Centre for Internet and Society

Overview of Responses

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T06:49:53Z

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

Consultation Paper on Media Law

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T06:47:54Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consultation-paper-media-law.pdf

National Consultation on Media Law Schedule

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T06:34:57Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/national-consultation-on-media-law-schedule.pdf

Implementation of IT in Kannada

praskrishna — 2014-10-10T09:39:00Z

Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted a Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Basaveshwara Science College, Bagalkot on September 20, 2014.

The workshop was sponsored by Basaveshwara Science College. Thirty-seven students participated. Kannada popular science writer and Kannada Wikipedian T G Srinidhi helped in conducting the workshop.

A scanned version of the article published by Prajavani is given below:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-bagalkot

105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T05:57:37Z

Contents will now be available in Wikisource for use by everyone.

The article was published in Bangalore Mirror on September 29, 2014.

Kannada book lovers will now be able to legally download more than 100 books that have been released by the state government under the Creative Commons licence. The treasure trove, which includes a good mix of classics and rhythmic writings, have been digitised by the Department of Kannada and Culture and some of them put up on Wikisource, the website from where details for Wikipedia pages are sourced.

The licence entitles anyone "to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs." The licence is not limited to use in Wikipedia.

The initiative, which aims to enrich Kannada language and culture, is the brainchild of UB Pavanaja, a Bangalore-based writer. Pavanaja, along with some other Wikipedia contributors, approached the department to digitise and re-release Kannada classics. The department then decided to give CC licence to 105 books last month. With this licence, the source copy (soft copy) of the books will be made available.

The books released by the department include 35 volumes of the Samagra Dasa Sahitya (complete Dasa literature), 15 volumes of Samagra Vachana Samputa (complete Vachana literature), 36 volumes of Rigveda Samhita, Kumaravyasa Bharata, Jaimini Bharata, Nalacharitre and Mohana Tarangini. Soon, all these will be available for anyone who wants to read them online.

"According to India's copyright laws, any book will be out of copyright after 60 years. So technically, classics are out of copyright but this applies to the text only. But when someone publishes even a classic, they hold the copyright to the information they have keyed in and edited," said Pavanaja who is also a member of the advisory committee to the state government of Kannada software development. "What the department has given is rights to re-published versions of the classics and also the commentary, criticism, essays on these classics they have published. Any information that is out of copyright is uploaded to wikisource.org. They have given us soft copies of some of the books. The rest of the books for which CC licence is provided will have to be typed again and uploaded to Wikisource."

Pavanaja, who is also a popular contributor of Kannada information on Wikipedia, feels the 'free and open' knowledge movement in Kannada and especially Wikipedia is hampered by lack of contributors.

"Malayalam Wikipedia has nearly 1,000 editors. Kannada also has 600 registered editors, but only about 22 are active. So while the number of Wikipedia articles in other languages are increasing in leaps and bounds, there are only about 18,000 Kannada articles. This is a very small number considering there are around 18 lakh hits for Kannada every day."

Director of the Department Kannada and Culture KA Dayanand told Bangalore Mirror that they are currently only uploading books to which the department holds the copyright.

"I have also written to the writers who hold copyrights of books published by us. If they give permission, more books will be released. If more Kannada books are available online, it can only boost Kannada on the Internet."

In another related development, Mysore University has released six of the 14 volumes of its encyclopedia. Four of these will be available for anyone to read online, modify and use it. The Hampi Kannada University has a huge 29-volume encyclopedia. Sources say the university is in the initial stage making this available on Creative Commons.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/bangalore-mirror-shyam-prasad-105-kannada-books-released-under-creative-commons

The Power of Communication: The Media, Public Space and Participatory Democracy

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T05:49:27Z

Bhairav Acharya will be presenting a paper at this event to be held in the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla on October 13 and 14, 2014.

For more details, see here.

Bhairav would talk about the tension in defamation law, between its deontological command (Kant's categorical imperative of truth) and its consequentialism (harm, to reputation or to public peace).

