Centre for Internet and Society

Response from Ministry of Home Affairs

praskrishna — 2013-07-15T04:34:10Z

Rakesh Mittal's reply received by the Centre for Internet and Society.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/response-from-ministry-of-home-affairs.pdf

Response from DeitY Clarifying Procedures for Blocking

praskrishna — 2015-04-29T14:36:44Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/response-deity.clarifying-procedures-for-blocking.pdf

Responding to govt requests is a challenge for online firms: Colin Maclay

praskrishna — 2013-03-15T05:07:10Z

Colin M. Maclay, MD of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, on challenges in cyberspace.

Colin M. Maclay, MD of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard mentions about the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore in his interview done by LiveMint. The article was published in LiveMint on March 13, 2013.

Mumbai: Colin M. Maclay, managing director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, says that companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are facing their greatest challenge in responding appropriately to governments that demand user information from them as part of regular practice or to abuse power. In an email interview to Mint on Wednesday, Maclay underscored the policy gaps on the Internet, differences in cyber laws across nations and the forces transforming education, media and technology companies online. He hopes to elaborate on some of these views in Mumbai on Thursday, the concluding day of Ficci Frames,a conclave on the media and entertainment industry that began on Tuesday. Edited excerpts:

How vulnerable are we because of the information shared on email platforms such as Gmail or Yahoomail or on social networks like Facebook?

We are vulnerable in many ways as we share information about ourselves and our friends, sometimes wisely and other times indiscriminately. But this information is later shared with many third-party tracking networks so that the highest bidder can advertise to us the product they think we want. That information is also sold to other interested parties, from businesses to governments. Other business offerings like facial recognition software only make the proposition spookier. Many of them want to responsibly monetize our data typically for advertising or improving their service offerings although we may not all agree on what that means in practice.

Are any laws being considered in the US to protect people’s privacy online?

Privacy around telephony, wiretaps for instance, is much better than Internet-related government requests. There are a host of laws and regulations around privacy in the US, but many of my colleagues would likely say that they are inadequate—not keeping up with the technology, actual use or business practice. They are also in conflict with European laws, which suggests the need to resolve these differences. In this gap, practices like the Google and Twitter Transparency Reports are significant steps forward in telling what governments are actually doing around the world with respect to online privacy and expression. India’s government has a noteworthy presence in these reports, as does the US.

Is it easier for the government to get personal information of suspects’ activity online from Google or Facebook than it would be through an offline search warrant?

There are questionable requests made to companies to provide user information, censor content or other such action by law enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions. Often it is legitimate, and companies should respond accordingly, while at other times, companies may overreach unintentionally, requesting much more information than they need or broader censorship due to their own lack of understanding. In other cases, as part of regular practice or in an informal abuse of power, governments will make requests that do not hold up scrutiny to the rule of law and due process. They may have political or economic motivations, for instance. It’s in discerning between these cases, and figuring out how to respond appropriately, that the companies face their greatest challenge.

Has the freedom of expression been limited by the governments?

The OpenNet initiative, a research collaboration between the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and the Berkman Center at Harvard, has documented the rise of state-sponsored Internet censorship from a handful of countries a decade ago to over 40 countries today. Beyond technical control, there is a massive increase in copyright-related takedowns that include legitimate takedowns, plus many attempts at economic and political control. There are informal legal and process controls on content. There is also a wide range of self-censorship that’s difficult to document.

How are these companies addressing the issue?

In recognition of the difficult situation, companies such as Google, Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. (Facebook is an observer at present), non-government organizations like Human Rights Watch, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDSA) and the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore and investors like Calvert Investments Inc. and F&C Asset Management Plc, founded the Global Network Initiative (GNI) in October 2008 to protect and advance privacy and freedom of expression online.

Cybercrimes like credit card frauds surface time and again...why is the Internet still not secure enough?

It goes back to beginnings of the Internet, it was built to be open rather than secure. That said, there are a variety of different concerns, including organizations doing an inadequate job of securing the credit card data they hold. That’s their fault and it seems there should be policy solutions that require better security and exact penalties for lapses and bad practice to encourage better behaviour. Credit card fraud online and offline is a problem, and unfortunately it sometimes effectively punishes countries with risk by automatically denying cards—effectively leaving users in those countries without access to e-commerce.

On the good side, top universities around the world now offer online education, How is it transforming the education system?

