Centre for Internet and Society

After SPB-Ilaiyaraaja, Sony Music and Sun Network lock horns over copyrights

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:49:53Z

In what seems to be the latest in an increasing number of cases of copyright violations, Sun Network on Friday was banned by the Madras High Court from using Sony Music copyrighted work.

This was published by the News Minute on April 26, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The order comes, despite Sun Network's claim that “it was the absolute copyright holder of films under the South Indian Cinematograph films". This instance, according to experts is yet another case that highlights the complex nature of copyrights and the need for reform in the act itself.

According to reports, Sony Music said it was forced to send a cease and desist notice to Sun Network on July 27 last year. This was after an exchange of letters between the two parties and meetings with councillors did not lead to a settlement. Sony reportedly wanted Sun to take prior licences before its works are either aired or adapted by artists to be recorded and aired. Sun Network, which has 33 TV channels in various south Indian languages, however, believed that it had the right to air this music owing to previous agreements that it had signed. The matter escalated over the last three years, where multiple warnings were issued.

"The problem here is that nobody is clear about exactly what rights they have. For a long time, the industry in the south was working with agreements that were not drafted properly. It was ambiguous and now when it comes under scrutiny, several problems arise," explains Swaroop Mumidipudi, an advocate.

"Sun Network’s case is actually not very weak. There are two competing copyrights here. The cinematograph film is one right where you get the image and sound together. Sony on the other hand could have the music rights. So in such a case it wouldn't have seemed wrong to Sun that they were playing the music. But if they changed the visuals that would be a problem," he adds.

Sony when contacted by The News Minute claims in addition to using the music, Sun was synchronising it with different visuals. "Approvals from music rights owners are mandatory before using (synchronization) songs with new visuals. The music could be existing songs, versions or underlying works," says Sridhar Subramanium, President - India and middle east - Sony Music Entertainment. "TV broadcasters, advertisers, film producers and internet companies who use existing music will now need to seek prior permission from copyright owners before communicating to the public including broadcasters," he adds.

Experts at the Centre for Internet and Society, however, claim, the issue is not that simple. "Figuring out who owns copyrigths and who licensed whom is complicated. You need to be cautious before you assume you have rights over something," says Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, CIS. He also comments that it must be a rude shock to think certain music comes under the realm of your agreement, only to be questioned later. "The Copyright Act that was last amended in 2012 does not address lot of practical problems. If even a low barrier of marking copyright somehow existed, then this confusion can be avoided," he adds.

This latest clash between two media giants, comes close on the heels of the tensions between music director Ilaiyaraaja and singer SP Balasubrahmanyam (SPB). The composer sent a legal notice to SPB, who was singing his songs in a tour abroad. The singer had claimed that he was not aware that prior permission was required but was forced to stop performing Ilaiyaraaja's songs for the rest of the tour.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-news-minute-priyanka-thirumurthy-april-26-2017-after-spb-ilaiyaraaja-sony-music-and-sun-network-lock-horns-over-copyrights

Stop the Haphazard Internet Shutdown Says MP Jay Panda

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:44:27Z

In just one year India lost $968M due to Internet shutdowns; “Cops may not be the right decision makers when it comes to imposing what is a digital curfew,” added an entrepreneur journalist.

The article by Regina Mihindukulasuriya was published in the Businessworld on April 26, 2017.

An entrepreneur from the troubled state of Kashmir, Muheet Mehraj, is cofounder and CEO of Kashmirbox.com. He said that businesses that run on the Internet are crippled by Internet shutdowns. “A lot of people's livelihood depends on the Internet. If you shut down the Internet, you shut down their lives. Also, hospitals and academic institutes need constant Internet access and a way must be found to ensure they are never impacted by a shutdown.”

In 2016, Brookings Institution released a survey of 19 countries and the Internet shutdowns each of them experienced. India was in that list and according to the century old research institute, suffered the biggest economic loss to GDP at 968 million dollars all due to Internet shutdowns.

The general secretary of Maha Gujarat Bank Employees Association was quoted in 2016 as saying that an Internet shutdown for 6 days across Gujarat culminated in a loss of rupees 7000 crore for banks in the state.

