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CIS Comments on the National Strategy on Blockchain
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-on-the-national-strategy-on-blockchain
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<p dir="ltr">This submission is a response by the researchers at CIS to the report “National Strategy on Blockchain” prepared by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) under the Government of India. </p>
<p>We have put forward the following comments based on our analysis of the report.</p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
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<h3>General Comments on the National Strategy</h3>
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<p dir="ltr">There are currently a number of reports and policies on blockchain use across departments, ministries and even states. The absence of a harmonised blockchain policy across all departments and institutions of government must be fixed. </p>
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<p dir="ltr">There are inherent dangers with viewing blockchain as a silver bullet solution. </p>
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<p dir="ltr">Informational concerns with blockchain are existent and policies must be designed to reflect these concerns and minimise their occurrences. </p>
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<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
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<h3>Section Specific Comments </h3>
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<p dir="ltr"><strong>Section 6.1</strong> - There is a need for greater decentralisation and a shift away from a solely government operated blockchain </p>
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<p dir="ltr"><strong>Section 6.2: </strong></p>
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<p dir="ltr">The legality of blockchain also faces the hurdle of smart contracts </p>
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<p dir="ltr">The RBI decision to halt the use of cryptocurrencies was struck down by the Supreme Court </p>
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<p dir="ltr">The right to be forgotten exists as an extension of the right to privacy as well </p>
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<p dir="ltr"><strong>Section 7</strong> - There is a need for greater detail and granularity in the report’s analysis and in the suggestions and recommendations that it makes. </p>
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<div> </div>
<div>The full submission to MEITY can be found at: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-strategy-on-blockchain">https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-strategy-on-blockchain</a></div>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-on-the-national-strategy-on-blockchain'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-on-the-national-strategy-on-blockchain</a>
</p>
No publisherVipul Kharbanda & Aman NairBlockchainBitcoinCryptocurrenciesData GovernanceSubmissionsE-Governance2021-03-22T05:34:41ZBlog EntryInputs to the Report on the Non-Personal Data Governance Framework
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/inputs-to-report-on-non-personal-data-governance-framework
<b>This submission presents a response by researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society, India (CIS) to the draft Report on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework prepared by the Committee of Experts under the Chairmanship of Shri Kris Gopalakrishnan. The inputs are authored by Aayush Rathi, Aman Nair, Ambika Tandon, Pallavi Bedi, Sapni Krishna, and Shweta Mohandas (in alphabetical order), and reviewed by Sumandro Chattapadhyay.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Text of submitted inputs: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/files/cis-inputs-to-report-on-non-personal-data-governance-framework" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Report by the Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework: <a href="https://static.mygov.in/rest/s3fs-public/mygov_159453381955063671.pdf" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
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<h2>Inputs</h2>
<h3>Clause 3.7 (v): The role of the Indian government in the operation of data markets</h3>
<p>While highlighting the potential for India to be one of the top consumer and data markets of the world, it also sheds light on the concern about the possibility of data monopolies. The clause envisions the role of the Indian government as a regulator and a catalyst for domestic data markets.</p>
<p>In doing so, the clause does not acknowledge that the proactive and dominant roles of the Indian government in generation and reuse of data, based on the existing data collection practices, as well as the provisions that have been given, as under the compulsory sharing provisions in the Report, and would continue to be given by the Personal Data Protection Bill. In reality, the Indian government’s role is not just of a catalyst but also of a key player, potentially with monopolistic market power, in the domestic data market, especially due to the ongoing data marketplace initiatives as detailed in published policy and vision documents. [1]</p>
<h3>Clause 3.8 (iv): Introducing collective privacy</h3>
<p>The introduction of collective privacy has initiated an overdue discussion at the policy level to arrive at privacy formulations that account for limitations in the contemporary dominant social, legal and ethical paradigms of privacy premised on individual interests and personal harm. The notion of collective privacy has garnered contemporary attention with the rise of data processing technologies and business models that thrive on the collection and processing of aggregate information.</p>
<p>While the Report acknowledges that collective privacy is an evolving concept, it doesn’t attempt to define either collective or what privacy could entail in the context of a collective. The postulation of collective privacy as a legally binding right is bereft with challenges in both domestic and international legal frameworks. [2]</p>
<p>Central to these challenges is the representation of the group of the entity. While the Report illustrates harms that may be incurred by certain collectives that collective privacy could protect against, these illustrated collectives are already recognised in law as rights-holding groups (society members, for example), and/or share pre-determined attributes (sexual orientation, for example).</p>
<p>The Report does not acknowledge that the very technological processes that may have rendered the articulation of collective privacy necessary, also are intended to create ad-hoc and newer sets of individuals or groups with shared attributes. [3] In doing so, the Report furthers an ontology of groups having intuitive, predetermined attributes that exist naturally, or in law, whereas the intervention of data collection and processing technologies can determine shared group attributes afresh. Moreover, the Report also ignores that predetermined attributes are static, and in doing so, ignores a vast existing literature speaking to fluidity of identities and the intersectionality of identities that individuals in groups occupy. [4] We fully appreciate the challenges these pose in the determination of the legal contours of collective privacy. Much of the Report’s recommendations are premised on the idea of a predetermined collective, rendering more granular exploration of these ideas urgent.</p>
<p>Further, the Report also puts forth a limited conception of privacy as a safeguard against data-related harms that may be caused to collectives. In doing so, it dilutes the conceptualisation of individual privacy as articulated in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) and Anr. vs Union Of India And Ors. Notwithstanding this dilution, the illustrations also only indicate harms that may be caused by private actors. Any further recommendations should envision the harms that may also be caused by public data-driven processes, such as those incubated within the state machinery.</p>
<h3>Clause 4.1 (iii) and Recommendation 1: Defining Non-Personal Data</h3>
<p>The Report proposes the definition of non-personal data to include (i) data that was never related to an identified or identifiable natural person, and (ii) aggregated, anonymised personal data such that individual events are “no longer identifiable”. In doing so, they have attempted to extend protections to categories of data that fall outside the ambit of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (hereafter “PDP Bill”). The Report is cognizant of the fallible nature of anonymization techniques but fails to indicate how these may be addressed.
The test of anonymization in regarding data as non-personal data requires further clarification. Anonymization, in and of itself, is an ambiguous standard. Scholarship has indicated that anonymised data may never be completely anonymous. [5] Despite this, the PDP Bill proposes a high threshold of zero-risk of anonymization in relation to personal data, to mean “such irreversible process of transforming or converting personal data to a form in which a data principal cannot be identified”. From a plain reading, it appears that the Report proposes a lower threshold of the anonymization requirements governing non-personal data. It is unclear how non-personal data would then be different from inferred data as described within the definition of personal data under the PDP Bill. This adds regulatory uncertainty making it imperative for the Committee to articulate bright-line, risk-based principles and rules for the test of anonymization. Such rules should also indicate the factors that ought to be taken into account to determine whether anonymization has occurred and the timescale of reference for anonymization outcomes. [6]</p>
<p>The recommendation also states that the data principal should "also provide consent for anonymisation and usage of this anonymized data while providing consent for collection and usage of his/her personal data". However the framing of this recommendation fails to mention the responsibility of the data fiduciary to provide notice to the data principal about the usage of the anonymized data while seeking the data principal’s consent for anonymization. The notice provided to the data principal should provide clear indication that consent of the data principal is based on their knowledge of the use of the anonymized data.</p>
<h3>Clause 4.8 (i), (ii): Function of data custodians</h3>
<p>The Report does not make it clear who may perform the role of data custodians. The use of data fiduciary indicates the potential import of the definition of ‘data fiduciary’ as specified under Clause 3.13 of the PDP Bill. However, this needs to be further clarified.</p>
<h3>Clause 4.8 (iii): Data custodians’ “duty of care”</h3>
As is outlined in the following section on data trustees, it can be difficult for a singular entity to maintain a duty of care and undertake actions with the best interest of a community when that community consists of sub-communities that may be marginalised.
Further, ‘duty of care’, ‘best interest’, and ‘absence of harm’ are not sufficient standards for data processing by data custodians. Recommendations to the effect of obligating data custodians to uphold the rights of data principals, including economic and fundamental rights need to be incorporated in the framework.
<h3>Clause 4.9: Data trustees</h3>
<p>The committee’s suggestion that the “most appropriate representative body” should be the data trustee—that often being either the corresponding government entity or community body— is reasonable at face value. However, in the absence of any clear principles defining what constitutes “most appropriate” there are a number of potential issues that can appear:</p>
<p><strong>Lack of means for selecting a data trustee:</strong> The report makes note of the fact that both private and public entities can be selected to be data trustees but offers no principles on how these data trustees can be selected, i.e. whether they are to be directly selected by the members of a community, and if so how. Any selection criteria or process prescribed has to keep in mind the following point regarding the potential lack of representation for marginalised communities that could arise from a direct selection of a data trustee by a group of people.</p>
<p><strong>Issues of having a single data trustee for large scale communities and when dealing with marginalised communities:</strong> The report assumes that in instances wherein a community is spread across a geographic region, or consists of multiple sub-communities, then the data trustee will be the closest shared government authority (for example, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India being the data trustee for data regarding diabetes among Indian citizens).</p>
<p><strong>This idea of a singular data trustee assumes that the ‘best interests’ of a community are uniform across that community. This can prove problematic especially when dealing with data obtained from marginalised communities that forms a part of a wider dataset.</strong> It is entirely possible to imagine that a smaller disenfranchised community may have interests that are not aligned with the general majority. In such a situation the Report is unclear as to whether the data trustee would have to ensure that the best interests of all groups are maintained, or would they be responsible for ensuring the best interests of the largest number of people within that community.
There are power differentials between citizens, government agencies, and other entities described by the Report. This places citizens at risk of abuse of power by government entities in their role as trustees, who are effectively being empowered through this policy framework as opposed to a representative mechanism. It is recommended that data trustees be appointed by relevant communities through clear and representative mechanisms. Additionally, any individual should be able to file complaints regarding the discharge of community trust by data trustees. This is necessary as any subsequent rights vested in the community can only be exercised through the data trustee, and become unenforceable in the lack of an appropriate data trustee.</p>
<p>Any legislation that arises on the basis of this report will therefore have to not only provide a means for selecting the data trustee, but also safeguards for ensuring that data collected from marginalised communities are used keeping in mind their specific best interests—with these best interests being informed through consultation with that community.</p>
<h3>Clause 4.10 (iii): Data trusts</h3>
<p>Section 4.10 (iii) notes that data custodians may voluntarily share data in these data trusts. However it is unclear if such sharing must be done with the express consent of the relevant data trustee.</p>
<h3>Clause 4.10 (iv): Mandatory sharing and competition</h3>
<p>The fundamental premise of a mandatory data sharing regime seems increasingly distant from its practical impacts. The EU which earlier championed the cause now seems reluctant to further it on the face of studies which skews towards counteractive impacts of such steps. Such steps could apply to huge volumes of first-party data companies collect on their own assets, products and services, even though such data are among the least likely to create barriers to entry or contribute to abuses of dominant positions. [7] This is hence likely to bring in more chilling effect on innovation and investment than a pro-competition environment. The velocity of big data also adds to the futility of such data sharing mandates. [8] It is recommended that a sectoral analysis of this mandate be undertaken instead of an overarching stipulation.</p>
<p>The Report suggests extensive data sharing without addressing the extent of obligation on the private players to submit to these requests and process them. The availability of meta-data about the data collected may be made easily accessible under mandates of transparency. However, the access to the detailed underlying data will be difficult in most cases due to the current structure of entities functioning in cyberspace, evidenced by the lack of compliance to such mandates by Courts of Law in the EU. Such a system can easily eliminate the comparative advantage of smaller players, helping larger players with more money at their disposal enabling their growth and throttling the smaller players. It could have serious implications on data quality and integrity through the sharing of erroneous data. Access to superior quality digital services in India may also have to be compromised. If this regime is furthered without amends to address these concerns, it might end up counter productive.</p>
<h3>Clause 5.1 (iv): Grievance redressal against state’s role</h3>
<p>This clause acknowledges the vast potential for government authorities and other bodies to abuse their power as data trustee. In addition, it should describe the setting up of impartial and accessible mechanisms for citizens to complain against such abuse of power and appropriate penalties, including the removal of the data trustee.</p>
<h3>Chapter 7, Recommendation 5: Purpose of data-sharing</h3>
<p>Recommendation 5 leaves scope for “national security” as a sovereign purpose for data sharing. This continues to be in line with the trend of having an overarching national security clause, as in the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. There could be provisions made to enable access to data for sovereign purposes without such broad definition, replacing it based on constitutional terms which will limit it to the confines laid down in the Constitution. This will effectively curb any misuse of the provision and strongly embed the proposed regulation of non-personal data on constitutional ethos. This can also prevent future conflicts with the fundamental rights.</p>
<p>Platform companies have leveraged their position in society to take on an ever-greater number of quasi-public functions, exercising new forms of unaccountable, transnational authority. It is not difficult to imagine that this trend can continue to non-platform companies, or even taken forward by these very entities which also have access to a large chunk of non-personal data. A strict division between sovereign purposes and core public interest purposes seems difficult. However, it is imperative to have a clearer definition of core public interest purposes and sovereign purposes. The broad based definition may facilitate reduced accountability. Separating government actions from sovereign purposes could bring forth the power imbalance between the State and its people, while in the case of the non-governmental entities, it will facilitate encroachment of government functions by private players. Both these cases may not consider the best interest of the data generators, or the people at large.</p>
<h3>Clause 7.1 (i): Data needs of law enforcement</h3>
<p>Clause 7.1 (i) allows for acquisition of data governed by this framework for crime mapping, devising anticipation and preventive measures, and for investigations and law enforcement. While this may be necessary to be granted to law enforcement in certain cases, this should happen only with an express permission of a court of law. Blanket executive access allows higher possibility of misuse by the people involved in law enforcement.</p>
<h3>Clause 7.2 (iv): Use of health data as a pilot</h3>