Like many analog institutions that are adopting digital resources, it’s unclear what will happen. Hopefully it will lower prices, increase learning opportunities, and improve learning all in a sustainable way. We can’t deny, however, the role of in-person interaction whether it’s while seeing friends, dating or doing business and learning is no different.

Looking at trends, laptops began replacing desktops and now tablets are becoming a preferred personal computing device. What’s next?

A decade ago it was laptops or mobiles, and the price of laptops came down, but the mobile network proliferated even faster. Smartphones continued to drop in price and increase in potential, laptops are lighter than ever, tablets have come up, even operating systems are beginning to converge. Now, immersive experiences like Google Glass are coming. It’s hard to know what’s next, but I hope that device convergence will serve as an enabler rather than a limiter.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-ruchita-saxena-march-13-2013-responding-to-govt-requests-is-a-challenge-for-online-firms

Respite from Internet Censorship?

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T15:51:30Z

Of late, a lot of the blocked websites have started reappearing. So should we sit back and relax? We take a look at how it's not really the start of something beautiful...writes Nimish Sawant. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Published in thinkdigit on June 2, 2012

In April, Chennai based Copyrights Labs got a John Doe order (An order against no one in particular) from Madras High Court which ordered ISPs to block several video hosting websites such as Vimeo and Dailymotion along with a string of torrent sites such as Isohunt and Pirate Bay. The motive was to prevent illegal sharing of the movies 3 and Dhammu. The ISPs went on this whole website blocking spree welcoming users with messages such as, “This website has been blocked as per instructions from the Department of Telecom (DoT)”.

In June, the Madras High Court issued an order which made it mandatory for complainants to provide exact URLs where they find illegal content, such that ISPs could block only that content and not the entire site.

This order is definitely a relief for Indian internet users, who were facing a variety of blocked websites for a couple of months. In the May-June period there was a lot of media coverage around Internet censorship and then there was the much-hyped Anonymous protest (http://goo.gl/YCQod) that saw a not-so-great participation. Just like most media stories, it is slowly departing from the public conciousness. So does this mean our censorship woes are behind us?

Far from it.

The dark cloud of Intermediaries Guidelines
The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 were added to the IT Act 2000. According to it, the intermediaries (website, domain registrar, blog owner and so on) guidelines allows the government to pull up any website that hosts “objectionable” content. It gives anyone the right to send “content removal notice” to an intermediary, asking it to be removed within 36 hours. Terms describing such content - grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene - are those that are open to interpretation. So, Facebook can be hauled up for derogatory content or pages on its site. Hell, even if you own a blog and someone else posts a derogatory comment, you can be pulled up.

This is a rather smart move by the government to force self-censorship down our throats. Just try imagining - Every 60 seconds: on YouTube there are 48 hours worth of videos uploaded; Wordpress users publish 347 blogs; Twitter users send over 100,000 tweets among others. (Source: http://goo.gl/U7qT8) How on earth is monitoring such a vast amount of data even possible?

Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw Expert	"Any content which is illegal can be blocked by ISP or on directions of a court.A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access. No specific section in IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court."

Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw Expert

"Any content which is illegal can be blocked by ISP or on directions of a court.A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access. No specific section in IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court."

Every site has internal checks and balances in the form of a 'Report Abuse' option, where users raise flags against content which they may find objectionable and the site takes a call. But with the intermediary rules, the content has to be removed within 36 hours. And here's the kicker – the content can be removed without informing the owner or giving him or her a chance to defend. A political cartoon website cartoonsagainstcorruption.com was a victim of such rules. In March this year, Rajya Sabha MP, P. Rajeeve, had moved a motion calling for the annulment of the intermediaries rules sometime in April. This motion, as would be expected, was defeated by a voice vote.

“Any content which is illegal can be blocked by the ISP or on directions of a court. A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access,” said cyberlaw expert Karnika Seth. When asked if there is a clause in the IT Act which enables a person to drag the government or the ISP for blocking access to their harmless content on the web, Seth said, “No specific section in the IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However, freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court.”

So what should one do if his or her content is blocked due to the blanket ban on websites? “If I am blocked access to my content on the web (say by blocking sites such as Vimeo or Blogspot for instance) I should file an appeal against the John Doe order in the higher court or to the division bench of High court if earlier order has been passed by single bench of the same High court. These provisions are there for any citizen in Procedural Law of India. The IT Act, 2000 need not be invoked,” says Advocate Prashant Mali, President, Cyber Law Consulting.

