The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 21 to 32.
Engaging on the Digital Commons
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons
<b>We at the Centre for Internet and Society are very glad to be able to participate in the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Our interest in the conference arises mainly from our work in the areas of intellectual property rights reform and promotion of different forms of ‘opennesses’ that have cropped up as a response to perceived problems with our present-day regime of intellectual property rights, including open content, open standards, free and open source software, open government data, open access to scholarly research and data, open access to law, etc., our emerging work on telecom policy with respect to open/shared spectrum, and the very important questions around Internet governance. The article by Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash was published in the journal Common Voices, Issue 4.</b>
<p>Our work on intellectual property reform are proactive measures at effecting policy change that go towards protecting and preserving an intellectual, intangible commons. We have opposed the Protection and Utilization of the Public-funded Intellectual Property Bill (an Indian version of the American Bayh-Dole Act) which sought to privatise the fruits of publicfunded research by mandating patents on them. We are working towards reform of copyright law which we believe is lopsided in its lack of concern for consumers and that its current march towards greater enclosure of the public domain is unsustainable. Believing that not all areas of industry and technology are equal, and that patent protection is ill-suited for the software industry, we have worked to ensure that the current prohibitions against patenting of software are effectively followed.</p>
<p>Defensively—that is working within the existing framework of intellectual property law—we seek to promote the various forms of copyright and patent licensing that have arisen as reactions to restrictive IP laws. Free/open source software and open content have arisen as a reaction to the restrictive nature of copyright law, such as the presumption under copyright law that a work is copyrighted by the mere fact of it coming into existence. (for instance, this was not so in the United States until 1989, till when a copyright notice was required to assert copyright). While earlier the presumption was that a work was to belong to the public domain, after the Berne Convention, that presumption was reversed. This led to the creation of the idea of special licences, by using which one could allow all others to share his/her work and reuse it. This innovation in using the law to promote, rather than restrict, what others could do with one’s works has enabled the creation and sharing of everything from Wikipedia, to Linux (which powers more than 85 percent of the world’s top 500 supercomputers) and Apache HTTP server (more than 60 percent of all websites). The advent of the Internet has allowed the creation of intangible digital commons.</p>
<p>We are also starting to engage with the question of telecom policy around spectrum allocation, and believe that promotion of a shared spectrum would help make telecom services, including broadband Internet, available to people at reasonable prices. We also believe that Internet governance should not be the prerogative of governments, and should not happen in a top-down fashion.</p>
<p>Comparisons between tangible commons and intangible commons have been made by people like Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, who in 1977 contributed to our understanding of subtractability and public goods. James Boyle has written about the expansion of copyright law as “the second enclosure movement”, following in the footsteps of the first enclosure movement against the take-over of common land which stretched from the fifteenth century till the nineteenth. Yochai Benkler, has written extensively on commons in information and communication systems as well as on spectrum commons. Just as Elinor Ostrom’s work shows how Garrett Hardin’s evocative ‘tragedy of the commons’ and the problems of free-riding are very often avoided in practice, Michael Heller’s equally evocative phrase ‘gridlock economy’ shows that ‘over-propertisation’ of knowledge can lead to a ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’.</p>
<p>Through this conference we wish to learn of the lessons that academic writings on tangible commons have to impart to intangible commons which are configured very differently (in terms of subtractability, for instance). Ostrom’s work shows how individuals can, in a variety of settings, work to find institutional solutions that promote social cooperation and human betterment. As part of her nine design principles of stable local common pool resource management, she lists clearly defined boundaries for effective exclusion of external unentitled parties. How does that work, when even the existing mechanisms of boundary-definition in intellectual property, such as patent claims, are often decried as being ambiguous thanks to the legalese they are written in? What of traditional knowledge for which defining the community holding ownership rights becomes very difficult? As Ostrom and Hess note, “the rules and flow patterns are different with digital information”, but how do these differences affect the lessons learned from CPR studies? How do Ostrom’s pronouncements against uniform top-down approaches to resource management affect the way that copyright and patents seek to establish a uniform system across multiple areas of art, science and industry (musical recordings and paintings, pharmaceuticals and software)? And how can Ostrom’s work on management of natural resources inform us about the management of resources such as spectrum or the Internet itself? These are all very interesting and important questions that need to be explored, and we are glad that this conference will help us understand these issues better.</p>
<p>Please read the article in Common Voices Issue 4 <a class="external-link" href="http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/common-voices-4.pdf">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshDigital AccessOpennessCommonsDigital Governance2011-08-20T12:56:26ZBlog EntryThe Future of Journalism: EJC @ Picnic 2010
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic
<b>Nishant Shah was a speaker at the PICNIC 2010, in Amsterdam, where he made a presentation titled "Citizens in the time of Database Democracies : Information ecology and role of participatory technologies in India"
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The
relationship between citizenship and government informatics have
historically
been shaped through a series of debates around questions of
citizenship,
security, State-market collaborations, and right based discourse in
India. Even
before the information explosion caused by the emergence of digital and
internet technologies, there has been a strident discourse around
participatory democracy and technology mediated governance as ways of
empowering the citizen's access to rights and resources in the country.
With the emergence of new technologies of storage,
retrieval and dissemination, these expectations have become more
visible. The Indian Government has
officially accepted the transition to become a S.M.A.R.T.
(Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and
Transparent) State, with the rise of 'Netizens' who, in their access
to new digital and internet technologies will change the very shape and
structure of governance. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However,
as the digital infrastructure develops and new kinds of citizen
services and consumption come to the fore,
battle-lines are being drawn between stakeholders. On the one hand are
those
who believe that this might be the opening of a Pandora’s Box for a
country
like India where a stark digital divide might create great inequality
in citizens' access to State services and resources, producing unjust
and discriminatory structures based on access, bandwidth and education.
. On the other
hand are those who celebrate the need for transparency, participation
and access to governmentality that these e-governance initiatives usher
in, addressing long standing questions of plutocratic governance,
bureaucratic systems of denial of rights and widespread corruption.
Both the warring factions draw upon partial data – of
failed attempts and projects by different government initiatives to
pilot
studies initiated by different government and civil society
organisations
respectively – to make their arguments for and against the emergence of
a 'Database Democracy' .premised on participatory politics facilitated
by new media practices in the country.</p>
<p>Especially
with the current rolling out of a Unique Identity Project (named Aadhar
– The
Hindi word for ‘Support’) these discussions have become more severe and
the
arguments have become angrier. It is not only timely but also necessary
to
examine the ecology of participatory technologies and processes in the
country in order
to look at the different sides of the debates and explore the role that
new media practitioners and stakeholders would play in efficiently and
responsibly establishing a protocol
of open and transparent governance structures without compromising
either the privacy,
rights or safety of the citizens. This presentation explores the
project Aadhar as symptomatic of a changing relationship between the
State and its Citizens mediated by ICT technologies and stakeholders,
to look at the ways in which new Citizenships are being forged in
emerging information societies like India.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More news about the panel on Future of Journalism, arranged by the European Journalism Commission, is available at</p>
<p>http://futureofjournalism.net/index.php/EJC_at_PICNIC2010</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceDigital ActivismDigital Governance2010-10-13T07:13:29ZBlog EntryCivic Hacking Workshop
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/civic-hacking-workshop
<b>CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.</b>
<p>The UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, Google India and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore are organizing a 'Civic Hacking Workshop' on Wednesday, July 28, 2010, bringing together civic-minded technologists who've been working with governmental data in India and Britain.</p>
<p>The workshop will discuss the problems of obtaining data, especially in India, the technological solutions that these various groups have encountered, the difficulties of technology as a mass-based civic solution, and the visions that these groups have for a more engaged civil society and the contributions they seek to make to the public.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The people attending are, from India (Bangalore):</p>
<ol><li>Alok Singh (Akshara Foundation)</li><li>Shivangi Desai (Akshara Foundation)</li><li>Arun Ganesh (Geohackers / National Institute of Design)</li><li>A. Pandian (Mapunity)</li><li>Sridhar Raman (Mapunity)</li><li>S. Raghavan Kandala (Mapunity)</li><li>Thejesh GN (Janaagraha / Infosys)</li><li>Sushant Sinha (IndianKanoon.com / Yahoo)</li><li>Vijay Rasquinha (Mahiti)</li><li>P.G. Bhat (SmartVote.in)<br /></li><li>Pranesh Prakash (CIS)</li><li>Raman Jit Singh Chima (Google)</li></ol>
<p><br />And from Britain:</p>
<ol><li>David McCandless (Information Is Beautiful)</li><li>Harry Metcalfe (TellThemWhatYouThink.org / Open Rights Group)</li><li>Tim Green (Democracy Club)</li><li>Edmund von der Burg (YourNextMP)</li><li>Rohan Silva (Special Adviser to the PM)</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/civic-hacking-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/civic-hacking-workshop</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen DataWorkshopDigital GovernanceOpenness2011-08-23T03:14:03ZBlog EntryCPOV : Wikipedia Research Initiative
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov
<b>The Second event, towards building the Critical Point of View Reader on Wikipedia, brings a range of scholars, practitioners, theorists and activists to critically reflect on the state of Wikipedia in our contemporary Information Societies. Organised in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by the Institute of Network Cultures, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, the event builds on the debates and discussions initiated at the WikiWars that launched off the knowledge network in Bangalore in January 2010. Follow the Live Tweets at #CPOV</b>
<p>Second international conference of the <em>CPOV Wikipedia Research
Initiative</em> :: March 26-27, 2010 :: OBA (Public Library Amsterdam,
next to Amsterdam central station), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference
of dynamic knowledge. The heated debates over its accuracy, anonymity,
trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of
Wikipedia and its user base. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts
Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places
Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder’s
Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty’s Wen-hsien ta- ch’ eng, and the
key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie. <span id="more-10604"></span>The multilingual Wikipedia as digital
collaborative and fluid knowledge production platform might be said to
be the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS
(Free/ Libre/ Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture.
