Centre for Internet and Society

PP

praskrishna — 2015-01-03T03:40:42Z

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Power to youth

praskrishna — 2012-11-06T06:10:57Z

The inclusion of young politicians in the recent reshuffle saw the average age of the Union Cabinet come down. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Across sectors, a new order is emerging as the next generation takes over the reigns. It has been one of our biggest paradoxes - a country which has one of the youngest populations in the world has not been harnessing the energy, verve and change-making abilities of its young.

The article published in the Hindustan Times on November 3, 2012 names Sunil Abraham and Lawrence Liang as some of the young people who are shaping the future...

The Cabinet reshuffle saw the elevation of younger politicians to the higher echelons of power, but these new appointments symbolise the coming of age of an entire generation. Across other sectors too - business, entertainment, activism, publishing - the young are slowly but surely assuming power and extending their influence.

These people are in positions to change the way we live, think, work and play. The future is here. Here's a look at some of those who are shaping it...

1) Sachin Pilot, 35, corporate affairs minister
He is the youngest minister in UPA-II and a two-term MP. He recently became an officer in the Territorial Army. In the cabinet reshuffle, he was elevated to minister of state with independent charge of corporate affairs. He promised to look into corporate irregularities and wants corporate affairs to be an enabling ministry that reduces red tape.

2) Jyotiraditya Scindia, 41, power minister
He is a three-time MP. He has done much for his state, Madhya Pradesh, including computerising state post offices, strengthening BSNL services, setting up industries, and constructing roads. He recently took over the power ministry (independent charge) and said that rural electrification and fuel generation are his priorities.

3) Arvind Kejriwal, 44, activist-turned-politician
An IIT-Kharagpur graduate, he worked for the revenue service before becoming an activist. He joined the RTI movement. In 2006, set up his own NGO and was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for his contribution to RTI. In 2011, he successfully planned Anna Hazare's Lokpal movement. He recently launched his own political party.

4) Siddharth Roy Kapur, 38, MD, UTV Studios
One of the most powerful people in Indian entertainment, he was responsible for many hit films under the UTV banner including Jodhaa Akbar, Fashion, Dev D, Kaminey, Raajneeti, Udaan, Peepli [Live], Delhi Belly and in 2012, Paan Singh Tomar and India's entry to the Oscars, Barfi. He has also been instrumental in the strategic tie-up with Disney.

5) Manish Tewari, 47, Union I&B minister
Tewari is a first-time MP. He joined the Youth Congress in 1981 and became its president in 1998. After 2008, he became a popular choice to publicly articulate the party's views. In the reshuffle, he was given the information & broadcasting ministry with independent charge. He has set cable digitisation and the problem of paid news high on his agenda.

6) Cyrus Mistry, 43, deputy chairman, Tata Sons
Mistry will be 44 in December when he takes over Ratan Tata's mantle at Bombay House. He joined Shapoorji Pallonji & Co as director in 1991. He is considered more of an 'insider' in the Tata Group. A graduate of Imperial College, UK and London Business School, he has stayed away from the limelight for much of his career, not unlike Tata.

7) JBS Sangha, 44, agricultural entrepreneur
From a mere seven acres, his business has grown to 5500 acres, producing 55,000 tonnes of potatoes annually. A poster boy of Indian agriculture and a student of plant breeding, he took his father's business to a new heights using cutting-edge biotechnology. He uses newer cold storage techniques and opted for eco-friendly pest control.

8) Deepinder Goyal, 29, founder-CEO, Zomato.com
An IIT Delhi graduate, Goyal launched Foodiebay.com in 2008 as an online database of restaurant menus from the NCR. The site, now famous as Zomato.com, is India's largest online restaurant guide covering over 40,000 restaurants in 12 cities. The site even has smartphone applications for Apple, Windows, Android and Blackberry.

9) Anurag Kashyap, 40, film director
One of the most revered new-age directors of Indian cinema, Kashyap has transformed the way Bollywood movies are perceived. He has been instrumental in merging genres of realistic art-house cinema and mainstream commercial song-drama films. With powerful films such as Black Friday, Dev D, Gulaal and Gangs of Wasseypur, Kashyap is now recognised as a bankable film maker.