Google Transparency report clearly established a link between internet censorship and the government. According to the report, between January and June 2011 Google received 1739 requests for disclosure of user data from the Indian government whereas from July to December 2011, the number of requests by the government went up to 2207. Thankfully Google's compliance rate has come down, but the requests will keep increasing. And this is just Google products we are talking about. Is it then right for just the government to go ahead and draft the rules regarding internet usage? Are there provisions for you, the user to play a part in drafting of these rules. According to Advocate Mali, laws are generally put up for debate on various Government websites. But in the case of the Intermediaries Guidelines, the government used the two-thirds majority to pass the rules.

According to Sunil Abraham, Director, Centre for Internet and Society – a Bangalore-based internet advocacy group, we are very far in terms of Internet policies. “Dr. Gulshan Rai of CERT-IN has not taken even the public feedback process seriously and does not hold public consultations. This is very unlike TRAI, the telecoms regulator that has a very sophisticated approach towards transparent and participatory policy formulation.” He says that in India there is little transparency in some areas of policy articulation and our representatives do not seem sufficiently interested in protecting the public interest.

Also according to Adv. Mali, the recent Madras High Court directive asking the ISPs to block only the ‘pirated content’ and not the entire website, is just half the battle won for the ISPs. “If ISP's feel they have won, then that's just half the victory, because if they don't implement the order with full might and even if one copyright gets infringed because of there weak enforcement, then it would amount to Contempt of Court which will land ISP's into soup,” he says.

“The Madras High Court judgement which essentially directs ISPs to block “pirated content”, and not the website as a whole, is a good judgment with respect to Internet users, but implementing it selectively would be a mammoth task for ISP's. If ISP's feel they have won, then it's just half the battle won, because if they don't implement the order with full might and even if one copyright gets infringed because of weak enforcement, then it would amount to Contempt of Court which will land ISP's into soup."

Advocate Prashant Mali, President, Cyber Law Consulting

Is the Anonymous way, the right way?
In June, we saw the global hactivist organisation - Anonymous attacking a string of Government websites and that of ISPs such as Reliance communications, which had blocked access to websites. On June 9, there was a street protest across various metros in India. While the participation was not very encouraging, the sympathy for what Anonymous hackers were doing to those opposing Internet censorship was immense.

According to Advocate Mali, though the agenda of Anonymous was good, their means of achieving that end were wrong. “One cannot put a gun on the Government’s head in a democracy. If they keep doing this, they will be outlawed. If Anonymous really wants to work for the netizens, they should find better ways to protest instead of those which are cognizable cyber crimes in India.” said Mali.

According to Abraham, Anonymous are embracing the civil disobedience movement to protest against unjust laws. He feels that it is pertinent for Anonymous to retain the moral high ground. “Breaking into servers, leaks of personal information and defacement of websites is both illegal and also unlikely to win them more supporters from within the policy formulation space,” concurs Abraham.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society

“The government ie. the government in power, does only frame subsidiary rules. For example – the draconian rules related to reasonable security measures, cyber cafes and intermediaries were drafted in April last year. The main Act in this case the Information Technology Act is framed in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Even though the elected government may dominate the proceedings, if they have a clear majority, the opposition parties must debate every detail especially in laws that affect our civil liberties. Unfortunately, since the Internet is not used by the majority of the population it is politically still an insignificant issue. The private sector cannot frame laws that regulate itself – that would be a contradiction in terms. Citizens cannot be asked to vote in referendums each time laws have to be passed, that would just be too slow. Transparency representative democracy is the online option – unfortunately in India there is little transparency in some areas of policy articulation and our representatives don't seem to be sufficiently interested in protecting the public interest.”

Where do we go from here?
So it is safe to say that even though the issue of censorship is not making headlines everyday, it will never will be behind us. “This is just a temporary lull in the storm. Governments are always keen to crack down on free speech and privacy online,” feels Abraham. According to him, projects such as Unique Identification (UID) and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) means the death of anonymity and pseudonymity for Internet and mobile users in the country.

On the other hand, Adv. Mali says that so long as the Intermediaries guidelines are part of the IT Act, it will only mean bad news for regular netizens. “Till the rules are effective, censorship and blocking would be a weapon in the hands of the Government, even though it may violate certain Fundamental Rights enshrined by Indian Constitution to Indian Citizens,” he said.