<p>The clause suggests the use of health sector data as a pilot use-case. This is highly undesirable due to the inherent nature of high sensitivity of the larger part of data related to the health sector. The high vulnerability of such data to harm the data principals should act as a deterrent in using this as the pilot use-case. Given the mass availability of data related to the health sector due to the pandemic, it creates further points of vulnerabilities which can be illegally monetised and misappropriated. It is recommended that this proposal be scrapped altogether.</p>
<h3>Clause 7.2 (iii): Power of government bodies</h3>
<p>As per this clause, data trustees or government bodies (who could also be acting as data trustees) can make requests for data sharing and place such data in appropriate data infrastructures or trusts. This presents a conflict of interest, as a data trust or government body can empower itself to be the data trustee. Such cases should be addressed within the scope of the framework.</p>
<h3>Clause 8.2 (vii): Level-playing field for all Indian actors</h3>
<p>In terms of this clause the “Non-Personal Data Authority (Authority) will ensure a level playing field for all Indian actors to fulfil the objective of maximising Indian data’s value to the Indian economy”. The emphasis on ensuring a level playing field for only Indian actors instead of non-discriminatory platform for all concerned actors irrespective of the country/nationality of the actor has the potential of violating India’s trade obligations under the WTO. Member states of the WTO are essentially restricted from discriminating between products and services coming from different WTO Members, and between foreign and domestic products and services unless they can avail of exceptions. There is also no clarity on what constitutes ‘Indian Actors’, would a Multi-National Corporation with its headquarters in a foreign State, but its subsidiaries in India also come within its ambit.</p>
<h3>Clause 8.2 (x): Composition of the Authority</h3>
<p>Clause 8.2 (x) states that the Authority will have some members with relevant industry experience. However, apart from this clause, the report is silent on the composition of the Authority. The report recognises that Authority will need individuals/organisations with specialised knowledge, i.e. data governance, technology, latest research and innovation in the field of non-personal data), however, it does not mention or refer to the role of civil society organisations and the need for representation from such organisations in the Authority.</p>
<p>The report frequently alludes to non-personal data being used for the best interest of the data principal and therefore, it is essential that the composition of the Authority reflect the inherent asymmetry of power between the data principal and the State. Considering that the Authority will also be responsible for sharing of community data and with determining the code of conduct for sharing of such data, it is important that the Authority also has adequate representation from civil society organisations along with groups or individuals having the necessary technological and legal skills.</p>
<h3>Clause 8.2 (iii) and (vi): Roles and Responsibility of the Authority</h3>
<p>A majority of the datasets in the country comprise of ‘mixed datasets’, i.e. it consists of both personal and non-personal data. However, there is lack of clarity about the coordination between the Data Protection Authority constituted under the PDP Bill and the Non-Personal Data Authority with regard to the regulation of such datasets. The Report refers to the European Union which provides that the Non-Personal Data Regulation applies to the Non-Personal Data of mixed datasets; if the Non-Personal Data part and the personal data parts are ‘inextricably linked’, the General Data Protection Regulation apply to the whole mixed dataset. However, it is unclear whether the Report also proposes the same mechanism for the regulation of mixed datasets.</p>
<p>Further, the contours of the enforcement role of the Committee should be specified and clearly laid down. Will the Committee also have penal powers as prescribed for the Data Protection Authority under the PDP Bill? Also, will the privacy concerns emanating from the risk of re-anonymisation of data be addressed by the NPD Committee or by the DPA under the PDP Bill. Ideally, it should be specified that any such privacy concerns will fall within the domain of the DPA as the data is then converted into personal data and the DPA will be empowered to deal with such issues.</p>
<h3>Endnotes</h3>
<p>[1] See Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (2020). National Digital Health Blueprint. Government of India. <a href="https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/Final%20NDHB%20report_0.pdf">https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/Final%20NDHB%20report_0.pdf</a>; Tandon, A. (2019). Big Data and Reproductive Health in India: A Case Study of the Mother and Child Tracking System. <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/big-data-reproductive-health-india-mcts">https://cis-india.org/raw/big-data-reproductive-health-india-mcts</a></p>
<p>[2] Taylor, L., Floridi, L., van der Sloot, B. eds. (2017) Group Privacy: new challenges of data technologies. Dordrecht: Springer.</p>
<p>[3] Mittelstadt, B. (2017). From Individual to Group Privacy in Big Data Analytics. Philos. Technol. 30, 475–494.</p>
<p>[4] See Taylor, L., Floridi, L., van der Sloot, B. eds. (2017) Group Privacy: new challenges of data technologies. Dordrecht: Springer; Tisne, M. (n.d). The Data Delusion: Protecting Individual Data Isn't Enough When The Harm is Collective. Stanford Cyber Policy Centre. <a href="https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/publication/data-delusion">https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/publication/data-delusion</a></p>
<p>[5] Rocher, L., Hendrickx, J.M. & de Montjoye, Y. (2019). Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models. Nat Commun 10, 3069 . <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10933-3">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10933-3</a></p>
<p>[6] Finck, M. & Pallas, F. (2020). They who must not be identified—distinguishing personal from non-personal data under the GDPR. International Data Privacy Law, 10 (1), 11–36. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipz026">https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipz026</a></p>
<p>[7] European Commission (2020). Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic And Social Committee And The Committee Of The Regions: A European strategy for data. <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1593073685620&uri=CELEX:52020DC0066">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1593073685620&uri=CELEX:52020DC0066</a></p>
<p>[8] Modrall, Jay. (2019). Antitrust risks and Big Data. Norton Rose Fullbright. <a href="https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-in/knowledge/publications/64c13505/antitrust-risks-and-big-data">https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-in/knowledge/publications/64c13505/antitrust-risks-and-big-data</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/inputs-to-report-on-non-personal-data-governance-framework'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/inputs-to-report-on-non-personal-data-governance-framework</a>
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No publishersumandroData SystemsPrivacyResearchers at WorkDigital EconomyData GovernanceSubmissions2020-12-30T09:40:52ZBlog EntryInputs to the public consultation on the draft Code on Social Security (Central) Rules, 2020 - Joint submission by an alliance of trade unions and civil society organisations
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/joint-submission-to-consultation-on-draft-code-on-social-security-central-rules-2020
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) contributed to a joint submission by IT for Change and various trade union and civil society organisations in response to the public consultation of the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the draft Code on Social Security Rules, 2020. Here are the overview, full text of the submitted inputs, and names of organisations and individuals who endorsed them.</b>
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<h4>Cross-posted from <a href="https://itforchange.net/platform-workers-concerns-draft-code-on-social-security-rules-2020-joint-submission" target="_blank">IT for Change</a>.</h4>
<h4>Full text of submitted inputs: <a href="https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Joint-Submission-to-the-Ministry-of-Labour-and-Employment-on-the-Code-on-Social-Security-Central-Rules-2020.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
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<h2>Overview</h2>
<p>A legal framework that addresses workers’ rights in the digital economy from all angles is imperative to address labour concerns in the 21st century. We welcome the inclusion of platform workers and gig workers in the Code on Social Security, 2020. However, we have some concerns regarding the draft Code on Social Security (Central) Rules, 2020 (hereinafter the “Draft Rules”), vis-à-vis the implementation of platform workers’ rights. In this document, we first list down our overall concerns before proceeding to a section specific critique in the format required by the consultation.</p>
<p><strong>1. Failure to universalise social security for platform workers:</strong> In their current form, the Draft Rules do not provide a social security framework for platform workers founded on the cardinal principles of universal social security. A basic social protection floor for all platform workers, including benefits such as universal maternal care and accident insurance, has not been guaranteed. Instead, the Draft Rules impose an age limit for platform workers to be eligible for social security [Rule 50(2)(d)], and also confer on the government the power to prescribe additional eligibility criteria [Rule 50(2)(f)]. These provisions are likely to narrow the
pool of workers who can avail the benefits under this law. Also, facilitation centres and toll-free helplines to onboard platform and gig workers into any future social security schemes have not been provided for in the Draft Rules, even though these were mentioned in the Code on Social Security, 2020.</p>
<p><strong>2. Lack of clarity on aggregator contributions:</strong> The Draft Rules also indicate that aggregators will have to contribute towards any social security scheme that may be framed by the government. This is appreciated. However, further clarity on how these contributions will be assessed in the context of the reality of platform work arrangements is needed. Platform workers may work for several aggregators simultaneously, and be engaged as workers for intermittent and irregular periods of time. As it stands, the
Draft Rules do not address how the minimum period of 90 days of being engaged as a platform worker is to be calculated — a mandatory eligibility criteria for registration under Rule 50(2)(d). It also does not outline how the number of days worked impacts the nature and extent of social protection that platform workers are eligible for. Additionally, under Guideline 6 of the Motor Vehicles Aggregators Guidelines, 2020 issued in November 2020, certain compliances are imposed on aggregators towards their drivers, such as health insurance and term insurance. It is unclear how obligations under the Motor Vehicles Aggregators Guidelines, 2020 will apply in consonance with aggregators’ contributions under the Draft Rules on the Code on Social Security, 2020.</p>
<p><strong>3. Absence of clear criteria to determine exemption of aggregators from contributions to social security:</strong> Section 114(7)(ii) of the Code on Social Security, 2020 permits the central government to use its discretionary powers to exempt aggregators from contributions to platform workers’ social security. It would have been important for the Draft Rules to clearly spell out the conditions under which aggregators could be exempted to ensure that aggregators do not evade their responsibilities towards their platform workers and gig workers. This has not been done, and aggregator exemption is now possible solely at the discretion of the central government.</p>
<p><strong>4. Flaws in the mechanisms outlined for constituting the National Social Security Board for Gig Workers and Platform Workers:</strong> There is currently no timeline for its constitution, leaving its existence to be determined as per the whims of the government. Furthermore, there is no transparency in the Draft Rules around the procedure by which the central government will nominate platform workers’ representatives to this Board. In this regard, the lack of a clearly spelt out role for trade unions and workers’ associations is also a major flaw, as workers’ organisations must have effective representation concerning social security schemes intended for their benefit.</p>
<p><strong>5. No guarantees for workers’ data rights:</strong> We are also concerned that the Draft Rules attempt to create a centralised database of platform workers and gig workers, to be enabled by the sharing of data by aggregators with the state. This data will include workers’ personal data, and in the absence of personal data protection legislation, this has serious implications for workers’ data rights and privacy. It is imperative that the draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 be passed at the earliest to safeguard against state and/or aggregator excesses in this regard. We also recommend the inclusion of clear purpose and use limitation safeguards in these Draft Rules itself, as part of enshrining the right to privacy. Additionally, workers must have the right to edit, correct and dispute the records of aggregators, and a mechanism for such an audit must be established by the government. Workers must also have the right to retain a certified, machine-readable copy of their data.</p>
<p><strong>6. Shortcomings of a centralised database:</strong> We also urge the central government to rethink the vision of a centralised database, and instead, explore the possibility of a federated architecture, with room for democratic and decentralised data management by workers themselves with involvement from state and local government agencies (building on labour welfare models). We are firmly of the view that the concentration of power and authority in the Central Government is unlikely to enable access to every last worker in a country of our complexity and size.</p>
<p><strong>7. Inadequacies of the foundational legislation:</strong> We would also like to highlight how the foundational flaws of the Code on Social Security, 2020 mar the efficacy and effectiveness of the Draft Rules in being able to provide social security entitlements to platform and gig workers. Firstly, in Chapter 1, Section 2 of the Code, there is no clarification on what to do about platform aggregators repeatedly referring to their “platform workers” as “contractors” or “agents” in their legal contracts/documents. The definitions clause assumes that “agent”, “contractor” and “platform worker” are all separate and unique, unambiguous terms. It
would have been important for the Draft Rules to clarify that if “agent” or “contractor” is being used to refer to a person performing platform work in any legal document or contract by an aggregator, the person should nonetheless be treated as a “platform worker”. Also, the Draft Rules should have specified that all workers associated with any of the nine classes of aggregators mentioned in the Seventh Schedule of the Code on Social Security, 2020 [ride sharing, food and grocery delivery, logistics, e-marketplace, professional services provider, healthcare, travel and hospitality, content and media services, and any other goods and services provider platforms] are to be treated as platform workers. Secondly, there should be clarity on the jurisdiction, i.e. under which ministry and legislative act, will “aggregators” function and operate, especially considering that a range of sectoral legislation in addition to labour laws are implicated in aggregator governance. Thirdly, the Code on Social Security, 2020 could have specified how the agency in charge of collection and management of aggregator contributions was to have been constituted. For example, it could have been conceived as a statutory and autonomous body, along the lines of the Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). But this opportunity has been missed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The following trade unions, civil society organisations and members of academia have endorsed this submission and its proposals:</p>
<p><strong>Trade unions</strong></p>
<p>All India Gig Workers Union</p>
<p>All India IT and ITeS Employees’ Union</p>
<p>All India Port & Dock Workers Federation</p>
<p>All India Railwaymens' Federation</p>
<p>Hind Mazdoor Sabha</p>
<p>Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers</p>
<p>National Federation of Indian Railwaymen</p>
<p>National Union of Seafarers of India</p>
<p><strong>Civil society organisations</strong></p>
<p>Aapti Institute</p>
<p>Gender at Work</p>
<p>GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation LLP</p>
<p>IT for Change</p>
<p>Kamgar va Majur Sangh</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet & Society</p>
<p>Tandem Research</p>
<p>TWN Trust</p>
<p>Paigam Network</p>
<p>Praxis - Institute for Participatory Practices</p>
<p>Partners in Change</p>
<p>Working People’s Charter, India</p>
<p><strong>Members of academia</strong></p>
<p>Divya K., Assistant Professor, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University</p>
<p>Dr. Rahul Sakpal, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences</p>
<p>Vibhuti Patel, Retired Professor of Tata Institute of Social Sciences and SNDT Women's University, Mumbai</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/joint-submission-to-consultation-on-draft-code-on-social-security-central-rules-2020'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/joint-submission-to-consultation-on-draft-code-on-social-security-central-rules-2020</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi and Ambika TandonSubmissionsGig WorkDigital LabourResearchers at Work2020-12-22T09:52:13ZBlog EntryCIS Submission to TRAI Consultation on Free Data
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-trai-consultation-free-data
<b>The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) held a consultation on Free Data, for which CIS sent in the following comments.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) asked for <a href="http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/ConsultationPaper/Document/CP_07_free_data_consultation.pdf">public comments on free data</a>. Below are the comments that CIS submitted to the four questions that it posed.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2 id="question-1">Question 1
<p><em>Is there a need to have TSP agnostic platform to provide free data or suitable reimbursement to users, without violating the principles of Differential Pricing for Data laid down in TRAI Regulation? Please suggest the most suitable model to achieve the objective.</em></p>
</h2>
<h3 id="is-there-a-need-for-free-data">Is There a Need for Free Data?</h3>
<p>No, there is no <em>need</em> for free data, just as there is no <em>need</em> for telephony or Internet. However, making provisions for free data would increase the amount of innovation in the Internet and telecom sector, and there is a good probability that it would lead to faster adoption of the Internet, and thus be beneficial in terms of commerce, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and many other ways.</p>