However, such celebration should contain critical insights, informed by
the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia
project in particular.</p>
<p>The CPOV Research Initiative was founded from the urge to stimulate
critical Wikipedia research: quantitative and qualitative research that
could benefit both the wide user-base and the active Wikipedia community
itself. On top of this, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the
contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function,
and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution
and power (re-)constitution. The overarching research agenda is at once a
philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of
knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social relations, and an
empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Conference Themes: Wiki Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art,
Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debate and Global Issues and Outlooks.</p>
<p>Follow the live tweets on http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23CPOV</p>
<p>Confirmed speakers: Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Andrew Famiglietti (UK),
Stuart Geiger (USA), Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL), Charles van den Heuvel
(NL), Jeanette Hofmann (DE), Athina Karatzogianni (UK), Scott Kildall
(USA), Patrick Lichty (USA), Hans Varghese Mathews (IN), Teemu Mikkonen
(FI), Mayo Fuster Morell (IT), Mathieu O’Neil (AU), Felipe Ortega (ES),
Dan O’Sullivan (UK), Joseph Reagle (USA), Ramón Reichert (AU), Richard
Rogers (USA/NL), Alan Shapiro (USA/DE), Maja van der Velden (NL/NO),
Gérard Wormser (FR).</p>
<p>Editorial team: Sabine Niederer and Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), Nishant
Shah and Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nathaniel
Tkacz (Melbourne). Project manager CPOV Amsterdam: Margreet Riphagen.
Research intern: Juliana Brunello. Production intern: Serena Westra.</p>
<p>The CPOV conference in Amsterdam will be the second conference of the
CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative. The launch of the initiative took
place in Bangalore India, with the conference WikiWars in January 2010.
After the first two events, the CPOV organization will work on
producing a reader, to be launched early 2011. For more information or
submitting a <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/reader">reader</a>
contribution.</p>
<p>Buy your ticket <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/practical-info/tickets/">online</a>
(with iDeal), or register by sending an email to: info (at)
networkcultures.org. One day ticket: €25, students and OBA members:
€12,50. Full conference pass (2 days): €40, students and OBA members:
25.</p>
<p>Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam, in
cooperation with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore,
India.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityResearchFeatured2011-08-23T02:52:25ZBlog EntryWikiWars - A report
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, hosted WikiWars – an international event that brought together scholars, researchers, academics, artists and practitioners from various disciplines, to discuss the emergence and growth of Wikipedia and what it means for the information societies we inhabit. With participants from 15 countries making presentations about Wikipedia and the knowledge ecology within which it exists, the event saw a vigorous set of debates and discussions as questions about education, pedagogy, language, access, geography, resistance, art and subversion were raised by the presenters. The 2 day event marked the beginning of the process that hopes to produce the first critical reader – Critical Point of View (CPOV) - that collects key resources for research and inquiry around Wikipedia.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The
debates around Wikipedia, the de facto dynamic knowledge production system
online, are very fairly divided into two competing camps. There is a group of
people who swear by Wikipedia – celebrating its democratic processes of
knowledge production, ease of access, and the de-canonisation of knowledge to
produce the ‘WikiWay’; And then there is a group of people who swear at
Wikipedia – raising concerns over authenticity, reliability, vulgarisation of
knowledge and the de-hierarchisation of knowledge systems that Wikipedia seems
to embody. The debates between the two groups are often passionate and situated
in wildly speculative and often personal interests and investments in Wikipedia
and the Web 2.0 Information Revolution that it seems to be a symptom of. The
debates also play out in various international locations, most of them relying
on personal anecdotes, experiences and half hearted data that does not stand
the tests of rigour.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">WikiWars,
then, concentrated on things which are about Wikipedia but also not about Wikipedia.
In many ways, as Geert Lovink, the Director of INC suggested, WikiWars was a
recognition of the fact that Wikipedia has come of age and can now be
systematically and philosophically examined as a work in progress that has
long-term implications about our future. It was the ambition of the Editorial
team (consisting of Geert Lovink, Sabine Nerdeer, Nathaniel Tkacz, Johanna
Niyesito, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah) to veer away from the recognised
battle-lines drawn in, around and about Wikipedia, and instead examine the
fault-lines that run under many of our assumptions, prejudices and imaginations
of Wikipedia. And Wikiwars, through careful screening and invested interests,
became one of the first platforms in the world to initiate a critical discourse
on Wikipedia, seeking to engage with its histories, it contemporary
manifestations and practices, and the futures that it seeks to inhabit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The
different presentations brought in located debates, theoretical and
philosophical concepts and personal experiences to build frameworks that
explain and contextualise Wikipedia as one of the most contested spaces online.
The eight panels across two days dealt with four major thematic areas which
need to be summarised in brief:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">1. <strong><u>Education, Pedagogy and
Knowledge:</u></strong> At the very basis of Wikipedia (and
other structures like it) is the question of knowledge production, the
possibility of using it as an educational tool and the potentials it has for
introducing new pedagogies and learning practices in and outside of institutionalised
education. Presenters from various disciplines engaged with these questions in
interesting ways.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Usha
Raman from Teacher Plus in Hyderabad, brought in the question of primary
education, the need for teacher training programmes and the ways by which
infrastructure development needs to be thought through when talking of
Wikipedia and education in the Indian context. The
necessity of locating Wikipedia in a much larger debates on learning were also
echoed by Noopur Rawal and Srikeit Tadepalli, students from Christ University
who brought their experience of Wikipedia and the expectations from classroom
education and learning in their presentation. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">In
the same field, but from a different approach, a panel examined Wikipedia as a site to critique
Western Knowledge production systems. Stian Haklev and Johanna Niyesito
concentrated on the questions of language and knowledge production. Haklev made
an impassioned argument deconstructing the utopian idea of Wikipedia’s
multilingual dreams and instead made a call for recognising the black-holes
when it comes to non-English production and consumption of knowledge on
Wikipedia. He further explored the implications that linguistic imbalance has
on the very governance structure of Wikipedia and its communities. Niyesito
challenged the ‘global’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ image that Wikipedia has built for
itself and posited the idea of Wikipedia as a translingual space where
different languages and cultures negotiate common understandings and processes
of producing knowledge. HanTeng
Liao explored knowledge production through the market economy of key-words to
see how the linguistic biases of search engines that harvest these keywords,
determines the access and visibility of different Wikipedia pages.</p>
<strong><u>Resistance, Diversity
and Representation:</u></strong> While these questions were present as
undercurrents to most of the presentations at WikWars, they were perhaps most
fiercely present in the debates that followed the presentations by Eric Ilya
Lee (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), YiPing Tsou (National Central University,
Taiwan), William Beutler and Eric Zimmerman (IDC, Israel).