“Indian Internet users have to be very vigilant – if not, we will loose all our rights and freedoms one by one,” warns Abraham.

We can just hope that the issue does not get completely out of hand.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-thinkdigit-com-nimish-sawant-02-06-2012-respite-from-internet-censorship

Resources of Meeting

praskrishna — 2014-11-07T00:37:51Z

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

Resources

praskrishna — 2012-01-26T15:13:03Z

Internet governance, freedom of expression, and privacy-related resources: cases, statutes, etc.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources

Resources

praskrishna — 2013-03-13T05:17:23Z

This section contains all government notifications, RTI applications, and accessibility related resources: cases, statutes, etc.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/resources

Resisting Revolutions

praskrishna — 2012-05-29T10:28:17Z

Nishant Shah's peer reviewed journal article was published in Democracy, Volume 55, Issue 2.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/resisting-revolutions.pdf

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India

praskrishna — 2012-06-21T05:29:02Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Foundation for Media Professionals invite you to an open discussion on 'Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India' at the Bangalore International Centre on April 21, 2012, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

Participants include:

P. Rajeeve, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, CPI(M))
Rajeev Chandrashekar, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, Independent) [tbc]
V.R. Sudarshan, Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka (Congress)
Na. Vijayshankar, Cyber Law College
Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm
B.G. Mahesh, OneIndia.in
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Centre for Law and Policy Research
Siddharth Narain, Alternative Law Forum
Ram Bhat, Maraa
S. Senthil, FSMK [tbc]
Deepa Dhanraj [tbc]
Arati Chokshi, People's Union for Civil Liberties (Karnataka) [tbc]

Immediate Background:

Member of Parliament P. Rajeeve has introduced a motion in the Rajya Sabha calling for the Internet censorship law passed last year ("Intermediary Guidelines Rules") to be annulled. This motion will be taken up once the Budget Session 2012 reconvenes, and will need the support of the majority of both Houses to be passed. Apart from this, we have seen multiple cases in the past few months of flagrant abuse of the speech laws, especially the Information Technology Act, including the removal of CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com, the arrest of M. Karthik, a 20-year-old atheist from Hyderabad, and of Prof. Ambikesh Mahapatra from Kolkata for 'defamatory' cartoons of Mamata Banerjee, both under s.66A of the Information Technology Act. We need to develop strategies to combat this over-eagerness by authorities to abuse speech laws.

More Detailed Background:

Internet censorship has been in India ever since VSNL brought internet connectivity to Indians in the mid-1990s, when websites were blocked through executive fiat. In 2000 the Information Technology Act was passed, and while it had a provision on electronic publication of obscene materials, it did not contain any provisions for blocking of websites. Still, Rules were made under the Act under which the government blocked numerous websites.

In 2008 the Act was amended, bringing more transparency to the censorship regime. Unfortunately, cases like the CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com and the disparity between censorship statistics published by Google and the official statistics revealed under RTI by the Department of Information Technology show a large amount of extra-legal censorship happening.

In February 2011, the DIT published draft rules that were severely criticised by many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar, P. Rajeeve, Mahendra Mohan, and Kumar Deepak Das, organizations including CIS, Software Freedom Law Centre, IAMAI, and companies like Google India. Many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar and P. Rajeeve, raised concerns about the draft. In April 2011 disregarding all these concerns, the government pressed ahead with the Rules. These rules allowed any person to get content removed from the Internet by writing to any 'intermediary' (like Rediff, BSNL, Google, Facebook, etc.) within 36 hours, with no questions asked, and no intimation to the content owner (hence no question of challenge), and once again made internet censorship as unaccountable as it was pre-2008, only with the power to censor in the hands of every citizen, rather than just a few government officials.

In May 2011, due to the backlash in the media, with negative editorials in prominent newspapers, Mr. Kapil Sibal indicated in an interview that the rules would be revisited. From August 2011 onwards there was a crackdown on several web companies, including Indiatimes, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, with the government asking them to proactively monitor online content and remove what it deemed objectionable material. Since then, a number of egregious cases of censorship through filing of intimidatory FIRs and lawsuits have been happening.

The Organisers

The Foundation for Media Professionals is an independent, not-for-profit organisation, set up in April 2008, by a group of Indian journalists with diverse media backgrounds and work experiences. Though we are traditionally referred to as journalists, we have decided to call ourselves differently to emphasise the importance we place on professionalism, so that we can be true to our vocation as watchdogs of society.