10) Ajay Dubey, 37, RTI and environmental activist
A Chhatisgarh resident, Dubey took the case of tiger conservation to its logical conclusion - a ban on tiger tourism in core areas. After his management degree, he took up activism and set up his own NGO, Prayatna, which started its first campaign for a ban on polythene. Of late, he has taken to legal advocacy fighting diverse cases such as environmental laws in mining, police reforms and other issues.

11) Shantanu Prakash, 47, founder, Educomp
He founded Educomp Solutions Ltd in 1994 after graduating from IIM-A. He began by setting up computer labs in schools on borrowed money. Educomp is a first-of-its-kind teacher-led educational content-based solution designed to improve learning. Featured in the Forbes 'Best Under a Billion' list, Prakash runs 27 offices worldwide working with over 26,000 schools and 15 million students.

12) Sachin Bansal, 31, CEO and co-founder of Flipkart
In 2007, Sachin and Binny Bansal (29) - pooled together Rs. 4 lakh to start an online bookstore, Flipkart.com. The venture was a high risk. But the Bansals (not related), IIT Delhi graduates, realised that quality of service was key - a lesson they learnt as engineers at Amazon.com. Four years down the line, Flipkart has roped in millions of dollars in investment becoming a successful e-retail store.

13) Hibi Eden, 29, green activist-MLA
Eden is the youngest of Kerala's green brigade of six young legislators who cried foul when the Planning Commission's Montek Singh Ahluwalia said Kerala should utilise its paddy fields for non-agricultural purposes. They started healthy debates on the environment, deforestation and criminalisation of politics. Their persistent campaign has forced the establishment to dump many environmentally hazardous programmes.

14) Akhilesh Yadav, 39, UP chief minister
He is the youngest ever CM of UP and the son of Samajwadi Party chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav. He has been widely credited with the party's thumping victory in the state assembly elections this year increasing their seats from 97 in 2007 to 224. He has attempted to move away from the image of 'goonda raj' (thug rule) which critics thought characterised Samajwadi's earlier regime.

15) Jeh Wadia, 37, managing director, GoAir
Wadia inherited an empire from his parents, Nusli and Maureen, and became one of the youngest chiefs in the aviation sector when he started GoAir, a low-cost airline, in 2005. He is currently the managing director of the 132-year-old textiles and retail business, Bombay Dyeing. He also sits on the boards of Brittania and Bombay Burmah. In 2008, the World Economic Forum elected him as a Young Global Leader.

16) Rakesh Senger, 38, child rights activist
Senger has saved a generation of children from exploitation - child labour, trafficking, organ trade and begging. A decade and a half into his calling, he helps the police raid places involved in child labour, disguises himself as a beggar to crack the children beggar mafia, and lobbies for children-friendly policies. His vision, with his organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan, is to see every child in school.

17) VK Karthika, 44, chief editor-publisher, Harper Collins India
Karthika began her career as an editorial assistant at Penguin India after dropping out of JNU 15 years ago. She steered Harper Collins to its current position as a leading English-language publisher in India. Under her lead, Harper Collins has published successful writers like Rana Dasgupta (Solo), Manu Joseph (Serious Men) and Hussain Naqvi (Homeboy) and has nurtured a great deal of fresh writing talent.

18) Anurag Thakur, 38, MP and president, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha
As a cricket administrator, he has put Himachal Pradesh on the world 'cricket map' by aiding the construction of a cricket stadium in Dharamsala, which has hosted three editions of the IPL. He is also promoting other games actively. "I see India as young nation with a billion dreams, ready to lead and inspire the world," he says.

19) Sunil Abraham, 39, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society
He started CIS in 2008 to deal with digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices. In 1998, he founded Mahiti, an IT and communication solutions firm. He was elected an Ashoka fellow to explore the internet's democratic potential. His activism focuses on limitations of the intellectual property rights regime, emerging alternatives and piracy.