<p>Thus the question that a telecom regulator should ask is not whether there is a <em>need</em> for TSP agnostic platforms, but whether such platforms are harmful for competition, for consumers, and for innovation. The telecom regulator ought not undertake regulation unless there is evidence to show that harm has been caused or that harm is likely to be caused. In short, TRAI should not follow the precautionary principle, since the telecom and Internet sectors are greatly divergent from environmental protection: the burden of proof for showing that something ought to be prohibited ought to be on those calling for prohibition.</p>
<h3 id="goal-regulating-gatekeeping">Goal: Regulating Gatekeeping</h3>
<p>TRAI wouldn’t need to regulate price discrimination or Net neutrality if ISPs were not “gatekeepers” for last-mile access. “Gatekeeping” occurs when a single entity establishes itself as an exclusive route to reach a large number of people and businesses or, in network terms, nodes. It is not possible for Internet services to reach their end customers without passing through ISPs (generally telecom networks). The situation is very different in the middle-mile and for backhaul. Even though anti-competitive terms may exist in the middle-mile, especially given the opacity of terms in “transit agreements”, a packet is usually able to travel through multiple routes if one route is too expensive (even if that is not the shortest network path, and is thus inefficient in a way). However, this multiplicity of routes is generally not possible in the last mile.<a id="fnref1" class="footnoteRef" href="#fn1"><sup>1</sup></a> This leaves last mile telecom operators (ISPs) in a position to unfairly discriminate between different Internet services or destinations or applications, while harming consumer choice.</p>
<p>However, the aim of regulation by TRAI cannot be to prevent gatekeeping, since that is not possible as long as there are a limited number of ISPs. For instance, even by the very act of charging money for access to the Internet, ISPs are guilty of “gatekeeping” since they are controlling who can and cannot access an Internet service that way. Instead, the aim of regulation by TRAI should be to “regulate gatekeepers to ensure they do not use their gatekeeping power to unjustly discriminate between similarly situated persons, content or traffic”, as we proposed in our submission to TRAI (on OTTs) last year.</p>
<h3 id="models-for-free-data">Models for Free Data</h3>
<p>There are multiple models possible for free data, none of which TRAI should prohibit unless it would enable OTTs to abuse their gatekeeping powers.</p>
<h4 id="government-incentives-for-non-differentiated-free-data">Government Incentives For Non-Differentiated Free Data</h4>
<p>The government may opt to require all ISPs to provide free Internet to all at a minimum QoS in exchange for exemption from paying part of their USO contributions, or the government may pay ISPs for such access using their USO contributions.</p>
<p>TRAI should recommend to DoT that it set up a committee to study the feasibility of this model.</p>
<h4 id="isp-subsidies">ISP subsidies</h4>
<p>ISP subsidies of Internet access only make economic sense for the ISP under the following ‘Goldilocks’ condition is met: the experience with the subsidised service is ‘good enough’ for the consumers to want to continue to use such services, but ‘bad enough’ for a large number of them to want to move to unsubsidised, paid access.</p>
<ol style="list-style-type: decimal;">
<li>Providing free Internet to all at a low speed.
<ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;">
<li>This naturally discriminates against services and applications such as video streaming, but does not technically bar access to them.</li></ol>
</li>
<li>Providing free access to the Internet with other restrictions on quality that aren’t discriminatory with respect to content, services, or applications.</li></ol>
<h4 id="rewards-model">Rewards model</h4>
<p>A TSP-agnostic rewards platform will only come within the scope of TRAI regulation if the platform has some form of agreement with the TSPs, even if it is collectively. If the rewards platform doesn’t have any agreement with any TSP, then TRAI does not have the power to regulate it. However, if the rewards platform has an agreement with any TSP, it is unclear whether it would be allowed under the Differential Data Tariff Regulation, since the clause 3(2) read with paragraph 30 of the Explanatory Memorandum might disallow such an agreement.</p>
<p>Assuming for the sake of argument that platforms with such agreements are not disallowed, such platforms can engage in either post-purchase credits or pre-purchase credits, or both. In other words, it could be a situation where a person has to purchase a data pack, engage in some activity relating to the platform (answer surveys, use particular apps, etc.) and thereupon get credit of some form transferred to one’s SIM, or it could be a situation where even without purchasing a data pack, a consumer can earn credits and thereupon use those credits towards data.</p>
<p>The former kind of rewards platform is not as useful when it comes to encouraging people to use the Internet, since only those who already see worth in using in the Internet (and can afford it) will purchase a data pack in the first place. The second form, on the other hand is quite useful, and could be encouraged. However, this second model is not as easily workable, economically, for fixed line connections, since there is a higher initial investment involved.</p>
<h4 id="recharge-api">Recharge API</h4>
<p>A recharge API could be fashioned in one of two ways: (1) via the operating system on the phone, allowing a TSP or third parties (whether OTTs or other intermediaries) to transfer credit to the SIM card on the phone which have been bought wholesale. Another model could be that of all TSPs providing a recharge API for the use of third parties. Only the second model is likely to result in a “toll-free” experience since in the first model, like in the case of a rewards platform that requires up-front purchase of data packs, there has to be a investment made first before that amount is recouped. This is likely to hamper the utility of such a model.</p>
<p>Further, in the first case, TRAI would probably not have the powers to regulate such transactions, as there would be no need for any involvement by the TSP. If anti-competitive agreements or abuse of dominant position seems to be taking place, it would be up to the Competition Commission of India to investigate.</p>
<p>However, the second model would have to be overseen by TRAI to ensure that the recharge APIs don’t impose additional costs on OTTs, or unduly harm competition and innovation. For instance, there ought to be an open specification for such an API, which all the TSPs should use in order to reduce the costs on OTTs. Further, there should be no exclusivity, and no preferential treatment provided for the TSPs sister concerns or partners.</p>
<h4 id="example-sites">“0.example” sites</h4>
<p>Other forms of free data, for instance by TSPs choosing not to charge for low-bandwidth traffic should be allowed, as long as it is not discriminatory, nor does it impose increased barriers to entry for OTTs. For instance, if a website self-certifies that it is low-bandwidth and optimized for Internet-enabled feature phones and uses 0.example.tld to signal this (just as wap.* were used in for WAP sites and m.* are used for mobile-optimized versions of many sites), then there is no reason why TSPs should be prohibited from not charging for the data consumed by such websites, as long as the TSP does so uniformly without discrimination. In such cases, the TSP is not harming competition, harming consumers, nor abusing its gatekeeping powers.</p>
<h4 id="ott-agnostic-free-data">OTT-agnostic free data</h4>
<p>If a TSP decides not to charge for specific forms of traffic (for example, video, or for locally-peered traffic) regardless of the Internet service from which that traffic emanates, as as long as it does so with the end customer’s consent, then there is no question of the TSP harming competition, harming consumers, nor abusing its gatekeeping powers. There is no reason such schemes should be prohibited by TRAI unless they distort markets and harm innovation.</p>
<h4 id="unified-marketplace">Unified marketplace</h4>
<p>One other way to do what is proposed as the “recharge API” model is to create a highly-regulated market where the gatekeeping powers of the ISP are diminished, and the ISP’s ability to leverage its exclusive access over its customers are curtailed. A comparison may be drawn here to the rules that are often set by standard-setting bodies where patents are involved: given that these patents are essential inputs, access to them must be allowed through fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licences. Access to the Internet and common carriers like telecom networks, being even more important (since alternatives exist to particular standards, but not to the Internet itself), must be placed at an even higher pedestal and thus even stricter regulation to ensure fair competition.</p>
<p>A marketplace of this sort would impose some regulatory burdens on TRAI and place burdens on innovations by the ISPs, but a regulated marketplace harms ISP innovation less than not allowing a market at all.</p>
<p>At a minimum, such a marketplace must ensure non-exclusivity, non-discrimination, and transparency. Thus, at a minimum, a telecom provider cannot discriminate between any OTTs who want similar access to zero-rating. Further, a telecom provider cannot prevent any OTT from zero-rating with any other telecom provider. To ensure that telecom providers are actually following this stipulation, transparency is needed, as a minimum.</p>
<p>Transparency can take one of two forms: transparency to the regulator alone and transparency to the public. Transparency to the regulator alone would enable OTTs and ISPs to keep the terms of their commercial transactions secret from their competitors, but enable the regulator, upon request, to ensure that this doesn’t lead to anti-competitive practices. This model would increase the burden on the regulator, but would be more palatable to OTTs and ISPs, and more comparable to the wholesale data market where the terms of such agreements are strictly-guarded commercial secrets. On the other hand, requiring transparency to the public would reduce the burden on the regulator, despite coming at a cost of secrecy of commercial terms, and is far more preferable.</p>
<p>Beyond transparency, a regulation could take the form of insisting on standard rates and terms for all OTT players, with differential usage tiers if need be, to ensure that access is truly non-discriminatory. This is how the market is structured on the retail side.</p>
<p>Since there are transaction costs in individually approaching each telecom provider for such zero-rating, the market would greatly benefit from a single marketplace where OTTs can come and enter into agreements with multiple telecom providers.</p>
<p>Even in this model, telecom networks will be charging based not only on the fact of the number of customers they have, but on the basis of them having exclusive routing to those customers. Further, even under the standard-rates based single-market model, a particular zero-rated site may be accessible for free from one network, but not across all networks: unlike the situation with a toll-free number in which no such distinction exists.</p>
<p>To resolve this, the regulator may propose that if an OTT wishes to engage in paid zero-rating, it will need to do so across all networks, since if it doesn’t there is risk of providing an unfair advantage to one network over another and increasing the gatekeeper effect rather than decreasing it.</p>
<h2 id="question-2">Question 2</h2>
<p><em>Whether such platforms need to be regulated by the TRAI or market be allowed to develop these platforms?</em></p>
<p>In many cases, TRAI would have no powers over such platforms, so the question of TRAI regulating does not arise. In all other cases, TRAI can allow the market to develop such platforms, and then see if any of them violates the Discriminatory Data Tariffs Regualation. For government-incentivised schemes that are proposed above, TRAI should take proactive measure in getting their feasibility evaluated.</p>
<h2 id="question-3">Question 3</h2>
<p><em>Whether free data or suitable reimbursement to users should be limited to mobile data users only or could it be extended through technical means to subscribers of fixed line broadband or leased line?</em></p>
<p>Spectrum is naturally a scarce resource, though technological advances (as dictated by Cooper’s Law) and more efficient management of spectrum make it less so. However, we have seen that fixed-line broadband has more or less stagnated for the past many years, while mobile access has increased. So the market distortionary power of fixed-line providers is far less than that of mobile providers. However, competition is far less in fixed-line Internet access services, while it is far higher in mobile Internet access. Switching costs in fixed-line Internet access services are also far higher than in mobile services. Given these differences, the regulation with regard to price discrimination might justifiably be different.</p>
<p>All in all, for this particular issue, it is unclear why different rules should apply to mobile users and fixed line users.</p>
<h2 id="question-4">Question 4</h2>
<p><em>Any other issue related to the matter of Consultation.</em></p>
<p>None.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1">
<p>In India’s mobile telecom sector, according to a Nielsen study, an estimated 15% of mobile users are multi-SIM users, meaning the “gatekeeping” effect is significantly reduced in both directions: Internet services can reach them via multiple ISPs, and conversely they can reach Internet services via multiple ISPs. <em>See</em> Nielsen, ‘Telecom Transitions: Tracking the Multi-SIM Phenomena in India’, http://www.nielsen.com/in/en/insights/reports/2015/telecom-transitions-tracking-the-multi-sim-phenomena-in-india.html<a href="#fnref1">↩</a></p>
</li></ol>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-trai-consultation-free-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-trai-consultation-free-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshTelecomHomepageTRAINet NeutralityFeaturedInternet GovernanceSubmissions2016-07-01T16:04:27ZBlog EntryComments to the GIGW
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/comments-to-gigw
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society submitted its comments to the National Informatics Centre on April 30, 2015. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We the undersigned would like to commend the NIC for taking a leadership role in promoting eaccessibility through the notification of the Guidelines for Indian Government websites (GIGW) in 2009. Undoubtedly, web accessibility plays an ultimately crucial role in enabling and enhancing citizen participation and access to information. The development of assistive technologies both hardware and software has increased the potentiality of the constituency of persons with disabilities and elderly to become one of the largest consumer groups on the Internet. We use the word ‘potentiality’ because the current information ecosystem on the Internet, comprising information through text, electronic documents, audio, video and other multimedia presented through Indian websites are inaccessible for persons using screen readers and other technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Despite the passage of 6 years since the GIGW, there has been negligible progress on the front for making Indian government websites conform to the notified standards. An evaluation of accessibility of government websites carried out in 2012<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1] </a>demonstrated that the majority yet remained inaccessible, with very slow improvement in the situation thereafter. Our interaction with government departments and government web developers revealed that there was still a relative lack of awareness of the need to conform to these guidelines coupled with an absolute lack of knowledge on how to implement them. Given this background, we submit our recommendations as below:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Mandatory: Since experience has demonstrated that voluntary compliance has not worked to bring about accessibility in government communication through the Internet, it is necessary that these guidelines be made mandatory with a strict deadline beyond which noncompliance becomes an offence, to ensure that it is taken seriously. This is now partly in place since the notification of the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2] </a>by the DEITy in Oct 2013. The legal mandate around this will only strengthen once the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill comes in force. Hence, the present recommendation.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">WCAG 2.0 level AA compliance: We recommend that WCAG 2.0 level AA be specified as the standard for minimum level of compliance in the guidelines. This is recommended for several reasons.<br />a. These are globally accepted standards which have been well researched<br />b. These have assigned success criteria for each guideline, which is not present in the current draft of guidelines, thus enabling a developer to know whether the criteria have been adequately met.<br />c. The task of review is a constant one which is being undertaken by experts around the world through various study groups and technical committees, which will ensure that updates are timely and keep abreast of new developments. Hence, the burden of review will not be upon us. At present, we also do not have the domain expertise on this subject which is available with W3C and elsewhere globally. Instead, efforts may be focused upon making any additions to the WCAG 2.0 which are required to make them more comprehensive in the Indian context.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Meeting success criteria: For each accessibility checkpoint / guideline, there should be defined success criteria to ensure that the implementation meets acceptable levels. There should be Objective measures in place to have technical validation of all the websites. There needs to be a process defined to validate all websites on WCAG accepted tools to ensure compliance to technical standards. The recommended procedure provided by the W3C for evaluating websites known as the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology 1.0<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3] </a>(WCAG-EM) may also be followed in this regard.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Onus of implementation: The onus of complying with the Guidelines must be placed on the top management in an organisation/ department/ ministry. Someone like a board member or other senior person.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Accessibility audit: There should be an accessibility audit after the development of a website by a 3rd party entity independent of the website developer and website owner.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Accessibility audit agency: There must be a provision to setup an entity which can perform access audit for all government websites. The agency may include government officials from various departments, ministries or autonomous bodies, leading accessibility firms and must include end users.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Content updation: To ensure the accessibility of new content that is added to a website on a regular basis, there should be a defined accessibility process so that an existing system that is accessible is not broken.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Clarity in the specifications: There should be clear guidelines to make it easy to comprehend for all and not just a technical person. At present, some of the guidelines are ambiguous and may not be easily discernible even to an experienced developer or website development agencies who are not domain experts. For example, guideline5 states: ‘Information structure and relationship is preserved in all presentation styles’. This guideline could be clearer if it specified that tabular information should be specified with table tags, labels should be marked with label tags, Headings should be marked with heading tags. Etc. This reiterates the earlier point that adherence to WCAG 2.0 is best since it provides developers with resources such as Understanding WCAG 2.0 and Techniques for WCAG 2.0 documents. Another example is guideline 19- ‘There is adequate contrast between text and background colour’. However, it is unclear as to what is meant by ‘adequate’. WCAG 2.0 on the other hand, specifies the contrast for each level. IT specifies acceptable colour combinations for background, foreground and text which increase accessibility.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Stress on implementation: A lot of attention should be given to implementing the guidelines. The fact that there has been minimal success in adoption of the guidelines makes out a clear case for a stronger awareness strategy and adoption action plan, with a dedicated team or department in place within NIC which can work towards supporting training and retrofitting efforts with different government departments and agencies around the country. This also calls for a two tier team approach, one at the central level, with contact points set up for each state which are responsible for this implementation, with the time limit for enforcement of these guidelines. For this purpose, partnerships may be sought with private players and organisations serving the disabled and accessibility experts.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are available to help this endeavour and are happy to provide support whether in the form of clarifications, feedback or any other manner. Our contact details are given at the end of this submission.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report (by CIS and Hans Foundation): http://cisindia.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-government-websites-in-india</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. Available at http://www.ncert.nic.in/announcements/notices/pdf_files/Nationalpolicyonuniversal.pdf</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>]. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-EEM/</p>