The talk would explore the utility of our present common law construction of libel; and, if it's not too bold, he hopes to make the case that Indian libel law should incorporate a new test of serious and actual harm as its primary defence to libel, and that the defence of truth should be done away with. This is because Bhairav believes that free speech law should strictly construe Mill's harm principle. In other words, lies and rumours after all, if the state can freely engage in questionable propanganda, people should be allowed to spread baseless rumours — are good for health and should not be criminalised.

Background note

The media has been a growth sector over two decades and more of liberalisation. All evidence points towards the media industry having substantially outrun the overall rate of growth of the economy. This is not surprising since advertising which has been the principal driver of media growth, tends to leave behind other sectors in times of economic buoyancy. Technology has been another powerful driver of media growth over the last two decades. From the first glimmers of satellite broadcasting over the C band which enabled local cable operators to provide a menu of untold variety in the early 1990s, to the recent spurt in the “direct to home” transmissions, the Indian TV scenario has been transformed from a tightly controlled government monopoly, to a state of unregulated proliferation.

A further enabling mechanism has been the rapid growth of internet access. The digital divide remains very much a reality and the numbers that are able to tap into the full potential of the internet, is still a rather small fraction of the total population. The proliferation of cellular telephony though, has made limited modes of access a reality for growing numbers. And the damage potential is at the same time manifest in the growth of the politics of rumour.

It has been a central dilemma of the recent phase of media growth in India that the physical infrastructure has expanded, but the rules of the game are yet to be agreed. The official response has been to put in place a doctrine of intermediary liability, which has had a special bearing on the emerging sector of the social media. This is a principle that is being fought in the court-rooms by well-endowed internet giants. But at the level of individual users, section 66A of the Information Technology Act -- enacted in 2009 – remains a source of peril for social media users.

There are worries often expressed that competition among media channels has fuelled a race to the bottom. “Sting operations” which are by definition illegal unless they serve a strong public interest, have become a common recourse. Respect for privacy and personal reputation has become a rather loosely observed component of the code of media ethics.

Incidents in the recent past when media coverage has been directly paid for by political and business entities have fuelled public concerns about spurious and inauthentic information circulating in the public domain merely to serve profit objectives.

Episodes when the media has amplified public discontent and caused severe stress within the apparatuses of the state, have led to frequent expressions of concern. Serving and retired intelligence officials have remarked on the destabilisation potential of the new social media. And current and past prime ministers have spoken of the need to be vigilant about the use of the social media, but also to ensure that the free speech right is respected and the potential of the new media in serving larger national goals is realised.

The global financial meltdown in September 2008 made deep inroads into the fortunes of the media. The months that followed sharply highlighted the vulnerability of the media industry to corporate pressures. Despite its very loud voice and its pervasive presence in the lives of several million citizens, the media industry is dwarfed by India’s major corporate players. Illustratively, the advertising budget of just one among the leading players in the “fast moving consumer goods” (FMCG) space would be of the same order of magnitude as the total revenue of India’s biggest media groups.

This has been the context in which certain very large corporate entities – possibly among a host of smaller ones – have moved into the media space. The official response to this complex of changes has been marked by fits and spurts, which finally subside into indecision and inaction.

Efforts to transform the state-owned broadcasting agencies into public service media have faltered. And with commercial motives being dominant, large numbers of citizens who are of no conceivable interest to advertisers have fallen between the cracks, losing their voice within the public sphere.
Older experiments in using the official media as a vehicle for transmitting a message of development and diversity, have fallen into obscurity and neglect. While the ambitious experiment of using satellite-enabled broadcast media for developmental objectives is yet to be evaluated, the state-owned media are seen to have not transformed their approach according to the times.

Radio, which could be the most democratic and accessible of broadcast media, remains underdeveloped in its potential because of a refusal by the government to surrender its monopoly over news and current affairs content over the media.