20) Raj Thackeray, 44, founder, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
He started his political career with his uncle and Shiv Sena-head Bal Thackeray, but left in 2006 to form the MNS. His politics is defined by protests against migrants, particularly from UP and Bihar. Thackeray and his party have been criticised for using violence and he faces several charges for incitement. His popularity rose after he won substantial votes in the recently held municipal elections.

21) Riyaaz Amlani, 37, CEO & MD, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality
He runs more than 27 establishments including the likes of Salt Water Cafe, Mocha and Smoke House Grill across eight cities. An entertainment management graduate from UCLA, Amlani returned to develop Mumbai's first go-karting track. He worked with Pritish Nandy Communications before starting Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, the company that owns the Mocha Cafè chain.

22) Lawrence Liang, 37, co-founder, Alternative Law Forum
Liang emerged as a voice against politics of "intellectual property". He is an Indian-Chinese legal researcher based in Bangalore and is known for his legal campaigns on public issues. Started in 2000, his forum provides legal support to people without access to legal services. It also conducts research on globalisation, urban studies, gender and intellectual property.

23) Francisco D'Souza, 43, CEO, Cognizant
D'Souza helped found the Nasdaq-100 company in 1994 and took over as CEO in 2007. During his tenure as Cognizant's CEO, revenues have grown from $1.4 billion to over $6 billion and the company has emerged as one of India's fastest growing tech companies. A son of an Indian diplomat, Francisco has lived in nine different countries and obtained his MBA degree from Carnegie-Mellon University.

24) Rohini Iyer, 32, MD, Raindrop Media
Her company is one of India's largest publicity firms. Most Bollywood A-listers are her clients and she is the publicist for three leading ladies - Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Vidya Balan. Her other clients include Ranbir Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham. Iyer has been featured in the Verve Power List, as well as Femina's list of 25 most powerful women in India, from the field of entertainment.

25) Milind Deora, 35, MoS telecom & IT
One of the youngest members of Lok Sabha, Deora was given additional charge of shipping in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. He says, "I think young people alone can't solve India's problems. There should be a good mix of experienced and young minds to bring about reforms and improve administration." He says he will work for making India a hub for ship maintenance and is also going to push for reforms in the telecom sector.

26) Lakshmi Venu, 29, executive-director, Sundaram Clayton
The daughter of TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan, Lakshmi is a topper from the Sishya School, Chennai, a Yale graduate and a PhD from the University of Warwick. She started as a management trainee in Sundaram Auto Components, a subsidiary of Sundaram Clayton, in 2003. She won her current position the hard way. She also had a stint with TVS Motor, another sub-division of the company.

27) SK Mahto, 38, deputy CM, Jharkhand
Head of the All Jharkhand Students Union Party, an ally in the BJP-led ruling coalition, he has been a minister in each government since Jharkhand's creation in 2000. His biggest achievements have been smooth conduct of the panchayat polls held in the state in 2009 after a gap of 29 long years and the 34th National Games held there last year. He is the undisputed leader of his party, which has six members in the state assembly.

28) Dhruv Ghanekar, 38, co-founder, Blue Frog
A composer by profession, he has co-created 3000 projects for ad films and alternative movies. His 2009 solo album Distance was a huge success. He has performed with famous musicians like Karl Peters, Louis Banks, Adrian D'Souza, Ustaad Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman, Etienne M'Bappe and Louis Banks. He now awaits the release of Broken Thread, an international film for which he has recorded music.

29) Chiki Sarkar, 35, Publisher, Penguin India
An Oxford graduate, Sarkar worked at Bloomsbury Publishing in London for seven years. In 2006, she became Editor-in-Chief of Random House India. Her picks that became award-winners include Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman, Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Aman Sethi's A Free Man. Last year, she took over as head of Penguin Books, India's largest English-language publishing house.

30) Glenn Saldanha, 41, CMD, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals
Saldanha joined the company after his father's demise in 1998 and became MD and CEO in 2001. Within a few years, he has transformed the company from just a local generics business to a research and innovation driven organisation. He has personally strategised the company's emergence as a leader in the discovery of new molecules.

