Centre for Internet and Society

An Interview on Internet Governance with Professor Milton Mueller and Jeremy Malcolm

anirudh — 2013-11-12T10:14:58Z

Anirudh Sridhar interviewed Professor Milton Mueller from the Syracuse University School of Information and Jeremy Malcolm, an Information Technology and Intellectual Property Lawyer, regarding current issues and debates surrounding internet governance.

Q1: The extent to which civil society can participate at the proceedings of WCIT’12?

Professor Mueller: I did not attend WCIT-12. Civil society and industry were both influential in the process. CS created a great deal of critical publicity and leaked documents that had formerly been private. Industry and CS both lobbied governmental officials. (I was the first to leak an official ITU document, and this led to the creation of WCIT leaks by some friends of mine who took the idea much farther.)

Professor Malcolm: Actually I did not attend the WCIT’12 in Dubai. I did attend the WTPF in May, but was not permitted to speak. I did distribute a briefing paper by hand and managed to speak to a few delegates. I also contributed some talking points to an intervention by the representatives of the Informal Experts Group (IEG). Undoubtedly the work of the IEG was influential, and the civil society representatives were influential within that group, but the role of the IEG was poorly articulated and its procedures and relationship to the plenary WTPF were quite arbitrary.

Since then, the organization that I represent, Consumers International, has been granted sector membership status of the ITU-T and ITU-D with a waiver of fees, so that next time we will have the opportunity to speak at any meeting that is open to sector members. This is all well and good for us, less so for civil society organisations that do not have expertise in telecommunications and hence would find it more difficult to apply for sector membership.

Q2: What were the central debates at the WCIT’12 conference?

Professor Mueller: The central debates were: 1) the relevance of International Telecom Regulations to Internet governance, 2) the ETNO proposal to have quality of service charging 3) role of the ITRs in "security" 4) to which entity do the ITRs apply (Operating entities, recognized operating entities, etc.)

Professor Malcolm: Proposals that ITU Recommendations should have mandatory status; that it should expand its mandate to include ICTs as well as telecommunications; that it should take over Internet naming and numbering functions from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers); and that Internet content hosts should share more of their revenue with the operators of telecommunications networks.

Q3: What were some good outcomes and what were some bad outcomes?

Professor Malcolm: None of these proposals succeeded, and not all even officially made it to the table. With the sustained opposition of the United States, Google and other powerful stakeholders, there was never any likelihood that they would.

What did make it through into the final treaty text are two provisions that, given that they are notionally responsible for the refusal of many countries to sign the ITRs, bear that responsibility like a dwarf wears a baggy suit. First, on security – it's worth setting this out in full:

Member States shall individually and collectively endeavor to ensure the security and robustness of international telecommunication networks in order to achieve effective use thereof and avoidance of technical harm thereto, as well as the harmonious development of international telecommunication services offered to the public.

And on spam:

Member States should endeavor to take necessary measures to prevent the propagation of unsolicited bulk electronic communications and minimize its impact on international telecommunication services. Member States are encouraged to cooperate in that sense.

The theory, though it taxes the imagination somewhat, is that these provisions could allow ITU members to justify constraints on Internet content, on the pretext that they are merely addressing security or spam. But the ITU already has work programs on security and spam, and ITU members in turn already heavily regulate these fields, without having an explicit mandate in the ITRs.

Q4: Is the fear of the ITU’s takeover of the internet real?

Professor Mueller:

There is no sudden UN or ITU effort to take over the Internet. There is, instead, a longstanding struggle between the Net and states at the national and international level. The WCIT is just the latest episode; and compared to WSIS, a minor one.

There is no evidence of any recent enlargement of the political support for states and inter-governmental institutions such as ITU. The same players are taking the same positions. There may even be erosion of support for inter-governmentalism, e.g. Brazil’s abandonment of CIRP.

The ITU is a paper tiger. Neither WSIS nor any other international development has strengthened or approved ITU efforts to gain control of pieces of the Internet since 1996.

Professor Malcolm: No: IN THE wake of the anti-climactic conclusion to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) earlier this month, readers could be forgiven for being confused about whether all the hype about the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) staging a UN takeover of the Internet had ever represented a real threat, or had just been a beat-up by special interest groups with an agenda to push.

Q5: Does the US, through ICANN exert too much unilateral influence on Internet Governance?

Professor Mueller: Off course. There are many examples of this. For example, the adoption worldwide of policies based on the DMCA and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the seizure of domains registered to US-based registrars even if they are foreign-owned and do not infringe foreign law, and the linking of tough IP laws to trade concessions.

Professor Malcolm: Yes, the US exerts too much influence over ICANN, via the GAC and the IANA contract. WCIT (or more accurately, the ITU) is NOT the right track to solve this, because keeping the internet away from the ITU is one of the primary reasons the US exerts unilateral control. Any attempt to solve the problem via the ITU will fail.

Q6: Are there any serious alternatives to ICANN?

Professor Mueller: It is inconceivable that IGF will ever evolve into a body that negotiates binding treaties. Its entire mission and purpose is to be an alternative to that. It is also an extremely weak and poorly funded institution.

Professor Malcolm: There are no longer any alternatives to ICANN that anyone seriously thinks are better. The only argument that people are making nowadays is that oversight of ICANN should become multilateral. Nobody (no longer even the ITU) is seriously suggesting that any other body than ICANN should be making these decisions. At most, the GAC wants more say, but even the GAC is still part of ICANN.

Q7: Can we have a multi-stakeholder process that is truly democratic with legal force?

Professor Mueller: To reconcile legally binding authority with MS, you would need some dramatic institutional changes at the global level that would create new forms of representation. These new institutional forms would have to find some way to represent all the world's people and organizations, not states. Because states are unlikely to give up this power on their own, some kind of revolutionary action would be required to bring that about, roughly analogous to the democratic revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th century.

Professor Malcolm: In the far future, yes. In the near future no, but we still need to start talking about it, because the future starts from now. Mechanisms of multi-stakeholderism are still not well enough developed that they can substitute for the legitimacy of the nation state. But nation states do not properly overlap with those who are governed by transnational rules about the Internet, so eventually change must come.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/interview-with-milton-mueller-and-jeremy-malcolm

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #IdentitiesVulnerabilitiesOpportunitiesDissent

Admin — 2022-05-24T14:42:54Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Demonstration of Research Outputs and Methods

Session Plan

The penetration of the internet, mobile phones, social media and multimedia has ushered in the digital revolution. The Digital society promised to be open, fluid and accessible cutting across the barriers of class, caste, gender and rigidities of social structures. It has tremendous scope and potential to contribute effectively to economic growth, social mobility and political participation, creating the possibilities of a more inclusive society across the globe. However, despite its inclusive potential, the existing gender disparities, discrimination, patriarchial structures and inequalities, faced by women has had a considerable impact on the digital gender divide, leading to the digital exclusion of women. This exclusion had further implications during the lockdowns as families were confined to their homes with access to the internet as their only window outside the home.

Global statistics betray considerable discrimination in women’s access to internet. Internet penetration in the Americas is 77.6% for men and 76.8% for women, while in Africa it is 33.8% for men and 22.6% for women. The gender gap in developing countries is 22.8 % while it is 2.3 per cent in the developed world. For the world as a whole it is 17%, as per 2020 data. In India only 85% of women have access to the internet and 58% have access to mobile internet. Access however is not the only impediment in exploiting the internet’s equalizing potential. Low levels of literacy, lack of awareness and structures of patriarchy inhibits women’s participation and mobility on the digital platform as well. The internet operates largely within the parameters of a male-dominated society favouring male access and usage. The digital space at the same time has added to the existing challenges and vulnerabilities of women. In this context the present panel proposes to deliberate on four critical themes/questions.

The papers are based on survey findings, field notes, case studies and literature survey from an ongoing Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, sponsored Major Research Project on “Women as ‘Digital Subjects; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Building Empowerment”. The study was conducted in two urban and peri-urban areas of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Kolkata and Howrah. The respondents included 540 women drawn from various socio-economic backgrounds, educational status, age and religious groups. The work status of the demographics in the sample includes- students 41 per cent, salaried workers (formal and informal/ full-time and part-time) 31 per cent, homemakers 20 per cent and businesswomen or entrepreneurs 8 per cent. 46 per cent of these women reported a total family or household income of two to five lakhs per annum. The survey was conducted in the lockdown months of January to May 2021, which gave a new meaning to home- as a workplace and as a social space - through a questionnaire, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with targeted groups especially home-based women entrepreneurs in Kolkata and Mumbai.

The data analysis from the survey will be posted prior to the session for the audiences. The themes of the panel aim to answer the following questions:

Who are the women who inhabit the social media driven digital space? Is it possible to speak of ‘women’ on the Net or are there ‘many voices of many women’? How do women perceive the internet and how do they seek to employ it? This question becomes critical in view of the unequal access to internet and internet enabled devices, not only on account of lack of digital literacy but also on account of existing social structures that deny women the agency. Moreover, lockdowns restricted people to their homes, leaving the digital spaces as the only means for social as well as economic interactions. In this situation, how did the digital spaces play out for providing opportunities to women?
What is the process and modalities of identity construction? What are the frames of reference for women in the process of new identity construction? Are these identities different from that of the ones in the real world? Are women re imagining their identities on the internet or constructing new ones? How are women creating new opportunities for themselves through the use of social media and the internet, given the flexibility of ‘working from home’ or ‘home-based’ ventures? Are these opportunities or are they compromises? In the process how are they using the internet to negotiate with the existing social structures that restrict their mobility and confine them to their homes?
What is the nature of women’s identities and expression in the virtual world? Can marginalized women use digital spaces to voice dissent? The flexibility of the digital media helps the marginalized create a space and alternative languages of dissent. How does this medium help Dalit women’s voices be transmitted in various forms?
Are women’s vulnerabilities in the digital world different from that of the real world? How do women negotiate these vulnerabilities? What does women’s vulnerability mean in the context of the internet? Do these vulnerabilities limit women’s access and participation?