A broad-based and critical debate on media policy, which looks at its promise as a space for participatory democracy, has been sorely lacking. This is in part because media industry players have worked themselves into the vantage position of setting the terms of the discourse. The voices of civil society and in particular, of those who stand to gain the most from a broadening of democratic spaces, have remained unheard.

This is the context in which an event under the above title is proposed at the institute. The ground covered in the event could include:

public understanding and perceptions of the media;
media representations of the “public” – “in” and “out” groups; voices heard and unheard;
“development” as represented in the media and the public space;
the voice afforded to diverse communities in determining development priorities;
the means afforded to diverse communities in voicing their opinion;
how the technical means of getting diverse opinions into the public space have evolved: from print, to the tightly controlled broadcasting space, to the unregulated broadcast space of the 1990s onwards;
securing transparency and public accountability in the media space;
from the perception of the telephone as a luxury irrelevant to the lives of the majority in the country, to its current status as an irreplaceable accessory of everyday life across all categories;
the plus and minus side of the ledger on the new communication possibilities;
the rights to privacy and personal reputation – reconciling these with accountability and the public right to information;
the politics of rumour; the damage potential of rumour and how rumour is also a means of enforcing public accountability;
how efforts to politically manage information invariably prove self-defeating, whether it is in the 1975-77 Emergency or today;
where do we go for a free and democratic media universe.

The event would seek to look back, look at current realities and look ahead to how things could be made better within a democratic order.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-power-of-communication-media-public-space-participatory-democracy

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age

praskrishna — 2015-02-12T17:07:32Z

IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI organized this event on September 13 and 14, 2014. Rohini Lakshane participated as a speaker.

Website:
http://www.itforchange.net/ITfC_Course_Re-wiring_womens_rights/index.php/Agenda

Speakers List:
http://www.itforchange.net/ITfC_Course_Re-wiring_womens_rights/index.php/Session_speakers

Video

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/re-wiring-women-rights-debates-in-digital-age

Fighting battles online

praskrishna — 2014-09-16T04:19:55Z

Internet policy maverick Sunil Abraham feels that accessibility is key to democratising the Internet space.

The article by Nikhil Varma was published in the Hindu on September 2, 2014.

Forty-year-old Sunil Abraham essays many roles, of a social entrepreneur, free software advocate and as policy director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society that focuses on accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance, telecom and digital humanities.

When he finished his engineering degree and was job hunting in Bangalore, the internet was an entity he had heard about, but never worked on.

“Family constraints meant that I had to look for jobs that paid me more than the salaries offered by industries for a 9 to 6 job. I decided to knock doors in the non profit sector. I met T. Pradeep, who ran Samuha, an NGO in Northern Karnataka that focused on integrated rural development.

Sunil says, “He offered me a job provided I learnt to work on the Internet. My job was to set up the organisation’s website. By 1998, I became the head of the IT department. Many spinoffs from Samuha were also becoming very successful. Pradeep gave us Rs.14 lakh and asked us to spin off and create a new organisation called Mahiti, with a mandate to serve non profits and provide them with affordable IT services. I just came into the picture to fulfil someone else’s dream. We provided email services to non-profit organisations at affordable rates. We ran a bulletin board service and also offered a free webpage for select NGOs.”

In 99, Sunil was offered an Ashoka fellowship. “It is a US non-profit that that supports social entrepreneurs. The idea that won me the fellowship was exploring the democratic potential of the internet. It is very similar to the work that I do at the CIS. The internet remains a tool that can be used for empowering and disempowering purposes that could have hegemonic implications for society. I also worked with the UNDP, after giving a speech about free and open software at one of their meetings. I was hired as a consultant.”

Till June 07’, Sunil worked with the UNDP, managing the open-source network spanning 42 countries. “I cut my policy teeth in the UN and learnt to work with governments and had a better idea of free software and open content. I made a lot of contacts in the course of my work.”