<p>Click to <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/comments-to-gigw.pdf" class="internal-link">download </a>the submission file.</p>
<ol> </ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/comments-to-gigw'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/comments-to-gigw</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaSubmissionsAccessibility2015-05-09T16:00:11ZBlog EntryCIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-draft-national-policy-on-electronics
<b>These were the comments submitted by CIS to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The Department of Information Technology must be commended for taking the initiative to create <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Draft-NationalPolicyonElectronics2011_4102011(2).pdf">this policy</a> which aims to reduce India’s dependence on other countries for crucial electronic hardware requirements, and to increase Indian production to such a capacity as to not only serve India’s increasing demand for electronics, but to fulfil foreign demand as well.</p>
<p>We have mainly focused our comments on the implications of the patent regime on this laudable goal.</p>
<h2 id="technology-transfer">Technology Transfer</h2>
<p>An area that the policy is silent on is technology transfer. In relation to technology, the main bargain embedded in the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO was the increase in the level of protection offered under patent laws of developing countries in exchange for increased transfer of technological know-how from the developed countries. While India has increased patent protection in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement, there has been no commensurate transfer of technology from countries which are currently hubs of electronics know-how.</p>
<p>One important example is China’s policy on transfer of technology along the whole value chain to enable domestic firms to gain technological expertise.</p>
<p>The Association of American Manufacturing notes, “One of the most potent weapons China has used to move up the value chain is forced technology transfer … It is only through the acquisition (rather than internal development) of sophisticated technologies that Chinese companies have been able to rapidly enter and expand in sophisticated industries ….”</p>
<p>This insistence on technology transfer as a national policy has served China well, and their experience should be incorporated into India’s National Policy on Electronics. This is not to say that India should not internally develop our own technological capabilities, but that the Indian government must use the policy space available to it to ensure that acquisition of technological capabilities happens alongside.</p>
<h2 id="outflow-of-foreign-exchange-as-royalties-creating-adverse-balance-of-payments">Outflow of Foreign Exchange as Royalties Creating Adverse Balance of Payments</h2>
<p>The latest data from the World Bank shows that our balance of payments is increasing adversely at an alarming rate, and has now reached over USD 2.38 billion.</p>
<p>Our royalty and licence fee payments have kept on increasing at an astounding rate.</p>
<h3 id="table-indias-royalty-and-licence-fees-payments-current-usd">Table: India’s royalty and licence fees payments (current USD)</h3>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th align="right">1991</th>
<th align="right">2006</th>
<th align="right">2007</th>
<th align="right">2008</th>
<th align="right">2009</th>
<th align="right">2010</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="right">49,565,208</td>
<td align="right">845,949,436</td>
<td align="right">1,159,824,391</td>
<td align="right">1,528,826,913</td>
<td align="right">1,860,283,808</td>
<td align="right">2,437,500,663</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> </p>
<p>Meanwhile India’s income is gaining slowly and erratically, and in 20100 reached USD 59.6 million.</p>
<h3 id="table-indias-royalty-and-licence-fees-receipts-current-usd">Table: India’s royalty and licence fees, receipts (current USD)</h3>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr class="header">
<th align="right">1991</th>
<th align="right">2006</th>
<th align="right">2007</th>
<th align="right">2008</th>
<th align="right">2009</th>
<th align="right">2010</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="right">615,525</td>
<td align="right">13,445,053</td>
<td align="right">30,690,000</td>
<td align="right">27,211,957</td>
<td align="right">38,128,141</td>
<td align="right">59,560,687</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>This bleeds the Indian economy through a very inefficient outflow of capital. Insisting on transfer of technology is an important component in slowing down this trend.</p>
<h2 id="linking-of-value-chain-and-preferential-treatment">Linking of Value Chain and Preferential Treatment</h2>
<p>One important clarification that is needed in the policy (specifically clause IV.1.3) is that “domestically manufactured electronic products” is intended to mean not those products for which the last part of value has been added in India. This way essentially non-Indian products with Indian branding can be seen to be “domestically manufactured electronic products”. The longer the Indian part of the value chain, the more preference it should be given, and holding by Indian companies of essential patent rights (or the availability of greater number of components of the product under royalty-free, FRAND and RAND licences) could be an important criteria. This will also encourage the transfer of technological know-how to Indian firms.</p>
<h2 id="preferential-treatment">Preferential Treatment</h2>
<p>Some may argue that the provision of preferential treatment to domestic manufacturers contravenes the GATT Agreement, however the GATT Agreement itself provides a usable exception in Article 3(8):</p>
<blockquote class="callout">
<p>Article III: National Treatment on Internal Taxation and Regulation</p>
<p>8 (a) The provisions of this Article shall not apply to laws, regulations or requirements governing the procurement by governmental agencies of products purchased for governmental purposes and not with a view to commercial resale or with a view to use in the production of goods for commercial sale.</p>
<p>(b) The provisions of this Article shall not prevent the payment of subsidies exclusively to domestic producers, including payments to domestic producers derived from the proceeds of internal taxes or charges applied consistently with the provisions of this Article and subsidies effected through governmental purchases of domestic products.</p>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>Thus, by crafting any further regulation under this policy to fit within this exception, India would not fall afoul of its obligations under GATT.</p>
<h2 id="cybersecurity-and-source-code">Cybersecurity and Source Code</h2>
<p>An important aspect of the cybersecurity that is discussed in clause IV.5 is the ability to validate the lack of malicious code in the electronics used in strategically important infrastructure. For this, manufacturers must be required to provide the source code as part of government tenders in strategically important infrastructure.</p>
<h2 id="distinction-between-innovation-and-intellectual-property">Distinction between Innovation and Intellectual Property</h2>
<p>The Electronic Development Fund must seek to promote innovation, research and development, and commercialization of products, and must be used to strategically acquire patents. Promotion of patents is not an end in itself, unlike promotion of innovation and ensuring that research and development reaches markets through commercialization. Patents are only a means to an end, and may sometimes be strategically useful, and often stand in way of gaining optimal use of technology by markets due to their monopolistic nature. Thus, it is recommended that “promotion of IP” be dropped from this clause, and instead “promotion of strategic acquirement and use of patents” be substituted in its place.</p>
<h2 id="national-electronics-mission">National Electronics Mission</h2>
<p>The National Electronics Mission should not only have industry participation but also participation from academia and civil society.</p>
<h2 id="funding">Funding</h2>
<p>The issue of funding for the initiatives outlined in this policy must be addressed as well.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-draft-national-policy-on-electronics'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-draft-national-policy-on-electronics</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshGovernment FeedbackIntellectual Property RightsInternet Governancee-GovernanceSubmissionsPatents2011-11-01T00:05:32ZBlog EntryComments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/draft-ndsap-comments
<b>A draft of the 'National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy', which some hope will be the open data policy of India, was made available for public comments in early May. This is what the Centre for Internet and Society submitted.</b>
<p>These are the comments that we at the Centre for Internet and Society submitted to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure on the draft <a class="external-link" href="http://dst.gov.in/NDSAP.pdf">National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy</a>.</p>
<h2>Comments on the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy by the Centre for Internet and Society</h2>
<p>We would like to begin by noting our appreciation for the forward-thinking nature of the government that is displayed by its pursuit of a policy on sharing of governmental data and enabling its use by citizens. We believe such a policy is a necessity in all administratively and technologically mature democracies. In particular, we applaud the efforts to make this applicable through a negative list of data that shall not be shared rather than a positive list of data that shall be shared, hence making sharing the default position. However, we believe that there are many ways in which this policy can be made even better than it already is.</p>
<h2>1. Name</h2>
<p>We believe that nomenclature of the policy must accurately reflect both the content of the policy as well as prevailing usage of terms. Given that 'accessibility' is generally used to mean accessibility for persons with disabilities, it is advisable to change the name of the policy.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. We would recommend calling this the "National Open Data Policy" to reflect the nomenclature already established for similar policies in other nations like the UK. In the alternative, it could be called a "National Public Sector Information Reuse Policy". If neither of those are acceptable, then it could be re-titled the "National Data Sharing and Access Policy".</p>
<h2>2. Scope and Enforceability</h2>
<p>It is unclear from the policy what all departments it covers, and whether it is enforceable.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. This policy should cover the same scope as the Right to Information (RTI) Act: all 'public authorities' as defined under the RTI Act should be covered by this policy.</p>
<p>B. Its enforceability should be made clear by including provisions on consequences of non-compliance.</p>
<h2>3. Categorization</h2>
<p>The rationale for the three-fold categorization is unclear. In particular, it is unclear why the category of 'registered access' exists, and on what basis the categorization into 'open access' and 'registered access' is to be done. If the purpose of registration is to track usage, there are many better ways of doing so without requiring registration.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. Having three categories of:</p>
<ul><li>Open data</li><li>Partially restricted data</li><li>Restricted data</li></ul>
<p>B. Data that is classified as non-shareable (as per a reading of s.8 and s.9 of RTI Act as informed by the decisions of the Central Information Commission) should be classified as ‘restricted’.</p>
<p>C. The rationale for classifying data as 'open' or 'partially restricted' should be how the data collection body is funded. If it depends primarily on public funds, then the data it outputs should necessarily be made fully open. If it is funded primarily through private fees, then the data may be classified as 'partially restricted'. 'Partially restricted' data may be restricted for non-commercial usage, with registration and/or a licence being required for commercial usage.</p>
<h2>4. Licence</h2>
<p>No licence has been prescribed in the policy for the data. Despite India not allowing for database rights, it still allows for copyright over original literary works, which includes original databases. All governmental works are copyrighted by default in India, just as they are in the UK. To ensure that this policy goes beyond merely providing access to data to ensure that people are able to use that data, it must provide for a conducive copyright licence.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. The licence that has been created by the UK government (another country in which all governmental works are copyrighted by default) may be referred to: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/</p>
<p>B. However, the UK needed to draft its own licence because the concept of database rights are recognized in the EU, which is not an issue here in India. Thus, it would be preferable to use the Open Data Commons - Attribution licence:</p>
<p>http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/</p>
<p>The UK licence is compatible with both the above-mentioned licence as well as with the Creative Commons - Attribution licence, and includes many aspects that are common with Indian law, e.g., bits on usage of governmental emblems, etc.</p>
<h2>5. Integrity of the data</h2>
<p>Currently, there is no way of ensuring that the data that is put out by the data provider is indeed the data that has been downloaded by a citizen.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>It is imperative to require data providers to provide integrity checks (via an MD5 hash of the data files, for instance) to ensure that technological corruption of the data can be detected.</p>
<h2>6. Authenticity of the data</h2>
<p>Currently, there is no way of ensuring that the data that is put out by the data provider indeed comes from the data provider.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>It is preferable to require data providers to authenticate the data by using a digital signature.</p>
<h2>7. Archival and versioning</h2>
<p>The policy is silent on how long data must be made available.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>There must be a system of archival that is prescribed to enable citizens to access older data. Further, a versioning and nomenclature system is required alongside the metadata to ensure that citizens know the period that the data pertains to, and have access to the latest data by default.</p>
<h2>8. Open standards</h2>
<p>While the document does mention standards-compliance, it is preferable to require open standards to the greatest extent possible, and require that the data that is put out be compliant with the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (IFEG) that the government is currently in the process of drafting and finalizing.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. The policy should reference the National Open Standards Policy that was finalised by the Department of Information Technology in November 2010, as well as to the IFEG.</p>
<p>B. The data should be made available, insofar as possible, in structured documents with semantic markup, which allows for intelligent querying of the content of the document itself. Before settling upon a usage-specific semantic markup schema, well-established XML schemas should be examined for their suitability and used wherever appropriate. It must be ensured that the metadata are also in a standardized and documented format.</p>
<h2>9. Citizen interaction</h2>
<p>One of the most notable failings of other governments' data stores has been the fact that they don't have adequate interaction with the citizen projects that emerge from that data. For instance, it is sometimes seen that citizens may point out flaws in the data put out by the government. At other times, citizens may create very useful and interesting projects on the basis of the data made public by the government.</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. The government's primary datastore (data.gov.in) should catalogue such citizen projects, including open and documented APIs that the have been made available for easy access to that data.</p>
<p>B. Additionally the primary datastore should act as a conduit for citizen's comments and corrections to the data provider. Data providers should be required to take efforts to keep the data up-to-date.</p>
<p>C. Multiple forms of access should preferably be provided to data, to allow non-technical users interactive use of the data through the Web.</p>
<h2>10. Principles, including 'Protection of Intellectual Property'</h2>