31) Anirban Das Blah, 34, MD, CAA KWAN
KWAN is one of India's largest celebrity management firms. Under Blah's leadership, it tied up with Creative Artists Agency, the world's largest entertainment and sports agency. He specialises in motion films, television, music, commercial endorsements, sports consulting, licensing and merchandising. He represents many rising stars including Frieda Pinto, Dev Patel and other Indian celebrities.

Compiled by: Aurangzeb Naqshbandi, B Vijay Murty, Gaurav Choudhury, KV Lakshmana, Manjula Narayan, Nagendar Sharma, Naveen Ammembala, Neha Sharma, Neyaz Farooquee, Panna Saroopa, Rahul Noronha, Rajeev Bhaskar, Ranjan Srivastava, Samar Khurshid and Swati Chitnis.

This list is not in order of any ranking. The people chosen for this list are below 50 in age (except entertainment, where the cut-off age has been kept at 40 years).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-india-news-new-delhi-nov-3-2012-power-to-youth

Power to the People

praskrishna — 2011-05-16T11:12:56Z

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POV: Should user-generated content be monitored?

praskrishna — 2012-01-19T12:46:26Z

After being in the dock for carrying 'objectionable' content, Google and Facebook, along with15 other websites, are fighting for what they call internet freedom. Wikipedia went dark to protest the Web Piracy Bill being introduced in the US. afaqs! speaks to industry experts to find out if a move to monitor content can backfire.

Paritosh Joshi
CEO, STAR CJ Live

When asked to offer my two-bit on whether user-generated content can be monitored, my immediate response was laden with invective expressions. Any publication that caters to people of refined and/or delicate tastes would find it hard to publish. For what it is worth, here it is, with bits bleeped out: "Only a *bleep*er, would reasonably suggest monitoring user-generated content. Or else, her/his name is Wen JiaBao or Kim Jong Number Un or something".

How big is this UGC thing anyway? Take a relatively small example. Twitter crossed 200 million tweets a day in June, 2011. At even 5 per cent compounded monthly growth rate, that should have ballooned to 280 million a day now. And, we haven't even begun talking about Facebook. Unless, of course, you choose to do a PR China and simply firewall it right out of reach.

Guess what! It isn't going to work because everyone will start figuring our proxy servers. Or perhaps you, or someone called Sybil or Sillable or Sibaling Rivalry (whatever) decided to say, to hell with Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. In which case, there is, quite literally, nothing left to say.

My 13-year-old figured out how to beat Net Nanny when she was 10. And someone thinks he can have a Net Supernanny to cover everyone? That ship has sailed. Deal with it.

Bharat Kapadia,
Founder, ideas@bharatkapadia.com

Gone are the days when a piece of news could be vetted and an editor could control what was being published. In these modern times, content generation has become real-time, making it practically impossible to monitor it. With the scope of the internet being so large and new ways to publish content coming up rapidly, it becomes physically and technically impossible to keep a check.

This is a classic case of shoot the messenger who brings bad news. Just because a website brings up objectionable content on a search does not make it punishable. What is right and wrong is a matter of judgment, and is totally subjective.

On a lighter note, to know why Wikipedia was blacked out for a day, one will have to probably refer to Wikipedia itself!

Sunil Abraham

Executive director, Centre for Internet and Society

User-generated content is already heavily monitored. Be it Facebook or Wikipedia, these sites are heavily monitored by persons and machines. Bots monitoring pornography via image processing, intellectual property via watermarking and pattern recognition, and ban-lists via semantic analysis are already used to ensure that content is compliant with the law of the land, and with the usually even more restrictive site or community "terms of use".

The World Wide Web has, for most parts, gone extinct. Under the Information Technology Act 2000, amended in 2008, take-down notices can be sent to remove illegal content. Our research indicates that even the largest national and international intermediaries happily over-comply with frivolous complaints and only bother about freedom of expression when it undermines their business models. Unfortunately, the IT Act and its associated rules have severely diluted free speech rights for Indians. Now, the government hopes to convince intermediaries to dilute their own terms of reference and step-up enforcement levels.