It was at the end of the UN stint that philanthropist Anurag Dikshit decided to set up the Centre for Internet and society in India and Sunil decided to take up the assignment. “Anurag has been a great help from the start. His funds have been very vital for the organization.”

CIS deals with a host of issues, ranging from making the internet and mobile phones disabled friendly to creating more Wikipedia pages in Indic languages and enhancing internet penetration in rural India. The organization is also

With government surveillance taking on newer dimensions in the internet Sunil says, “Surveillance is like adding salt in cooking. It is essential in small quantities, but counter productive even if it is slightly in excess. While surveillance may be a good idea to keep public servants occupying high office under scrutiny, employing mass surveillance on everybody may not work well.”

He adds, “A rational approach is needed. We believe that privacy is inversely proportional to the power a person yields, while transparency is directly proportional to the power a person yields.”

Sunil is deeply apprehensive about some of the steps governments take to stem the flow of information. “A couple of years ago, the government had banned text messages beyond a certain limit to prevent rumours from circulating. This resulted in people moving to Whatsapp, which is more difficult to monitor. The government agencies ended up being the actual losers. The more unrestricted surveillance, better chances that it could be compromised.”

Another vital issue that plagues our times are the limits to free speech and expression. “Different countries have different sets of laws and traditions that govern all aspects of life. We have not managed to arrive on a consensus on food habits, mankind is a long way from developing a uniform policy about internet usage. In India, there are some limits on free speech.”

He says, “If something is illegal offline, it is bound to illegal online. I do not think we need specific laws to police the internet. If you try to ban something, it may end up getting more consumed. It happened in the case of Wendy Doniger’s book being withdrawn by Penguin. The sales of the book skyrocketed when it was published by another publisher.”

Sunil adds, “It is an important that good laws are made and these laws have been enforced properly. Enforceability must also be taken into account during framing laws.”

A scanned version of the article published in the newspaper can be found below:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-nikhil-varma-september-2-2014-fighting-battles-online

Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One

praskrishna — 2014-09-12T05:50:23Z

When Google launches its low-cost Android One devices next Monday, Indian users will be able to give voice commands, type messages and use almost all major mobile applications in Hindi.

The article by Varun Aggarwal was published in the Economic Times on September 11, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

This is because the California, US based internet giant is hoping that the devices, which have been tailor-made for emerging markets, will help it capture the non-English speaking user base in the country.

Over 40 per cent of the population in India lists Hindi as its first language. Android One will come bundled with local language support and users will not have to download any external application to access their smartphone in Hindi, a person with knowledge of the development told ET.

"Google has been constantly working on developing more salience around Indic computing, providing regional language support to users for its various products and services," a Google spokesman said in an email. Internet users in India could increase by nearly a fourth if local language content is provided, according to a 2014 report from Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International.

In rural India, 43 per cent said they would adopt the Internet if they had content in their local language. Local language consumption growth is estimated to be more than four times that of English, according to Google. The company is trying to take a lead over its competitors by taking advantage of this trend.

Google is working to create more Hindi content online through local partnerships and is expected to launch more products keeping the Indic audience in mind.

"So far different vendors were offering different ingredients of the Indian language meal and users were expected to cook it themselves," said Venkatesh Hariharan, founder of Alchemy Business Solutions, a company which works on Indic computing and technology for development.

"If Google offers a comprehensive experience that works out-of-the-box in Indian languages that could attract millions of new users." Indic computing has so far been limited to enthusiasts who had to download a keyboard from one site, a local language dictionary from another and fonts from a third.

"If we really want widespread adoption, then using a mobile phone in Indian languages should be as easy as using it in English," Hariharan said. This is what Google hopes to achieve by introducing devices in partnership with Indian handset makers Micromax, Spice and Karbonn, which will launch the Android One devices for Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 next week.

The availability of such devices will also help internet companies such as Facebook and Yahoo promote their products in Indian languages. Facebook currently supports 13 Indian languages. "We are focused on enabling all major Indic languages and on actively promoting them on various platforms," a Facebook spokesperson said.