The panel includes four papers relating to the four themes:

I. Urban Woman and the Digital Media: Access, Preferences and Challenges

This paper will present the main findings about Indian urban women’s access, participation and the purpose of their usage of the digital media. It is based on a survey that was conducted under the ICSSR’s major research project “Women as ‘Digital Subjects; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Building Empowerment” at the Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. The survey was conducted among 540 women respondents from Mumbai and Kolkata and their peri-urban areas.

The survey data will showcase their demographic profiling and socio-economic status in the form of age groups, education levels, social groupings such as caste and religion, occupations and household level incomes, asset ownership and living spaces.

The access to devices, internet costs and preferences in usage of social media platforms and apps will also be shown. Women’s perceived advantages and limitations to uses of digital media in their personal and/or professional lives will be revealed.

Further, the data will show their perceptions about their digital identities, realisation of gendered vulnerabilities in digital spaces and assessment of potential economic opportunities in world outside their physical world -the digital world.

The paper will conclude by pointing out the gendered nature of digital media-driven opportunities, with a focus on home-based entrepreneurship, and the need for intervention at the social level and policy frameworks to enhance the negotiating power of these aspiring women in three broad sections.

II. Women, Identity and the Digital Media: Re-imagination or Re- negotiation?

The impact of the internet has been exponential. On a very fundamental level, the internet has changed the way society interacts and connects with each other. This became more apparent and conspicuous during the pandemic as the social world moved to the internet and offline communities were formed by families, neighbourhoods, communities and societies. One of the particularly engaging aspects of this new modality of communication through the internet is its ability to support user-generated content in an interactive and ubiquitous manner. Within the digital world, this leads to the creation of new contacts which lead to assertion of 'new identities’.

Based on a survey of 540 women in Mumbai and Kolkata and in-depth interviews of the lived experiences of home-based entrepreneurs on the use of social media for Entrepreneurship, this sub-theme will throw light on the access to the internet and online platforms and the opportunities that it has created for entrepreneurship among homemakers during the pandemic.

In the light of these, the paper seeks to examine the women’s perception about the gendered nature of the internet, its potential in reconfiguring their identities, the possibilities of multiple identities on the internet and the intersectionality and divergence of such identities. The paper explores the dynamics of the process of identity creation by women in the digital space through the use of social media platforms namely Facebook and Whatsapp by examining and situating the life experiences of women. The paper argues that the digital spaces are geared towards reconfiguring existing identities vis-a-vis the digital platforms that women use or are part of.

III. Gendering the Digital Dalit Dissent: Reading Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s Transmedia Art

The digital medium with its unique forms of engagement and the possibility of inhabiting several mediational spaces allows the marginalized Dalit women to voice the dissent in multiple tongues. This paper argues that the language of dissent of Dalit women in the digital medium can be distinguished distinctly from their peers in the textual medium. These voices are marked by not only an insistence of dismantling the hierarchies of textual production and its complementary codes of participation but inventing multiplicities of form of expression that traverses various languages and forms. In doing so it invents a language of dissent that critically engages with but significantly departs from a range of Dalit feminist discourses that has essentially framed an alternative Dalit ‘canon’.The paper further argues that the digital Dalit feminist discourse changes the optics of engagement by re-inventing the understanding of ‘difference’ as an essentially polymorphous category. Thus is further accentuated in terms of how the Dalit Diaspora re-inscribes 'home' as a site of negotiations of caste invisibility.

The paper will particularly focus on the transmedia art of Thenmozhi Soundararajan as an incentive to place this understanding of dissent firmly within the overlapping categories of ‘engaged art’ and ‘engaged activism’.

IV. Gendered Vulnerabilities in the Digital Spaces: Some Insights

Vulnerability is a concept that is often used in the literature on victimization. Vulnerability can be seen as the intersection between two axes: risk and harm and any given individual may be plotted in respect of his or her level of risk of being victimized and the amount of harm the victimization experience may cause.

The dimensions of vulnerabilities that women are subject to in digital spaces include go beyond inequity of access to the internet or devices, lack of digital literacy, cyber bullying / harassment, cyber crime and financial frauds. Based on survey findings of 540 women respondents in Mumbai and Kolkata, and their peri-urban areas, this paper argues that the internet is innately male-oriented, elitist and to a large extent undemocratic. These create inbuilt obstacles for women digital users and therefore require their tremendous effort. The greater problem however lies in normalizing such vulnerabilities creating the possibilities of transforming the digital space into mirror images.

Keywords: Internet, Digital Media, Women on Digital Media, Women

Session Team

Manisha Madhava PhD (Jadavpur University) is an Associate Professor and Head of, Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. Her areas of research interest include Parliamentary Democracy in India with special reference to Lok Sabha, state parties in India, and social media and politics. She is the author of State Parties in India: Parliamentary Presence & Performance (Gyan, 2020) and co-editor of Indian Democracy: Problems and Prospects (Anthem, 2009). She is currently working on an ICSSR Sponsored Major Research Project on Women as ‘Subjects’ in Digital Media; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Empowerment.

Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She has been trained in literary studies at Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ruprecht Karls Universitat, Heidelberg. Post-colonial studies, culture studies, Digital humanities and emerging literatures are her areas of interest.

Aparna Bose is an independent researcher and visiting faculty at the Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University with an interest in International Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, Area studies (mainly Africa), and Human Rights. Based in Mumbai, India, she has taught Political Science and International Relations courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at different institutions in Mumbai. She holds a PhD in African Studies from Mumbai University.

Saumya Tewari (PhD in Development Studies, TISS, Mumbai) is an independent researcher with an interest in comparative politics, reforms, transparency & accountability and gender. Currently based in Lucknow, India, she has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Public Policy and Political Science at different institutions in Mumbai and at Kumaun University in Nainital. She has worked as a policy writer with IndiaSpend, tracking public policy concerns in health, education, governance, election data and gender. She also holds a PG Diploma in Public Policy from ISS, The Hague and is an honorary fellow at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identitiesvulnerabilitiesopportunitiesdissentir

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #COVID19VaccineDiscourse

Admin — 2022-03-18T10:16:55Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Session Plan

This panel discusses vaccine hesitancy in the Global North and the Global South as is evident through social media. It is common to talk about the differences between the Global North and the Global South regarding vaccine hesitancy (Makau, 2021). Past studies have looked at economic, social, technological and power gaps regarding the impact of COVID-19 (Makau, 2021). However, our preliminary research suggests there are several similar factors affecting public perceptions of the COVID-19 attitude to vaccines across contexts such as religious beliefs, education, age, lack of trust on public health systems, influence of opinion and religious leaders among others (ECDC, 2022; Kanozia & Arya, 2021; Arce, J.S.S. et. al., 2021).

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic the notion of “home” has become a key space for individuals to feel safe and protected from the COVID-19 virus. Playing a vital role in the creation of this space is the use of social media and the ways in which it influences vaccine discourse in online spaces. The availability and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines provides people with the opportunity to return to the public space and embrace their communities outside of the physical space of home. Our concept of “home” encompasses the whole world. Though we will be discussing the similarities of the Global North and the Global South, we will be talking here of the “home” as a community space that makes us feel “home”, inclusive of the divisions that exist between the Global North and the Global South.

World Health Organization has emphasized the significant role of vaccines for ending the pandemic (Dror et al., 2020). Despite the availability of various vaccines globally, vaccine hesitancy has led to visible protests and resistance against vaccine mandates internationally (Kelly, 2022; Ngo, M., Bednar & Ray 2022). There is a gap in understanding how vaccines are a universal need. Questions we raise are the following: If online communication opens dialogue about vaccine hesitancy or further polarizes it, how does it open access to information regarding COVID-19 vaccine availability? Do digital spaces provide a place for discourse and discussion about these topics?

The reasons behind vaccine hesitancy may vary from place to place. Even though geographical borders seem to blur due to the interconnections in the world by the arrival of internet technology and communication, the world order is still often viewed as being dichotomous Global North and Global South to point to the global socio-economic gaps (Roberts et. al., 2015).

This panel plans to study relevant twitter hashtags to understand how social media has been used to drive people towards/against vaccine hesitancy. The data is scraped using computational tools such as Gephi and Netlytic to identify trends such as #antivaksin, #vaccineSideEffects and #pfizer. We will do close readings of the textual data scraped along with an examination of visible networks and clusters within to see what discursive connections emerge across contexts. We therefore identify common and/or contrasting themes across the specific regional contexts from the global south and global north.

References:

Dror et al. (2020). Vaccine hesitancy: the next challenge in the fight against COVID‑19.European Journal of Epidemiology, pp. 775-779.

Carpentier, N. (2017). Discourse. In Keywords for Media Studies. Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray. Ed., New York: NYU Press, pp. 59-62.

Kanozia, R., & Arya, R. (2021). Fake news, religion, and covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Media Asia, 48(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/01296612.2021.1921963, pp. 313–321.

Kelly, L. (2022, February 12). NZ, Australia vaccination mandates protests gain in numbers. Reuters. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/new-zealand-australia-vaccination-mandates-protests-gain-numbers-2022-02-12/

Roberts, J. Timmons, Amy Bellone Hite, and Nitsan Chorev, Eds. 2015. The Globalization and Development Reader Perspectives on Development and Global Change. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Makau, W. M. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the growing North-South divide. E-international Relations, 15.

ECDC. (2022, January 31). Overview of the implementation of COVID-19 vaccination strategies and deployment plans in the EU/EEA. Retrieved from European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/overview-implementation-covid-19-vaccination-strategies-and-deployment-plans

Ngo, M., Bednar, A., & Ray, E. (2022). Trucker Convoy Protesting Covid Mandates Slow Traffic Around Washington. The New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/trucker-convoy-dc-beltway.html.