We should not fool ourselves into thinking that private sector companies like Google will defend our fundamental rights. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for parliamentarians to ask for the revocation of the rules for intermediaries, cyber-cafes and reasonable security practices.

Alok Kejriwal

CEO, Games2win

I feel that user-generated content should not be monitored, but moderated. And, this responsibility lies with the users or consumers. The reason for this is simple - wisdom of the crowd is more powerful than the wisdom of one.

On the other hand, sites like Google and Facebook, which are in the dock for carrying objectionable content, are being plain arrogant. They have forgotten their purpose for being here. These companies must realise that just because we Indians have a great press and judicial system, they do not have the freedom to publish anything that is derogatory to our culture. In my view, they are behaving like spoilt American brats, who have no respect for another culture, mythology and values.

Anupam Mukerji

The fake IPL player

Co-founder, Pitch Invasion

There are few amongst us who wouldn't want to be amused by a speaking parrot which regales us with stuff it's trained to speak. But, what would you do if your speaking parrot refused to toe your line, spoke only the truth with scant regard to diplomacy and political correctness, spilling your beans to visitors every day?

For far too long, the political class has survived and thrived by keeping the media in covert and overt control, thereby directing public opinion where they wanted. Online social media has changed the rules of this game.

The medium isn't the criminal. Acting against a medium is worse than even shooting the messenger.

The new age citizen is a different animal from any of the past. More aware, more travelled, more opinionated and more demanding. This is a species you try to control at your own peril. But, if you try to embrace it in the right spirit, it will reciprocate in kind.

The constitution gives us the right to voice our opinions without fear. The same constitution also prohibits us from spreading lies, defaming people, inciting violence or acting in an anti-national manner.

India needs an environment of freedom and fearlessness because without this, we will be nothing but 'a China with poor infrastructure'.

Nisha Menon's blog post was originally published in afaqs! on 19 January 2012

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/pov-should-user-generated-content-be-monitored

Post-website attack, cops hot on pursuit of Anonymous hackers

praskrishna — 2012-08-06T09:51:11Z

The cyber crime wing has formed special teams to nab the hackers who attacked and stole data from the Tamil Nadu police website.

The article was published in the Times of India on July 11, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

"We have submitted a formal complaint to trace the hacker," said additional director general of police (ADGP-State Crime Records Bureau) Ashish Bhengra after a high-level meeting on Tuesday led by director general of Police K Ramanujam. The meeting discussed the precautionary steps to prevent similar incidents.

The hacktivist collective Anonymous said on Tuesday that they hacked the TN police's website to protest internet censorship by the government of India. On July 8, the group released a set of files containing complaints made by public to the TN police and action taken by officials. "This is less about TN police and more about a continuing protest," said members of the group in an internet relay chat to TOI. The group said apart from certain Internet service providers, the government continued to censor the internet.

"If our protest is not respected for the very real and constitutional questions it raises, then we throw more and more areas open where wrongdoing may be found," said a member.

The group's India wing posted links to the leaked documents under its Twitter handle 'opindia_revenge' on Sunday night. The files show a range of complaints filed by the public -- from fleecing of passengers by autorickshaw drivers, property disputes, grouses from police personnel and instances of missing mobile phones and people. The complaints have been filed from across Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, and even places such as Uttarakhand and Kuwait.

The group has redacted phone numbers and email ids in some cases but has left other data like name and address. The documents also have details of action taken by the police -- from forwarding the case to the respective police station to digging up information on accused persons.

Anonymous India, which has done a series of virtual sit-ins on government and corporate websites, has only a few high-profile hacking operations in India. In May, it hacked the servers of Reliance Communications, preventing users from accessing social media websites. The group also released a list of websites that were allegedly blocked by Reliance. The group started attacking official websites to protest what it called 'censorship' of the internet that snowballed after a Madras High Court 'John Doe' order to prevent movie piracy. Anonymous also organised a protest march on June 9 at various Indian cities.

