Internet Governance Blog
Breaking Down Section 66A of the IT Act
Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which prescribes 'punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc.' is widely held by lawyers and legal academics to be unconstitutional. In this post Pranesh Prakash explores why that section is unconstitutional, how it came to be, the state of the law elsewhere, and how we can move forward.
Draft nonsense
Seriously flawed and dodgily drafted provisions in the IT Act provide the state a stick to beat its citizens with.
DoT Blocks Domain Sites — But Reasons and Authority Unclear
Earlier this year, ISPs such as Airtel and MTNL blocked a number of domain sites including BuyDomains, Fabulous Domains and Sedo.co.uk. Whereas the Indian Government and courts have previously issued orders blocking websites, these actions have generally been attributed to issues such as posting of inflammatory content or piracy of copyrighted material. However, the reasoning behind blocking domain marketplaces such as the above mentioned sites is not clear.
Will The International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) Impact Internet Governance? A Multistakeholder Perspective
Pranesh Prakash made a presentation at the India Internet Governance Conference (IIGC) held at the FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi on October 4 and 5, 2012. The event was organised by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, FICCI and Internet Society. CIS was one of the supporting organisations.
Statement of Civil Society Members and Groups Participating in the "Best Bits" pre-IGF meeting at Baku in 2012
The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the signatories for this submission made to the ITU on November 16, 2012.
Q&A to the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy
In January 2012 Justice A.P. Shah formed a committee consisting of a group of experts to contribute to and create a report of recommendations for a privacy legislation in India. The committee met a total of seven times from January to September 2012. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) was a member of the committee creating the report. This blog post is CIS’s attempt to answer questions that have arisen from media coverage on the report, based on our understanding.
Indian Government's Submission to ITU
The following is the text of the submission made by the Government of India to the World Conference of International Telecommunications, Dubai on November 3, 2012. This is the final version of a draft that was circulated earlier.
Submission on India's Draft Comments on Proposed Changes to the ITU's ITRs
Given below are the responses from the representatives of civil society in India (The Society for Knowledge Commons, Centre for Internet & Society, The Delhi Science Forum, Free Software Movement of India, Internet Democracy Project and Media for Change) to the Government of India's proposals for the upcoming WCIT meeting, in December 2012, in Dubai.
Submission by Indian Civil Society Organisations on Proposals for the Future ITRs and Related Processes
The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the signatories of this submission which was sent in November 2012, in response to the International Telecommunication Union's call for public comments in relation to the revision of International Telecommunication Regulations that are to take place at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai from December 3 to 14, 2012.
The Rules of Engagement
Why the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.
Rethinking DNA Profiling in India
DNA profile databases can be useful tools in solving crime, but given that the DNA profile of a person can reveal very personal information about the individual, including medical history, family history and so on, a more comprehensive legislation regulating the collection, use, analysis and storage of DNA samples needs included in the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill.
Privacy Perspectives on the 2012 -2013 Goa Beach Shack Policy
CCTVs in India are increasingly being employed by private organizations and the government in India as a way to increase security and prevent/ deter crime from taking place. When the government mandates the use of CCTV’s for this purpose, it often does so by means of a blunt policy mandate, requiring the installation of CCTV systems, but without any further clarification as to who should oversee the use of the cameras, what bodies should have access to the records, how access should be granted or obtained, and how long the recordings should be retained.
A Public Meeting on DNA Profiling Bill in Delhi
On September 27, 2012, the Centre for Internet and Society hosted a public talk at the Indian International Centre focused on the draft DNA Profiling Bill. Presenting at the meeting were international experts Dr. Helen Wallace, director of GeneWatch UK and Jeremy Gruber, president and executive director of the Council for Responsible Genetics US, and Dr. Anupuma Raina, senior scientist at AIIMs.
The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water
The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.
An Introduction to the Issues in Internet Governance
That the internet cannot be governed was a central conviction of the early architects of the internet. In many ways it proved true when a majority of nation-States were kept off interference with the functioning of the internet. However with growing popularity of the internet, countries of the world are increasingly vying for control over it. This has become especially significant with the involvement of developing nations into the power struggle.
Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II
Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”).
SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech
If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.
India's Internet Jam
As authorities continue to clamp down on digital freedom, politicians and corporations are getting a taste for censorship too. Pranesh Prakash reports.
To regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question
Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.
Social media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore
I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.
Document Actions