<p>It is unclear why ‘protection of intellectual property’ is one of the guiding principles of this policy. Only those ideals which are promoted by this policy should be designated as ‘principles’. This policy, insofar as we can see, has no relation whatsoever with protection of intellectual property. The government is not seeking to enforce copyright over the data through this policy. Indeed, it is seeking to encourage the use of public data. Indeed, the RTI Act makes it clear in s.9 that government copyright shall not act as a barrier to access to information.</p>
<p>Given that, it makes no sense to include ‘protection of intellectual property’ amongst the principles guiding this policy. Further, there are some other principles that may be removed without affecting the purpose or aim of this document: ‘legal conformity’ (this is a given since a policy wouldn’t wish to violate laws); ‘formal responsibility’ (‘accountability’ encapsulates this); ‘professionalism’ (‘accountability’ encapsulates this); ‘security’ (this policy isn’t about promoting security, though it needs to take into account security concerns).</p>
<h3>Recommendation:</h3>
<p>A. Remove ‘protection of intellectual property’, ‘legal conformity’, ‘formal responsibility’, ‘professionalism’, and ‘security’ from the list of principles in para 1.2.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/draft-ndsap-comments'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/draft-ndsap-comments</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsOpen DataSubmissionsOpenness2011-08-24T06:32:55ZBlog EntryComments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ict-in-school-education
<b>The Department of School Education & Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources Development invited comments on its latest draft of the National Policy on ICT in School Education. CIS' comments are listed in this post.</b>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The Department of School
Education & Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources
Development has invited comments on its latest draft of the National
Policy on ICT in School Education. We, at the Centre for Internet and
Society (CIS) have the following comments on the latest draft:</p>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Digital content and
resources already available in the public domain must be leveraged
by the Government and this intention must be specifically expressed
in the policy.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The provision in the
copyright law providing for fair use of copyrighted material must be
completely taken advantage of in developing, sharing, disseminating
and exchanging digital content and resources. Material already part
of the public domain should be included in the pool of resources to
be utilised by the Government under the policy.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">It is not enough for
the State to provide “open and free access” to ICT and
ICT-enabled tools and resources to all students. It is important
that the Government adopts the concept of global Open Educational
Resources (OER) and license Indian content appropriately. OER refers
to digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators,
students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning
and research.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="#sdfootnote1sym"><sup>1</sup></a>
OER materials are being increasingly integrated into open and
distance education. The policy should mandate the State to license
all digital content under OER.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">It is commedable
that the policy mandates use of Open Standards for the State to
maintain and share digitsed content. However, we recommend that the
policy uses the same definition for “Open Standards” as that
incorporated in the Government's Open Standards policy so that the
same phrase is defined uniformly across all national policies.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The policy should
not foreclose the option of including freeware or resources obtained
gratis in the educational material for students. It should allow the
State to make efforts to obtain freely available educational
material and incoporate it as part of the educational material.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Course developed by
the State should be licensed under a Creative Commons License,
preferably an attribution-only<a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote2anc" href="#sdfootnote2sym"><sup>2</sup></a>
or sharealike<a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote3anc" href="#sdfootnote3sym"><sup>3</sup></a>
CC license 3.0. Similarly, software used as part of educational
resource must be licensed under a GPL or a BSD license.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Teachers and
students should be sensitised towards the fair use exception in the
Indian copyright law so that maximum utilisation of the provision
is facilitated.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">School libraries
should be encouraged to exercise their right to the fair use
exception applicable to libraries. Even though the law on fair use
in respect of public libraries seems restricted in terms of the
number of copies of a book that can be made (and thus, leading to
staggered borrowing) and making it a prerequisite for the book to be
unavailable for sale in India. However, there is significant room
for interpretation of these ambiguous provisions and take advantage
of the fair use exception to provide greater access to educational
materials available in school libraries. Other statutes such as the
Public Libraries Act govern the operations of State libraries and
this, in addition to the fair use provision, would allow for greater
flexibility in operation for the libraries. The State should
endeavour to make the most of these provisions and interpret them to
enable greater access to learning material for the students.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The policy should
require libraries to follow an anonymisation policy which ensures
that the details of books borrowed by the students remain private
and the students' privacy is adequately safeguarded in this regard.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">As far as ICT for
children for special needs is concerned, it is recommended that the
State use the DAISY format to make documents accessible and comply
with WCAG guidelines to ensure accesssibility of web content.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Indian law on fair
use exception applicable for distance education is still unclear.
Therefore, we recommend that this policy be used test the
feasibility of fair use in case of distance education in India.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The results and
findings from the monitoring, evaluation and research should be
declared Open Government Data (OGD) and shared or disseminated
accordingly. A piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse
and redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement of
attribute and share-alike.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote4anc" href="#sdfootnote4sym"><sup>4</sup></a>
Open data commissioned or produced by the government or government
controlled entities constitutes OGD.<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote5anc" href="#sdfootnote5sym">5</a></sup></p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">As far as use of
software for education is concerned, students need to read code
before they write code, just as in the case of books. Therefore,
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has to be made available so
that the source code is accessible for the students to read and
improve upon. De facto proprietary software could be made available
where budget exists so that students can learn in a
technology-neutral fashion and are exposed to multiple
implementations of an idea. However, proprietary software
availability will be inapplicable for domains which operate
exclusively on free software.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The present draft
recommends educating students and teachers on use of firewalls and
other security measures to be used to block “inappropriate
websites”. We feel that there is no requirement for a centralised
policy on blocking websites. We recommend community-based blocking
wherein each school can decide the criteria on which they want to
block a website.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">It is very critical
to ensure that there is no surveillance done on children so that
there is a free environment for children to use the digitised
content and the internet for their educational purposes.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">We recommend that
the State is mandated to have all Indian language content be encoded
using Unicode standards.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">We have gone through
the comments made on the draft version by IT for Change and Free
Software Foundation (FSF) and we are broadly in agreement with the
points made by them. We would like to reiterate that use of FOSS
must be made mandatory.</p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
</li></ul>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote1sym" href="#sdfootnote1anc">1</a> OECD
(2007), <em>Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open
Educational Resources</em>, OECD Publishing.<br />doi:
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264032125-en" target="_blank">10.1787/9789264032125-en</a></p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote2sym" href="#sdfootnote2anc">2</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode</a></p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote3sym" href="#sdfootnote3anc">3</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode</a></p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote4sym" href="#sdfootnote4anc">4</a> <a href="http://www.opendefinition.org/">http://www.opendefinition.org/</a></p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote5sym" href="#sdfootnote5anc">5</a> <a href="http://www.opendefinition.org/government/">http://www.opendefinition.org/government/</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ict-in-school-education'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ict-in-school-education</a>
</p>
No publisherkrithikaOpennessSubmissions2011-08-30T14:23:03ZBlog EntryComments to the Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty (March 2011)
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011
<b>As a follow up to a stakeholder meeting called by the MHRD on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, CIS provided written comments on the April 2007 Non-Paper of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, emphasising the need for a signal-based approach to be taken on the Broadcast Treaty, and making it clear that India should continue to oppose the creation of new rights for webcasters.</b>
<p>On February 22, 2011, the Ministry of Human Resource Development held a meeting to decide on the Indian position on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. The Ministry asked the participants at the meeting to send in written submissions on four matters. We sent in submissions on those four issues, as well as a few others.</p>
<h2>Comments on the non-paper for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty by the Centre for Internet and Society</h2>
<p>On February 23, 2011, the Ministry of HRD had asked for comments on four matters:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Article 3 of the Non-paper which was circulated earlier</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Term of protection for signal</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Nature of limitations and exceptions</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Protection of signal and retransmission</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>We have made submissions on those and a few other matters as well. Unless noted otherwise, all comments made in this note pertain to the final non-paper (April 2007) and not the draft non-paper (March 2007).</p>
<h2>Article 3</h2>
<p>Article 3 of the draft non-paper that was circulated (March 2007) for comments from country delegates stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>3. Scope of Application</p>
<p>The provisions of this Treaty shall not provide any protection in respect of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(i) mere retransmissions;</p>
<p>(ii) any transmissions where the time of the transmission and the place of its reception may be individually chosen by members of the public (on-demand transmissions); or</p>
<p>(iii) any transmissions over computer networks (transmissions using the Internet</p>
<p>Protocol, “webcasting”, or “netcasting”).</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>A number of people present at the recent MHRD-organized meeting noted that “mere retransmissions” is a confusing term. In the revised non-paper (April 2007), it has been clarified that protection is not granted to third parties for merely retransmitting another’s signal (Art. 3(4)(i)).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>3. Specific Scope and Object of Protection</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(4) The provisions of this Treaty shall not provide any protection</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(i) to retransmitting third parties in respect of their mere retransmissions by any means of broadcasts by broadcasting organizations;</p>
<p>(ii) to any person for transmissions where the time of the transmission and the place of its reception may be individually chosen by members of the public (on-demand transmissions); or</p>
<p>(iii) to any person for transmissions over computer networks</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition, Art. 3(4)(iii) is currently ambiguous since it is not clear whether “retransmissions” are subsumed under the word transmission. By allowing for separate rights for retransmission over computer networks, the Treaty allows for the creation of two classes: traditional broadcasters who will have rights over retransmissions over computer networks, and all other persons who will have no rights over transmissions. Thus, if “retransmission” is not subsumed under the word “transmission”, it would be advisable to alter that clause to read “<i>to any person for transmissions or retransmissions over computer networks</i>”.</p>
<p>Lastly, Art. 3(4) should additional prevent protection for persons broadcasting materials for which they have not acquired copyright, or for broadcasting materials in the public domain.</p>
<h2>Term of Protection of Signals</h2>
<p>No term of protection should be provided. As was noted by the US government in its response to the draft non-paper, it is questionable “whether a 20-year term of protection is consistent with a signal-based approach”. The Brazilian delegation also states: “Article 13 should be deleted. A twenty-year term of protection is unnecessary. The agreed “signal-based” approach to the Treaty implies that the objected of protection is the signal, and therefore duration of protection must be linked with the ephemeral life of the signal itself.” Thus, a term is only needed if we stray away from a signal-based approach. As we do not wish to do so, there should be no term of protection.</p>
<h2>Limitations and Exceptions</h2>
<p>The limitations and exceptions (L&E) currently provided for allow for mirroring of copyright L&E limited by a Berne-like three-step test.</p>
<p>However, reasons for providing protection over broadcasting are not the same as those for copyright. For instance, a country may wish to make exceptions to signal protection for cases such as broadcast of a national sport, as India has done with the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act.</p>
<p>This might well afoul of the three-step test proposed in Article 10(2). Furthermore, a country may wish to limit the application of broadcasters rights for national broadcasters (whose programming is paid for by taxpayers, and thus should be available to them), but may not be able to do so under the provisions of Article 10(2). Thus, Article 10(2) should be deleted, and Article 10(1) should be expanded to include issues of national interest and for free-to-air broadcast signals.</p>
<h2>Protection of Signal and Retransmission</h2>
<p>It should be a sine qua non condition of India’s that that this be a purely signal-based treaty with no fixation or post-fixation rights. Thus, it should restrict itself to protection of signals, and simultaneous retransmission.</p>
<p>As a result, no separate right to prevent unauthorized “decryption” should be granted, since signal-theft is already a crime. For instance, this provision would also cover decrypting an unauthorized retransmission without authorization from the retransmitter. This provides the unauthorized retransmitter rights, even though s/he has no right to retransmit. This leads to an absurd situation.</p>
<p>As stated by the Brazilian government:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[Article 10 of the draft non-paper and Article 9 of the non-paper] is inconsistent with a “signal-based approach”. It creates unwarranted obstacles to technological development, to access to legitimate uses, flexibilities and exceptions and to access to the public domain. It does not focus on securing effective protection against an illicit act, but rather creates new exclusive rights so that they cover areas unrelated with the objective of the treaty, such as control by holder of industrial production of goods, the development and use of encryption technologies, and private uses. The prohibition of mere decryption of encrypted signals, without there having been unauthorized broadcasting activity, is abusive.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Other comments</h2>
<h3>Article 7</h3>
<p>Article 7 of the non-paper provides broadcasters rights post-fixation (“Broadcasting organizations shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing … the deferred transmission by any means to the public of their fixed broadcasts. ”). This is contrary to a signal-based approach. A signal-based approach would necessarily mean that it is only signal theft (which happens only via unauthorized simultaneous retransmission) that should be protected. Deferred transmission should implicate the rights of the owner of copyright, but not of the broadcasting organization.</p>
<h3>Article 4</h3>
<p>As suggested by the Brazilian government, Article 4(1) which proposes a non-prejudice clause should be amended to add the words “and access to the public domain” at its end. This is consistent with the WIPO Development Agenda.</p>
<h3>Article 5</h3>
<p>India should re-iterate its suggestion to add the following to the definition of “broadcast” under Art. 5(a): “‘broadcast’ shall not be understood as including transmission of such a set of signals over computer networks. ”</p>
<p>Further, the phrase “general public ” should be retained in Art.5 (as was present in the draft non-paper), and should not be made into “public”. The danger is that a limited public (say family members) could possibly be covered by the term “public”, while they will be excluded from “general public”, which in any case is the target audience of all broadcast.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeIntellectual Property RightsBroadcastingSubmissionsTechnological Protection Measures2012-12-14T10:29:20ZBlog EntryNote on the Authorities under the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (9th February 2011)
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities
<b>The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) released a revised draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act which is up for comments on the MSJE website. The Centre for Law and Policy Research, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society jointly submitted a note on the section on statutory authorities.
