like initiative to ensure metadata uniformity in Indian repositories for easy exchange.

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Guest blogger Madhan Muthu has a Masters in Library and Information Science, and has worked at the National Institute of Technology as an Assistant Librarian since March 2004. He is heavily involved as a volunteer in India's open access movement. Presently, he is coordinating the Oriya Books Digitisation project in partnership with other libraries. Prior to NIT, he was at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai, for about six years.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/international-repository-infrastructure-workshop-amsterdam-16-17-march-2009-a-report

International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft

sumandro — 2015-06-02T15:51:12Z

The first public draft of the International Open Data Charter was released at the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, May 28-29, 2015. It is being developed by a range of organisations led by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Open Data Working Group (co-chaired by Government of Canada and the Web Foundation), the Government of Mexico, the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network, and Omidyar Network. CIS has contributed comments to a previous version of the draft, and also took part in the pre-release meeting of potential stewards of the Charter on May 26 in Ottawa. Here is the text of the draft Charter. Please visit opendatacharter.net/charter/ to submit your comments.

Consultation Draft, May 2015

Preamble

1) The world is witnessing the growth of a global movement facilitated by technology and digital media and fuelled by information – one that contains enormous potential to create more accountable, efficient, responsive, and effective governments and businesses, and to spur economic growth.

Open data sit at the heart of this global movement.

2) Building a more democratic, just, and prosperous society requires transparent, accountable governments that engage regularly and meaningfully with citizens. Accordingly, there is an ongoing effort to enable collaboration around key social challenges, to provide effective oversight of government activities, to support economic development through innovation, and to develop effective, efficient public policies and programmes.

Open data is essential to meeting these challenges.

3) Effective access to data allows individuals and organisations to develop new insights and innovations that can generate social and economic benefits to improve the lives of people around the world, and help to improve the flow of information within and between countries. While governments collect a wide range of data, they do not always share these data in ways that are easily discoverable, useable, or understandable by the public.

This is a missed opportunity.

4) Today, many people expect to be able to access high quality information and services, including government data, when and how they want. Others see the opportunity presented by government data as one which can provide innovative policy solutions and support economic and social benefits for all members of society. We have arrived at a point at which people can use open data to generate value, insights, ideas, and services to create a better world for all.

5) Open data can increase transparency around what government is doing. Open data can also increase awareness about how countries’ natural resources are used, how extractives revenues are spent, and how land is transacted and managed – all of which promotes accountability and good governance, enhances public debate, and helps to combat corruption.

6) Providing access to government data can drive sustainable and inclusive growth by empowering citizens, the media, civil society, and the private sector to identify gaps, and work toward better outcomes for public services in areas such as health, education, public safety, environmental protection, and governance. Open data can do this by:

showing how and where public money is spent, which provides strong incentives for governments to demonstrate that they are using public money effectively;
supporting citizens, civil society organisations, governments and the private sector to collaborate on the design of policies and the delivery of better public services;
supporting assessments of the impact of public programs, which in turn allows governments, civil society organisations, and the private sector to respond more effectively to the particular needs of local communities; and
enabling citizens to make better informed choices about the services they receive and the service standards they should expect.

7) Open government data can be used in innovative ways to create useful tools and products that help to navigate modern life more easily. Used in this way, open data are a catalyst for innovation in the private sector, supporting the creation of new markets, businesses, and jobs. These benefits can multiply as more private sector and civil society organisations adopt open data practices modelled by government and share their own data with the public.

8) We, the adherents to the International Open Data Charter, agree that open data are an under-used resource with huge potential to encourage the building of stronger, more interconnected societies that better meet the needs of our citizens and allow innovation and prosperity to flourish.

9) We therefore agree to follow a set of principles that will be the foundation for access to, and the release and use of, open government data. These principles are:

Open Data by Default;
Quality and Quantity;
Accessible and Useable by All;
Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens;
Collaboration for Development and Innovation;

10) We will develop an action plan in support of the implementation of the Charter and its Technical Annexes, and will update and renew the action plan at a minimum of every two years. We agree to commit the necessary resources to work within our political and legal frameworks to implement these principles in accordance with the technical best practices and timeframes set out in our action plan.

Principle 1: Open Data by Default

11) We recognise that free access to, and the subsequent use of, government data are of significant value to society and the economy, and that government data should, therefore, be open by default.

12) We acknowledge the need to promote the global development and adoption of tools and policies for the creation, use, and exchange of open data and information.

13) We recognise that the term ‘government data’ is meant in the widest sense possible. This could apply to data held by national, federal, and local governments, international government bodies, and other types of institutions in the wider public sector. This could also apply to data created for governments by external organisations, and data of significant benefit to the public which is held by external organisations and related to government programmes and services (e.g. data on extractives entities, data on transportation infrastructure, etc).