Arce, J.S.S. et. al. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low-andmiddle-income countries, Nature Medicine, VOL 27 1386, 1385–1394, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01454-y.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covid19vaccinediscourse

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #HomeAndTheInternet

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:21:27Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion of Papers

Session Plan

The COVID-19 pandemic left many of us stranded between homes – some were able to reach back to our natal homes while others had to make do with where we were then situated. This was a difficult journey of sudden confinement. In times like these when people ought to be with their families, many of us didn’t get the chance to be with them. There emerged new questions of what is home, where is our home.

Can there be a single home? Can people from the North Eastern belt call the mainland our home in times of crisis where racial discrimination was right on our face? Do meanings of home change for a person with psychosocial disabilities who relies on external communities for support system? What does this forced confinement inside the home bring for the queer subject for whom the public space was the only getaway to live our queer lives?

We understand that the pandemic opened up the canvas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ by offering us alternative modes of socialization, thereby building communities within social movement which may not be tied to physical interaction. The internet in this context offered a temporary escape to many of us, while also latching on to our tendencies of addictive consumption. It was the only connection we had with the world outside. Issues that were previously overlooked gained attention as they reached to the level of crisis. Not only did educational learning suddenly shift to the digital space, we also witnessed a transition of the existing social movements into the digital landscape. This was obviously exclusionary for many without access, but also opened scope for a new accessibility of these existing modes of learning which the disabled population could better adapt to.

This session is a presentation of two papers by the three team members on the theme of home and the internet for Dalit-Bahujan and Tribal students in India along the intersections of queer, disabled and North Eastern identity-based experiences. With qualitative interviews of women and queer students, and students with psychosocial disabilities in higher education, we bring out narratives of how the pandemic has affected the idea of home for them, how their cross-cutting intersectional identities have played a role in their experience of the real and the digital space, how the burden of labour has changed for women students in these times, how the social movements took shape within the contours of the home and on the internet, and what are the mental health impacts of these experiences on these students. The papers will be partly autoethnographic as the research questions have evolved from the personal experiences of the researchers themselves.

Keywords: Mental health, movement building, working from home, friendship, labour, discrimination, social media, internet

Session Team

Bhanu Priya Gupta is a PhD scholar in Disability Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her research area is mental illness among Dalit-Bahujan women in the Hindi-speaking belt of India. She is a first-generation graduate who comes from the Bhadbunja community (most backward caste) of North India. She identifies as a Bahujan queer woman, a caregiver and person with mental illness. She has previously worked at National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) as a Research Associate. She is also a writer and has published her works at Mad in Asia, Velivada, In Plainspeak, and Gaysi Family.

Dona Biswas is a PhD candidate in Women’s and Gender Studies, studying in Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS). Her research area is social movement and women in movement, working on Bodoland Movement in Assam. She belongs to Namasudra (SC) Bengali community, migrated Agricultural labourer, in Assam. She has previously worked at Nirantar: A Centre for Gender and Education, Delhi as a Research Assistant on Early and Child Marriage in India. Her writings have been published at Feminism in India, Velivada, and Sanghaditha.

Ekta Kailash Sonawane belongs to Mahar (Dalit) community of Maharashtra. They did their Masters in Gender Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi wherein they wrote a dissertation on the intellectual history of class, caste and gender. They have worked as a journalist and researcher at Awaaz India TV and Institute of Human Development. Their work has been published at Dalit Camera, Indie Journal, Colour's Board, Feminist Collective. They have also published a feature article in Hindustan Times.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homeandtheinternet

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #WaitingForFood

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:11:04Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion of Papers

Session Plan

“Don’t come to Burger King, let the King come to you! Order safe deliveries from our kitchen to your doorstep on Swiggy or Zomato. Stay home, stay safe”.

The above caption is from an advertisement by the popular fast food joint Burger King, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, one would have come across many such advertisements, centering the safety of the customer, from restaurants and food delivery platforms during the pandemic. Delivery platforms also reinforced this idea of ‘safe access to food from home’ through measures such as temperature checks and vaccination status of the delivery workers, option of no-contact delivery etc. Within such a context, the idea of ‘home’ acquired a certain valence, imbued with a sense of comfort that allowed for multiplicity of food options to be delivered within a short span of time, without compromising one’s safety. In this session, we propose to explore aspects of time, space, and home in the context of food delivery in the pandemic. While we explore time through the concept of ‘waiting’, we look at space through processes of simultaneous compression and rarefaction.

A cursory glance at any food delivery app provides the customer with a certain distribution of time- order placed, preparing order, order picked up, order delivered- all of which are significantly tied to how the process of waiting at home is approached and experienced by the customer. Additionally, the tracking option on the app with an icon of the driver mediates the waiting experience. Similarly, such processes of waiting are experienced by the delivery worker in different ways albeit through multiple delivery cycles outside of home. In any given delivery cycle, a delivery worker waits for the order to be assigned and waits for the restaurant to prepare the order. In addition to this, incentives and long distance delivery produce other forms of waiting for the delivery worker. This waiting operates simultaneously with rapid movement often required to ensure that the order is delivered to the customer who is waiting at home. These forms of waiting are integral to the order-delivery chain and they take place on multiple registers- shaped by the space of home and outside home.

Various food delivery apps also communicate to the customer the promise of delivering different cuisines from across restaurants at the tip of their fingers. Such technologies entail a collapse of space that the customer experiences which varies drastically from the spatial organization of these said options. Many aspects of the app interface are directed towards this compression- the manner in which multiple cuisines and restaurants are organized on the app, the tracking interface that signals an apparent proximity mediated by time frame. Real time experience of delivery often punctures this idea of a seemingly seamless process- glitches in the map showing faulty directions and specifically in the context of Mumbai, the space itself is characterized by traffic jams, climate events etc- reconfiguring space in specific ways.

Drawing on the above discussions, the proposed session will include two papers exploring dimensions of space, time and home. Both papers will be presented In the first paper, (presenter's name) will discuss time in the context of waiting by asking how different modalities of waiting, experienced in the food-delivery process, are linked to the space of home and outside home. In the second paper, (presenter's name) will focus on space as a concept to understand how the perception of the compression of space in the app itself is animated in the order delivery process. Through both these papers, we attempt to explore how the idea of home itself gets restructured through the discourse of ‘staying at home to be safe’. Both papers draw on an ethnographic study conducted by the discussants in Central Mumbai.

Outline of the Session

The discussants will share a recording of their respective presentations of 15 minutes each (as stated in the call for papers). The session will begin with a short discussion between presenters for 20 minutes. This will be followed by an open floor discussion on the papers with the audience present for the subsequent 30 minutes.

Session Team

Nisha Subramanian is pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at Ashoka University. Their work explores rights of forest dwelling communities and temporalities of justice and injustice within the space of the forest

Rhea Bose is pursuing her PhD in The School of Development Studies (SDS), TISS Mumbai. Her work looks at the intersections of cyberspace and queer theory.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #IdentifyingTheIdeaofLaborinTeaching – Negotiating pedagogy at home and inside classroom(s)

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:16:11Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion

Session Plan

If we introspect the past two years in the context of the pandemic, techno-digital tools and methods have become a necessity from being a substitute in our daily ventures. Schools, colleges and other institutions were forced to continue with what we became familiar as ‘work from home’. Taking work spaces as case studies (offices/schools/colleges) we aim to explore how ‘home’ has transformed itself from an informal space to a forma one through the medium of digital devices and the internet. Schools, in particular have undergone a shift in the modes of their practices – onsite to online (home), which has also resulted in the transformation of spaces within which pedagogy used to navigate.

The devices and the programs which cater to platforms like Google classroom, Zoom and other have seen a revival in usage in these recent times. This execution of the digital platforms or the ‘Zooming Towards a University Platform’ (D’Souza, 2020) has however boosted the Education Technology sector since online teaching for them has always been the ‘front paw’ (D’Souza: 2020). With these platforms being increasingly used as mediums to conduct ‘classes’ from the vicinities of home, one significant issue that has come across is the issue of the space. To be more precise, the online platforms and digital devices have challenged the conventional classroom space which has resulted in the change of pedagogy and mobility of individuals – both students and educators etc. This change in the space – from brick and mortar to online interfaces can be related to the Foucauldian notion of heterotopia, which is a result of a decentralization of the physical classroom space.

Evidently, the practice of work, in this case teaching/pedagogy has also undergone changes. Interaction in a classroom was always aimed towards a broader objective carried out within a ‘public sphere’ (Habermas, 1962). With digitization owing to the pandemic the public sphere seemed to get replaced by private spaces especially homes, only to be integrated within an online (digital) space which has a temporal existence. Owing to this, academic work or labor has seen an imposed digitisation on the part of both educators and students, and the transformation of the existing space has called for a different approach towards pedagogy.

Drawing on these, we would like to seek answers for these questions:

How is work or labor in the academic sectors getting reconfigured with the imposition of the digital?
Is the idea of space and concept of work related to each other? if so, how? Or is work specific to space? What difference lies between the space of the home and the institutional space?
Is space or work a characteristic of each other? Do they fulfill each other’s’ features? Given this, does the idea of the public vs private sphere in terms of teaching and learning alter the notion of separate spaces?
How is the classroom getting reconfigured within the home and the digital ? what role does the individual(s) and the technodigital play?

Session Team

Sunanda Kar works as a research student in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, Assam. Her research interests include Digital Humanities, Literary studies, and New Media.

Bishal Sinha works as a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of English, Assam University. His Research interests include Postcolonial Studies, Film and Media Studies and Literary Gerontology.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identifyingtheideaoflabourinteaching

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions

sumandro — 2016-12-12T13:37:23Z

We have a wonderful range of session proposals for the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) to take place in Bengaluru on March 03-05, 2017. From the 23 submitted session proposals, we will now select 10 to be part of the final Conference agenda. The selection will be done through votes casted by the teams that have proposed the sessions. This will take place in December 2016. Before that, we invite the session teams and other contributors to share their comments and suggestions on the submitted sessions. Please share your comments by December 14, either on session pages directly, or via email (sent to raw at cis-india dot org).

The Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) will be organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B).

Proposed Sessions

01. #NotFewNotWeird (Surfatial: Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav, and Satya Gummuluri)

02. #VirtualFringe (Ritika Pant, Sagorika Singha, and Vibhushan Subba)

03. #StudentIndicUsageOnline (Shruti Nagpal and Sneha Verghese)

04. #SpeakMyLanguageInternet (Anubhuti Yadav, Sunetra Sen Narayan, Shalini Narayanan, Anand Pradhan, and Shashwati Goswami)

05. #ArchivesForStorytelling (V Jayant, Venkat Srinivasan, Chaluvaraju, Bhanu Prakash, and Dinesh)

06. #SelfiesFromTheField (Kavitha Narayanan, Oindrila Matilal and Onkar Hoysala)

07. #OpenAccessScholarlyPublishing (Nirmala Menon, Abhishek Shrivastava and Dibyaduti Roy)

08. #DigitalPedagogies (Nidhi Kalra, Ashutosh Potdar, and Ravikant Kisana)

09. #DigitalMusicAndDigitalReactions (Shivangi Narayan and Sarvpriya Raj)

10. #RenarrationWeb (Dinesh, Venkatesh Choppella, Srinath Srinivasa, and Deepak Prince)

11. IndicLanguagesAndInternetCoHabitation (Sreedhar Kallahalla, Ranjeet Kumar, Mohan Rao, and Anjali K. Mohan)

12. #DigitalPedagogy (Padmini Ray Murray and Dibyaduti Roy)

13. #CopyLeftRightLeft (Ravishankar Ayyakkannu and Srikanth Lakshmanan)

14. #ObjectsofDigitalGovernance (Marine Al Dahdah, Rajiv K. Mishra, Khetrimayum Monish Singh, and Sohan Prasad Sha)

15. #MaterializingWriting (Sneha Puthiya Purayil, Padmini Ray Murray, Dibyadyuti Roy, and Indrani Roy)

16. #DotBharatAdoption (V. Sridhar and Amit Prakash)

17. #DigitalDesires (Dhiren Borisa, Akhil Kang, and Dhrubo Jyoti)

18. #TheDigitalCommonplace (Ammel Sharon and Sujeet George)

19. #DigitalIdentities (Janaki Srinivasan, Savita Bailur, Emrys Schoemaker, Jonathan Donner, and Sarita Seshagiri)

20. #ToolsToAMultitextUniverse (Spandana Bhowmik and Sunanda Bose)

21. #DigitalisingKnowledge (Sneha Ragavan)

22. #ICTDEthics (Bidisha Chaudhuri, Andy Dearden, Linus Kendall, Dorothea Kleine, and Janaki Srinivasan)

23. #RepresentationAndPower (Bidisha Chaudhuri, Andy Dearden, Linus Kendall, Dorothea Kleine, and Janaki Srinivasan)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc17-selection

WSIS+10 High Level Event: A Bird's Eye Report

geetha — 2014-06-20T15:57:32Z

The WSIS+10 High Level was organised by the ITU and collaborative UN entities on June 9-13, 2014. It aimed to evaluate the progress on implementation of WSIS Outcomes from Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005, and to envision a post-2015 Development Agenda. Geetha Hariharan attended the event on CIS' behalf.

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) +10 High Level Event (HLE) was hosted at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva, from June 9-13, 2014. The HLE aimed to review the implementation and progress made on information and communication technology (ICT) across the globe, in light of WSIS outcomes (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005). Organised in three parallel tracks, the HLE sought to take stock of progress in ICTs in the last decade (High Level track), initiate High Level Dialogues to formulate the post-2015 development agenda, as well as host thematic workshops for participants (Forum track).

The High Level Track:

Opening Ceremony, WSIS+10 High Level Event (Source)

The High Level track opened officially on June 10, 2014, and culminated with the endorsement by acclamation (as is ITU tradition) of two Outcome Documents. These were: (1) WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes, taking stock of ICT developments since the WSIS summits, (2) WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015, aiming to develop a vision for the post-2015 global information society. These documents were the result of the WSIS+10 Multi-stakeholder Preparatory Platform (MPP), which involved WSIS stakeholders (governments, private sector, civil society, international organizations and relevant regional organizations).

The MPP met in six phases, convened as an open, inclusive consultation among WSIS stakeholders. It was not without its misadventures. While ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré consistently lauded the multi-stakeholder process, and Ambassador Janis Karklins urged all parties, especially governments, to “let the UN General Assembly know that the multi-stakeholder model works for Internet governance at all levels”, participants in the process shared stories of discomfort, disagreement and discord amongst stakeholders on various IG issues, not least human rights on the Internet, surveillance and privacy, and multi-stakeholderism. Richard Hill of the Association for Proper Internet Governance (APIG) and the Just Net Coalition writes that like NETmundial, the MPP was rich in a diversity of views and knowledge exchange, but stakeholders failed to reach consensus on crucial issues. Indeed, Prof. Vlamidir Minkin, Chairman of the MPP, expressed his dismay at the lack of consensus over action line C9. A compromise was agreed upon in relation to C9 later.

Some members of civil society expressed their satisfaction with the extensive references to human rights and rights-centred development in the Outcome Documents. While governmental opposition was seen as frustrating, they felt that the MPP had sought and achieved a common understanding, a sentiment echoed by the ITU Secretary General. Indeed, even Iran, a state that had expressed major reservations during the MPP and felt itself unable to agree with the text, agreed that the MPP had worked hard to draft a document beneficial to all.

Concerns around the MPP did not affect the review of ICT developments over the last decade. High Level Panels with Ministers of ICT from states such as Uganda, Bangladesh, Sweden, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and others, heads of the UN Development Programme, UNCTAD, Food and Agriculture Organisation, UN-WOMEN and others spoke at length of rapid advances in ICTs. The focus was largely on ICT access and affordability in developing states. John E. Davies of Intel repeatedly drew attention to innovative uses of ICTs in Africa and Asia, which have helped bridge divides of affordability, gender, education and capacity-building. Public-private partnerships were the best solution, he said, to affordability and access. At a ceremony evaluating implementation of WSIS action-lines, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), India, won an award for its e-health application MOTHER.

The Outcome Documents themselves shall be analysed in a separate post. But in sum, the dialogue around Internet governance at the HLE centred around the success of the MPP. Most participants on panels and in the audience felt this was a crucial achievement within the realm of the UN, where the Tunis Summit had delineated strict roles for stakeholders in paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda. Indeed, there was palpable relief in Conference Room 1 at the CICG, Geneva, when on June 11, Dr. Touré announced that the Outcome Documents would be adopted without a vote, in keeping with ITU tradition, even if consensus was achieved by compromise.

The High Level Dialogues:

Prof. Vladimir Minkin delivers a statement. (Source)

The High Level Dialogues on developing a post-2015 Development Agenda, based on WSIS action lines, were active on June 12. Introducing the Dialogue, Dr. Touré lamented the Millennium Development Goals as a “lost opportunity”, emphasizing the need to alert the UN General Assembly and its committees as to the importance of ICTs for development.

As on previous panels, there was intense focus on access, affordability and reach in developing countries, with Rwanda and Bangladesh expounding upon their successes in implementing ICT innovations domestically. The world is more connected than it was in 2005, and the ITU in 2014 is no longer what it was in 2003, said speakers. But we lack data on ICT deployment across the globe, said Minister Knutssen of Sweden, recalling the gathering to the need to engage all stakeholders in this task. Speakers on multiple panels, including the Rwandan Minister for CIT, Marilyn Cade of ICANN and Petra Lantz of the UNDP, emphasized the need for ‘smart engagement’ and capacity-building for ICT development and deployment.

A crucial session on cybersecurity saw Dr. Touré envision a global peace treaty accommodating multiple stakeholders. On the panel were Minister Omobola Johnson of Nigeria, Prof. Udo Helmbrecht of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), Prof. A.A. Wahab of Cybersecurity Malaysia and Simon Muller of Facebook. The focus was primarily on building laws and regulations for secure communication and business, while child protection was equally considered.

The lack of laws/regulations for cybersecurity (child pornography and jurisdictional issues, for instance), or other legal protections (privacy, data protection, freedom of speech) in rapidly connecting developing states was noted. But the question of cross-border surveillance and wanton violations of privacy went unaddressed except for the customary, unavoidable mention. This was expected. Debates in Internet governance have, in the past year, been silently and invisibly driven by the Snowden revelations. So too, at WSIS+10 Cybersecurity, speakers emphasized open data, information exchange, data ownership and control (the right to be forgotten), but did not openly address surveillance. Indeed, Simon Muller of Facebook called upon governments to publish their own transparency reports: A laudable suggestion, even accounting for Facebook’s own undetailed and truncated reports.

In a nutshell, the post-2015 Development Agenda dialogues repeatedly emphasized the importance of ICTs in global connectivity, and their impact on GDP growth and socio-cultural change and progress. The focus was on taking this message to the UN General Assembly, engaging all stakeholders and creating an achievable set of action lines post-2015.

The Forum Track:

Participants at the UNESCO session on its Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues (Source)

The HLE was organized as an extended version of the WSIS Forum, which hosts thematic workshops and networking opportunities, much like any other conference. Running in parallel sessions over 5 days, the WSIS Forum hosted sessions by the ITU, UNESCO, UNDP, ICANN, ISOC, APIG, etc., on issues as diverse as the WSIS Action Lines, the future of Internet governance, the successes and failures of WCIT-2012, UNESCO’s Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues, spam and a taxonomy of Internet governance.

Detailed explanation of each session I attended is beyond the scope of this report, so I will limit myself to the interesting issues raised.