The Brookings survey recorded the maximum number of disruptions in India at 22. According to IndiaSpend.org, The Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University of Delhi counts 37 shutdowns across 11 states since 2015 and 22 of them happened in the first 9 months of 2016.

The Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) claims there have been 72 instances of Internet shutdown in India since 2012 and that not all of them are justified.

The SFLC.in along with other civil society organizations addressed the increasing frequency of Internet shutdowns in the country. Baijayant 'Jay' Panda, Member of Parliament said that India needs effective checks and balances on the process and power to order Internet Shutdowns in India. He added that, “The power to shut Internet should be exercised by the district's Superintendent of Police only in rare cases when there is imminent threat to breakdown of law and order, and risk of loss of life and property".

He was speaking at a public discussion organized by SFLC.in, in association with Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF); IT for Change, Internet Democracy Project (IDP); Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), and Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP).

Mr Panda remarked that this power should be limited to 24 or 48 hours. “If Internet must be shut down for a longer duration, the decision must be taken by Director General of Police or the chief secretary of state”, he said.

Abhinandan Sekhri, cofounder and CEO of Newslaundry raised concerns that there is a fundamental flaw in how Indians approach law making, in that they first look at the worst case scenario before taking a liberal and democratic point of view. “Cops may not be the right decision makers when it comes to imposing what is a digital curfew,” Mr. Sekhri said.

Snehashish Ghosh, associate manager for public policy at Facebook said, “Even though we may not have ready data to measure the impact of shutdowns, there is no denying that businesses suffer.” The Facebook Inc. – owned, WhatsApp is often reported as one of the most missed services whenever the Internet is shutdown in Kashmir during days of social unrest.

Mishi Choudhary, president and legal director of SFLC.in said, “According to our Internet Shutdown Tracker, India has experienced at least 72 instances of Internet Shutdowns since 2012. Several communities and states have suffered irreversible socioeconomic losses because they were denied Internet access for extended durations.”

Mishi continued, “The shutdown of Internet not only restrains basic human rights such as the right to freedom of speech and expression, but also cripples activities like e-commerce, e-governance, e-health and e-learning, entirely reliant on the Internet.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-world-regina-mihindukulasuriya-april-26-2017-stop-the-haphazard-internet-shutdown-says-mp-jay-panda

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 27 Meetings

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:38:46Z

Udbhav Tiwari represented the Centre for Internet & Society in a series of meetings held at University of Waikato and Novotel in Hamilton, New Zealand between April 18 and 25, 2017.

The participation was by the virtue of our institutional membership in Information Systems Security Sectional Committee (LITD 17) at the Bureau of Indian Standards.

The first 5 days of the meetings (18 to 23 April, 2017) were the working group meetings, where Udbhav participated in Working Group 1 - Information security management systems and Working Group 5 - Identity management and privacy technologies. Udbhav's participation in WG1 was largely exploratory, where I made some connections and tagged projects for us to comment on prior to the next set of meetings. These projects were Cyber Security, Cyber Insurance, Government Use of the ISO 27001 Standards, International Framework for Cyber Security and the Standing Document on Regulatory Use of 27001.

In WG5, Udbhav was appointed as Co-Rapporteur in the Study Period on Smart Cities, which will go on for another 6 months. The plenary of SC 27 was held on April 24 and 25, 2017. The final resolutions from the Working Groups plenary can be accessed below:

WG1 Recommendations and Resolutions

WG5 Resolutions

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/iso-iec-jtc1-sc-27-meetings

WG 5 Resolutions

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:26:32Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/wg-5-resolutions

WG 1 Recommendations and Resolutions

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:24:37Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/wg-1-recommendations-and-resolutions

India bans social media in Kashmir for one month

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:09:56Z

Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir have banned 22 social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in an effort to calm tensions in the disputed region.

The article was published in the Telegraph on April 27, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The government said Wednesday that the one-month ban was necessary for public safety because social media were being "misused by anti-national and anti-social elements." Videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian forces fueled protests have been shown on social media in recent days.

"It's being felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interests of peace and tranquility in the state," the public order said.