On the other hand, Yahoo shifted its multilingual support from websites to only mobile apps. For instance, the Yahoo Mail mobile app supports eight Indian languages.

"We can confirm we recently closed down the Indian language sites to better focus on our core offerings," a Yahoo representative said. While experts welcomed Google's push towards Hindi, some want the technologies to be open source.

"Now you'll have some people who will specialise on building Indic computing tools on Google and others doing the same on some other platform," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore based research organisation, The Centre for Internet and Society. "At least Google, which seems to have understood and taken advantage of free software, should give back to the free software movement."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-economic-times-varun-aggarwal-september-11-2014-google-aims-to-win-india-with-android-one

Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir

praskrishna — 2014-09-12T05:10:34Z

As flood-ravaged Indian Kashmir faces a communication blackout, social media posts on Facebook and Twitter are playing a huge role in tracing people stranded in the region.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on September 10, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

More than 400 people in India and Pakistan have been killed in the floods which have engulfed the mountainous region, and tens of thousands are waiting to be rescued.

Aijaz Qaisar, who works in Bangalore, is desperate for news of his ailing, elderly parents and his brother’s family. They had to scramble to the third floor of their home in Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, after floodwaters inundated the lower two floors.

“It’s a kind of attic, they are in an attic. It was again through Facebook, my brother, youngest brother, he had posted pictures of water all around…and after that no communication at all," he said. "[I am] completely, completely helpless.”

Qaisar has posted an SOS plea on Facebook, “please rescue Mr. Qaisar-ud-Din’s family” and given their address. Until Wednesday afternoon, he was still waiting.

“I am hoping, I am hoping that somebody would respond," he said. "I am hoping one call back telling me that water has not gone beyond, and there is food being supplied or at least water being supplied.”

Like Qaisar, tens of thousands of distressed relatives have flooded Facebook and Twitter with cries for help, urging rescuers and army personnel working in Indian Kashmir to reach their loved ones.

With phone and power lines down, those stranded are unable to call for help. And so such posts are helping to point rescue teams in the right direction. At the moment rescuers have virtually no way of identifying victims most urgently in need of help - the sick, the elderly and children.

While Qaisar has not yet been lucky, many others have. A Facebook exchange between the army and the sister of a woman, who is nine months pregnant, shows that soldiers responded to her plea on social media and rescued the stranded woman.

Army officials say all messages for help being received on its website are being forwarded to a group that includes senior commanders in the region. Starting Monday, the army also began putting up a list of rescued people on one of its Facebook accounts to keep relatives informed.

Self-help groups have also sprung up on Facebook sharing information on missing people. Google has allied with the National Disaster Response Force to create a database of stranded and missing people. People wanting to donate are connecting on the hashtag #Kashmirfloods.

Sunil Abraham at the Center of Internet and Society says social media can be a powerful tool for collaboration in situations like the ones faced by Kashmir.

“Through features like hashtag, you can form dynamic, express community,' he said. "Here social media has a marked advantage because an express platform for collaboration can be set up instantaneously.”

About 50,000 people have been rescued so far - 40,000 of them by the armed forces. But tens of thousands are still trapped in their homes.

The army, posted in huge numbers in the Himalayan region that borders Pakistan, is at the forefront of the massive rescue effort.

Atul Bhatia, an army official in Jammu region who turned a generator on an army truck into a mobile recharge point, told an Indian television channel that lack of communication is the biggest problem.

“The connect with relatives of theirs outside this area was the most important thing for the relatives and them to be assured that everything is fine," he said.

"With no electricity for five days out here, it was important their mobiles start working.”

The floods engulfed the region a week ago, devastating villages and towns, and destroying roads and bridges in the scenic mountain region.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-september-10-2014-anjana-pasricha-kashmir-flood-social-media-aids-rescue

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Pervasive Technologies

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2014-bulletin

NVDA and ESpeak August 2014 Report

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T06:18:59Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nvda-e-speak-update-august-2014.pdf

Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance?

