Centre for Internet and Society

Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India

praskrishna — 2013-01-02T05:35:22Z

Professor Leslie Chan, a champion of Open Access (OA) and Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough visited Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore in December 2012 for a series of lectures. Well known advocate for OA in India and the developing world, Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, accompanied him on these tours.

Leslie gave five talks in over three days at the Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, on the morning of December 17, at the National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR on the afternoon of December 17 at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala on Decemeber 18 followed by a discussion with Satish Babu, President of the Computer Society of India and Director of ICFOSS in the afternoon, a talk at Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library on December 19, and a talk at SDM Institute for Management Development on December 20, 2012, which was more of a discussion.

Speaking on “Opportunities for Knowledge Management in the Open Access Environment” at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management–Kerala, Leslie Chan said, “the recognition of what constitutes scholarship is still very narrow and the quality of the content is secondary. It is the brand of the journal that is still the driving force behind every western journal.” He further said that there was a tension brewing among open access, quality control and the means of measuring impact. Market forces had infiltrated the realm of knowledge as well, for it was the companies that were increasingly taking over journals that were originally published by scholarly societies.[1]His presentation touched upon what is OA and its key benefits, growth of OA in the last ten years, and opportunities for information and library professionals. See the presentation slides below.

At the Mysore University Library, Leslie gave a lecture on Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communications and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment. He dealt with the key issues of changing contexts of research discovery and dissemination in the digital environment, why greater openness is good for science, the tensions between openness, quality measures, impact and policies, collaboration and competition, interdisciplinary research, deluge of research data. Prof. Chan touched upon some key problems like the broken scholarly communication system, emerging tools not being used effectively to serve scholarship, and the need to re-design scholarly communications and impact measures. See the presentation slides below.

Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communication and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment from University of Toronto Scarborough

Therafter, Prof. Chan visited Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development and addressed scientists, librarians and academicians. There were discussions on how open access journals and repositories can help improve the visibility of an institution's research strengths, help attract research collaborators for authors and increase the return on investment. Prof. Chan was particularly critical of the current trends, in evaluating both researchers and their institutions using impact factor of journals in which they publish their research papers as the yardstick. Read the press coverage by Star of Mysore (PDF, 462 Kb).


Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam accompanied Prof. Leslie in his tours to Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore

Leslie's tour to Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore which saw him deliver a series of lectures along with open forum discussions has triggered a fresh awakening to seriously debate on open access initiatives. The event was well covered by the media with the Hindu doing an exclusive interview with him.[2]

More pictures of Prof. Chan's visit can be seen here.

[1]. See “Call for efforts to promote open access platforms, The Hindu, December 19, 2012, available at http://bit.ly/10LEiBU, last accessed on December 31, 2012.
[2]. See "In defence of Open Access systems", The Hindu, December 31, 2012, available at http://bit.ly/VZfmz6, last accessed on January 2, 2013.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/leslie-chan-gives-five-talks-in-india

Open (Govt) Data

praskrishna — 2014-05-23T11:42:07Z

Open (Govt) Data

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Open

praskrishna — 2013-02-25T04:30:36Z

Plane

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Oommen Chandy

praskrishna — 2011-07-20T07:11:38Z

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Only digital sex, please

praskrishna — 2015-06-15T01:38:12Z

Many Indian men are getting so dependent on digital sex and online pornography that they can’t handle real relationships. And a new book says this is happening the world over. Prasun Chandhuri and Avijit Chatterjee turn the spotlight on the trend

The article was published in the Telegraph on May 31. Rohini is quoted.

P. Sharath doesn't know how to handle women. The 31-year-old software engineer, who works for a multinational company in Bangalore, thinks he doesn't need them either. The man who grew up in Hubli in Karnataka and now earns an eight-figure annual salary has his virtual world. That gives him his sexual satisfaction.

Socially awkward, Sharath did try to date a woman, but the relationship broke within a few months because he found that she was getting to be "clingy" and "boring". An attempt by his family to fix a marriage with a woman failed when he groped her in a cinema hall. His online women, on the other hand, need no pampering, and do not complain.

Sharath, however, is not happy. "He no longer gets any gratification from online sex and has been suffering from anxiety and depression," says Dr Ali Khwaja, a Bangalore-based psychologist and founder of the Banjara Academy, a counselling centre.