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">For
Lee and Tsou, the responses to the Chinese language Wikipedia from popular
media and personal experiences, were demonstrative of the fact that the lack of
diverse means of representation and participation lead to a strong resistance
of Wikipedia in Taiwan. Beutler
looked at the heavily contested editorial space and policies of Wikipedia to
make a point about how lack of effective governance systems based on
mutual tolerance and diversity lead to
stressful and often traumatic experiences for users who might not be
represented through the mainstream ideas and
ideologies of an English speaking populace.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Zimmerman
took a startling position, calling for a regime of attribution and dissolving
the pseudonymous structures of knowledge production in Wikipedia in order to
build designs of trust and verification into the system, thus leading to better
and more credible research tools and representations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">The
tone of debates was altered with presentations by Mark Graham (Oxford Research
Institute) and the team of artists Nathaniel Stern and Scott Kildal, the team
responsible for the Wikipedia Art Project. Graham
showed the complexity of visualising space and how the production of space (or
physical geography) on Wikipedia often reflects the virtual density of access
and presence online. Showing a nuanced set of images that help mapping these
new geographies for a richer diversity and representation, Graham showed how
systems like Wikipedia ‘cannot know what they cannot know’ despite the reliance
on the wisdom of crowds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Stern
and Kildall, in giving an account of their project which used Wikipedia’s
policies to undermine and challenge it, show how the institutionalisation of a
space and its ‘canonisation’ can quickly lead to a new set of problems where
the space becomes the very thing it had set itself against.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">3. <strong><u>Politics of Free, Open
and Exclusion:</u></strong> The rhetoric of free and open have been
built into all popular discourses around Wikipedia. However, the presentations
at WikiWars showed that these need to be taken with at least a pinch of salt
and further examined for what they signify. Alok
Nandi of Architempo made a dramatic and creative revisit of these guiding
principles of Wikipedia. He showed how an inquiry into rituals of
participation, distortion and access on Wikipedia can promote, not merely
looking at the politics of exclusion but also at the politics of inclusion and
the problems therein.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Dror
Kamir’s evocative narrative of ‘Your side, my side and Wikipedia’ illustrated
how the question of boundaries, of knowledges, of facts and truths get
distorted as language, community, nationality, etc. come into play in recording
and documenting knowledge on Wikipedia. Concentrating on conflict zones in the
Middle East, he talked about the lack and perhaps the impossibility of
producing neutrality the way in which Wikipedia demands of its users. These
ideas resonated with the propositions that ShunLing Chen from Harvard had
floated in the opening panel to explore the ‘boundary work’ of Wikipedia and
how it defines and produces itself in relation to external forces and
controversies. These
discussions on the politics of presence, absence, inclusion and exclusion were
further layered by presentations by Linda Gross, Elad Weider, Heather Ford and
Nathaniel Tkacz who produced a critique of the Free and Open, taking a
cautionary step away from accepting these as inherently good.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">While
Gross explored the structure of egalitarianism that Wikipedia builds for
itself, Ford presented an analysis of the licensing regimes of the knowledge
produced within Wikipedia and the problems they pose to traditional knowledges
and non-mainstream information. Weider,
trained as a lawyer, critiqued the neo-liberal discourse around Wikipedia and
tried to correlate the communities with markets. Tkacz’s historical overview of
Free and Open, resulted in a compelling inquiry into the very structures that
inform the shape and functioning of objects like Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Twitter:
#WikiWars <a href="http://twitter.com/wikiwars">http://twitter.com/wikiwars</a>
and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/jackerhack/wikiwars">www.<strong>twitter</strong>.com/jackerhack/<strong>wikiwars</strong></a><cite></cite></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Flickr:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30479432@N03/sets/72157623193288710/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/30479432@N03/sets/72157623193288710/</a></p>
<p>
CPOV blog : <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/">http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The videos fom the Wikiwars event are embedded below:</p>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHM_HIA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHM_QoA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHM_RgA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHM_z4A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN2T4A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN2gMA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN2iUA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN2z0A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN3C4A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN3QYA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHN3QYA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOgCwA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOgGgA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOgiUA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOqA4A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOqxYA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHOrhIA"></embed>
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<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHh%2B0AA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHh%2B2EA"></embed>
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<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHh_A8A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHh_lQA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHh_w4A"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHjmiIA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHjnHEA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHjuxkA"></embed>
<embed height="250" width="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHjuzwA"></embed>
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<embed height="270" width="320" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYHj4kEA"></embed>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital GovernanceWikipediaFeaturedCyberculturesWorkshopCPOV2010-10-06T11:21:56ZBlog EntryFill The Gap: Global Discussion on Digital Natives
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet
<b>More often than not people don't understand the new practices inspired by Internet and digital technologies. As such a series of accusations have been leveled against the Digital Natives. Educators, policy makers, scholars, and parents have all raised their worries without hearing out from the people they are concerned about. Hivos has initiated an online global discussion about Digital Natives. So, to voice your opinion, start tweeting with us now #DigitalNatives.</b>
<div class="content-view-full">
<div class="class-event">
<div class="pagecontent">
<h2>If you cannot attend Fill The Gap, you can also join us in a global discussion on some of the issues being discussed at #DigitalNatives<br /></h2>
<br />
<p>1.
Are
you an apolitical consumer, or do you have ambitions?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives</a></p>
<p>2.
Are
you a little prince or princess, who only wants to talk to like minded people
or are you different?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess</a></p>
<p>3.
Is
Wikipedia your bible or do you really know something?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki</a></p>
<p>4.
Are
you a digital dinosaur? They say you don’t know anything about ICT!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur</a></p>
<p>5.
Why
use the Internet, why don’t you march the streets?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest</a></p>
<p>6.
Plans
to change the world? What do you need?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld</a></p>
<br />If you are in Amsterdam, here is the information you will need to attend the event:<br />
<h2>Fill the Gap! - 7</h2>
<h3>
R U Online?</h3>
<div class="date">Date: 15 January 2010 </div>
<div class="date">Time: 12.30 until
17.00 hour</div>
<div class="date">Location: Het Sieraad, Postjesweg 1, Amsterdam</div>
<br />
<strong></strong>The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth
and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened
and put to use for a better world? Hivos, apart from cohosting the
event, will be involving digital natives to hear their stories about
ICT and engagement.
<br />
<p>
An Open Space event on the potential of new (mobile) media and youth in
developing countries. For everyone in politics, the profit and the
non-profit sectors who is interested in ICT and international
development cooperation.</p>
<p>
The use of new (mobile) technology is the most natural thing in the world for the youth of today.</p>
<p>
Shaped by the digital era and at ease with creativeity, these
innovators use new media to change the world. Just think of the Twitter
revolution in Iran. What can the international development sector learn
from this? How could international development cooperation use the
potential power of youth to tackle development problems?</p>
<p> The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of
youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be
strengthened and put to use for a better world? The kick-off will be
hosted by Jennifer Corriero, co-founder of Taking IT Global: the
international platform for youth and the use of new media for a better
world. Then the floor is open to discuss your own ideas with people
from new media, the business world and the international development
sector during the Open Space sessions. Join in: come to Amsterdam on
Friday January 15th and be inspired during Fill the Gap!<br />
<br /> Registration is free. The programme is in English.</p>
<br /><a href="http://www.fill-the-gap.nl/Fill_the_gap_7?" target="_blank">» Fill the Gap</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital NativesAgencyYouthFeaturedCyberculturesNew PedagogiesDigital subjectivitiesICT2010-01-22T10:54:13ZBlog EntryA provisional definition for the Cultural Last Mile
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/definiton
<b>In the first of his entries, Ashish Rajadhyaksha gives his own spin on the 'Last Mile' problem that has been at the crux of all public technologies. Shifting the terms of debate away from broadcast problems of distance and access, he re-purposes the 'last mile' which is a communications problem, to make a cultural argument about the role and imagination of technology in India, and the specific ways in which this problem features in talking about Internet Technologies in contemporary India.</b>
<div class="main">
<div class="snap_preview">
<p>In its classical
form, the ‘last mile’ is a communications term defining the final stage
of providing connectivity from a communications provider to a customer,
and has been used as such most commonly by telecommunications and cable
television industries. There has however been a a specific Indian
variant, seen in its most classical avatar in scientist Vikram
Sarabhai’s contention that overcoming the last mile could solve the two
major challenges India has faced, of <strong>linguistic diversity </strong>and <strong>geographical distance</strong>,
and mounted as the primary argument for terrestrial television in the
early 1980s. (I will try and attach the Sarabhai paper a little later
to this posting).</p>
<p>This specifically Indian variation, where technology was mapped onto
developmentalist-democratic priorities, has been the dominant
characteristic of communications technology since at least the
invention of the radio in the 1940s. For at least 50 years now, that
means, the last mile has become a mode of a techno-democracy, where
connectivity has been directly translated into democratic citizenship.