The sites remained online Thursday as the local telecom company struggled to block them.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director for the Indian advocacy group the Center for Internet and Society, called the ban a "blow to freedom of speech" and "legally unprecedented in India."

An official with Kashmir's state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, said engineers were still working on shutting down the 22 sites, including Facebook and Twitter, but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the internet across the Himalayan region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give technical details of the effort to the media.

Meanwhile, 3G and 4G cellphone service has been suspended for more than a week, but slower 2G service is still available.

Residents of Srinagar, the region's main city, were busily downloading documents, software and applications onto their smartphones which would likely be able to circumvent the social media block once it goes into effect. Many expressed relief to still have internet access Thursday morning.

"It was a welcome surprise," said Tariq Ahmed, a 24-year-old university student. "It appears they've hit a technical glitch to block social media en mass."

While the government has halted internet service in Kashmir in previous attempts to prevent anti-India demonstrations, this is the first time they have done so in response to the circulation of videos and photos showing alleged military abuse.

Others mocked the government. A Facebook post by Kashmiri writer Arif Ayaz Parrey said the ban showed "the Indian government has decided to take on the collective subversive wisdom of cyberspace humanity."

Indian police and paramilitary officials accuse agitators of using social media to instigate violence.

An international journalists' rights group urged Indian authorities to immediately revoke the "sweeping censorship of social media," saying it "will bring neither peace nor order" in the region.

"Such broad censorship clearly violates the democratic ideals and human rights India purports to uphold," said Steven Butler, Asia Program coordinator at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuse for some years, but several recently posted clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election on April 9, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests.

One video shows a stone-throwing teenage boy being shot by a soldier from a few meters (yards) away. Another shows soldiers making a group of young men, held inside an armored vehicle, shout profanities against Pakistan while a soldier kicks and slaps them with a stick.

The video pans to a young boy's bleeding face as he cries. Yet another clip shows three soldiers holding a teenage boy down with their boots and beating him on his back.

The video that drew the most outrage was of young shawl weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar tied to the hood of an army jeep as it patrolled villages on voting day. A soldier can be heard saying in Hindi over a loudspeaker, "Stone throwers will meet a similar fate," as residents look on aghast.

Protests and clashes are an almost daily occurrence in Indian-administered Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment runs deep among the mostly Muslim population after decades of military crackdowns. Disputes over control of the Kashmir region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, have sparked two wars between the nations since 1947.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-april-27-2017-india-bans-social-media-in-kashmir-for-one-month

Internet Shutdowns

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T15:53:53Z

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

CyberSecurityAgreements_Infographic_04.pdf

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T14:57:45Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/CyberSecurityAgreements_Infographic_04.pdf

Economic, social and cultural rights in India: FOSS

praskrishna — 2017-04-23T05:14:13Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-foss

Aadhaar: A widening net

praskrishna — 2017-04-22T05:06:23Z

As India makes Aadhaar compulsory for a range of services, concerns about potential data breaches remain more than six years after the govt started building the world’s largest biometric identification system.

The article by Komal Gupta, Apurva Vishwanath and Suranjana Roy was published in Livemint on April 21, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

On 29 March, a storm broke out on social media after private data that former Indian cricket captain M.S. Dhoni had furnished to get enrolled in India’s unique identity system, known as Aadhaar, were leaked online.

The popular cricketer’s wife, Sakshi, flagged the matter on Twitter, tagging information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. “Is there any privacy left? Information of Aadhaar card, including application, is made public property,” Sakshi fumed on the microblogging site.

The minister replied: “Sharing personal information is illegal. Serious action will be taken against this.”

It turned out to be the fault of an overenthusiastic common services centre in Dhoni’s home town of Ranchi licensed to enrol people in Aadhaar. The centre was promptly blacklisted. “We have ordered further inquiry on the matter and action will be taken against all those involved in the leak,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers Aadhaar.

The matter blew over soon enough, but it served to illustrate the lingering concerns about potential data breaches and privacy violations surrounding Aadhaar, which has become the world’s largest biometric identification database with 1.13 billion people enrolled in it in the past six years.