Increasingly, counsellors in urban India are coming across such cases of people who are so used to digital sex that they can't cope with real relationships any more. Khwaja refers to them as "hollow men" - people who go through despair after relations fail because of their dependence on digital pornography.

"Almost every week I meet a young man addicted to porn," says Mumbai-based counsellor Shefali Batra, author of the recently published book Teen Matters.

It's a pattern that many counsellors have noticed. As teenagers, young boys get hooked on to digital sex. "But it becomes a vicious addiction over time, playing havoc with their social and sexual development," Batra says. The women they meet do not match up to the large breasted and oversexed digital women - and the boys become men who cannot sustain marriages and relationships.

Pornography has always existed, and some counsellors do not believe that it is always harmful. But the spread of the Internet, the easy availability of smartphones and the profusion of sophisticated sex games and other platforms have led to a situation where men merely log on for sexual satisfaction.

The Internet is bursting at the seams with sex sites. There are various types of sex games, including cartoon sex games, 3D sex games, virtual reality sex games and so on where the viewer can indulge in sex with three or four imaginary characters. Some online games offer virtual simulation sex. In a new genre of digital porn, users can enjoy 3D porn with a special virtual reality headset that allows them to step inside their favourite games and completely immerse themselves in a sexual fantasy.

And this is happening across the world. In a recently released book, Men (Dis)Connected: How technology has sabotaged what it means to be male, psychologist Philip Zimbardo holds that "masculinity" is being destroyed by online pornography and gaming technology.

"We have surveyed over 20,000 young people in many countries. Even though we don't have data on Indian men, we assume that the impact of freely available porn is creating a new breed of addicts in every country," he says in an email interview. "These men prefer to masturbate to visual images than have live sexual relations with real women."

Nikita Coulombe, co-author of Men (Dis)Connected, adds that it is an "endless novelty" and a "virtual harem" for the men. "In 10 minutes you can see more 'mates' than your ancestors would have seen in their lifetime."

There was a time when people shrugged and said, it's just a phase. But Zimbardo believes that this addiction has gone beyond that and will have a "permanent negative impact" on young men everywhere because the porn industry is big business.

The professor emeritus at Stanford discovered this phenomenon when he found that many of his male students were shy and spent too much time poring over screens. Closer home, academic and writer Shiv Visvanathan had a similar experience while teaching at the O.P. Jindal University in Haryana.

"Many of these guys do not know how to talk to a girl - they'd rather convey their feelings through text messages or through social networks or mobile phones. Sometimes you'll even see two people sitting close together but talking over the phone, just to avoid a face-to-face conversation," Visvanathan says.

What this means is that young men are not just wary of getting into relationships - they are not missing them either. "Porn gives them instant gratification which can be repeated, say, 200 times. Moreover, the virtual body seems more transformable than the actual body and it's fast," Visvanathan points out.

It is an addiction that draws men more than women, primarily because the majority of Internet porn is male-centric and, more than teenage women, boys are addicted to computer games and associated thrills. "Research has affirmed that this is truer for the male brain in comparison to the female brain," explains Batra. "The male brain is more thrill and pleasure seeking and these exciting virtual realities provide an immense rush of pleasure in the brain."

Zimbardo's survey underlines this. It found that three out of five men expressed a "lack of interest in pursuing and maintaining a romantic relationship" while three out of four women between the ages of 18 and 30 said they were concerned about the "emotional immaturity or the unavailability" of men.

While the celebrated psychologist plans to conduct a similar survey in India, concerns are already rising because the lack of sex education in schools and colleges - coupled with repressed backgrounds and exaggerated pornographic images - gives the young a warped idea of sex and relationships.

"In a society where talking about sex is taboo, their only avenue to satisfy sexual curiosities becomes porn," says Rohini Lakshane, researcher, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

This is why sexologist Prakash Kothari often encounters young men who yearn for a "14-inch organ" and suffer from performance anxiety and depression. "Proper sex education can teach them just two inches and oodles of erotic love are enough to satisfy your female partner," says Kothari.

The experts stress that they are not against pornography. "One should not shoot the messenger," contends Audrey D'Mello, programme director, Majlis, a legal counselling centre in Mumbai. "If used properly it can be an aphrodisiac," Kothari adds.

But many of the images that the young today see are violent and bestial. "These twisted forms of sex are being consumed by young men and boys through smartphones across the country," laments Ira Trivedi, author of India in Love. Lakshane believes that easy access to violent pornography "degrades and objectifies women", giving men and boys a "skewed view of sex and intimacy".