At ICANN’s session on its own future (June 9), Ms. Marilyn Cade emphasized the importance of national and regional IGFs for both issue-awareness and capacity-building. Mr. Nigel Hickson spoke of engagement at multiple Internet governance fora: “Internet governance is not shaped by individual events”. In light of criticism of ICANN’s apparent monopoly over IANA stewardship transition, this has been ICANN’s continual response (often repeated at the HLE itself). Also widely discussed was the role of stakeholders in Internet governance, given the delineation of roles and responsibilities in the Tunis Agenda, and governments’ preference for policy-monopoly (At WSIS+10, Indian Ambassador Dilip Sinha seemed wistful that multilateralism is a “distant dream”).

This discussion bore greater fruit in a session on Internet governance ‘taxonomy’. The session saw Mr. George Sadowsky, Dr. Jovan Kurbalija, Mr. William Drake and Mr. Eliot Lear (there is surprisingly no official profile-page on Mr. Lear) expound on dense structures of Internet governance, involving multiple methods of classification of Internet infrastructure, CIRs, public policy issues, etc. across a spectrum of ‘baskets’ – socio-cultural, economic, legal, technical. Such studies, though each attempting clarity in Internet governance studies, indicate that the closer you get to IG, the more diverse and interconnected the eco-system gets. David Souter’s diagrams almost capture the flux of dynamic debate in this area (please see pages 9 and 22 of this ISOC study).

There were, for most part, insightful interventions from session participants. Mr. Sadowsky questioned the effectiveness of the Tunis Agenda delineation of stakeholder-roles, while Mr. Lear pleaded that techies be let to do their jobs without interference. Ms. Anja Kovacs raised pertinent concerns about including voiceless minorities in a ‘rough consensus’ model. Across sessions, questions of mass surveillance, privacy and data ownership rose from participants. The protection of human rights on the Internet – especially freedom of expression and privacy – made continual appearance, across issues like spam (Question 22-1/1 of ITU-D Study Group 1) and cybersecurity.

Conclusion:

The HLE was widely attended by participants across WSIS stakeholder-groups. At the event, a great many relevant questions such as the future of ICTs, inclusions in the post-2015 Development Agenda, the value of muti-stakeholder models, and human rights such as free speech and privacy were raised across the board. Not only were these raised, but cognizance was taken of them by Ministers, members of the ITU and other collaborative UN bodies, private sector entities such as ICANN, technical community such as the ISOC and IETF, as well as (obviously) civil society.

Substantively, the HLE did not address mass surveillance and privacy, nor of expanding roles of WSIS stakeholders and beyond. Processually, the MPP failed to reach consensus on several issues comfortably, and a compromise had to be brokered.

But perhaps a big change at the HLE was the positive attitude to multi-stakeholder models from many quarters, not least the ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré. His repeated calls for acceptance of multi-stakeholderism left many members of civil society surprised and tentatively pleased. Going forward, it will be interesting to track the ITU and the rest of UN’s (and of course, member states’) stances on multi-stakeholderism at the ITU Plenipot, the WSIS+10 Review and the UN General Assembly session, at the least.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/wsis-10-high-level-event-a-birds-eye-report

World Intellectual Property Organisation

Anirudh Sridhar and Snehashish Ghosh — 2013-12-03T06:56:10Z

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations which deals with issues related to intellectual property rights throughout the world.

Under Article 3 of the convention establishing WIPO, the United Nation agency seeks to "promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world through cooperation among states..."[1]

With the proliferation of the internet, issues related to copyright have become more and more prominent. Internet has made sharing of content easy and efficient. It has also opened up avenues for e-commerce, sale and purchase of music, movies, e-books and other related content. In India, special music services and video services are made available to mobile users by the telecom service providers as value added services through internet technologies such as wireless access protocol (WAP) and general packet radio service (GPRS). Moreover, business models such as iTunes and Flyte allow consumers to download MP3 music for a fee. In this context, digital copyright has become an important topic of discussion.

Copyright law has faced difficulties coping up with digital technologies, especially the Internet. Enforcing copyright has been a tough task, given that protected works can be easily shared and transferred through the internet. In order to adjust the legal system to be in consonance with the latest technological developments the WIPO has laid down two treaties which are known as internet treaties. They are the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). These two treaties are considered to be the updates and supplements to the Berne Convention for the protection of the literary and artistic material.

"The WIPO Internet Treaties are designed to update and supplement the existing international treaties on copyright and related rights, namely, the Berne Convention and the Rome Convention. They respond to the challenges posed by the digital technologies and, in particular, the dissemination of protected material over the global networks that make up the Internet. The contents of the Internet Treaties can be divided into three parts: (1) incorporation of certain provisions of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) not previously included explicitly in WIPO treaties (e.g., protection of computer programs and original databases as literary works under copyright law); (2) updates not specific to digital technologies (e.g., the generalized right of communication to the public); and (3) provisions that specifically address the impact of digital technologies." [2]

Treaties

Berne Convention

The Berne Convention [3] was first accepted in 1986. It was an international agreement that sought to govern copyrights. Its basic purpose was to make the signatories recognize the copyrights of the works of authors of other signatory countries at the same level as copyrights in their own countries. The Three Step Test is a test contained in different forms in a few international treaties on copyright law. It provides a limit on the exceptions and limitations that a treaty member can provide under its domestic law. However, the Three Step Test was first laid down in Article 9 of the Berne Convention and it states:

It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.

There are two divergent views on the limitations to copyright. Civil law sees copyright as a natural law right, meaning that an author already has the right to his work, and the law merely recognises it. Hence, civil law limitations to rights tend to be narrow. Common law adopts a utilitarian approach and advocates use of common law principles to spur creation of socially valuable works. In pursuance of such socially beneficial measures, Common law limitations are open ended.

When the Three Step Test was first conceived, it was to reconcile these divergent views of copyright limitations. So, at its core was the aim to allow national legislations sufficient latitude with regard to limitations. The effects of this treaty are enormous in that it affects the accessibility of almost every book or movie online for the average internet user.

The Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was set up in 1998-1999 in order to examine issues of substantive law or harmonization in the field of copyright and rights related to copyright. The committee is comprised of all the member states of WIPO. However, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations only have observer status.[4]

WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), 1996

The WPPT [5] benefits primarily two different kinds of people:

Performers (actors, singers, musicians, etc.), and
Producers of phonograms (the persons or legal entities who or which take the initiative and have the responsibility for the fixation of the sounds).

The purpose of the Treaty was to protect the rights of performers and producers of phonograms in the most effective and uniform manner possible without making void contractual obligations that pre-date the treaty. The Treaty grants performers four different kinds of economic rights in their performances fixed in phonograms:

The right of reproduction,
The right of distribution,
The right of rental, and
The right of making available.

The term of protection has been agreed for at least 50 years. The Treaty also constituted an Assembly that has the power to decide whether intergovernmental organizations can become party to the treaty.

WIPO Copyright Treaty

The WCT was adopted in 1996 by 89 countries.[6] After many advances were made in information technology since the formation of previous copyright treaties, this treaty attempted to add protections for copyrights. Mainly it ensures that computer programs were protected as literary works (Article 4) and also that the arrangement and selection of material in databases is protected (Article 5). It bolsters the protection further by providing authors with control over the rental and distribution of their work according to Article 6 to 8 which wasn’t directly prevalent in the Berne Convention. Many theorists feel that it is far too broad and offers too much protection to the copyright holder. For example, the circumvention of technical protection measures in pursuit of legal and fair use rights can be prevented because it is prohibited in this treaty. It also applies a uniform standard to all the signatory countries even though they are all at different stages of economic development and knowledge industry.

Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty

In 2006, the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) made a basic proposal to develop protection rights for all broadcasting organizations. This treaty would allow broadcasting organizations like media broadcasters to protect the content of their transmissions. They basically will have the right to protect their transmissions from reproduction, retransmission and even from public communication and will retain the copyright protection for 50 years. The problem with this treaty is that it adds a layer protection to the copyright that already exists on the material that is being broadcasted. This would allow broadcasters to restrict access to works that are currently available in the creative commons just because they happened to transmit it. This means that the citizens were unable to access works that they could previously access. The easier and fair way of solving the problem that broadcasters face, which the piracy of broadcast signals would have been to criminalize the piracy at an international level, many NGO’s are currently arguing.

Treaty Proposal on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

The International Federation of Library Association (IFLA) is currently working closely with the member states of WIPO in order to draft a binding international instrument for copyright limitations and exceptions. These exceptions and limitations are necessary for the libraries to preserve their collection, lend materials and facilitate/ support education and research. This treaty proposal is mainly being drafted by NGO’s and civil society actors in partnership with librarians and intellectual property experts. IFLA has collaborated with the International Council on Archives (ICA), Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) and Corporación Innovarte to produce the Treaty Proposal on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives.[7]

Some of the things that the treaty proposes are:

Parallel importation (i.e. buying books from abroad)
Cross-border uses of works and materials reproduced under a limitation and exception
Library lending
Library document supply
Preservation of library and archival materials
Use of works and other material under related rights for the benefit of persons with disabilities
Use of works for education, research and private study
Use of works for personal and private purposes
Access to retracted and withdrawn works
Orphan works[8]

Education

There is another treaty being discussed currently on copyright exceptions for education and research. The main issue is deciding the order in which these treaties will be negotiated and which matter is most pressing or urgent to address presently. Developing countries are in favour of both exceptions for libraries and archives as well as for education while developed countries are of the mind that exceptions for these things already exist in the current framework of international treaties and conventions. The US is expressly opposed to more discussions on more copyright exceptions and wants to move forward on the broadcast treaty discussions.[9]

Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knowledge Ecology International, Public Knowledge along with other civil society groups formed a joint statement for the copyright exceptions for education in the digital age:

"(...) Education should be accessible for all without barriers of space, time, or cost. Digital technologies, from the portable computer to mobile phones to tablets, are being introduced as crucial educational tools in countries ranging from South Korea to Nigeria, from Brazil to the USA. Educational materials and, therefore, its market, is increasingly becoming digital and policymakers must consider this trend when drafting copyright exceptions and limitations in a way that is appropriate for future generations and the digital age.