This is not a forum for the media executive who might be into marketing, management or space selling. Nor is membership open to amateurs, for whom journalism is a hobby and not the main source of income. As journalists we cannot be politically neutral. Ours is not a sterile craft that seeks merely to entertain or inform. We confess to just one prejudice: liberty. In pursuing that principle, the Foundation shall be non-partisan, while welcoming members of all political persuasions.

Our intention is to strive towards the nobility of our calling and its high-minded purpose. We will try to inculcate and amplify best practices. We will debate issues impinging on our profession. We shall recognise and reward excellence.

The Centre for Internet and Society was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different research programmes on topics such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, Telecom, Digital Natives and Digital Humanities.

The programmes have resulted in research outputs: monographs such as Re: Wiring Bodies, Porn: Law, Video, Technology, Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, Archives and Access and the Last Cultural Mile; reports such as Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report, Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers, Open Government Data Study, and Online Video Environment in India ; analyses such as WIPO Treaty for the Print Disabled, WIPO Broadcast Treaty, and Copyright Amendment Bill ; books such as Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and e-Accessibility Handbook for Persons with Disabilities; a reader on the Wikipedia titled Critical Point of View; other outputs such as Banking, Telecommunications, Consumer Protection, IT Act, Limitations, Copyright, Internet Protocol, Media, Sexual Minorities and UID.

We have participated in forums like WIPO, FICCI, IGF, and gave policy submissions to various ministries and departments of the Government of India including the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Department of Information Technology, and Department of Telecom on policies like NIA Bill, IT Act, National Policy on Electronics, Cyber Café Rules, Security Practices Rules, Intermediary Due Diligence Rules, and Interoperability Framework for e-Governance.

VIDEOS

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/resisting-internet-censorship

Researchers at Work

praskrishna — 2024-01-05T02:35:51Z

Researchers at Work

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ResearchersWork.png

Research papers will be available in public domain

praskrishna — 2012-02-17T05:38:36Z

IIT-Madras intends to make circle of knowledge complete, writes Vasudha Venugopal in this article published in the Hindu on 15 February 2012. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam is quoted in the article.

2012-13 was declared the year of science by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, and there is a lot of effort being made all over the country to not only intensify the quantity and quality of research but also ensure greater access for all. For instance, IIT-Madras plans to make available its research papers in all disciplines online, in the public domain. The institute already provides e-learning through online web and video courses in engineering, science and humanities streams through NPTEL.

The attempt now is to convince faculty members to upload their research papers into the institution's repository, says Mangala Sunder Krishnan, Web Coordinator (NPTEL). The move will not only benefit students and faculty members but will also help the circle of knowledge to be complete, he says.

What IIT- Madras plans to do is follow an Open Access policy that would make the access of journals and scientific research public and many other educational organisations plan to follow suite. “Most research publications stay locked up in commercial journals and are inaccessible to many. Open Access is the best way to ensure that research produced in the developing world gets wider visibility,” says Francis Jayakanth, a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information, the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Mr. Jayakanth has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository ePrints@IISc that has over 32,000 publications by researchers.

Subbiah Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society explains: “A research produced by the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai which would be of great relevance to researchers, say in a university in Maharashtra, may not be even noticed by the scientists there. Both groups receive funds from the same source - Government of India - and yet what one does is not easily accessible to the other. “Open Access would bridge that gap and make information available to everyone,” he says.

Open Access repositories would help authors place their papers in an interoperable institutional open access archive and anyone with an Internet connection can access it. Researchers say that in most reputed journals, it takes almost six months to get a paper published, and most insist that the paper is removed from the internal repository of the author's institution once it is published. “But 70 per cent of the publishers are now fine with the authors taking the pre-print of their paper uploaded in the repository. And since in open access, every thing is peer reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Mr. Jayakanth.

While institutions such as IIT- Madras subscribe to over 2,000 journals, many colleges under Anna University and University of Madras have access to just about 1,500 journals. “There is almost Rs.10 -12 lakh that the institution spends on journal subscriptions so unless there is funding, many self-financed colleges prefer not to subscribe to journals and go for a few mandatory ones prescribed by AICTE. Students and researchers have no way to acquaint themselves with recent updates,” says D. Krishnan, professor, Anna University.