It has continuously provided the major rationale for successive
technological developments, from the 1960s wave of portable
transistors, the terrestrial transponders of the first televisual
revolution it the early 1980s (the Special Plan for the Expansion of
Television), the capacity of satellite since SITE and the INSAT series,
and from the 1990s the arrival of wired networks (LANs, Cable,
fibre-optic) followed by wireless (WLAN, WiMAX, W-CDMA). At each point
the assumption has been consistently made that the final frontier was
just around the corner; that the next technology in the chain would
breach a major barrier, once and for all.</p>
<p><strong>What I hope to do is to provide a historical account to
argue that the theory of the ‘last mile’ has been founded on
fundamental (mis)apprehensions around just what this bridge
constitutes. </strong>Further, that these apprehensions may have been
derived from a misconstruction of democractic theory, to assume, first,
an evolutionary rather than distributive model for connectivity, and
second, to introduce a major bias for broadcast (or one-to-many) modes
as against many-to-many peer-to-peer formats. The book, whenever I
succeed in writing it, will hope to argue the following:</p>
<p>1. It has been difficult to include <strong>human resource</strong>
as an integral component to the last mile. Contrary to the relentlessly
technologized definition of the last mile, it may perhaps be best seen
historically as <em>also</em>, and even perhaps <em>primarily</em>, a
human resource issue. This is not a new realization, but it is one that
keeps reproducing itself with every new technological generation<a href="http://culturallastmile.wordpress.com/#_ftn1">[1]</a>,
with ever newer difficulties. The endemic assumption, derived from the
broadcasting origins of the definition is that it is primarily the <em>sender</em>’s responsibility to bridge the divide, that <em>technology </em>can
aid him to do so on its own, and that such technology can negate the
need to define connectivity as a multiple-way partnership as it reduces
the recipient into no more than an intelligent recipient of what is
sent (the citizen model). On the other hand, it is possible to show how
previous successful experiments bridging the last mile have been ones
where <em>recipients have been successfully integrated into the communications model </em>both as peers and, even more significantly, as <em>originators </em>as well as <em>enhancers </em>of
data. Importantly, this paper will show, this has been evidenced even
in one-way ‘broadcast’ modes such as film, television and radio (in the
movie fan, community radio and the television citizen-journalist).</p>
<p>2. The one-way broadcast versus peer-to-peer versus two/multiple-way
debate needs to he historically revisited. The need to redefine the
beneficiary of a connectivity cycle as a full-fledged partner tends to
come up against a bias written into standard communications models –
and therefore several standard revenue models – that consistently tend
to underplay what this paper will call the <em>significant sender/recipient</em>.
While both terrestrial and satellite systems require some level of
peer-to-peer transmission systems to facilitate last-mile
communications, it has been a common problem that unless <em>either</em> a clear focus exists on geographic areas <em>or</em>
significant peer-to-peer participation exists, broadcast models
inevitably find themselves delivering large amounts of S/N at low
frequencies without sufficient spectrum to support large information
capacity. While it is technically possible to ‘flood’ a region in
broadcasting terms, this inevitably leads to extremely high wastage as
much of the radiated ICE never reaches any user at all. As information
requirements increase, broadcast ‘wireless mesh’ systems small enough
to provide adequate information distribution to and from a relatively
small number of local users, require a prohibitively large number of
broadcast locations along with a large amount of excess capacity to
make up for the wasted energy.</p>
<p>This problem, importantly, springs as much from a built-in <em>ideological </em>commitment
to one-way broadcasting formats, as from technological limitations. The
technology itself poses further problems given the bias of different
systems to different kinds of connectivity, and with it different types
of peer-to-peer possibilities. Rather than attempting a
one-size-fits-all model for all models to follow, we need to work out
different <em>synergies </em>between broadcast-dependent and peer-to-peer-enabled platforms.</p>
<p>This book will eventually hope to study the history of peer-to-peer
and multiple-way structures as systems where sending has become a
component part of receiving. Key technological precedents to the
present definition of the sender-communication ‘partner’ would be <strong>community radio</strong>, <strong>low-power transmission-reception systems </strong>(most famously the Pij experiment in Gujarat conducted by ISRO), and various <strong>internet-based networking models</strong>.</p>
<p>3. The need to revisit the technological community is therefore
critical. The key question is one of how technological communities have
been produced, and how they may be sustained. In January 2007, the
attack by V.S. Ailawadi, former Chairman, Haryana Electricty Regulatory
Commission, on India’s public sector telecom giants BSNL and MTNL for
keeping their ‘huge infrastructure’ of ‘copper wire and optic fibre’ to
themselves, when these could be used by private operators as cheaper
alternatives to WiMAX, W-CDMA and broadband over power lines, shows the
uneasy relationship between new players and state agencies. Mr.
Ailawadi’s contention that the ‘unbundling’ of the last mile would
bring in competition for various types of wireless applications and
broadband services not just for 45 million landlines but also for 135
million mobile users of various service providers, also therefore needs
to be revisited from the perspective of community formation. How would
the new 135 million mobile users be effectively tapped for their
capacity to become what we are calling significant senders?</p>
<p>In defining the last mile as to do with the recipient-as-sender, and thus the <strong>community</strong>, this paper will focus on a history of community action along specific models of connectivity. These are: cinema’s <strong>movie fan</strong>, internet’s <strong>blogger</strong> and <strong>networker</strong>, solar energy’s <strong>barefoot engineer</strong>, software’s <strong>media pusher</strong> and television’s <strong>citizen-journalist. </strong>A specific focus for study will be the models of <strong>participatory learning</strong> in the classroom, using <strong>film</strong>, the <strong>vinyl disc</strong>, the <strong>audio cassette</strong>, the <strong>radio</strong>, the <strong>television</strong>, the <strong>web </strong>and now the <strong>mobile phone</strong>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/definiton'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/definiton</a>
</p>
No publishernishantA copy of this post is also available on the author's personal blog at http://culturallastmile.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/1-what-is-the-cultural-last-mile/ICT4DDigital GovernancePublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCyberculturesDigital subjectivities2011-08-02T08:57:07ZBlog EntryOpen Standards Workshop at IGF '09
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society co-organized a workshop on 'Open Standards: A Rights-Based Framework' at the fourth Internet Governance Forum, at Sharm el-Sheikh. The panel was chaired by Aslam Raffee of Sun Microsystems and the panellists were Sir Tim Berners-Lee of W3C, Renu Budhiraja of India's DIT, Sunil Abraham of CIS, Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft, and Rishab Ghosh of UNU-MERIT.</b>
<p>Sir Tim Berners-Lee started the session with an address on various rights. Rights, he noted can range from being things like the rights to air and water to the right not to have the data carrier you use determine which movie you watch. Then, there are tensions between rights: the right to anonymity can clash with the right to know who posted information on making a bomb. Berners-Lee stated that for 2009, he has chosen to pursue one particular right: the right to government-held data. This data can include everything from where schools are to emergency services such as locations of hospitals. Today, we are talking about standards. </p>
<p>The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a fifteen-year old body in which all kinds of people come together for purposes of setting standards around the World Wide Web. Thus, everything from HTML, which is used to write Web pages to WCAG, which are guidelines to enable people with disabilities access websites through assistive technologies. W3C conducts its discussions openly: anybody who has a good idea has a right to participate in its discussions -- it does not matter who one works for, who one represents -- what does matter are the ideas one brings to the table. The kinds of standards that W3C deals with are of interest to an immensely wide-ranging group of people. Even ten-year olds have actually expressed their opinions about standards like HTML. All this openness of participation must be guaranteed while ensuring that the processes move forward.</p>
<p>Next spoke Renu Budhiraja of the Department of Information and Technology, which is a part of the Indian government. She started off by hoping that this workshop would be not only a platform to share knowledge, but also to reach consensus on a few matters. Next, she laid out why open standards are extremely important for the Indian government. What citizens want in their interactions with the government are ease of interaction and efficiency. For them it is immaterial whether a certain service is provided by Department A or Department B. Thus we need to move towards a single-window government service for citizens, enabling them to interact easily with the government's various departments. While such an initiative must be centralized for it to be effective, it is crucial that its implementation be decentralized and suited to each district or localities' needs.</p>
<p>There is, understandably, a huge institutional mechanism behind ensuring that these systems are based on open standards. We have expert committees, consisting of academics and knowledgeable bureaucrats, and working groups, which include industry groups. Through these, we have evolved a National Policy on Open Standards, which is currently in a draft stage, but shall be notified soon. This policy outlines the principles based on which particular standards required for governmental functioning are to be chosen or evolved. This document will ensure long-term accessibility to public documents and information, and seamless interoperability of various governmental services and departments. It will also reduce the risk of vendor lock-in and reduce costs, and thus ensure long-term, sustainable, scalable and cost-effective solutions.</p>
<p>Ms. Budhiraja noted that there are a few aspects of the policy that bear discussion in a forum such as the IGF. First is the issue of whether royalty-free is the only choice for innovation. All other things equal, between royalty-free and reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) standards, of course royalty-free is to be preferred. But what if a superior technology (JPEG200 vs. JPEG) is RAND? What should the government's position be in such a case? Further, what should the government's position be when in a particular domain a RAND standard is the only option? </p>