</b>
<p>This Note is on the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (Hereinafter "The PWD Act, 2011") which was released on 9th February, 2011[<a href="#1">1</a>] to specifically review the authorities established under the PWD Act, 2011, the powers and functions assigned to the authorities and the effect of the establishment of these authorities. </p>
<ol><li><strong>The Disability Rights Authority </strong><br /><em>Vague provisions</em><br /><span class="Apple-style-span">
<p> The main functions of the DRA are to formulate rules, regulations, guidelines, schemes and other activities. Under section 29 (I), the DRA also has the power to monitor enforcment of the Act and to protect the rights of persons with disabilities and to suo moto address violations of rights of perosns with disabilities. In this regard, the provisions of the Act are vague. There are no provisions to indicate what penalties the DRA may impose in the event of any violation of the provisions of the PWD Act 2011. Wide powers are given to the DRA with regard to promotion, protection, monitoring and even enforcement of rights under the Act. However it is not clear as to how exactly these functions, especially the monitoring and enforcement of rights should be performed. </p>
<p><em>Powers of review and advice</em></p>
<p>Under Section 29J, the DRA has the power to review and advise the government to take measures with regard to laws that discriminate against persons with disability. This power will affect the functioning of the authorities under the other disability legislations such as the Mental Health Act,1987 and the National Trusts Act, 1999 as these legislations will be considered to be discriminatory on the issue of legal capacity. Therefore these other disability legislations need to be amended before the DRA can act on its review and advice powers. </p>
<p>Further, in many of the provisions of the Act, there is a mention of a 'designated authority' to perform certain functions without specifying what the designated authority is or who designates the authority. It is unclear as to whether the 'designated authority' refers to a new authority to be established under the Act or it refers to the DRA.</p>
</span></li><li><strong>The Disability Courts</strong><br /><span class="Apple-style-span">
<p><em>Multiplicity of Fora for grievance redressal</em></p>
<p>There is no clarity on the intended structure of the courts at different levels. The word “Court” is not defined anywhere under the Act, which is a great lacuna. There are several different for a provided for grievance redressal under the Act – the DRA, the Court of the National Disability Commissioner, the State Disability Courts and the Grievance Redressal Officer in each establishment. It is not clear as to whether these authorities under the Act have concurrent power or whether a person has to approach one authority and seek remedy before going to another. Over and above these courts and fora, the regular civil courts, family courts, High Courts would also have jurisdiction. It is not clear as to whether the jurisdiction of all other courts is ousted by the Act in setting up the special State Disability Courts and the Court of the National Disability Commissioner.</p>
<p>Section 6(7) and (8) empower “a court or the disability court” to make suitable orders on finding the occurrence of discrimination. These Sections merely mention a ‘court’ without specifying which court is referred to as there is no definition of ‘court’ under the Act. There is also no provision under the Act which allows a person to approach any other ordinary court for reliefs under the Act. Therefore it is not clear as to what this Section refers to when it uses the word ‘court’.</p>
</span></li><li><strong>The Court of the National Disability Commissioner</strong><br /><span class="Apple-style-span">
<p>Under Section 29S (2), the Act allows a person to directly approach the National Disability Commissioner only if the person is aggrieved of “discrimination” under the Act and not for other cases of violation. On the other hand, under section 29S (1) (c ) the Court of the National Disability Commissioner has the power to suo moto address all infringment of rights. There is a great contradiction therefore in the jurisdiction of the Court of the National Disability Commissioner. </p>
<p>Further, although there is an entire part of the Act which is dedicated to the imposition of penalties and sanctions, there are no provisions for the National Disability Commissioner to impose any penalties and sanctions. </p>
<p>The National Disability Commissioner acts as the appellate authority on the orders of the DRA. But there is no provision to appeal from the orders of the State Disability Court. </p>
</span></li><li><strong>The State Disability Courts</strong></li></ol>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span></p>
<ul><li>The State Disability Courts have a wider jurisdiction that the National Disability Commissioner in that a person can approach the State Disability Courts complaining of violation of any rights under the Act. </li><li>Even in case of the State Disability Court there is no specific provision that allows the court to impose penalties and sanctions detailed under the Act. </li></ul>
<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
<p>The PWD Act, 2011 has made some changes from its earlier draft in December 2010. With regard to the authorities established under the Act, there are many inconsistencies which need to be resolved before the Act can come into force. The powers and the functions of all the authorities need to be clearly demarcated. Further, the empowering provisions should be linked to the provisions which prescribe the procedure through which the powers can be exercised. Provisions imposing penalties and sanctions should be linked to the authorities which have the power to impose the same. There are several authorities which all have power to look into violations of the Act, which can confuse a person seeking remedies under the Act. Unless these issues are addressed, the PWD, Act 2011 would cause major practical problems at the stage of implementing the rights recognised under the Act.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1">[1]See Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011, available at http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/workdraftdd.pdf (Last visited on 21-02-2011)</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSubmissionsAccessibility2011-08-24T05:42:13ZBlog EntryCIS Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase I)
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-ifeg-phase-1
<b>In November 2010, the Central Government released the Draft 0.6 of the Technical Standards for the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase I), requesting comments by January 27, 2011. Here are the comments that CIS submitted.</b>
<h3>General Review Comments</h3>
<ul>
<li>The present document is an excellent step in the right direction, following very ably the policy guidelines laid down in the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance.</li>
<li>The Expert Committee and other contributors have made excellent choices as to the 19 standards that have been laid down in the IFEG. It is praiseworthy that of these 18 are designated as mandatory, and only two are designated as interim standards. Furthermore, the system has been very transparent with the selection of standards, providing concise descriptions for each.</li>
<li>It is also important to note that while accessibility has been mentioned while talking of HTML, accessibility standards should preferably also be specifically mentioned in the presentation and archival domain. </li>
<li>However, many other governmental interoperability frameworks are going beyond merely listing technical standards. Some governments, such as Germany and the EU, go beyond technical interoperability, and also have documents dealing with organizational, informational, and legal interoperability. These are equally important components of an interoperability framework. Other governments also also lay down best practice guides, and other aids to implementation, sometimes even including application recommendations. Further, there are many which lay out standards for the the semantic layer, business services layer, etc. </li>
<li>We at the Centre for Internet and Society are currently advising the government of Iraq on development of their e-Governance Interoperability Framework, and would be glad to extend any support that the Department of IT may require of us, including comments on all further phases. </li>
</ul>
<h3>Specific Section-wise Review Comments</h3>
<div>Section 5.2.7 - In the “additional remarks” row, it is stated that “If Adobe Systems Incorporated’s intent to make it royalty free is achieved then no further reviews will be necessary.”</div>
<div></div>
<div>This should be changed to indicate that (a) there might be entities other than Adobe that hold necessary patents over PDF v1.7, and (b) that a desirable feature—of there being multiple implementations of the standard—might not be fulfilled by PDF v1.7.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Adobe has in fact published a <a class="external-link" href="http://www.adobe.com/pdf/pdfs/ISO32000-1PublicPatentLicense.pdf">public patent licence</a> that covers PDF v1.7 (ISO 32000-1:2008), and makes all of Adobe’s essential claims over PDF v1.7 available royalty-free.</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-ifeg-phase-1'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-ifeg-phase-1</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsOpennessSubmissions2013-05-22T10:48:52ZBlog EntryFeedback to the NIA Bill
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-feedback-to-nia-bill
<b>Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok introduce the formal submission of CIS to the proposed National Identification Authority of India (NIA) Bill, 2010, which would give every resident a unique identity. The submissions contain the detailed comments on the draft bill and the high level summary of concerns with the NIA Bill submitted to the UIDAI on 13 July, 2010.</b>
<p>The UID draft bill is a proposed legislation that authorizes the creation of a centralized database of unique identification numbers that will be issued to every resident of India. The purpose of such a database is characterized as ensuring that every resident is provided services and benefits. The UID project was first set up and introduced to the public in February 2009 by the planning committee. In June 2010, a draft bill was proposed which attracted public debates and opinions for over two weeks. Currently the bill is being considered by Parliament in the winter session (July-August 2010). If the Parliament of India approves the bill, it may be enacted during Winter 2010.</p>
<p>CIS has closely followed the UID project and reviewed the bill right from the time when it was first issued. and has worked to initiate and contribute to a public debate including attending of workshops in Delhi on 6 May, 2010 and in Bangalore on 16 May, 2010.</p>
<p>We respect the fact that civil society has many voices. That said, in our criticisms, suggestions, and analysis of the UID draft bill, we are asking for a simple, well-defined document, the language and structure of which expressly precludes abuse of a centralized identification database. The document should provide solely for its stated purpose of enabling the provision of benefits to the poor. Along with this mandate we believe the document should give clear rights of choice, control, and privacy to the <em>Aadhaar</em> number holder. Below is a summary of our general comments with citations to specific sections of the draft bill. A <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/letter-to-uid-authority" class="internal-link" title="Feedback on the NIA Bill 2010">detailed</a> section by section critique is attached along with our <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/high-level-summary" class="internal-link" title="High Level Summary">high level summary</a> of concerns. The compilation and synthesis of detailed critiques was done by Malavika Jayaram.</p>
<h2>Summary of High Concerns </h2>
<h3>Clarity of Definition and Purpose</h3>
<p>Most importantly we find that in order to adhere to the stated purpose of the bill there is a need to limit and better define language in the relevant sections of the bill. This includes the powers and purpose of the Authority and the overarching scheme of the bill. We are concerned that the over-breadth and generality of the language will open up the opportunity for more information to be collected than originally stated. Further, definition will act to prevent uncontrolled or unwanted change in the project’s scope, and will clearly limit the usage of the <em>Aadhaar</em> numbers to the facilitation of the delivery of social welfare programs.<br /><br />For the bill to be in line with its original purpose of reaching out to the poor, we also believe the issue of fees must be addressed. We find that there is an inadequate definition in the bill of what fees shall be applied for authentication of <em>Aadhaar</em> numbers. Also we find that it is incompatible with the bill’s stated purpose to require an individual to pay to be authenticated. The bill should provide that no charges will be levied for authentication by registrars and other service providers for certain categories of <em>Aadhaar</em> number holders (BPL, disabled, etc.), and that charges will be limited/capped in other cases. This will bring the bill in line with the statement in Chapter II 3 (1) “Every resident shall be entitled to obtain an <em>Aadhaar</em> number on providing his demographic information and biometric information to the Authority in such a manner as may be specified by regulations” and Chapter 3 (10 ) “The Authority shall take special measures to issue <em>Aadhaar</em> numbers to women, children, senior citizens, persons with disability, migrant unskilled and unorganized workers, nomadic tribes or such other persons who do not have any permanent dwelling house and such other categories of individuals as may be specified by regulations. If a fee must be permitted, a cap/safeguard should be put in place to ensure that the fee does not become a mechanism of abuse.</p>
<h3>Protection of the Citizen</h3>
<p>The bill should ensure the protection of citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom of choice. To do this it is important that the bill is voluntary, allows for the protection of anonymity, and is clear on how data will be collected, stored and deleted. Measures should be taken towards ensuring that the <em>Aadhaar</em> number is truly voluntary. Accordingly, a prohibition against the denial of goods, services, entitlements and benefits (private or public) for lack of a UID number – provided that an individual furnishes equivalent ID is necessary. The bill should also spell out the situations in which anonymity will be preserved and/or an <em>Aadhaar</em> number should not be requested such as a person’s sexuality/sexual orientation and marital status/history. Furthermore, the bill should require the Authority, registrars, enrolling agencies and service providers to delete/anonymize/obfuscate transaction data according to defined principles after appropriate periods of time in order to protect the privacy of citizens.</p>
<h3>Motivations of the UID Bill</h3>
<p>Since the submission of the high level summary, we note that a list of 221 agencies empanelled by the UIDAI has been uploaded onto the website (by a memo dated 15 July, 2010). A swift reading reveals that most of the agencies who are going to help enroll people into the UIDAI system are not NGOs, CSOs or other welfare oriented not-for-profit entities; rather, they are largely IT companies and commercial enterprises. This begs the question as to whether the UID scheme/<em>Aadhaar</em> is truly geared towards delivery of benefits and inclusivity of the poor and marginalized. Already concerns have been voiced that the “ecosystem” of registrars and enrolling agencies contemplated by the scheme, to the extent that it envisages a public-private partnership, could firstly, be “hijacked” or “captured” by commercial motives and result in sharing of data, security breaches, compromised identities, loss of privacy, data mining and customer profiling, and secondly, end up neglecting the very sections of society that the scheme allegedly most wants to help. The list of empanelled companies makes this even more likely and imminent a concern. Without casting aspersions on any of those entities, we would like to highlight that this sort of delegated structure raises several concerns.</p>