Even if you go through consortiums, you have to spend Rs.20 lakh which many smaller R&D organisations cannot afford to, adds P. Ramamoorthy, librarian at Sameer- Centre for Electromagnetics, a government-funded research agency. “The restrictions imposed by many commercial publishers do not allow one to legally share the published output of his result with his colleague. Open access will relive authors of such hassles,” he says.

The original article was published in the Hindu

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain

Research Advisory Network Meeting

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T06:39:38Z

All sessions will take place at the OECD Headquarters, located at 2 Rue André Pascal, 75016, Paris, France. Sunil Abraham is participating in the event.

For agenda and other details, click here.

Hosting of the Event

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has agreed to host this meeting of the Global Commission on Internet Governance’s Research Advisory Network (RAN). The OECD will provide meeting space and logistical support, and is committed to engaging the project in the development of evidence-based policy recommendations for the future of Internet governance.

Meeting Participant List

Special Guests

James Kaplan
Bill Woodcock

OECD Staff

Aaron Martin
Anne Carblanc
Sam Paltridge
Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone
Lorrayne Porciuncula

Commission Secretariat

Caroline Baylon
Eric Jardine
Mark Raymond
Aaron Shull
Brenda Woods

Research Advisory Network Biographies

Sunil Abraham / @sunil_abraham

Sunil Abraham is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). CIS is a five year old policy and academic research organization focusing on accessibility, access to knowledge, Internet governance, telecom, digital natives and digital humanities. He founded Mahiti in 1998, a social enterprise that provides technology to civil society for which he was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Subimal Bhattacharjee / @subimal

Subimal Bhattacharjee is an independent consultant on defence and cyber issues, working primarily with government and private sector advisory panels in India. He is the former India country director for General Dynamics International Corporation. Subimal is a columnist and internationally respected speaker on issues of Internet governance and cyber security.

Bertrand de La Chapelle / @bdelachapelle

Bertrand de La Chapelle is the Director of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, a global multistakeholder dialogue process developing a due process framework to handle the diversity of national laws in cross-border online spaces. He served as a Director on the ICANN Board from 2010 to 2013. From 2006 to 2010, he was France’s Thematic Ambassador and Special Envoy for the Information Society, participating in all WSIS follow-up activities and Internet governance processes, including in particular the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and was a Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Bertrand is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po Paris and Ecole Nationale d’Administration.

Laura DeNardis / @LauraDeNardis

A scholar of Internet architecture and governance, Dr. Laura DeNardis is a CIGI senior fellow and professor at American University. She is an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and previously served as its Executive Director. She is the Director of Research for the Global Commission on Internet Governance and is the author of The Global War for Internet Governance (Yale University Press 2014).

Patrik Fältström / @patrikhson

Patrik Fältström is head of research and development at Netnod. Previously, he was a distinguished engineer at Cisco, technical specialist at Tele2, systems manager at the Royal Institute of Technology, researcher at Bunyip Information Systems and a programmer in the Royal Swedish Navy. He has been a member of numerous advisory groups and investigations related to the Internet, both public and private sector. Patrik holds an M.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Stockholm.

Paul Fehlinger / @PaulFehlinger

Paul Fehlinger is the co-founder and manager of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process developing a due process framework to enable the coexistence of diverse national laws in cross-border online spaces. He started working on Internet governance at Sciences Po Paris and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He is since actively engaged in the UN Internet Governance Forum, EuroDIG and other global Internet fora.

Fen Hampson

Fen Osler Hampson is a distinguished fellow and director of the Global Security & Politics Program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). He has served as director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and is concurrently chancellor’s professor at Carleton University. He is the recipient of various awards and honours and is a frequent commentator and contributor to international media.

Clem Herman / @clemherman

Clem Herman is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computing and Communications at the UK Open University, and was previously director of the Manchester Women’s Electronic Village Hall (WEVH) pioneering the use of ICTs to empower women. She has published widely on gender issues in technology and is the founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology.

Konstantinos Komaitis / @kkomaitis

Konstantinos Komaitis is a policy advisor at the Internet Society, focusing primarily on the field of digital content and intellectual property. Before joining the Internet Society in July 2012, he was a senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Konstantinos holds a Ph.D. in law and his thesis focused on issues of intellectual property and the Internet, with particular focus on the intersection of trademarks and domain names. He is the author of The Current State of Domain Name Regulation.