The increasing adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the classroom and in libraries and archives has proven that teachers, learners, researchers, librarians and archivists need rights to access, use, remix, text-mine, exchange, and collaborate on educational materials. Similar rights must be ensured beyond the classroom and library or archive, taking into account the growing importance of e-learning, online communication, and the increasing practice of exchanging educational and other information content across geographical and institutional borders.

The international copyright system has recognized the need for exceptions and limitations from its earliest days. Without these, the copyright system would not be able to achieve its fundamental purpose of encouraging creation and innovation for the benefit of all humankind. (...)"[10]

WIPO Case Study

In June 2013, 186 member states of the WIPO adopted a landmark treaty known as the Treaty for the Visually Impaired (Formally known as: “Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled.”) [11] The purpose of the treaty was to increase the access to books for blind, visually impaired and print disabled people across the globe.

Aspects of the Treaty:

It required an exception in domestic copyright law for people with print disabilities and the visually impaired.
It allowed for the import and export of accessible versions of books without the permission of the copyright holder.
However, only “authorised entities” such as blind people’s organizations can avail this provision under the treaty’s terms.
Article 2 of the Treaty states that accessible books changing hands under its provisions should be solely for the use of “beneficiary persons”. It also states that “authorised entities” take “due care” when handling these books, and that they discourage the reproduction and distribution of copies that are unauthorized.

This treaty has the potential to change the way in which access to information is experienced by the visually impaired. This shows that civil society actors can take an active part in the drafting of important legislation as such a landmark treaty was originally proposed by the World Blind Union and Knowledge Ecology International after a meeting that was convened in 2008.[12] There was input sought from NGO’s throughout the process as well.

After the adoption of the treaty, however, the function of NGOs just increases. There are many steps required in order to ensure the effective implementation of the provisions of the treaty on the ground. Saksham Trust is one such NGO that works towards empowering marginalized sections of society by working on things like this. The following is an interview with Dipendra Manocha of Saksham Trust.

What kind of work in accessibility does your organization do?
Daisy Forum of India is a network of organisations that produce and distribute books in accessible formats to persons with print disabilities. These organisations produce digital e-text and digital talking books. The organisation works in the area of policy, capacity building, awareness, technology and mainstreaming accessibility in the area of books for persons with print disabilities.

What are the main impediments to ensuring accessibility on the ground?

Our policies and laws do not make it mandatory to use standards for digital content. Standards such as Unicode, accessible digital formats, etc., are not followed in production of digital content. Due to this we are forced to re-publish everything that gets published in India.
Books that are available as accessible content in other countries cannot be brought in India. We also cannot send books in accessible formats to other countries with common languages.
Enough resources are not allocated to produce accessible books for persons with print disabilities.
There are several technology gaps such as non-availability of text-to-speech (TTS) or OCR in Indian languages due to which production and reading options of accessible books is very expensive. The only option of reading in many languages is hard copy Braille or human voice recorded talking books. Both these are much more expensive than reading of digital e-text with the help of TTS technology.
Organisations and individuals in large parts of the country are not aware of the latest developments and methods of getting accessible content from common catalogue or online libraries, etc.
Reading technology has not reached the end users of the country in a large scale.
Main stream publishing industry is producing digital books but these are produced in a way that they are not usable by persons with print disabilities.

How important do you think treaties are?
These are extremely important as it takes best practice model of accessible books all over the world. Various stakeholders came together thinking and working together to find the best possible solution that takes care of the interests of all stakeholders.

Not even 2% of the blind individuals worldwide have sufficient access now. Countries like Namibia don’t even have a basic infrastructure to implement what the Treaty for the Visually Impaired offers. Therefore, in these places, what are the subsequent steps that an organization like yours has to do after the treaty enables?

Allocate resources to establish infrastructure for distribution providing sufficient protection to content to enable developing countries to participate in international exchange programme.
Develop mechanisms for international exchange of content.
Address technology gaps so that local language content can be produced and read by persons with print disabilities.

The developed world will act according to its commercial interests. Most of the knowledge is produced in the developed countries and most of the disabled are in developing countries. What are ways to make this equation seem more lucrative?

South-south cooperation
Even relatively smaller subscriptions and remunerations for already developed content will be additional resource of funds even for companies or organisations of developed countries if they begin distribution of their content in developing countries.

Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information (TPMs/RMI)

In order to ensure that unauthorized copying of a protected material can be prevented or detected, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) included new provisions dealing with TPMs and RMI.

TPMs are technological safeguards which are put in place which prevents the copying of a protected work in digital format to be copied multiple times. This includes limiting the number of devices on which a song can be copied, using software which does not allow the consumer to copy the protected works from an optical disc.

RMI are generally put on the protected work to ensure that the label of the owner of the work is always embedded in the work. For example, in case of a movie, the film studio may use an RMI which would be positioned as the logo in the movie. It can be also stored as metadata along the video or the protected work.

Article 11 of the WCT and Article 18 of the Wipo Performances and Phonograms Treaty, 1996, (WPPT) states that the states must provide legal protection for TPMs and RMI apart from making provisions for legal remedy in case of circumvention of the technological protection measures. It is interesting to note that India is not a signatory to both the treaties that is WPPT and WCT. This could be because of the strict copyright provisions in the treaties which undermine many goals of accessibility currently being pursued by India.

[1]. Article 3 – Objectives of the Organization, Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization available at http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/convention/trtdocs_wo029.html

[2]. www.wipo.int/copyright/en/ecommerce/ip_survey/chap3.html#3a

[3]. See more at http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html

[4]. See more at http://www.wipo.int/policy/en/sccr/

[5]. See more at http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wppt/summary_wppt.html

[6]. See more at http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/trtdocs_wo033.html

[7]. See more at http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/hq/topics/exceptions-limitations/documents/TLIB_v4.3_050712.pdf

[8]. See more at http://www.ifla.org/node/5856

[9]. See more at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/wipo-possible-international-treaty-copyright-exceptions-limitations

[10]. See full document at https://www.eff.org/file/35218#page/1/mode/1up

[11]. See more at http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=245323

[12]. See more at http://keionline.org/content/view/210/1

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

Internet Engineering Task Force

anirudh — 2013-12-01T02:34:23Z

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

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

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

Structure

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

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

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

IETF Standards Process

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

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

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

The main goals of the Internet Standards Process are:

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

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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

The guiding principles of W3C"[4] are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #ListInterface

sumandro — 2018-11-26T13:19:12Z

Details of a session proposed by Bharath Sivakumar, Rakshita Siva, and Deepak Prince for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

We would, as a starting point like to consider the conditions of possibility for the ‘list’ to emerge as the core thematic for this year’s Internet Researchers’ Conference. The proposal call provides several motivating questions and anchoring reasons foregrounding the list as an object for analysis and discussion. Broadly these may be divided along two lines - one pertaining to the qualities of the list (who makes it, why are they ephemeral, what makes lists this or that) and the other pointing to certain critical questions that emerge on our political landscape, with the list or practices of listing central to this politics.

Segment 1 [15 minutes]

In our session, the first item on the agenda (this also is a list!) is an outline of the way lists are thought of in 2 contexts:

Bureaucratic processing/management (lists and their relationship to documents, files in offices, and also, everyday lists such as shopping lists).
List as a technological object in networked technological systems ie the list-interface.

The late media theorist Cornelia Vismann is our guide among others, including Umberto Eco and Foucault’s notion of the ‘statement’.

Segment 2 [15 minutes x 3 => 45 minutes]

In the second part of our proceedings, we would like to consider 3 problems pertaining to the list:

‘List’ as a mode of presentation in various user-interfaces, such as the whatsapp screen and its relationship to the subjective experience of time : It's winter and you've opened the Amazon app to buy one winter jacket. You open the app on your phone and begin to search for one, only to realize you've been endlessly scrolling for the last half an hour looking for jackets without buying a single one and if your friend hadn't called you to break you out of that flow, you would have most probably continued to scroll for another half an hour. I could make a similar point about how you keep scrolling through Instagram endlessly without stopping or how you similarly keep scrolling endlessly through Netflix or YouTube videos without touching to watch a single one. A common theme that connects these interfaces is their "no dead end" feature. They are arranged in the form of “lists” keep going on without a stop, structuring the user’s experience of subjective time.
The #MeToo movement is, as the proposal call says, a few years old, but it is only with the publishing of this list that it erupts into the terrain of the political, at least within the context of academic institutions. We would like to examine the conditions that make this political emergence possible. As first pass, we will note here that the #LoSHA is a list that refuses to process (Other facebook posts for example, are read, ‘liked’ or commented on and then passed over, ie processed).
Social media platforms - sites of media exchange are organized structurally as lists. There’s a list of posts, responses to ‘posts’ are also lists and even interactive features are available as lists -“Like, Share and Subscribe” at the end of a youtube video for example. On Facebook, audiences would be asked to “Like, Comment and Share” in that order of increasing activity. In the recent past, “Likes” have been expanded further to “reacts” which gives a list of “reacts” (including emotions, example-sad), a list or sequence of sentiments which people use to register their response. Similarly, there are such structures present in the forms of lists across platforms, built into the keyboard to be able to structure our immediate response or sentiment (emoticons, stickers gifs etc). These are attempts to codify emotion or more broadly, affect. The 3rd problematique in our panel will consider the process of structuring affect in online environments through the listing of signs such as the ‘like’, the ‘react’ etc.

Segment 3 [30 minutes]

Following our presentation of these problems and modes of analytically situating ‘lists’ in everyday practices in online spaces, we will open the floor for discussion.