The project, under which a 12-digit identification number is to be allotted to every Indian resident, was originally supposed to be a way of plugging leakages in the delivery of state benefits such as subsidized grains to the poor.

It has now become mandatory for everything ranging from opening a bank account and getting a driver’s licence or a mobile phone connection to filing of income tax returns. Even government school students entitled to a free mid-day meal need an Aadhaar number.

The use of Aadhaar has only expanded with the government going on an overdrive to promote cashless transactions and payment systems linked to the biometric ID system after banning old, high-value bank notes in November in a crackdown on unaccounted wealth hidden away from the taxman.

For instance, the Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS) empowers a bank customer to use Aadhaar as her identity to access her Aadhaar-enabled bank account and perform basic banking transactions like cash deposit or withdrawal through a bank agent or business correspondent.

The customer can carry out transactions by scanning her fingerprint at any micro ATM or biometric point-of-sale (POS) terminal, and entering the Aadhaar number linked to the bank account. A merchant-led model of AEPS, called Aadhaar Pay, has also been launched.

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) mobile application. This will enable merchants to receive payments through fingerprint scans of customers.

“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.

Aadhaar’s growing importance in the economy has only served to deepen concerns about potential data breaches. And there are other concerns as well.

For instance, the Aadhaar biometric authentication failure rate in the rural job guarantee scheme, which assures 100 days of work a year to one member of every rural household, is as high as 36% in the southern state of Telangana, according to data released by the state government.

“Aadhaar is supposed to be an enabler and it will happen only when it is made voluntary. Biometric authentications might fail due to poor data connectivity and transactions might not happen even though the Aadhaar number of the person is there; so, what’s the benefit,” asked Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based think tank.

Aadhaar was the brainchild of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which lost power in the 2014 general election to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The first 10 Aadhaar numbers were handed over to residents of a small village called Tembhli in Maharashtra on 29 September 2010 in the presence of then prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and Aadhaar’s chief architect Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder of software services giant Infosys Ltd.

After coming to power, the NDA systematically went about making Aadhaar the pivot of government welfare programmes. In March last year, Parliament passed the Aadhaar Bill to make the use of Aadhaar mandatory for availing of government subsidies despite resistance from opposition parties.

Last month, finance minister Arun Jaitley said the 12-digit number would eventually become a single, monolithic proof of identity for every Indian, replacing every other identity card.

To be sure, Aadhaar has helped the government better target beneficiaries of its welfare programmes, cutting out middlemen and corruption. For instance, the government claims to have saved about Rs50,000 crore in cooking gas subsidies by linking the Aadhaar number with bank accounts in which the subsidy is directly transferred.

Yet, Aadhaar has its critics, who have challenged the project on grounds including potential compromise of national security, violation of the right to privacy and exclusion of people from welfare programmes. The Supreme Court has cautioned the government that no citizen can be denied access to welfare programmes for lack of an Aadhaar number.

Before cricketer Dhoni’s data breach made the headlines, in February, UIDAI filed a complaint against Axis Bank Ltd, business correspondent Suvidhaa Infoserve and e-sign provider eMudhra, alleging they had attempted unauthorized authentication and impersonation by illegally storing Aadhaar biometrics. The breach was noticed after one individual performed 397 biometric transactions between 14 July 2016 and 19 February 2017. All three entities have been temporarily barred from offering Aadhaar-related services until UIDAI makes a final decision.

Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said rules on the use of Aadhaar data are inadequate.

“UIDAI is allowed to share the information of a person from its database on its website, after taking proper consent of that person. However, there is no law which states what should be done if any other party does that with the same individual. Such rules must be in place,” Prakash said.

Four years after the Aadhaar project took off, a retired judge took the government to court. K. Puttaswamy, a former judge of the Karnataka high court, moved the Supreme Court in 2013, arguing that Aadhaar violated his fundamental right to privacy under the constitution. The case opened the gates for legal challenges to Aadhaar. Over the next few years till date, at least a dozen cases had questioned the legality of the project.

Ramon Magsaysay award winner Aruna Roy brought a case on behalf of manual workers whose faint finger prints, she said, often go undetected. Currently, only 44 million out of the 101 million beneficiaries of India’s rural job entitlement are paid through Aadhaar.