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T04:21:23Z

‘Blame the British’ is an oft-invoked argument when the subject of India’s outdated laws comes up for discussion. But 68 years since Independence, can we still afford to parrot that old line?

The article by Vidya Venkat (With additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai) was published in the Hindu on September 7, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

Moiz Tundawala, a doctoral researcher in law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, feels that it is unfair to blame just the colonial hangover when several opportunities for reforming the legal system in India have been wasted by bureaucrats and judges. He points to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as an example.

“This law pronounces illegal carnal intercourse against the order of nature, making criminals of gays and transgender persons. But why was a progressive judgment of the Delhi High Court, which struck off this section, upturned later by the Supreme Court? If we continue to bear the burden of colonial era laws, we only have ourselves to blame,” he said.

Though the Constitution-making exercise in India was inspired by the British and other western systems, it was nevertheless an independent process. But the same did not happen with the laws in India that were handed down from the British, Mr. Tundawala said. He felt that several laws enacted in the post-colonial era smacked of a colonial mindset. “Take for instance laws such as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, or the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. All of them aim to control and subjugate a population with little regard for their democratic aspirations. So what this country needs is a radical overhaul of the judicial and criminal justice system.”

If we continue to bear the burden of colonial era laws, we only have ourselves to blame.

The Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, continues to presume the state to be the primary owner of telecommunications networks, though the sector was privatised long ago. “The provisions on surveillance in this Act are from a colonial era and are heavy-handed, allowing for spying even without a court warrant. Up until 1998, it spoke of ‘the Provinces’ in some provisions instead of ‘India,’” Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society, said.

The Police Act, 1861, is another law that has often been criticised for perpetuating colonial-era institutional practices. Despite numerous commissions and Supreme Court orders advocating reform measures, progress in changing this law has been slow. Lawyer-activist Maja Daruwala, who heads the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi, said those in establishment were very comfortable with the policing law and the power that it gave them. “When governments find it convenient to use policing as a means to hold down the population, why would they bother to amend it?”

Ms. Daruwala said the main fault lay with the definition of police duties and the overall structure and the spirit of the law itself. “The police in India are often accused of bias against certain communities, such as Dalits and tribal people. This is because the issue of need for diversity in policing in a democratic country such as India has not been addressed by the law. In the U.K., the design of the policing law changed gradually with the changing needs of the population, but this has not been the case here,” she said.

Section 124-A of the IPC on sedition is another provision in the statute book that is seen as promoting the colonial mindset. Several instances of the abuse of sedition law exist in independent India. In 2010, for instance, the BJP government in Chhattisgarh used the law against activist Binayak Sen for which he was imprisoned, only to be let off by the Supreme Court later which found him innocent. S. Prabakaran, Member, Bar Council of India, and president of the Tamil Nadu Advocates’ Association, said it was shameful that India continued to keep the law that was decried by none other than Mahatma Gandhi. “This law was brought in by the British to quell the Independence movement in India. Why have we not bothered to repeal it?”

Efforts to reform the criminal justice system have been fraught with challenges. The Justice Malimath committee, set up in 2000, had recommended reforms in the system, which were met with resistance from the human rights lobby. Cautioning the present government against any sweeping changes that would tinker with the basic structure of the law, V. Suresh, national general secretary, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, said: “The Malimath committee failed in its mission because it involved an effort to change the entire structure of the law itself, which upholds presumption of innocence, burden of proof on the state, and rules on admissible evidence, in order to improve conviction rates. No doubt, it was met with resistance by the legal fraternity as the idea was to do away with essential checks and balances in the legal system.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/vidya-venkat-the-hindu-september-7-2014-colonial-yoke-or-bureaucratic-insouciance

Telecom Cases

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T02:20:51Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/telecom-cases.zip

Healthcare

praskrishna — 2014-09-07T04:09:15Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/health-care.zip