Session Team

Bharath Sivakumar graduated with a B.Sc (Research) degree in mathematics from Shiv Nadar University and currently works for Loonycorn where he's part of the team that creates technical courses. He has eclectic tastes ranging from mathematics to philosophy to Anthropology and feels at home in the hills. He enjoys trekking, loves performing on stage and aspires to be a stand up comedian one day.

Rakshita Siva is a researcher at IIIT Bangalore in the faculty of Digital Society. She graduated with a Mechanical engineering major and a minor in Sociology from Shiv Nadar University. Her interests relate to the digital, questions of self, interiority and the psyche. Rakshita is a singer and enjoys a good jam.

Deepak Prince is a course instructor and Phd candidate in the Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social sciences at SNU. His thesis research seeks to grapple with the 'explosion' of smartphones and touchscreens in practices of everyday sociality through the conceptual categories of the screen and the interface. Deepak's key research interest revolves around technics, the history and philosophy of technical objects. He also takes an interest in questions of anthropological disciplinarity, the history of ideas and political anthropology.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-listinterface

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #EnlistingPrivacy

sumandro — 2019-01-08T09:56:31Z

Details of a session proposed by Pawan Singh and Pranjal Jain for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

This session offers a provocation to advance the conversation on privacy in India. Privacy is at once a legal right, a technological/design feature and an everyday practice of managing our social and personal lives. What do we mean when we invoke privacy in our everyday conversations? Privacy conjoins opposing impulses to engage in online public sociality and expressing a desire for limits on data sharing. We trade privacy for convenience. When we skip lengthy terms and conditions of apps, websites and other online agreements we enter into an agreement without much concern for what we are agreeing to when we tick the box at the bottom of the contract. Privacy is a right we cannot not want. As much as privacy remains a subject of, and subject to impassioned speech, it becomes a cognitive burden when we are called upon to read the privacy policies before signing up for an online service.

In this session, we invite participants to tell stories on privacy based on their life experiences. The session aims to employ the concept of a list liberally to understand how privacy continues to be on a to-do list of sorts for lawmakers, technologists and users who are constantly being informed to manage their online account settings, to constantly make certain things private and to care about privacy. Even as privacy has finally joined the list of fundamental rights in India, its meaning continues to be contested. What may be the politics of privacy at play in the circulation of the #MeToo list? Privacy itself may be spoken of as a list of values and affordances: as dignity and bodily integrity of rights subjects, as confidentiality of certain information, the integrity of data flows, self-determination and individual autonomy. The list of all things privacy will evolve with new, privacy-by-design technologies in a rapidly evolving information technology global landscape.

The objective of the session is to bring the examples of potential and actual privacy violations from our daily life in the public domain. We plan to invite three to five participants to engage in a small roundtable-format discussion on privacy and the metaphor of list. Pawan Singh (New Generation Network Fellow, Deakin University) and Pranjal Jain (Masters student of Design, Srishti School of Design) will facilitate the session. We plan to invite participants from our academic and professional networks at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, NUMA co-working space and Digital Identity Research Initiative (DIRI) at the Indian School of Business (ISB).

We plan to contact interested participants through email in December 2018. In order for this roundtable-format session to be productive, we plan to invite participants from diverse backgrounds who can share their perspectives.

The intent of the session is to make a repository of examples from daily life on privacy at the intersection of online space and social life. The repository of examples can be a dynamic list that grows as participants, attendees and others add to the conversation on privacy. It may be maintained as a digital artefact or an online resource.

We are looking for participants who questions what is privacy to them and still in the process of figuring out what is privacy? We also welcome the participants who do not know what is privacy but curious to discover it.

Session Team

Pawan Singh: New Generation Network Scholar at Deakin University. Works on issues of identity, representation, privacy and the costs of social justice in India and globally. Current project on Aadhaar, data privacy and social media in India.

Pranjal Jain: Human-Centered Designer from Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Currently in the 2nd year of Master in Design and research assistant at Digital Identity Research Initiative, Indian School of Business. Believe in Ethical Data Practices. Works on designing for online privacy through speculative and critical design.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-enlistingprivacy

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #ButItIsNotFunny

sumandro — 2018-11-26T13:12:36Z

Details of a session proposed by Madhavi Shivaprasad and Sonali Sahoo for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

Exactly a year after #LoSHA (List of sexual Harassers in the Academia) was compiled by Raya Sarkar in 2017, the second wave of #MeToo began when writer Mahima Kukreja accused comedian Utsav Chakravarty of sending her unsolicited pictures of his private parts. This sparked a barrage of tweets by her with screenshots from other women who had been in similar situations with him, and in one case, also a minor.This was the beginning of the second wave of #MeTooIndia.

In this session, we propose to look at the implications of “List” being circulated in relation to the comedy industry in particular and study the discourse surrounding it. While Raya Sarkar’s was structured as a list and circulated on social media as one too (albeit a dynamic one), the second wave of the movement was nothing of the sort. Sarkar has still refused to divulge details of the assault as shared with her in the interest of those that came forward with their stories. The second wave, involving primarily the media and entertainment industry, was about naming and shaming the perpetrators, mainly by specifying details of every case of harassment while keeping the survivors anonymous. In this case, there was no physical, tangible list, but host of people on social media sharing screenshots of the accounts and retweeting the same. Each of the panellists will be presenting papers and engaging with the interpretative idea of “list” as they understand it in relation to the comedy industry in India.

Apart from such “controversial” issues being brought forth in the media, comedy, or comedians have not necessarily featured as a genre of academic study in India. Although the content performed by the stand-up comedians today has been about challenging the status quo with regard to questioning hegemonic narratives, the idea that at the end of the day “it is just a joke”, unfortunately leads to dismissal of comedy as serious business. It is with this objective as well that we want to foreground the stand-up industry and the ways in which it contributes to dominant progressive as well as regressive discourses especially with respect to gender.

The session is intended to be a panel discussion that would foreground the multivalent possibilities of what “The List” entails with respect to comedy. Both the panelists would be presenting individual papers followed by a discussion of their findings with each other as well as to be thrown open to the audiences.

Paper 1: Sexual harassment in comedy: When Twitter threads are treated as “legitimate” testimonials [Madhavi Shivaprasad]

In my paper, I will be focussing on the characteristics of “The List” circulated by Mahima Kukreja and the reasons people began to consider that the #MeToo movement had “arrived” in India.

There are two main aspects to the way in which it played out in India. At first, it was mainly about showing solidarity with other women, make people aware of the “magnitude” of the problem, the pervasiveness of it. The second was the naming and shaming in the hope of taking away the power harassers hold over the women, banking on their silence.

However, there is also a third aspect to it that needs to be considered with much seriousness: that of the details of the sexual assault itself. These accounts were circulated widely and in reading these details is where the “virality” of the posts lay. It was almost as if digital media houses were having a field day reporting one harassment case after another. Thanks to unimaginable speeds of the internet, reports would be filed within hours of posting the tweet online. New names were being added every day, new lists being made.

It is also interesting that it was the “lack” of a conventional list that ended up making the list of comedians accused of sexual harassment go viral. The list here manifests in the form of multiple Twitter threads by different people associated with the comedy industry. So much so that it became difficult to keep track of who was saying what.

In this paper, I ask questions such as what specific characteristics of the stand-up industry made it possible for it to become the first to come to the limelight. At the same time, I speculate about effect of the #MeToo movement for the men and women who are a part of the comedy industry today. What does it mean for their careers now that some have been outed as harassers? How are the women dealing with the threat, and at the same time comfort of having #MeToo as a resort to made their concerns public?

The questions I ask therefore are these: How does the “List” initiated through Twitter threads become pervasive in its absence as a conventional sequence of items? Is it just the solace afforded by what the list represents that encouraged women to make their stories public? What other structures were in place which made it effective at such a magnitude? What implications does it hold for the larger feminist movement in the wake of so many comedians being dropped off the rosters of large media conglomerates such as Amazon Prime?

Paper 1: The list on YouTube: An analysis of the comments manifested by the Indian stand-up routines on street assaults [Sonali Sahoo]

There has been a shift from the mainstream idea of the essentials of a comic woman (Tuntun, Upasana Singh, Archana Puran Singh on the celluloid and Supriya Pilgaonkar and others on television) who are portrayed from the point of view of the male (for the script has always been written by males). The essentials of the comic woman shall be elaborated upon by tracing the evolution of the idea of the female comic on various settings such a films and television, live performances posted online during the discussion. Today, the noticeable shift has been the female comedians have not remained just the face in a comedic plot but also the voice along with the face (the stand-up comedian writing and performing her own script) in a comedic setting. However, the female stand-up comedians have faced a rebuttal at this juncture. They have been called out for not aligning to the dominant ideals of the topics to be included in a stand-up routine. Their issue-based humour associated with the body, and hegemony politics has been openly reprimanded on Twitter, other social media. One tweet invited a lot of criticism in December 2017 which said “female content bra, boobs, period.” People were agreeing with it but also disagreeing and defending it by saying “so what?” In this paper, though, the scholar in not interested not in the Twitter conversational list rather, she is looking at the comments section on YouTube to understand the reactions people have to content posted by these comedians on their YouTube channel. Following is the explanation of the objective of the discussion.

The list has existed in various forms, here I intend to look at the comments section on YouTube as a list, and look at the implications of it through over a period of 2 to 3 years. (on the YouTube channels of Radhika Vaz, Vasu Primlani, Daniel Fernandes, Karunesh Talwar amongst a few others) To be particular, how are the commentators influencing the comedians or are they really?

How is the list formulated by the commentators different in concern to male and female stand-up comedians when they incorporate street assault or harassment against women in their stand-up routines? (a common ground)
How does it bring out the ideology of the commentators?
Discussion of the impact factor determined through its reach by referring to various newspaper articles that apparently are the voice of a collective group of people in the Indian society.