<p>Additionally, we find the speed and efficiency with which the UIDAI juggernaut is signing MoUs with states, banks and government agencies on the one hand, and issuing tenders, RFPs, RFQs and otherwise seeking proposals and awarding contracts to private entities – in the absence of any Parliament-sanctioned law (the bill is still a draft, and yet to even be placed before the Parliament) to be alarming. Along with news of the increasing costs of the project and doubts about how foolproof the technology will be, it is staggering to imagine that something that raises so many concerns is being pushed through without a more serious debate. The lack of formal procedures and open debates makes one wonder how democratic the actual process is.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>To conclude, CIS believes that the UID bill threatens the rights of citizens in India, and appeals to the citizen to think critically of its implications and consequences.</p>
<p>1. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/letter-to-uid-authority" class="internal-link" title="Feedback on the NIA Bill 2010">Detailed Summary pdf (159kb)</a></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/high-level-summary" class="internal-link" title="High Level Summary">2. High Level Summary (77kb)<br /></a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-feedback-to-nia-bill'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-feedback-to-nia-bill</a>
</p>
No publisherelonnaiSubmissionsInternet Governance2012-03-21T10:14:27ZBlog EntryAnalysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis
<b>CIS analyses the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, from a public interest perspective to sift the good from the bad, and importantly to point out what crucial amendments should be considered but have not been so far.</b>
<p>
The full submission that CIS and 21 other civil society organizations made to the Rajya Sabha Standing Committee on HRD (which is studying the Bill) is <a title="Copyright Bill Analysis" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/upload/copyright-bill-submission">available here</a>. Given below is the summary of our submissions:</p>
<h2 class="western">Existing Copyright Act</h2>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The Indian Copyright
Act, 1957 has been designed from the perspective of a developing
country. It has always attempted a balance between various kinds of
interests. It has always sought to ensure that rights of authors of
creative works is carefully promoted alongside the public interest
served by wide availability and usability of that material. For
instance, our Copyright Act has provisions for: </p>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">compulsory and
statutory licensing: recognizing its importance in making works
available, especially making them available at an affordable rate.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">cover versions:
recognizing that more players lead to a more vibrant music industry.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">widely-worded
right of fair dealing for private use: recognizing that individual
use and large-scale commercial misuse are different.</p>
</li></ul>
<p align="JUSTIFY">These provisions of
our Act <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/watchlist/report/india">have been lauded</a>,<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="#sdfootnote1sym"></a></sup>
and India has been rated as <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/summary-report-2010">the most balanced copyright system in a
global survey</a><sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote2anc" href="#sdfootnote2sym"></a></sup>
conducted of over 34 countries by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.consumersinternational.org/">Consumers International</a><sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote3anc" href="#sdfootnote3sym"></a></sup>.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The Indian Parliament
has always sought to be responsive to changing technologies by paying
heed to both the democratisation of access as well as the securing of
the interests of copyright holders. This approach needs to be lauded,
and importantly, needs to be maintained.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><br /></p>
<h2 class="western">Proposed Amendments</h2>
<h3 class="western">Some positive amendments</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Fair
Dealings, Parallel Importation, Non-commercial Rental</strong>: All works
(including sound recordings and cinematograph films) are now covered
the fair dealings clause (except computer programmes), and a few
other exceptions; parallel importation is now clearly allowed; and
non-commercial rental has become a limitation in some cases.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Persons with
disabilities</strong>: There is finally an attempt at addressing the
concerns of persons with disabilities. But the provisions are
completely useless the way they are currently worded.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Public
Libraries</strong>: They can now make electronic copies of works they
own, and some other beneficial changes relating to public libraries.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Education</strong>:
Some exceptions related to education have been broadened (scope of
works, & scope of use).</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Statutory and
compulsory licensing</strong>: Some new statutory licensing provisions
(including for radio broadcasting) and some streamlining of existing
compulsory licensing provisions.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Copyright
societies</strong>: These are now responsible to authors and not owners
of works.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Open
licences</strong>: Free and Open Source Software and Open Content
licensing is now simpler.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Partial
exemption of online intermediaries</strong>:
Transient and incidental storage of copyrighted works has
been excepted, mostly for the benefit of online intermediaries.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Performer’s
rights</strong>: The general, and confusing, exclusive right that
performers had to communicate their performance to the public has
been removed, and instead only the exclusive right to communicate
sound/video recordings remains.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Enforcement</strong>:
Provisions on border measures have been made better, and less prone
to abuse and prevention of legitimate trade.</p>
</li></ul>
<h3 class="western"><br /></h3>
<h3 class="western">Some negative amendments</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>WCT and WPPT
compliance</strong>: India has not signed either of these two treaties,
which impose TRIPS-plus copyright protection, but without any
corresponding increase in fair dealing / fair use rights.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Increase in
duration of copyright</strong>: This will significantly reduce the public
domain, which India has been arguing for internationally.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Technological
Protection Measures</strong>: TPMs, which have been shown to be
anti-consumer in all countries in which they have been introduced,
are sought to be brought into Indian law.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Version
recordings</strong>: The amendments make cover version much more
difficult to produce.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Moral rights</strong>:
Changes have been made to author’s moral rights (and performer’s
moral rights have been introduced) but these have been made without
requisite safeguards.</p>
</li></ul>
<h3 class="western"><br /></h3>
<h3 class="western">Missed opportunities</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Government-funded
works</strong>: Taxpayers are still not free to use works that were paid
for by them. This goes against the direction that India has elected
to march towards with the Right to Information Act.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Copyright
terms</strong>: The duration of all copyrights are above the minimum
required by our international obligations, thus decreasing the
public domain which is crucial for all scientific and cultural
progress.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Criminal
provisions</strong>: Our law still criminalises individual,
non-commercial copyright infringement.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Libraries and
archives</strong>: The exceptions for ‘public libraries’ are still
too narrow in what they perceive as ‘public libraries’.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Educational
exceptions</strong>: The exceptions for education still do not fully
embrace distance and digital education.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Communication
to the public</strong>: No clear definition is given of what constitute a
‘public’, and no distinction is drawn between commercial and
non-commercial ‘public’ communication.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Internet
intermediaries</strong>: More protections are required to be granted to
Internet intermediaries to ensure that non-market based
peer-production projects such as Wikipedia, and other forms of
social media and grassroots innovation are not stifled.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Fair dealing
and fair use</strong>: We would benefit greatly if, apart from the
specific exceptions provided for in the Act, more general guidelines
were also provided as to what do not constitute infringement. This
would not take away from the existing exceptions.</p>
</li></ul>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeConsumer RightsCopyrightFair DealingsPublic AccountabilityIntellectual Property RightsRTIFeaturedBroadcastingPublicationsSubmissionsTechnological Protection Measures2011-09-21T06:01:54ZBlog EntryCIS comments on WIPO Treaty
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/CIS-Comments-on-Treaty
<b>Nirmita Narasimhan of CIS has given her reply comments to the US Copyright Office's call for comments on the proposed WIPO draft proposal to facilitate access to copyrighted works for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities, in response to the Federal Register Notice of October 13, 2009.</b>
<p>The US Government had called for comments on the proposed WIPO treaty for the visually impaired shortly before the 19th SCCR to which organisations responded from different parts of the world. CIS' comments on the Treaty were also filed with the US Government and are available on their website at <a class="external-link" href="http://www.copyright.gov/docs/sccr/comments/2009/reply-2/">http://www.copyright.gov/docs/sccr/comments/2009/reply-2/</a></p>
<p>SCCR 19: CIS got the status of an accredited civil society in the recent SCCR held at Geneva from 14th-18th of December and had an opportunity to make statements on two of the issues which were being discussed there, namely on the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty" class="external-link">Treaty for the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled, proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay</a>.<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/CIS-Statement-on-Broadcast-Treaty" class="internal-link" title="CIS Statement on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 19"><br /></a></p>
<p>Further, for submissions to the DG, WIPO by the visually impaired in India, click on <a class="external-link" href="http://www.visionip.org/news/en/vip_in_dg_09.html">http://www.visionip.org</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/CIS-Comments-on-Treaty'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/CIS-Comments-on-Treaty</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaSubmissionsAccessibility2013-01-28T11:16:44ZBlog EntryResponse to TRAI Consultation paper No. 6/2009
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/response-to-trai-consultation-paper
<b>CIS Distinguished Fellow, Shyam Ponappa, provides a detailed response to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's Consultation paper No. 6/2009 "Overall Spectrum Management and review of license terms and conditions". Shyam Ponappa is suggesting that, the TRAI approach the telecom policy in a manner which will facilitate greater user access and, more generally, be designed to serve the public interest in the long-term. </b>
<p>Shyam Ponappa November 12, 2009<br />Distinguished Fellow<br />Centre for Internet & Society<br />Bangalore/New Delhi<br />cis-india.org</p>
<p><a href="mailto:shyamponappa@gmail.com">shyamponappa@gmail.com</a></p>
<p>Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<br />Attn: Sh. Sudhir Gupta, Advisor (MN)<br />Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan<br />Jawahar Lal Nehru Marg, New Delhi-110 002<br />Tel. No.011-23220018 , Fax No.011-23212014</p>
<p>E-mail : <a href="mailto:advmn@trai.gov.in">advmn@trai.gov.in</a> </p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><u><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/TRAI%20CP%20Response-Nov%2012%202009.pdf" class="internal-link" title="TRAI response">TRAI Consultation paper No. 6/2009- October 16, 2009</a></u></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><u>"Overall Spectrum Management and review of license terms and conditions"</u></h2>
<p><br />Sir,</p>
<p>It would help to have a logical framework that defines overall objectives, prioritizes issues, and structures and organizes issues and questions. This would facilitate analysis and response, as we have attempted below.</p>
<p>We begin by responding to Question 57 as a preamble to all the questions:</p>
<p>57. What in your opinion is the desired structure for efficient management of spectrum?<br />[This question addresses only one of two essential criteria, efficiency. The other criterion is effectiveness; both need equal emphasis.]</p>
<p>Please see separate attachment for answers to Questions 1-56.</p>
<h3>Status</h3>
<p>Currently, communications services in India comprising Internet, voice and SMS have the following attributes:</p>
<ol start="1"><li>Low broadband usage, with relatively high prices: eg, direct satellite TV subscriptions at Rs. 200/month, compared with 512 kbps Internet at Rs. 1,000/month.</li><li>Fragmented spectrum allocation for exclusive use by each operator in a service area.</li><li>Very high intensity of spectrum use by operators compared with international norms because of constrained availability.</li><li>Too many operators per service area (11-14 or more [15-16 with all potential operators with GSM and CDMA counted separately], versus the global average of 4-5).</li></ol>
<p>[For details on (2), (3) and (4), please see: 'An assessment of spectrum management policy in India', David Lewin, Val Jervis, Chris Davis, Ken Pearson, Plum Consulting, December 2008<br /><a href="http://www.plumconsulting.co.uk/pdfs/GSMA%20spectrum%20management%20policy%20in%20India.pdf"><u>http://www.plumconsulting.co.uk/pdfs/GSMA%20spectrum%20management%20policy%20in%20India.pdf</u></a>]</p>
<h3>Needs</h3>
<p> Our needs are:</p>
<ul><li>good services for Internet, voice and SMS,</li><li>at reasonable prices, eg, comparable pricing for TV and broadband,</li><li>accessible from/to most households across the country.</li></ul>
<p>The need is especially great in rural areas, as broadband can be the medium for delivery of essential services like education (from basic to advanced to vocational training and Continuing Education at all levels, including high-level professional CE), health (again, from basic diagnostics and monitoring at home, to advanced care at adequately equipped centres), and security and law-and-order services at significantly higher levels than is possible without excellent communications infrastructure.</p>
<p>In view of the above, we suggest that the Government of India consider adopting the following policy goals in the public interest ( and therefore, that where appropriate, the TRAI set these objectives/make appropriate recommendations to the GOI).</p>
<h3>Suggested Policy Goals/Objectives [based on needs]</h3>