14) We recognise that there is domestic and international legislation, in particular pertaining to security, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and personally-identifiable and other sensitive information, which must be observed and/or updated where necessary.

15) We will:

develop and adopt policies and practices to ensure that all government data is made open by default, as outlined in this Charter, while recognising that there are legitimate reasons why some data cannot be released;
provide clear justifications as to why certain data cannot be released;
establish a culture of openness, not only through legislative or policy measures, but also with the help of training and awareness programs, tools, and guidelines designed to make government, civil society, and private sector representatives aware of the benefits of open data; and
develop the leadership, management, oversight, and internal communication policies necessary to enable this transition to a culture of openness.

Principle 2: Quality and Quantity

16) We recognise that governments and other public sector organisations hold vast amounts of information that may be of interest to citizens, and that it may take time to identify data for release or publication.

17) We also recognise the importance of consulting with citizens, other governments, non-governmental organisations, and other open data users, to identify which data to prioritise for release and/or improvement.

18) We agree, however, that governments’ primary responsibility should be to release data in a timely manner, without undue delay.

19) We will:

create, maintain, and share public, comprehensive lists of data holdings to set the stage for meaningful public discussions around data prioritisation and release;
release high-quality open data that are timely, comprehensive, and accurate in accordance with prioritisation that is informed by public requests. To the extent possible, data will be released in their original, unmodified form and at the finest level of granularity available, and will also be linked to any visualisations or analyses created based on the data, as well as any relevant guidance or documentation;
ensure that accompanying documentation is written in clear, plain language, so that it can be easily understood by all;
make sure that data are fully described, and that data users have sufficient information to understand their source, strengths, weaknesses, and any analytical limitations;
ensure that open datasets include consistent core metadata, and are made available in human- and machine-readable formats under an open and unrestrictive licence;
allow users to provide feedback, and continue to make revisions to ensure the quality of the data is improved as needed; and
apply consistent information lifecycle management practices, and ensure historical copies of datasets are preserved, archived, and kept accessible as long as they retain value.

Principle 3: Accessible and Usable by All

20) We recognise that opening up data enables citizens, governments, civil society organisations, and the private sector to make better informed decisions.

21) We recognise that open data should be made available free of charge in order to encourage their widest possible use.

22) We recognise that when open data are released, they should be made available without bureaucratic or administrative barriers, such as mandatory user registration, which can deter people from accessing the data.

23) We will:

release data in open formats and free of charge to ensure that the data are available to the widest range of users to find, access, and use them. In many cases, this will include providing data in multiple formats, so that they can be processed by computers and used by people; and
ensure data can be accessed and used effectively by the widest range of users. This may require the creation of initiatives to raise awareness of open data, promote data literacy, and build capacity for effective use of open data.

Principle 4: Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens

24) We recognise that the release of open data strengthens our public and democratic institutions, encourages better development, implementation, and assessment of policies to meet the needs of our citizens, and enables more meaningful, better informed engagement between governments and citizens.

25) We will:

implement oversight and review processes to report regularly on the progress and impact of our open data initiatives;
engage with community and civil society representatives working in the domain of transparency and accountability to determine what data they need to effectively hold governments to account;encourage the use of open data to develop innovative, evidence-based policy solutions that benefit all members of society, as well as empower marginalised groups; and
be transparent about our own data collection, standards, and publishing processes, by documenting all of these related processes online.

Principle 5: Collaboration for Development and Innovation

26) We recognise the importance of diversity in stimulating creativity and innovation. The more citizens, governments, civil society, and the private sector use open data, the greater the social and economic benefits that will be generated. This is true for government, commercial, and non-commercial uses.

27) We recognise that the potential value of our open data is greatly increased when it can be used in combination with open data from other governments, the private sector, academic, media, civil society, and other non-governmental organisations.

28) We will:

create or explore potential partnerships to support the release of open data and maximise their impact through effective use. This may include local, regional, and global partnerships between governments, civil society, and the private sector;
engage with civil society, the private sector, and academic representatives to determine what data they need to generate social and economic value;
provide training programs, tools, and guidelines designed to ensure government employees are capable of using open data effectively in policy development processes;
encourage non-governmental organisations to open up data created and collected by them in order to move toward a richer open data ecosystem with multiple sources of open data;
share technical expertise and experience with other governments and international organisations around the world, so that everyone can reap the benefits of open data; and
empower a future generation of data innovators inside and outside of government by supporting an environment optimised for increasing open data literacy and encouraging developers, civil society organisations, academics, media representatives, government employees, and other open data users, to unlock the value of open data.

Crossposted from http://opendatacharter.net/charter/.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/international-open-data-charter-first-public-draft