<p>Next is the issue of single vs. multiple open standards. When interoperability is what we are aiming at, can multiple standards be recommended as some in the industry are asking us to do? And then is the issue of market maturity. The government sometimes finds itself in a situation where a standard is available, but well-developed products around that standard aren't and there aren't sufficient vendors using that standard. All these issues are of great practical importance when a government works on a policy document on standards.</p>
<p>Next up was Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. His presentation was on open standards as citizens' and consumers' rights. He started off by citing the example of the Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application (SCOSTA) standard, and the implications that the SCOSTA story has on large-scale projects such as the National Unique ID project currently under way in India. SCOSTA, an open standard, was being written off as unimplementable by all the MNC smart card vendors who wished to push RAND standards. IIT Kanpur helped the government develop a working implementation. Within twenty days, the card manufacturers submitted modified cards for compliance testing by NIC. Because of SCOSTA being an open standard, local companies also joined the tender. The cost went down from Rs. 600 per card to Rs. 30 per card. This shows the benefits of open standards as a means of curbing oligopolistic pricing, and working for the benefit of consumers.</p>
<p>From a rights-based perspective, access to the state machinery is a primary right. Citizens should not be required to pirate or purchase software to interact with the state. If e-governance solutions are based on proprietary standards, not all citizens would be equal. The South African example or requiring a particular browser to access the election commission's website shows that in a rather drastic fashion. When intellectual property interferes with governmental needs, governments have not been shy of issuing compulsory licences. This was seen when during the Great War the United States government pooled various flight-related patents and compulsorily licensed them, as well as what we are currently seeing with many Aids-related drugs being compulsorily licensed in developing countries. Thus, there are precedents for such licensing, and governments should explore them in the realm of e-governance. Many countries now have statutes that guarantee the right to government-held information. Government Interoperability Frameworks should take these into account, and mandate all government-to-citizen (G2C) information be transacted via open standards. This must be backed up by a strong accessibility policy to ensure that the governments don't discriminate between their citizens.</p>
<p>Proprietary standards act like pseudo-intellectual property rights, just as DRMs do. They add a layer on top of rights such as copyright, and can prevent the exercise of fair use and fair dealing rights because of an inability to legally negotiate the standards in which the content is encoded in a cost-free manner. In guaranteeing this balance between copyrights and fair dealing rights, free software and alternative IP models play a crucial role. Because of software patents being recognized in a few countries, development of free software which allows citizens to exercise their fair use rights is harmed in all countries.</p>
<p>Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft spoke next and placed the standards debate in a large context. He noted that standards are a technicality that are only a small part of the large issue which is interoperability in e-governance and delivery to citizens. The real challenges are organizational and semantic interoperability. Frequently interoperability is not harmed by technical issues, but by legal and organizational issues. Governments used to work on paper; during the shift to electronic data, they didn't engage in any organizational changes. Thus they continue to function with electronic data the same way that they did with paper-based data. Governments often lack strong privacy policies regarding the data that each of their departments holds. This harms governmental functioning. Additionally, legacy hardware and software have to be catered to by the standards we are talking about: sometimes an open standard just will not work. </p>
<p>Standards don't guarantee interoperability, and there is significant work done on this by noted academics ("Why Standards Are Not Enough To Guarantee End-to-End Interoperability" Lewis et al.; "Difficulties Implementing Standards" Egyedi & Dahanayake; "Standards Compliant, But Incompatible?" Egyedi et al.). Mandated standards lists will not help address interoperability issues between different implementations of the same standard. What would help? Transparency of implementations; collaboration with community; active participation in maintenance of standards, etc., would help. There is a need for continued public sector reform, with a focus on citizen-centric e-governance, and a need to engage with the question of whether government-mandated standards lists lead the market or follow the market.</p>
<p>Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, a senior researcher at UN University, Maastricht, spoke next. He started by noting that technical standards are left to technical experts. That needs to change, which is why discussing open standards at the IGF is important. He next set off a hypothetical: imagine you go to the city council office in Sharm el Sheik, and at the parking lot there it says that your car has to be a Ford if you are to park there; or if the Dutch government insists that you have a Philips TV if you are to receive the national broadcaster's signal. While these might seem absurd, situations like this arise all the time when it comes to the realm of software. Thus, the social effects of open standards are of utmost importance, and not just their technical qualities. Analysing the social effects of open standards takes us back to the economics of technology and technological standards. Technological standards exhibit network externalities: their inherent value is less than the value of others using them. Being the only person in the world with a telephone won't be very useful. Technological standards also exhibit path dependence: once you go with one technological format, it is difficult to change over to another even if that other format is superior to the first. Thus, clearly, standards benefit when there is a 'natural monopoly'. The challenge really arises when faced with the question of how to ensure a monopoly in a technology without the supplier of that technology exhibiting monopolistic tendencies. This can only be done when the technology is open and developed openly, of which the web standards and the W3C are excellent examples. If the technology or the process are semi-open, then because of the few intellectual property rights attached to the technology, some would be better off than others. Just as governments cannot insist on driving a particular make of cars as a prerequisite for access to them, they cannot insist on using a particular proprietary standard as a means of accessing them.</p>
<p>Many interesting questions arose when the floor was thrown open to the audience. "Should governments only mandate a particular standard when it is certain that market maturity exists?" Not really, since governmental decisions also give signals to the market and help direct attention to those standards. It would be best if roadmaps were provided, with particular under-mature standards being designated as "preferred standards", thus helping push industry in a particular direction. Examples where this strategy has borne fruit abound. This is also the strategy found in the Australian GIF. On the issue of multiplicity of standards, Sir Tim was very clear that they have to be avoided at all costs. He gave the example of XSLT and CSS, which are both stylesheet formats. He noted that their domain of operation was very different (with one being for servers and the other for clients), so having two standards with similar functions but different domains of operation does not make them multiple standards. Multiple standards defeat the purpose of the standardization process.</p>
<p>It was noted that governmental choices are of practical importance to citizens. During the Hurricane Katrina emergency, the federal emergency website only worked properly if Internet Explorer was used. How do we move forward? We must move forward by having policies that strike a balance between allowing for the natural evolution of standards and stability. The Government Interoperability Frameworks must be dynamic documents, allowing for categorization between standards and having clear roadmaps to enable industry to provide solutions to the government in a timely fashion. Governments must be strong in order to push industry towards openness, for the sake of its citizens, and not let industry dictate proprietary standards as the solution. Some opined that since there are dozens of domains that governments function in, maintaining lists of standards is a time-consuming process that is not justified, but others rebutted that by noting that for enterprise architectures to work, governments have to maintain such lists internally. Opening up that list to citizens and service providers would not entail greater overheads.</p>
<p><strong>Sunil Abraham talking Open Standards at IGF09</strong></p>
<p>(Video added on December 30, 2009)<br /><br /><br /><a title="<OBJECT>, shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" class="__noscriptPlaceholder__" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">
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</a>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsConsumer RightsDigital GovernanceFair DealingsFLOSSWorkshopOpenness2011-08-23T02:54:03ZBlog EntryRethinking the last mile Problem: A cultural argument
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/post1
<b>This research project, by Ashish Rajadhyaksha from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, is mainly a conceptual-archival investigation into India’s history for what has in recent years come to be known as the ‘last mile’ problem. The term itself comes from communication theory, with in turn an ancestry in social anthropology, and concerns itself with (1) identifying the eventual recipient/beneficiary of any communication message, (2) discovering new ways by which messages can be delivered intact, i.e. without either distortion of decay. Exploring the intersection of government policy, technology intervention and the users' expectations, with a specific focus on Internet Technologies and their space in the good governance protocols in India, the project aims at revisiting the last mile problem as one of cultural practices and political contexts in India.</b>
<p></p>
<p>THE CULTURAL
LAST MILE</p>
<p>Ashish
Rajadhyaksha</p>
<p><u>The Argument</u>:</p>
<p>Mapped onto
developmental-democratic language since at least Independence, this concept,
further mapping concrete benefits with the delivery of the message, has come to
define the classic model by which the Indian state attempts to ensure that <em>policy</em> designed for <em>local implementation</em> actually reaches its <em>intended beneficiaries</em> without <em>distortion</em>.
The immense link between communication theory and democracy thereby defines not
only the Indian state’s historic dependence on <em>technologies</em> of communication – radio, terrestrial and satellite.