Young-eum Lee

Young-eum Lee is a professor in the Department of Media Arts and Sciences at Korea National Open University. She has been involved in various Internet governance policy making processes of the Korean domain name .kr at KISA (KRNIC), and has also been involved in global Internet governance activities at ICANN. Since 2003, she has been a council member of the ccNSO representing .kr in the Asia-Pacific region. Young-eum received her M.A. in Communication Science at Northwestern University and her doctorate in Communication from the University of Michigan.

Tim Maurer

Tim Maurer is a research fellow at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. He focuses on cyberspace and international affairs, namely Internet governance, cyber-security, and human rights online. In October 2013 and February 2014, he spoke about cyber-warfare at the United Nations. Tim’s research has been published and featured by national and international print, radio and television media, including Harvard University, Foreign Policy, CNN and Slate among others. He conducts academic research as a non-resident research fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

Emily Taylor / @etaylaw

Emily Taylor is a renowned expert in the field of Internet law and governance, and provides research services in areas including security, IPv6 deployment, internationalised domain names, the domain name industry, and global policy development. Her roles in the Internet sphere include chair of the WhoIs Review Committee for ICANN 2012, member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group to the IGF (2006-2012), director of Synetergy (providing Sunrise Dispute resolution services to the largest gTLD applicant, Donuts), and several ongoing non-executive directorships.

Rolf H. Weber

Rolf H. Weber is professor for civil, commercial and European law at the University of Zurich Law School. Since 2008, he is the director of the Information and Communication Law Center at the University of Zurich, a member (now Vice-Chairman) of the Steering Committee of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) as well as a member of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). Since 2009, he has been a member of the High-level Panel of Advisers of the Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID) and author of frequent publications on Internet Governance.

Andrew Wyckoff

Andrew W. Wyckoff is the director of the OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. Prior to the OECD, he was a program manager of the Information, Telecommunications and Commerce program of the US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, an economist at the US National Science Foundation and a programmer at the Brookings Institution. Andrew holds a Master of Public Policy from the JFK School of Government, Harvard University.

Special Guest Biographies

James M. Kaplan

James M. Kaplan is a partner at McKinsey & Company in New York. He convenes McKinsey's global practices in IT infrastructure and cyber-security. He has assisted leading institutions in implementing cyber-security strategies, conducting cyber-war games, optimizing enterprise infrastructure environments and exploiting cloud technologies. James led McKinsey's collaboration with the World Economic Forum on "Risk & Responsibility in a Hyper-Connected World," which was presented at the Forum's recent Annual Meeting in Davos. He published on a variety of technology topics in the McKinsey Quarterly, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review Blog Network.

Bill Woodcock

Bill Woodcock is the executive director of Packet Clearing House, the international non-governmental organization that builds and supports critical Internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system. Since entering the Internet industry in 1985, Bill has helped establish more than one hundred and fifty Internet exchange points. In the early 1990s, Bill developed the anycast routing technique that now protects the domain name system. In 2002 he co-founded INOC-DBA, the security-coordination hotline system that interconnects the network operations centers of more than three thousand ISPs around the world. And in 2007, Bill was one of the two international liaisons deployed by NSP-Sec to the Estonian CERT during the Russian cyber-attack.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-advisory-network-meeting

Research Advisory Network Agenda

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T06:38:00Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/research-advisory-network-agenda.pdf

Request for Specifics

praskrishna — 2016-10-30T15:04:21Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/requestForSpecifics.pdf

Request for Blocking of Websites

praskrishna — 2011-10-21T12:57:51Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) had filed a request for information under RTI Act, 2005 with the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India on 13 May 2011. CIS had requested the department to provide its reply on a number of issues concerning blocking of websites. CIS received replies from the DIT office to each of the questions raised in the application is produced below.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/request-for-website-blocking.pdf

Centre for Internet and Society

Response from Ministry of Home Affairs

Response from DeitY Clarifying Procedures for Blocking

Responding to govt requests is a challenge for online firms: Colin Maclay

Respite from Internet Censorship?

Resources of Meeting

Resources

Resources

Resisting Revolutions

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India

Participants include:

Immediate Background:

More Detailed Background:

The Organisers

Researchers at Work

Research papers will be available in public domain

Research Advisory Network Meeting

Hosting of the Event

Meeting Participant List

Research Advisory Network Committees

Special Guests

OECD Staff

Commission Secretariat

Research Advisory Network Biographies

Research Advisory Network Agenda

Request for Specifics

Request for Blocking of Websites