However, the latest attack inconveniences public and damages the cause, said users. "Anonymous consists of a large bunch of activists who gained some credibility in India after they organised offline protests. But this operation doesn't serve any purpose and brings down their credibility as details of those who filed complaints have been revealed," said Pranesh Prakash, lawyer and programme manager at The Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research organisation.

According to a member of Anonymous, people are afraid of thinks that they are not aware of. "Some were angry at us for leaking data from Reliance. But if criticism is justified, we will make sure it doesn't happen again," said the member.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/post-website-attack

Post truth society

praskrishna — 2018-09-12T12:15:18Z

Post truth society

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Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:38:06Z

The article was published in Indian Express, Mangaluru edition on December 12, 2015. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted. A scanned version of the article is given below.

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Post and be Damned

praskrishna — 2012-11-19T03:40:46Z

Your careless comments online could put you in jail, thanks to Section 66A of the Information Technology Act. Kavitha Shanmugam examines a law that some critics say is vague and unconstitutional

Kavita Shanmugham's column was published in the Telegraph on November 14, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Two weeks ago, S. Ravi, owner of a small plastic packaging unit in Puducherry, was rudely woken up by the police at 5am, manhandled and arrested. Reason: Ravi had posted a couple of unflattering comments about Karti Chidambaram, son of finance minister P. Chidambaram, on Twitter. He had tweeted that Chidambaram Junior "had amassed more wealth than Robert Vadra".

Ravi was arrested under Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2008, and hauled up before a judicial magistrate who remanded him to nine days in custody. "It was then that I became really scared," says Ravi, who is out on bail.

A casual tweeter with just 16 followers, Ravi believes he did nothing wrong. “I was using a statement that was already there on the Internet. They could have sent me a lawyer’s notice or investigated the complaint before taking action,” argues Ravi, whose Twitter following has now jumped to 2,518.

"My tweet was retweeted by 20,000 people, who dared the authorities to arrest them too," he adds indignantly, terming Section 66A a “draconian law" with "wide scope for misuse".

Ravi is not alone in denouncing Section 66A of the IT Act. Indeed, there is now a huge outcry against the law, with a section of legal and cyber experts saying that it is nothing but a useful tool in the hands of the powers that be to curb freedom of speech and expression online.

At the same time, there are those who believe that online abuse or defamation cannot masquerade as freedom of speech and that the law is necessary to move against those who commit this offence.

Karti Chidambaram, for one, believes that Ravi’s tweet was motivated and defamatory. "The tweeter made one tweet in 78 days. It was about me. It clearly implied that I am corrupt. That is malicious. So I preferred a complaint to the police. The law exists. I didn’t frame the law," he says.

Section 66A of the IT Act lays down that a person can be punished with up to three years’ imprisonment if he or she sends offensive information or messages through a computer resource or communication device. The problem arises because it fails to clarify what can be termed "offensive". For example, information that is "grossly offensive" or has "menacing character” or information disseminated for the “purpose of causing annoyance and inconvenience" are all brought under the ambit of "offensive". This leaves the law wide open for various interpretations and abuse. "It’s too vaguely worded," insists M. Lenin, a lawyer advising volunteers of India Against Corruption in Chennai. “Any online statement can be declared 'offensive' and any tweet may be deemed ‘inconvenient’. The section has become a convenient tool for the police to harass people."

Section 66A of the IT Act lays down that a person can be punished with up to three years’ imprisonment if he or she sends offensive information or messages through a computer resource or communication device. The problem arises because it fails to clarify what can be termed "offensive". For example, information that is "grossly offensive" or has "menacing character” or information disseminated for the “purpose of causing annoyance and inconvenience" are all brought under the ambit of "offensive". This leaves the law wide open for various interpretations and abuse.

"It’s too vaguely worded," insists M. Lenin, a lawyer advising volunteers of India Against Corruption in Chennai. “Any online statement can be declared 'offensive' and any tweet may be deemed ‘inconvenient’. The section has become a convenient tool for the police to harass people."