<ol start="1"><li>Adopt the criteria of long-term net benefits in the public interest for decisions, eschewing short-term cash collections from auctions and fees.</li><li>An approach to policies for telecommunications services (not for broadcasting) that limits the number of operators per service area in line with international experience, because of the economics of networks.<br />[This implies an explicit reversal of prior policies to maximize competition, and requires allowing for consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.]</li><li>Access to broadband (to be defined as at least 512 kbps in keeping with international norms) at all feasible locations in the country for all users.</li><li>Develop incentives and penalties favouring good rural service provision, with the emphasis on broadband: an Administered Incentive Pricing mechanism.</li><li>Explore ways to structure policies to reduce costs/maximize utility through facilities and resource sharing, so that prices can be reduced while maintaining good scope for investment from growth and profits.<br /><br />This implies two areas of exploration:<br />a) Shared use of facilities and equipment/networks;<br />b) Shared use of spectrum.<br /><br />(i) This is best done by collaborative consultations between experts (from the GOI, private sector and academia), operators, equipment providers, and government. Without the requisite interdisciplinary skills combined with operating expertise and investment capability, the effort is too complex for an iterative, serial consultation process.<br />(ii) Even within the GOI, this requires interdisciplinary and cross-jurisdictional convergence, both to develop solutions as well as to implement them.<br />(iii) This also needs GOI initiatives to invite companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Qualcomm as well as Google and Intel, possibly cable companies like Liberty Global, and electricity companies that deliver Internet through their networks.<br />(iv) The GOI also needs to depute experienced representatives from various ministries and departments including the WPC, the Defence Services, and specialist agencies such as the DRDO/NTRO.<br />[Please see ‘Managing Spectrum’ in the <em>Business Standard</em> November 5, 2009, and related references: <a href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.com/2009/11/managing-spectrum.html"><u>http://organizing-india.blogspot.com/2009/11/managing-spectrum.html</u></a>]</li><li>Monitor operations online and intervene actively where revenues (the totality of rates/tariffs) are far above total costs, i.e., profits are unreasonable. This is a necessary adjunct to accepting a monopolistic/oligopolistic market structures.</li></ol>
<h3>Suggested Approach</h3>
<p>The use of a decision tree as in the ‘Issue Map for Spectrum & Broadband’ below (please see Exhibit) facilitates a logical sequence and prioritization in exploring alternatives. (Please note that this is for broadband, voice and SMS, and not for broadcasting.) A similar exploration process for networks and facilities (sharing versus exclusive use for delivery) could follow. However, stakeholders should be free to use any analytical process to improve on this in the common interest.</p>
<p>Once decisions are taken on these two issues (spectrum and network/ facilities sharing), other issues like pricing and consolidation can be logically addressed based on these decisions, probably within the scope of existing laws and regulations.</p>
<p>New regulations or laws should be considered only after comprehensive analysis on the lines of Project LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy by Sh. Bibek Debroy).</p>
<p align="center"> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/TRAI%20consultation.jpg" class="internal-link" title="TRAI">Exhibit: Issue Map on Spectrum & Broadband </a></p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="../../igov/others/uploads/copy_of_shayamzoom.jpg/image_preview" alt="Issue Map on Spectrum & Broadband" height="251" width="400" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shyam Ponappa<br />Centre for Internet & Society<br />cis-india.org</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/TRAI%20CP-Q%201-57-Nov%2012%202009.pdf" class="internal-link" title="TRAI - consultation Q 1- 57">Attachment – Question 1-57</a></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/TRAI%20CP%20Response-Nov%2012%202009.pdf" class="internal-link" title="TRAI response">TRAI Consultation paper</a> No. 6/2009 – October 16, 2009</p>
<p>Overall Spectrum Management and review of license terms and conditions</p>
<p align="left"><strong>Chapter 1<br /></strong><strong>Spectrum requirement and availability</strong></p>
<ol type="1" start="1"><li>Do you agree with the subscriber base projections? If not, please provide the reasons for disagreement and your projection estimates along with their basis?<br /><strong>Do not disagree.</strong></li><li>Do you agree with the spectrum requirement projected in ¶ 1.7 to ¶1.12? Please give your assessment (service-area wise).<br /><strong>Agree if exclusive bands of spectrum are used by different operators, and the spectrum requirement is linked to subscribers. Disagree if common use of spectrum is adopted. Please see preamble (reply to Question 57) for details of shared/pooled spectrum approach.</strong></li><li>How can the spectrum required for Telecommunication purposes and currently available with the Government agencies be re-farmed?<br /><strong>(a) By rationalizing usage, as advocated in the preamble for commercial operators, by pooling spectrum for common use where possible.<br />(b) By inducting equipment that allows more efficient usage and usage of other bands.</strong></li><li>In view of the policy of technology and service neutrality licences, should any restriction be placed on these bands (800,900 and 1800 MHz) for providing a specific service and secondly, after the expiry of present licences, how will the spectrum in the 800/900 MHz band be assigned to the operators?<br /><strong>(a) Please see suggestions on shared/pooled spectrum as above.<br />(b) In the event that common use of spectrum is infeasible/not accepted by the Government of India, and exclusive bands of spectrum are assigned to operators as is the practice now, work out ways to consolidate fragmented bands (other than through M&A) for operators, to enable operators to hold contiguous bands for greater efficiency, and explore shared use of pooled spectrum.</strong></li><li>How and when should spectrum in 700 MHz band be allocated between competitive services?<br /><strong>Preferred method: for common use (can be pooled or shared even if assigned for exclusive use, immediately).</strong></li><li>
<p align="left">What is the impact of digital dividend on 3G and BWA?<br /><strong>Should extend its reach and access because of lower costs.<br /></strong><br /><strong>Chapter 2<br />Licensing Issues</strong></p>
</li><li>Should the spectrum be delinked from the UAS Licence? Please provide the reasons for your response.<br /><strong>If spectrum is treated as a common resource, the logical requirement is for a linkage that is not dependent on ownership, but to access for service delivery, i.e., common access.</strong></li><li>In case it is decided not to delink spectrum from UAS license, then should there be a limit on minimum and maximum number of access service providers in a service area? If yes, what should be the number of operators?<br /><strong>Follow global practice: do not exceed five operators in any service area unless there are compelling reasons to do so.</strong></li><li>What should be the considerations to determine maximum spectrum per entity?<br /><strong>Minimum contiguous band for effective rollout and efficient delivery, i.e., inexpensive capital outlay for equipment and towers/network while maintaining Quality of Service.</strong></li><li>Is there a need to put a limit on the maximum spectrum one licensee can hold? If yes, then what should be the limit? Should operators having more than the maximum limit, if determined, be assigned any more spectrum?<br /><strong>This depends on the overall approach to spectrum management, i.e., common use, or exclusive use. The logic for a limit is effective delivery capability at ‘normal’ cost. There is no logic for assigning more than this. However, if spectrum is for common/shared use, the only criterion is throughput/capacity.</strong></li><li>If an existing licensee has more spectrum than the specified limit, then how should this spectrum be treated? Should such spectrum be taken back or should it be subjected to higher charging regime?<br /><strong>As in No. 10. If common/shared spectrum use is adopted, there needs to be a transition worked out, as in the transition to revenue sharing.</strong></li><li>In the event fresh licences are to be granted, what should be the Entry fee for the license?<br /><strong>The principles followed should be:<br />(a) Low license fees to minimize access costs.<br />(b) Provided licenses are delinked from spectrum and few in number, there need to be strict rollout requirements.<br />(c) Incentives for broadband and rural coverage in the form of a structured Administrative Incentive Pricing mechanism.<br />(d) Penalties for failure.</strong></li><li>In case it is decided that the spectrum is to be delinked from the license then what should be the entry fee for such a Licence and should there be any roll out condition?<br /><strong>As in No. 12.</strong></li><li>Is there a need to do spectrum audit? If it is found in the audit that an operator is not using the spectrum efficiently what is the suggested course of action? Can penalties be imposed?<br /><strong>(a) Operating attributes should be monitored online on a continuous basis.<br />(b) Spectrum use probably needs to be monitored as an operating attribute.<br />(c) Penalties and incentives are needed, including forfeiture for continued transgression.</strong></li><li>Can spectrum be assigned based on metro, urban and rural areas separately? If yes, what issues do you foresee in this method?<br /><strong>This needs to be considered only if common/pooled usage is decided against. With common use or sufficiently large blocks/bands of spectrum, no problems are likely to arise.</strong></li><li>Since the amount of spectrum and the investment required for its utilisation in metro and large cities is higher than in rural areas, can asymmetric pricing of telecom services be a feasible proposition?<br /><strong>Yes. <br /><br />M&A issues</strong><br /><strong>If the common/shared use approach is adopted, M&A can be under existing laws and regulations.</strong></li><li>Whether the existing licence conditions and guidelines related to M&A restrict consolidation in the telecom sector? If yes, what should be the alternative framework for M&A in the telecom sector?</li><li>Whether lock-in clause in UASL agreement is a barrier to consolidation in telecom sector? If yes, what modifications may be considered in the clause to facilitate consolidation?</li><li>Whether market share in terms of subscriber base/AGR should continue to regulate M&A activity in addition to the restriction on spectrum holding?</li><li>Whether there should be a transfer charge on spectrum upon merger and acquisition? If yes, whether such charges should be same in case of M&A/transfer/sharing of spectrum?</li><li>Whether the transfer charges should be one-time only for first such M&A or should they be levied each time an M&A takes place?</li><li>Whether transfer charges should be levied on the lesser or higher of the 2G spectrum holdings of the merging entities?</li><li>Whether the spectrum held consequent upon M&A be subjected to a maximum limit?<br /><br /><strong>Spectrum Trading</strong></li><li>Is spectrum trading required to encourage spectrum consolidation and improve spectrum utilization efficiency?<br /><br /><strong>At present, trading is required to allow consolidation. However, if a comprehensive approach is taken to spectrum use, and especially if common use through common access is established, this set of problems will no longer exist after a transition period. Nor will there be any shortage of spectrum.</strong></li><li>Who all should be permitted to trade the spectrum ?<br /><strong>As in No. 24.</strong></li><li>Should the original allottee who has failed to fulfill “Roll out obligations” be allowed to do spectrum trading?<br /><strong>There should be penalties and forfeiture for failure to meet rollout obligations, and clawbacks as an interim measure during the transition.</strong></li><li>Should transfer charges be levied in case of spectrum trading?</li><li>What should be the parameters and methodology to determine first time spectrum transfer charges payable to Government for trading of the spectrum? How should these charges be determined year after year?</li><li>Should such capping be limited to 2G spectrum only or consider other bands of spectrum also? Give your suggestions with justification.<br /><br /><strong>This question assumes there is a difference in “2G spectrum” and other spectrum, which is incorrect. The difference is in equipment that has evolved in different phases along different bands. Spectrum should be treated as technology-neutral for the purposes of service delivery. Any service should be deliverable on any band, subject to interference limitations.</strong></li><li>Should size of minimum tradable block of spectrum be defined or left to the market forces?</li><li>Should the cost of spectrum trading be more than the spectrum assignment cost?<br /><br /><strong>Spectrum sharing<br /><br />These questions are addressed in the preamble in the cover note.</strong></li><li>Should Spectrum sharing be allowed? If yes, what should be the regulatory framework for allowing spectrum sharing among the service providers?</li><li>What should be criteria to permit spectrum sharing?</li><li>Should spectrum sharing charges be regulated? If yes then what parameters should be considered to derive spectrum sharing charges? Should such charges be prescribed per MHz or for total allocated spectrum to the entity in LSA?</li><li>Should there be any preconditions that rollout obligation be fulfilled by one or both service provider before allowing the sharing of spectrum?</li><li>In case of spectrum sharing, who will have the rollout obligations? Giver or receiver?<br /><br /><strong>Perpetuity of licences</strong></li><li>Should there be a time limit on licence or should it be perpetual?</li><li>What should be the validity period of assigned spectrum in case it is delinked from the licence? 20 years, as it exists, or any other period</li><li>What should be the validity period of spectrum if spectrum is allocated for a different technology under the same license midway during the life of the license?</li><li>If the spectrum assignment is for a defined period, then for what period and at what price should the extension of assigned spectrum be done?</li><li>If the spectrum assignment is for a defined period, then after the expiry of the period should the same holder/licensee be given the first priority?<br /><br /><strong>Uniform License Fee</strong></li><li>What are the advantages and disadvantages of a uniform license fee?</li><li>Whether there should be a uniform License Fee across all telecom licenses and service areas including services covered under registrations?</li><li>If introduced, what should be the rate of uniform License Fee?<br /><br /><strong>License fees should be treated as part of the overall scheme of Administered Incentive Pricing.<br /><br />Chapter 3<br />Spectrum assignment</strong></li><li>If the initial spectrum is de-linked from the licence, then what should be the method for subsequent assignment?<br /><strong>Please see comments on common/shared use in the preamble in the cover note.</strong></li><li>If the initial spectrum continues to be linked with licence then is there any need to change from SLC based assignment?<br /><strong>The SLC basis for spectrum assignment gives rise to many distortions and is not in line with international practices.</strong></li><li>In case a two-tier mechanism is adopted, then what should be the alternate method and the threshold beyond which it will be implemented?</li><li>Should the spectrum be assigned in tranches of 1 MHz for GSM technology? What is the optimum tranche for assignment?</li><li>In case a market based mechanism (i.e. auction) is decided to be adopted, would there be the issue of level playing field amongst licensees who have different amount of spectrum holding? How should this be addressed?</li><li>In case continuation of SLC criteria is considered appropriate then, what should be the subscriber numbers for assignment of additional spectrum?</li><li>In your opinion, what should be the method of assigning spectrum in bands other than 800, 900 and 1800 MHz for use other than commercial?<br /><br /><strong>Spectrum pricing</strong></li><li>Should the service providers having spectrum above the committed threshold be charged a one time charge for the additional spectrum?</li><li>In case it is decided to levy one time charge beyond a certain amount then what in your opinion should be the date from which the charge should be calculated and why?</li><li>On what basis, this upfront charge be decided? Should it be benchmarked to the auction price of 3G spectrum or some other benchmark?</li><li>Should the annual spectrum charges be uniform irrespective of quantum of spectrum and technology?</li><li>Should there be regular review of spectrum charges? If so, at what interval and what should be the methodology?<br /><br /><strong>Structure for spectrum management</strong></li><li>What in your opinion is the desired structure for efficient management of spectrum?<br /><br /><strong>Please see the preamble in the cover note.</strong></li></ol>
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<p>Shyam Ponappa<br />Centre for Internet & Society<br />cis-india.org</p>
<p>November 12, 2009</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/response-to-trai-consultation-paper'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/response-to-trai-consultation-paper</a>
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No publisherradhaTelecomSubmissions2011-08-24T08:06:46ZBlog Entry