It goes further, as the technological apparatus – and its variants of the
classic ‘broadcast’ model of single sender-multiple receiver – comes to
underpin the very definition of democratic development.</p>
<p>One consequence
is an <em>evolutionary</em> definition of
technology, with the last mile defined as a means of eternal purification of
the message, combining content ‘corruption’ with socio-economic corruption, as
newer generations of technology tirelessly eliminate distortion in both. This
could well be the history of Indian state policy, from radio broadcasts
representing the ‘voice of the State’ to the era of e-Governance. Such an authority is somewhat graphically in evidence in
recent years in the deployment of ‘neutral’ technology such as computers within
e-governance initiatives, which have, when successful , seen
computer-illiterate farmers make wide use of ICT services where they ‘do not
feel that there is a barrier to their obtaining information’, a ‘tribute to the
grassroots staff and their training’, but also to ‘faith in the technology’
(Shaik, Jhamtani and Rao 2004: 9). The attribution of such ‘neutrality’ to
modern ‘scientific’ technology has been in evidence from late
nineteenth-century still photography to the use of technologies such as ‘First
In–First Out (FIFO)’, a way that prevents queue-jumping, biometrics and double
screens for users to view typed in matter, including touch screens
(Parthasarathy 2005, VIII: 9).</p>
<p><u>The Research
Project</u></p>
<p>This project
assumes that, given the chronic historic failure in bridging the last mile,
whether in communication theory or in the standard functioning of development
projects (a key component of the relatively new discipline of disaster
management) – a failure stemming from difficulties in both naming and accessing
intended beneficiaries – it becomes necessary to reinvestigate the model
itself, along with its historic failures.</p>
<p>The project is
split into three parts: <br />
(1) The conceptual argument: a historical trace of the theoretical origins of
the concept ‘Last mile’ (even if not named as such), and key technical
locations of its deployment: the telegraph, the ‘film trains’ in the 1920s, the
radio (extended to transistorization in the 1960s), and the first experiments
with terrestrial and satellite technology. <br />
(2) It will then take three specific examples (perhaps but may be
changed),(a) the SITE experiment of the
1970s with specific new field work on the well known Kheda experiment; (b) the
Cable Television movements in India in the 1980s, and (c) Experiments with WLL
in IIT Chennai in the 1990s. <br />
(3) The concluding section will address locations where the last mile has in
fact been bridged successfully, in the review’s estimation, and will inquire
into how it came to be functional. It is at this point speculated that it
worked mainly because (a) the original model was either tampered with or used
contrary to stated intentions, and (b) when it worked, this happened with the
connivance of the state. The project will therefore perhaps conclude with the
following investigations: that historically significant occasions when
alternative definitions were thrown up for the last mile worked mainly because
they were dependent on error and accident (rather than seeing these as
interruptions or distortions to the signal), and that they functioned more on
both peer-to-peer and reverse broadcasting than on the
single-sender-multiple-recipients model.</p>
<p><u>References</u>:</p>
<p>Ashish Rajadhyaksha
(1990), ‘Beaming Messages to the Nation’, <em>Journal of Arts &
Ideas</em>, No. 19 (May): 33–52.</p>
<p>Ashish Rajadhyaksha
(1999), ‘The Judgement: Re-Forming the Public’, <em>Journal of Arts &
Ideas</em>, Nos. 32–33 (April)</p>
<p>N. Meera Shaik, Anita
Jhamtani and D.U.M. Rao, ‘Information and Communication Technology in
Agricultural Development: A Comparative Analysis of Three Projects from India’,
Agricultural Research and Extension Network (AGREN), 2004.</p>
<p>Balaji Parthasarathy et
al (ed), ‘Information and Communications Technologies for Development: A
Comparative Analysis of Impacts and Costs from India’, Bangalore: International
Institute of Information Technology, 2005.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/post1'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/post1</a>
</p>
No publishernishantHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkInternet HistoriesDigital Governance2015-04-03T10:54:21ZBlog EntryIT Act and Commerce
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/it-act-and-commerce
<b>This is a guest post by Rahul Matthan, partner in the law firm Trilegal, and widely regarded as one of the leading experts on information technology law in India. In this post, Mr. Matthan looks at the provisions in the amended Information Technology Act of interest to commerce, namely electronic signatures and data protection.</b>
<p>This post analyses the amendments brought about to the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act 2000”) through the recent 2008 amendments (“IT Act 2008”).</p>
<h2>Definitions</h2>
<p>The IT Act 2008 has introduced a few additional definitions to the list of definitions originally included in the IT Act 2000. These definitions have either amplified the existing provisions or been introduced in order to address new issues required to be defined in the context of the newly introduced provisions in the statute. Some of the significant definitions have been discussed below:</p>
<h3>Computer Network</h3>
<p>The definition of “computer network” has been amended to specifically include the wireless interconnection of computers. While wireless technology did fall within the scope of the IT Act under the rather generic head of “other communication media”, the Amendment Act clarifies the scope of the IT Act by expressly including the term “wireless”.</p>
<h3>Communication Devices</h3>
<p>The IT Amendment Bill, 2006, had provided an explanation for “communication devices” under Section 66A. This definition has been moved into the definition section and now applies across all sections of the IT Act 2008. “Communication devices” is defined to mean “a cell phone, personal digital assistance (PDA) device or combination of both or any device used to communicate, send or transmit any text, video, audio or image”.</p>
<p>There has been case law even under the IT Act that has held mobile phones to fall within the ambit of the IT Act, as a result of which all the provisions of the Act that apply to computers are equally applicable to mobile phones. This amendment only makes that position more explicit.</p>
<h2>Electronic Signatures<br /></h2>
<p>One of the major criticisms of the IT Act 2000 was the fact that it was not a technology neutral legislation. This was specifically so in relation to the provisions in the IT Act 2000 relating to the use of digital signatures for the purpose of authentication of electronic records. The statute made specific reference to the use of asymmetric cryptosystem technologies in the context of digital signatures, and, in effect, any authentication method that did not use this technology was not recognised under the IT Act 2000.</p>
<p>The IT Act 2008 has attempted to make this more technology neutral. In doing so, the attempt has been to bring the law in line with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Model Law on Electronic Signatures (“Model Law”).</p>
<h3>Replacement of Digital Signatures</h3>
<p>The first significant change in the IT Act 2008 is the replacement of the term “digital signatures” with “electronic signatures” in almost all the provisions in the IT Act 2000. In some provisions, reference continues to be made to digital signatures, but the net effect of the amendments is to treat digital signatures as a subset (or an example of one type) of electronic signatures.</p>
<p>Electronic signatures have been defined as the authentication of an electronic record using the authentication techniques specified in the 2nd Schedule to the Act, provided they are reliable. </p>
<p>The reliability criterion has been introduced, very much along the lines of the Model Law. However, the contents of the 2nd Schedule are yet to be stipulated, which means that despite the existence of a reliability standard, the only authentication method available at this point in time is the digital signature regime.</p>
<h3>Dual Requirement</h3>
<p>One significant implication of this amendment is the introduction of a dual requirement – to meet the reliability standard as well as to be included in the 2nd Schedule. However, structuring the authentication procedures in this manner offsets the objective tests of neutrality borrowed from the Model Law, since an authentication method may meet the reliability test but will not be deemed to be legally enforceable unless it is notified in the 2nd Schedule.</p>
<p>Additionally, there will be grounds for challenging electronic signatures that are notified to the 2nd Schedule, if it can be shown that the signature so notified is not reliable under the terms of the reliability criteria. This can act as an impediment to the recognition of electronic signatures by notification.</p>
<h3>Emphasis on Digital Signatures</h3>
<p>Another concern is the treatment of digital signatures in the post amendment statute. The IT Act 2008 continues to retain all the provisions relating to digital signatures within the main body of the statute. The term “digital signature” has not been uniformly substituted with “electronic signature” throughout the statute. In certain provisions this leads to a certain amount of absurdity, such as in those relating to representations made as to the issuance, suspension or revocation of digital signature certificates; due to the lack of uniformity, these principles now apply only to digital signatures and not to all types of electronic signatures. </p>
<p>It would have been preferable if the provisions relating to digital signatures had been moved in their entirety to the 2nd Schedule. Then, digital signatures would have become just another class of electronic signatures listed in the Schedule. By omitting to do this, the authors ensure that digital signature-specific provisions remaining in the main body of the statute challenge the technology neutrality of the statute.</p>
<h3>Certifying Authorities</h3>
<p>The IT Act 2008 has made the certifying authority the repository of all electronic signatures issued under the statute. Given that there are, at present, multiple certifying authorities, this provision is impractical. Instead, the statute should have either referred to the Controller of Certifying Authorities or should have been worded to state that each certifying authority would be the repository for all electronic signature certificates issued by it.</p>
<h3>Impact on Other Statutes</h3>
<p>Since the enactment of the IT Act 2000, amendments have been carried out in other statutes, relying on the concept of digital signatures. For instance, the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, makes the use of a digital signature essential for an electronic cheque.1 While the IT Act 2008 has expanded the scope of the available authentication measures, by introducing the technologically neutral concept of electronic signatures, corresponding amendments in other statutes like the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, will need to be carried out, so that they are not limited in their application to digital signatures.</p>