Earlier this year, Section 66A was also invoked, among other laws, to arrest Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra for forwarding an email cartoon of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Indeed, some experts go a step further and call Section 66A patently unconstitutional. Says Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, "It’s clearly in violation of Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech. The fact that some information is ‘grossly offensive’ (Section 66A) or that it causes ‘annoyance’ or ‘inconvenience’ while being known to be false (Section 66A(c)) cannot be a reason for curbing freedom of speech unless it is directly related to violating decency, morality or public order, or amounts to defamation."

However, apologists for Section 66A argue that the law has its merits too in that it can be used to move against genuine incidents of harassment or defamation online. Take the case of Chinmayee Sripada, a popular Chennai-based playback singer. Chinmayee, who has one lakh followers on Twitter, was targeted by a group of six men who sent her lewd and threatening tweets for a period of time. Apparently, they were upset with her remarks on reservation and for not joining them in a Twitter campaign against the killing of Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan navy.

Recently, Chinmayee complained to the police with “thousands of pages of ugliness and vulgarity” and the trolls, including a professor at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chennai, were identified and arrested under Section 66A.

The offending tweeters apologised to her and closed their accounts after the arrest. "I believe Section 66A belled the cat. The arrest made people realise that Twitter also demands self-regulation. In the name of freedom of speech there is zero control on platforms like Twitter. There should be some boundaries," says Chinmayee’s mother T. Padmahasini.

Ramachandra Murthy, Ravi’s lawyer, too believes that Section 66A is a "good tool" for genuine cases of harassment. "Unfortunately, it is being misused by influential people. Still, if you are innocent the case can never hold up in court," he reasons.

Others question the need for a separate law to deal with cases of online defamation or harassment when the Indian Penal Code already has provisions to tackle them. New Delhi-based lawyer Apar Gupta cites the examples of Section 500, 499 and 294 of the IPC which deal with defamation or committing obscene acts in public. "Section 66A only makes the burden on the accused harsher," he adds.

While some IT experts want Section 66A scrapped, others say that it should at least be amended. “Even if the section is not struck off the statute books, the provisions in it may be read down by the courts and safeguards may be prescribed in its application,” says Gupta.

Until that happens, mistaking social media platforms for online drawing rooms where you can indulge in all kinds of freewheeling chat could be fraught with danger.

Justice A.P. Shah, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, echoes that view. "Section 66A is very broad and loosely worded. The scope of such a law has to be restricted. Instead, it is vague and clearly violative of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and expression," he says.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/telegraphindia-opinion-story-kavitha-shanmugham-nov-14-2012-post-and-be-damned

Position of Stakeholders' Illustrations

praskrishna — 2014-10-29T13:24:11Z

Position of Stakeholders' Illustrations

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Portland Pride

praskrishna — 2014-07-25T06:09:42Z

Portland Pride

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Portal augurs well for transparency

praskrishna — 2011-07-26T15:16:47Z

Data.gov.in will have meta-data, which will facilitate discovery of data and access from portals of ministries, says T Ramachandra. The article was published in the Hindu on 25 July 2011.

The unveiling of an official data access and sharing policy and the commissioning of a data portal (data.gov.in), which is on the anvil, will pave the way for digitally opening up the Central government data to the public.

"The data portal will be having meta-data [data about data], which will facilitate the discovery of the data and access from the portals of respective government departments/ministries. At present, the data policy is likely to cover the Central government and all activities funded by the Government of India," said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of Natural Resources Data Management System, Department of Science and Technology.

Governmental data-holding organisations will prepare a negative list of non-shareable sensitive data, weighing the need to restrict public access given such considerations as security and privacy, against the obligation to share it with civil society and the scientific community. Apart from this, access to certain categories of data will be restricted.

The broad guidelines spelt out in the Right to Information Act will be followed and the list will be periodically reviewed. "All data outside the negative list will be proactively disseminated, and an oversight committee will facilitate policy implementation," said Dr. Kumar.

But does this mean that the public have to make specific requests for the unlocking of data-sets? “Data will be available through the data portal, and there will be no specific unlocking required. However, access to certain data may be through registration/authorisation,” he responded.