To be sure, India’s Constitution does not contain a black and white reference to a “fundamental right to privacy”, that the government cannot violate. The list of rights says “no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to a procedure established by law”—often interpreted by courts as an all-encompassing right including right to live with dignity, right to speedy justice and even a right to clean air.

Nilekani, the man behind Aadhaar, has cautioned that privacy is a broader issue involving how people retain their privacy in day-to-day life. “Privacy is an all-encompassing issue because of the rapid rate of digitization the world is seeing. Your smartphone has sensors, GPS and is generating more and more information about everything; voice-activated devices could also be recording your conversations. There’s a profusion of CCTV cameras at malls, restaurants, ATMs recording your movements,” Nilekani said in a recent interview with The Economic Times.

But this is where a problem arises. Although there is concurrence on the need for a privacy law, there is a great reluctance on the part of the government to come out with one.

“We don’t have a comprehensive privacy law; all our databases are unlinked. The government is trying to link the databases using Aadhaar for all schemes but a separate privacy law must be there for protecting any piece of information, whether or not linked to Aadhaar,” said Rahul Matthan, a partner at law firm Trilegal and a Mint columnist.

Matthan said first a privacy law must be put in place and then there has to be a discussion on what all it must include.

The government on its part pointed out that India’s apex court itself has been indecisive on a right to privacy.

“The larger question on privacy needs to be settled by the court. Till then, one cannot comment on secondary concerns,” attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said in an interview.

In 2015, the Supreme Court decided that a bench of at least seven judges will rule on the privacy issue, while clarifying that the government cannot make Aadhaar a mandatory proof of identity for its welfare schemes. Twenty months after the judicial order, the larger bench is yet to be formed by the apex court. The passing of the Aadhaar Act in Parliament to provide statutory backing to Aadhaar also indicates a departure from the Indian government’s position of not taking a legislative stand while an issue is under the apex court’s consideration.

For example, one of the reasons the Indian government has shown restraint in repealing a colonial law that criminalizes homosexuality is because the apex court is seized of the issue.

In the absence of legislation and pending an authoritative ruling by the top court, whether 1.3 billion Indians are entitled to their privacy remains a grey area. Meanwhile, the government is seemingly in the final stretch of its Aadhaar enrolment drive.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-april-21-2017-komal-gupta-apurva-vishwanath-suranjana-roy-aadhaar-a-widening-net

NASA Space Apps Challenge 2017

praskrishna — 2017-04-20T16:53:35Z

The NASA Space Data Challenge (Hillhacks Pre-event) will be hosted at the Centre for Internet & Society's Bengaluru office on Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Calling all hackers, designers, makers, the open source community, space enthusiasts and the ones who will join us for the main NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon.

We are thrilled to share with you that members of Hillhacks would join us to talk about the amazing work they have done so far and about their upcoming hill hacks too.

Also joining would be OpenCube Labs to share their experience of their projects in previous editions of the NASA Space Apps Challenge.

This pre-event will be a great place for you to get your doubts out of the way about the main hackathon.

You possibly can meet potential team members who can give you additional dimensions for your project. You can learn how you can best leverage the data available from NASA and tackle the challenges by them.

See you there!

Participant registration is now open! Click here to view Space Apps 2017 locations to find an event near you and sign up.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/nasa-space-apps-challenge-2017

Economic, social and cultural rights in India: Opportunities for advocacy in intellectual property rights - The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

praskrishna — 2017-04-20T16:40:50Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-opportunities-for-advocacy-in-intellectual-property-rights-the-traditional-knowledge-digital-library

Economic, social and cultural rights in India: Opportunities for advocacy in intellectual property rights

praskrishna — 2017-04-20T16:36:46Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-opportunities-for-advocacy-in-intellectual-property-rights

Economic, social and cultural rights in India: Opportunities for advocacy in intellectual property rights: Access to mobile technology

praskrishna — 2017-04-20T16:32:57Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-opportunities-for-advocacy-in-intellectual-property-rights-access-to-mobile-technology

Economic, social and cultural rights in India: Synthesis Overview

praskrishna — 2017-04-20T16:26:39Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india