<h2>Data Protection<br /></h2>
<p>Prior to the passing of the IT Act 2008, the concept of 'data protection' was not recognised in India. The amendments have now introduced some amount of legal protection for data stored in the electronic medium. This chapter analyses the changes sought to be introduced and their impact on data protection law in India.</p>
<h3>Data under the IT Act 2000</h3>
<p>The only provision under the IT Act 2000, which dealt with unauthorised access and damage to data, was Section 43. Under that section, penalties were prescribed in respect of any person who downloads copies or extracts data from a computer system, introduces computer contaminants or computer viruses into a computer system or damages any data residing in a computer system.</p>
<h3>Data under the IT Act 2008</h3>
<p>Under the IT Act 2008, far-reaching changes have been made in relation to data. Two sections have been inserted specifically for that purpose – Sections 43-A and 72-A, one dealing with the civil and the other with the criminal remedies in relation to the breach of data related obligations.</p>
<h3>The Civil Remedies for Data Protection</h3>
<p>The newly introduced Section 43-A reads as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Compensation for failure to protect data - Where a body corporate, possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data or information in a computer resource which it owns, controls or operates, is negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures and thereby causes wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, such body corporate shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation, to the person so affected.</p>
<p> Explanation - For the purposes of this section:</p>
<p> (i) “Body Corporate” means any company and includes a firm, sole proprietorship or other association of individuals engaged in commercial or professional activities;</p>
<p>(ii) “Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures” means security practices and procedures designed to protect such information from unauthorised access, damage, use, modification, disclosure or impairment, as may be specified in an agreement between the parties or as may be specified in any law for the time being in force and in the absence of such agreement or any law, such reasonable security practices and procedures, as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with such professional bodies or associations as it may deem fit; and</p>
<p>(iii) “Sensitive Personal Data or Information” means such personal information as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with such professional bodies or associations as it may deem fit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While at first this provision appears to address several long standing concerns relating to data protection in India, there are several insidious flaws that could affect the development of a data protection jurisprudence in the country.</p>
<h3>Non-Electronic Data</h3>
<p>In the first instance, there is no mention, under this provision, of non-electronic data. Most international data protection statutes recognise and protect data stored in any electronic medium or a relevant filing system (including, for instance, a salesperson's diary). The newly introduced provisions of the IT Act 2008 do not provide any protection for data stored in a non-electronic medium.</p>
<p>It could be argued that given the legislative focus of this statute (it has been called the Information Technology Act with a reason), it would be inappropriate to include within this statute protection for forms of data that do not relate to the digital or electronic medium. While that argument is valid to many who look to the new provisions introduced in the IT Act 2008 as the answer to the data protection concerns that the country has been facing all these years, their enthusiasm must be tempered as these new provisions merely provide solutions for electronic data.</p>
<h3>Classification of Data</h3>
<p>Most international data protection statutes distinguish between different levels of personal data – specifying difference levels of protection for personal information and sensitive personal information. Depending on whether the data can be classified as one or the other, they have different levels of protection, as loss, unauthorised access or disclosure of sensitive personal information is considered to have a deeper impact on the data subject. </p>
<p>The new provisions of the IT Act 2008 make no such distinction. Section 43-A applies to all “sensitive personal data or information” but does not specify how personal data not deemed to be sensitive is to be treated. In essence, personal information and sensitive personal information do not appear to be differentially treated in the context of data protection.</p>
<h3>Consequences</h3>
<p>Under most international data protection statutes, the person in “control” of the data is liable for the consequences of disclosure, loss or unauthorised access to such information. This ensures that liability is restricted to those who actually have the ability to control the manner in which the data is treated. </p>
<p>However, under the new provisions of the IT Act 2008, the mere possession of information and its subsequent misuse would render any person who possesses this data liable to damages. While there is likely to be a debate on what constitutes possession and how this differs from control, there can be little doubt that by referring to “possession” in addition to “operation” and “control”, the IT Act 2008 appears to have widened the net considerably.</p>
<h3>Negligence in Implementing Security Practices</h3>
<p>Section 43-A specifically places liability on a body corporate only if such body corporate has been negligent in implementing its security practices and procedures in relation to the data possessed, controlled or handled by it. The choice of language here is significant. The statute specifically refers to the term “negligence” in relation to the security practices and procedures as opposed to stipulating a clear, pass-fail type obligation to conform.</p>
<p>There is a significant difference between the terms “negligence to implement” and “failure to implement”. The former can only result in a breach if the body corporate that was required to follow reasonable security practices with regard to the data in its possession or control does not perform the required action and it can be proved that a reasonable man in the same circumstances would have performed the required action. If a body corporate is to be made liable under the provisions of this Section, it is not enough to demonstrate that security procedures were not followed; it has to be proved in addition that the body corporate was negligent.</p>
<h3>Wrongful Loss and Gain</h3>
<p>The Section appears to have been constructed on the basis that a breach has occurred in the event that any “wrongful gain” or “wrongful loss” was suffered. These terms have not been defined either under statutes or through any judicial precedents in the civil context. However, these terms do have a definition under criminal law in India. The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (“IPC”), defines “Wrongful Gain” to mean gain, by unlawful means, of property to which the person gaining is not legally entitled; and “Wrongful Loss” to mean the loss by unlawful means of property to which the person losing it is legally entitled.</p>
<p>There does not appear to be any greater significance in the use of these terms even though they are typically found in criminal statutes. Therefore, apart from the slight ambiguity as to purpose, their use in the IT Act does not appear to have any great significance.</p>
<h3>Limitation on Liability</h3>
<p>The provisions of Section 43 originally had the total liability for a breach capped at Rs. 5,00,00,000 (five crore rupees). The original text of Section 43-A had the same limitation of liability in respect of its data protection provisions. Before the bill was passed into law, this limitation was removed and now a breach of Section 43-A is not subject to any limitation of liabilities.</p>
<h3>Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures</h3>
<p>Section 43-A makes a reference to “reasonable security practices and procedures” and stipulates that a breach has been caused only if such practices and procedures have not been followed. There are three methods by which reasonable security practices and procedures can be established:</p>
<ul><li> By agreement;</li><li>By law; and</li><li>By prescription by the Central Government.</li></ul>
<p><br />As there is no law in India which sets out an appropriate definition for the term and since it will be some time before which the Central Government comes out with necessary regulations, it would appear that the only option available is for the parties to arrive at an agreement as to how the sensitive personal data and information exchanged under their contract is to be handled.</p>
<p>As a corollary, till such time as the government establishes the necessary rules in relation to these security practices and procedures, if a body corporate does not enter into an agreement with the person providing the information as to the reasonable security practices and procedures that would apply, the body corporate cannot be brought within the purview of this section for any loss or damage to data.</p>
<h3>The Criminal Remedies for Unlawful Disclosure of Information</h3>
<p>In addition to the civil remedies spelled out in such detail in Section 43-A, the newly introduced provisions of Section 72-A of the IT Act 2008 could be used to impose criminal sanctions against any person who discloses information in breach of a contract for services. While not exactly a data protection provision in the same way that Section 43-A is, there are enough similarities in purpose to achieve the same result.</p>
<p>Section 72-A reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> Punishment for Disclosure of information in breach of lawful contract - Save as otherwise provided in this Act or any other law for the time being in force, any person including an intermediary who, while providing services under the terms of lawful contract, has secured access to any material containing personal information about another person, with the intent to cause or knowing that he is likely to cause wrongful loss or wrongful gain discloses, without the consent of the person concerned, or in breach of a lawful contract, such material to any other person shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with a fine which may extend to Rupees five lakh, or with both.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In substance, this provision appears to be focused on providing criminal remedies in the context of breach of confidentiality obligations under service contracts; given that the section specifically refers to the disclosure of personal information obtained under that service contract, it is fair to classify this as a provision that addresses data protection issues.</p>
<h3>Personal Information</h3>
<p>The IT Act 2008 does not define “personal information”. Equally, there are no judicial precedents that provide any clarity on the term. The Right to Information Act, 2005 does provide a definition for “personal information”, but that definition is inappropriate in the context of the IT Act 2008. In the absence of a useable definition for the term “personal information”, it becomes difficult to assess the scope and ambit of the provision and in particular to understand the extent to which it is enforceable.</p>