The sharing of such data might be tied to a pricing policy. "Pricing will be decided by the respective department/ministry. However, standardised parameters will be made available as guidelines for fixing the price," he said.

The draft of the proposed National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy the government published some time ago indicates that the departments themselves can decide whether the data belongs to the ‘open access', ‘registered access,' or ‘restricted access' categories, with the policy neither mandating nor coming up with guidelines on how to do so, said Pranesh Prakash, programme manager, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO.

The CIS has recommended that the policy have the same scope as the RTI Act, and that all ‘public authorities,' as defined under the Act, be covered by it. Only the restricted categories (laid down in Sections 8 and 9 of the RTI Act) should be allowable for ‘restricted access.'

In a study on open government data in the Indian context, the CIS suggested that any policy be oriented towards meeting the requirements of a broad spectrum of citizenry. Specifically, sections that do not get to immediately benefit from advances in information technology. “Data mashing and private sector information products are important goals,” but the government itself should be proactive in creating the applications that show potential uses for the data.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the global body that sets web standards, has said governments, by putting their data on the Internet, facilitate greater transparency, deliver more efficient public services and encourage greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information.

Anil Bairwal, National Coordinator of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which is involved in disseminating election-related data through its website Electionwatch, says there is “huge public interest” in data, and that accessibility was of prime importance. For instance, election-related data was made available by the authorities in the PDF/image file formats. “This forces us to do a manual interpretation of every affidavit, which consumes a lot of time and energy. It would be helpful if this data was available in a portable open format via an online tool.”

Other countries have already made strides in furthering open data. Prominent examples are the U.K. government website, data.gov.uk, and the U.S. government's www.data.gov website, which is key to President Barack Obama's Open Government Initiative.

Read the original article published in the Hindu here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/portal-augurs-well-for-transparency

Pornography and the Law

praskrishna — 2010-12-21T11:06:10Z

Word file

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/pornography-law

Pornography & the Law - A Call for Peer Review

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T12:12:17Z

Namita Malhotra's research project on "Pornography & the Law". is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. Her monograph is an attempt to unravel the relations between pornography, technology and the law in the shifting context of the contemporary.

It is these shifts that push the arguments here to be relevant beyond specific occurrences or phenomenon in the digital world (the moment of video pornography, interactive cyber sex, webcam sex, camfrog, social networking and sexual behaviour, chatroulette, facebook, confessional and sexualized blogging, sexting and mobile phones, etc.) to attempt to understand the nature of affects that surround pornography, especially as reflected in the law and its desire to contain it, and how law’s desire to contain is also about subjectivities and practices around technology. The structure of the monograph is somewhere between a willful literature review and a dressing room, where various concepts, ideas, images or visions around law, film/video, technology and new media are tried on for size to explain or unravel parts or whole of the picture around pornography in the Indian context.

The Researchers At Work Programme, at the Centre for Internet and Society, advocates an Open and transparent process of knowledge production. We recognise peer review as an essential and an extremely important part of original research, and invite you, with the greatest of pleasures, to participate in our research, and help us in making our arguments and methods stronger. The first draft of the monograph is now available for public review and feedback. Please click on the links below to choose your own format for accessing the document.

Word
PDF

We appreciate your time, engagement and feedback that will help us to bring out the monograph in a published form. Please send all comments or feedback to nishant@cis-india.org or you can use your Open ID to login to the website and leave comments to this post.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/pornography-and-law

pornographic

praskrishna — 2011-05-23T06:37:33Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/page_55_20110530.jpg

Porn: Law, Video, Technology

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T11:25:57Z

Namita’s legal inquiry into the relationship between technologies and the law finds a new point of entry into existing debates by looking at the legal construction of pleasure through different technologies of mass consumption in order to revisit the arguments around pornography and obscenity effect in recent times. She produces a comprehensive overview of different debates, both in the West and in India, to concentrate on how the visual aesthetics of pornography, the new circuits of pornographic consumption and the privilege of affect over regulation lead to possibilities of interaction and negotiation with heteronormative power structures in the country.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/porn-law-video