Hence, the whole point of the scholar is to look at the “list” of YouTube comments as deeply rooted misogyny in the society which have come to the limelight only due to the female stand-up routines on street assaults.

In the end of this session the scholar would discuss the potential of stand-up industry as an important medium to start the discourse on the sexual assault. These comedic routines can also be looked at as to be the first of the incidences discussing their personal accounts of harassment on the comedic stage.

Session Team

Madhavi Shivaprasad is currently a Ph.D scholar in the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies at TISS, Mumbai. She also teaches full-time in the English department at Mount Carmel College Bangalore. Her areas of interest include gender and studies, humour studies, as well as disability studies.

Sonali Sahoo has an M.A. in English language and literature from St. Joseph’s College for women, Vizag. She is currently pursuing an M. Phil in English studies from Christ (Deemed to be University). Her area of interest include cultural, gender and humour studies in particular.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-butitisnotfunny

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #PowerListing

sumandro — 2018-11-26T13:22:03Z

Details of a session proposed by Dr. Shubhda Arora, Dr. Smitana Saikia, Prof. Nidhi Kalra, and Prof. Ravikant Kisana for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

#PowerListing: Approaches towards an understanding of power dynamics of knowledge creation and agency behind ‘listing’ as exercised by the State, Individuals and Corporations

‘Lists’ come with an ontological mandate of organising information in a structured and hierarchical manner. This has a deliberate aspect with respect to the question of power. Our panel attempt to investigate the question of power in terms of who wields it and what implications, philosophically and materially, this lands on the stakeholders thereof. The questions of power have different insinuation when the agency of the ‘listing’ rests with the state, the individual or if it is folded within the operational matrix of a corporate service.

Our panel attempts to bring all these myriad conversations together to try and unpack the various nuances of this discussion on power around ‘lists’. Listed below is the detailed breakdown of this plan:

Paper 1: Digital Lists and List-making in Post-disaster Contexts [Prof. Shubhda Arora]

Looking at crowd sourcing of lists for humanitarian and relief purposes, this paper explores list making and circulation in a post-disaster context, specifically looking at aspects of public list making and its challenges of credibility and duplicity. The paper further examines the interaction between these ‘unofficial’ lists and intervention agencies namely the Government, Army and NGOs, which prepare their own ‘official’ lists for purposes of relief and rehabilitation. Lists of missing people, of people being marked safe, of relief material and centres, of monetary aid, of loss in terms of human life, land and money are the different kinds of lists prepared and circulated through media like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram among others. The constant revision of lists based on localized information and on-ground data, the compilation of master list from various sources of lists and the problem of ‘fake lists’ need further inquiry to understand digital list making after a disaster.

Paper 2: Identity frameworks and #MeToo in India [Prof. Nidhi Kalra]

When Lawrence Grossberg argued that "Cultural studies needs to move towards a model of articulation as 'transformative practice', as a singular becoming of a community", he likely did not anticipate what became the #MeToo movement. Concerns of identity-transformation, community creation, and activism spread over social has been termed as arm-chair slactivism. Yet, we are witness and participant in a movement whose terrains and possibilities are forming as we read and write. Just a few hours before writing this piece news came of Tarana Burke, the founder of #MeToo claims that she is wary that the movement will need "to shift the narrative that it’s a gender war, that it’s anti-male, that it’s men against women, that it’s only for a certain type of person — that it’s for white, cisgender, heterosexual, famous women. That has to shift."

In the Indian context, #MeToo has been the vehicle of a movement with many identities linked to it--from scholars, politicians, celebrities, to Dalit female students, to women and men in the Media industry. Considering it is such a historic moment in internet history, it is important for us to use the lens of cultural studies to ask what this wave of activism does vis-a-vis identity production/transformation? What the sites of contestation around the concern of identity as it used in the #MeToo movement in India? This talk will hope to open dialogue about recording, transcribing and understand this moment and it's frameworks of identity.

Paper 3: “Making” the (ethnic) citizen: NRC list as State power and anxiety [Prof. Smitana Saikia]

In borderland regions of modern nation states, the ontological status of legal subjects is often fraught with competing assertions. In India’s northeastern state of Assam, this is particularly true due to a historical movement of peoples from Bangladesh (then East Bengal/Pakistan). Assam’s own nativist movement against “illegal” immigrants in 1980s (both popular and an armed resistance) catapulted the issue into national prominence thereby reiterating the anxiety that nation-states feel while defining and interpellating its citizens, in an Althusserian sense. In this context, the NRC emerges as a tool to affect order in what remains a contested terrain of citizenship. This paper thus situates the NRC in the interacting landscape of the Indian nation-state’s attempt to “identify” (and hence create) citizens on one hand, and on the other, the Assamese elite’s attempt to create the ethnic “other” to consolidate and preserve political power. The paper argues that the state’s need to create a register (list) of citizens is at once a display of its hegemonic power, as it is also reflective of an acute anxiety inherent to projects of constructing (nation-) states.

Paper 4: ‘Congratulations you got a match’-- The embedded listing within the dating app ‘Tinder’ & its implications thereof [Prof. Ravikant Kisana]

The process of ‘listing’ involves the act of segregating and organising data. This involves questions of power. Who makes the lists and to what end— the state or the subversive, with what motivations, are important points of investigation and discussion. However, such an operational understanding of a ‘list’ assumes a mechanical agency in the ‘listing’ process. This paper looks to investigate the digital apps and services which are based on automated listing and hierarchical segregation of its subscribers. Google, Facebook, Uber, etc— all contain within the folds of their operational code, an algorithmic listing of data. The researcher will seek to explore this nuance in the context of dating app ‘Tinder’, which now offers three levels possible dating matches that have been ‘listed’ and curated automatically. This paper will seek to interview users of the app and try to map the ideas and anxieties around such a digital listing of their very identity profiles.

Session Team

Dr. Shubhda Arora is currently working as assistant professor of media and communication at FLAME University, Pune after having completed her doctoral studies from MICA, Ahmedabad . Her doctoral thesis is in the area of Environmental and Disaster Risk Communication.

Dr. Smitana Saikia is an assistant professor of Politics at FLAME University, Pune. She has received her PhD from King’s College London and her thesis studied long term state and identity formation processes to explain conflict in India’s northeast. Her research interests include ethnic conflicts, borderlands, federalism, and caste and electoral politics in India.

Prof. Nidhi Kalra has been a learning facilitator since 2008. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at FLAME University, Pune. Prior to that, she has taught at the English Department in Savitribai Phule Pune University and Gargi College in the University of Delhi. Nidhi has received her MPhil in English Literature from the University of Delhi, for which she worked on problematizing Holocaust memoirs. Her research interests include Memory Studies, Trauma Studies, Oral History, Digital Humanities, and Children’s/Young Adult Literature.

Prof. Ravikant Kisana is currently the Co-Chair of Humanities & Languages at Flame University, Pune. He has previously completed his doctoral studies from MICA, Ahmedabad. His doctoral research focused on the oral histories of Bollywood cinema in Kashmir, and its intersections with Kashmiri nationalism and resistance. His areas of research focus on the sociology of cinema, gender & sexuality intersections with films & new media platforms, as well as investigations into the structural mores of cybercultures.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-powerlisting

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #FOMO

sumandro — 2018-11-26T13:17:11Z

Details of a session proposed by Pritha Chakrabarti and Dr. Baidurya Chakrabarti for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

The broad basis of the discussion would be the lists that address and invoke aspirations to know, particularly what has come to be known as 'listicle'. The focus would also be on social media and other digital platforms, including blogs and fan clubs, which list out cultural objects like books, films, music, etc. that one must not miss. On one hand, many of such listicle-s are essentially advertising devices and, in that way, descendants of the bestseller list and such that one used to encounter on the pages of The Hindu and so on. On the other, we have similar lists made by fans and culture enthusiasts, and the consumers. Both of these play on a specific type of aspiration and the attendant anxiety, expressed in common parlance as FoMo, i.e. Fear of Missing Out, in this specific case the fear of missing out on knowing/knowing about something. But FoMo, as a dominant structure of feeling in contemporary society, in the context of listicle-s, begs many more questions: what is one afraid to miss out and how intense can that fear be? Who is afraid to miss out and what does missing out represent to them? Who decides what can be missed and what not? What is deemed to be the proper content of listicle-s and what is not; and what are the repercussions of the list form on the overall repository of knowledge from which the listicle-s are culled? What is the difference and continuity between lists meant as content that leads to commercial advertisement and lists made by the consumers? What happens when one begins to increasingly learn everything from the list form? Is there a 'list knowledge', the way there is a 'bookish knowledge'? What are the political repercussions of such 'list knowledge'?

The sessions will begin with two presentations/short papers (15 minutes each), mainly to provide an initial guide map for the discussion. The next 45 minutes will be devoted to discussion with the audience, so as to list out the complex factors and facets the conjugation of listicle and FoMo has produced, which will be moderated by both the presenters. The final 15 minutes will be assigned to the summarization of the points discussed by the speakers.

Session Team

Dr. Baidurya Chakrabarti is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication, Pune. Besides receiving his doctoral degree in Cultural Studies from EFL University, Hyderabad, he has also worked in the publishing industry as well as a content editor in the corporate sector. His doctoral dissertation maps the ideological terrain of contemporary Bollywood against the rise of neoliberalism in India. His areas of interests include contemporary film cultures, digital modernity, particularly digital cinephilia, comparative cultural studies, etc.

Pritha Chakrabarti is an independent researcher based out of Hyderabad. She has recently submitted her doctoral dissertation titled Politics of Screen Dance in Indian Cinema in the department of Cultural Studies at EFL University, Hyderabad. A recipient of the ICSSR-CSDS doctoral fellowship, she has worked on the ideology of on-screen choreographic construction and dissemination and reception of film dance as popular culture. Professionally a Content Manager, she has nearly a decade-long experience in marketing content generation, both offline and online.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-fomo