<h3>"Willful"</h3>
<p>The section would only apply to persons who willfully disclose personal information and cause wrongful loss or gain. Hence, in order to make a person liable it has to be proved that the person disclosing the personal information did so with an intention to cause wrongful loss or gain. It would be a valid defense to claim that any loss caused was unintentional.</p>
<h3>Service Contracts</h3>
<p>The section appears to be particular about the fact that it only applies in the context of personal information obtained under a contract for services. This appears to rule out confidential information (that is not of a personal nature) that has been received under any other form of agreement (including, for example, a technology license agreement). The section is clearly intended to protect against the misuse of personal information and cannot be adapted to provide a wider level of protection against all breaches of confidential information. That said, employers now have a much stronger weapon against employees who leave with the personal records of other fellow employees.</p>
<h3>Consent</h3>
<p>This section also clearly applies only to those disclosures of personal information with the intent to cause wrongful loss or gain which have taken place without the consent of the person whose personal information is being disclosed. What remains to be seen is how the law will deal with situations where a general consent for disclosures has been obtained at the time of recruitment.</p>
<p>Such clauses are made effective around the world by including opt in and opt out clauses, to allow the employee to either expressly agree to the disclosure of his personal information or to specifically exclude himself from the ambit of any such disclosures.</p>
<h3>Media of Material</h3>
<p>This section, unlike several other provisions of the IT Act 2008, deals with all manner of materials without requiring them to be digital. However, while disclosure of information stored in the non-electronic medium has been recognised, in the absence of a clear definition of personal information, it is difficult to ascertain the application and enforcement of this section.</p>
<h3>What’s Missing</h3>
<p>In order to be a truly effective data protection statute, the IT Act 2008 must include provisions relating to the collection, circumstances of collection, control, utilisation and proper disposal of data. At present the statute is silent about these aspects. In many ways, the statute addresses the particular concerns of companies or corporate entities looking for protection in relation to data outsourced to any other corporate entity for processing. Within these specific parameters the statute works well. However it does little to protect the average citizen of the country from the theft of personal data. Until we have statutory recognition of these issues, we will not be able to say that we have an effective data protection law in India.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/it-act-and-commerce'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/it-act-and-commerce</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIT ActDigital GovernanceData ProtectionAuthenticationSecurity2011-08-02T07:41:45ZBlog EntryPrimer on the New IT Act
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/primer-it-act
<b>With this draft information bulletin, we briefly discuss some of the problems with the Information Technology Act, and invite your comments.</b>
<p align="justify">The latest amendments to
the Information Technology Act 2000, passed in December 2008 by the
Lok Sabha, and the draft rules framed under it contain several provisions
that can be abused and misused to infringe seriously on citizens'
fundamental rights and basic civil liberties. We have already <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/it-act/short-note-on-amendment-act-2008" class="internal-link" title="Short note on IT Amendment Act, 2008">written about some of the problems</a> with this Act earlier. With this information bulletin, drafted by Chennai-based advocate Ananth Padmanabhan, we wish to extend that analysis into the form of a citizens' dialogue highlighting ways in which the Act and the rules under it fail. Thus, we invite your comments, suggestions, and queries, as this is very much a work in progress. We will eventually consolidate this dialogue and follow up with the government on the concerns of its citizens.</p>
<h3 align="justify">Intermediaries
beware</h3>
<p align="justify">Internet service
providers, webhosting service providers, search engines, online
payment sites, online auction sites, online market places, and cyber
cafes are all examples of “intermediaries” under this Act. The
Government can force any of these intermediaries to cooperate with
any interception, monitoring or decryption of data by stating broad
and ambiguous reasons such as the “interest of the sovereignty or
integrity of India”, “defence of India”, “security of the
State”, “friendly relations with foreign States”, “public
order” or for “preventing incitement to” or “investigating”
the commission of offences related to those. This power can be abused
to infringe on the privacy of intermediaries as well as to hamper
their constitutional right to conduct their business without interference.</p>
<p align="justify">If a Google search on
“Osama Bin Laden” throws up an article that claims to have
discovered his place of hiding, the Government of India can issue a
direction authorizing the police to monitor Google’s servers to
find the source of this information. While Google can, of course,
establish that this information cannot be attributed directly to the
organization, making the search unwarranted, that would not help it
much. While section 69 grants the government these wide-ranging
powers, it does not provide for adequate safeguards in the form of having to show due cause or having an in-built right of appeal against a decision by the government. If Google refused
to cooperate under such circumstances, its directors would be liable
to imprisonment of up to seven years.</p>
<h3 align="justify">Pre-censorship<br /></h3>
<p align="justify">The State has been given
unbridled power to block access to websites as long as such blocking
is deemed to be in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of
India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations
with foreign States, and other such matters.</p>
<p align="justify">Thus, if a web portal or
blog carries or expresses views critical of the Indo-US nuclear deal,
the government can block access to the website and thus muzzle criticism
of its policies. While some may find that suggestion outlandish, it is very much possible under the Act. Since there is no right to be heard before your website is taken down nor is there an in-built mechanism for the website owner to appeal, the decisions made by the government cannot be questioned unless you are prepared to undertake a costly legal battle. </p>
<p align="justify">Again, if an intermediary (like Blogspot or an ISP like Airtel) refuses to cooperate, its directors may be personally liable to imprisonment for up to a period of seven years. Thus, being personally liable, the intermediaries are rid of any incentive to stand up for the freedom of speech and expression.</p>
<h3 align="justify">We need to monitor your computer: you have a virus<br /></h3>
<p align="justify">The government has been
vested with the power to authorize the monitoring and collection of
traffic data and information generated, transmitted, received or
stored in any computer resource. This provision is much too
widely-worded. </p>
<p align="justify">For instance, if the
government feels that there is a virus on your computer that can
spread to another computer, it can demand access to monitor your
e-mails on the ground that such monitoring enhances “cyber
security” and prevents “the spread of computer contaminants”.</p>
<h3 align="justify">Think before you click "Send"<br /></h3>
<p align="justify">If out of anger you send
an e-mail for the purpose of causing “annoyance” or
“inconvenience”, you may be liable for imprisonment up to three
years along with a fine. While that provision (section 66A(c)) was
meant to combat spam and phishing attacks, it criminalizes much more
than it should.</p>
<h3 align="justify">A new brand of "cyber terrorists" <br /></h3>
<p align="justify">The new offence of “cyber
terrorism” has been introduced, which is so badly worded that it
borders on the ludicrous. If a journalist gains
unauthorized access to a computer where information regarding
corruption by certain members of the judiciary is stored, she becomes
a “cyber terrorist” as the information may be used to cause
contempt of court. There is no precedent for any such definition of cyberterrorism. It is unclear what definition of terrorism the government is going by when even unauthorized access to defamatory material is considered cyberterrorism.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/primer-it-act'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/primer-it-act</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIT ActDigital GovernancePublic AccountabilityIntermediary LiabilityCensorship2011-08-02T07:41:54ZBlog EntryLetter to ICANN on NCSG
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/letter-to-icann-on-ncsg
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society sent the following mail to ICANN regarding their attempt to impose their own charter for a Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG), instead of accepting the one drafted by the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC).</b>
<p>Dear Sir or Madam,</p>
<p>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society - Bangalore. We are a Bangalore based research and advocacy organisation promoting consumer and citizen rights on the Internet. We currently focus on IPR reform, IPR alternatives and electronic accessibility by the disabled. Please see our website <http://cis-india.org> for more information about us and our activities.</p>
<p>It has come to our attention that ICANN is imposing the ICANN staff-drafted charter for a Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) and ignoring the version drafted by civil society. As you know, the civil society version was drafted using a consensus process and more than 80 international noncommercial organizations, including mine, support it.</p>
<p>This is an unacceptable situation since the governance structures contained within the NCSG charter determine how effectively noncommercial users can influence policy decisions at ICANN in years to come. On behalf of Internet users in India - I would strongly urge you to reject the staff drafted version of the charter and adopt the version drafted and endorsed by civil society.</p>
<p>Best wishes,</p>
<p>Sunil Abraham<br />Executive Director<br />Centre for Internet and Society</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/letter-to-icann-on-ncsg'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/letter-to-icann-on-ncsg</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshPublic AccountabilityDigital PluralismDigital Governance2011-08-02T07:41:11ZBlog Entry