Calcutta-based Subhrangshu Aditya counselled a woman who wanted a divorce because her husband forced her to replicate all that he watched on porn. "It was torture for her, devoid of romantic love or eroticism," Aditya says.

Indeed, the effect on men has an impact on women as well. Trivedi points out that as men devote themselves to porn, women go for measures such as vaginal beautification to attract men.

Or women go off sex altogether.

"These women have an extreme phobia about sex," says Aindri Sanyal, an infertility specialist at a Calcutta-based fertility centre. "Some haven't even got their marriage consummated. So they want to conceive through artificial insemination."

Is there a way out? Experts such as Khwaja are doing what they can. "I am trying to help Sharath socialise in mixed groups, then spend a few minutes at a time doing a favour for a woman, or showing a gesture. I want him to focus on understanding the emotions that girls go through and eventually make him understand how to interact with another flesh-and-blood person who has her own romantic and sexual needs," he says. "The process will take quite a long time."

Zimbardo, 82, wants the "socially crippled generation" to hit the Escape button on their digital devices. He wants to remind them that real sex involves communicating with a real person, feeling their pain, earning their trust and making a real connection to their heart. Like people did, once upon a time.

If it’s May, it’s got to be India

Some porn stats

In 2014, India ranked among the highest consumers of pornographic content in the world, according to Pornhub, an online video hub
Around 25 per cent of Indian visitors on Pornhub.com were women, 2 per cent higher than the worldwide average of 23 per cent
Indians seek out pornography most in May and least in October
More Indians surf porn on their smartphones than on desktops
On an average, Indians spend 8 minutes and 22 seconds per visit to Pornhub, 30 seconds less than the rest of the world
Of all states, people from Andhra Pradesh spend the least time on Pornhub — 6 min and 40 sec; people from West Bengal spend 9 min and 5 sec; people from Assam spend 9 min and 55 sec
Sunny Leone is India’s favourite porn star
In most places in the world, porn is viewed most on Monday, but in India, it’s on Saturday
Porn viewing in India dips by over 25 per cent on Diwali, Dussehra, New Year’s Eve and Gandhi Jayanti.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-may-31-2015-only-digital-sex-please

Online Video

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T03:21:31Z

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Online Trolls Attack Critics of India's Aadhaar State ID System

praskrishna — 2017-06-07T13:34:00Z

India's biometric state ID system has been leaking citizens’ data for months. When this information surfaced in April 2017, it stoked fears that the system could be used as an instrument of surveillance against Indian residents.

The blog post by Rohith Jyothish was published by Global Voices on May 31, 2017.

The Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), which administrates the system known as Aadhaar (meaning foundation in Hindi) maintains that it only collects minimal personal data and stores it securely. But critics have firmly expressed doubts about these claims.

The implications of these leaks, and of any system flaw in Aadhaar technology, are substantial, especially for Indians who depend on the Aadhaar system in order to authenticate their identities when they use any number of government services. The Aadhaar system has become the gatekeeper of state systems and services ranging from voting to financial savings to food subsidies.

The digital sphere is now starting to see a pushback against Aadhaar critics through articles and blogposts that describe concerned citizens and privacy experts as the ‘anti-Aadhaar brigade‘ and accuse them of publishing “half-truths” and “spread[ing] confusion to advance their own interests.” One such article was even featured on the UIDAI website.

Some of the most well-researched critiques of the system have come from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an inter-disciplinary research organisation in Bangalore that has now become a target of the pro-Aadhaar lobby. Shortly after CIS released a report that pointed out security flaws in the Aadhaar ecosystem, the UIDAI accused the organization of hacking into the Aadhaar system themselves.

In fact, CIS had investigated databases of four specific government websites. Three were available publicly, the fourth one was accessible by simply changing one of the URL parameters. Following the accusation from UIDAI, CIS clarified that the Aadhaar numbers along with other sensitive personal financial information like bank account details were made available by government websites themselves, putting a sizeable portion of Indian citizens at risk of financial fraud.

The Press Trust of India (India's largest news agency) referred to it as a “flip-flop”, which was contested by researchers at CIS.

Independent technology news platform Medianama reported that the accusation by the UIDAI is regrettably consistent with previous actions in which they filed a case against a journalist for exposing flaws in Aadhaar's enrollment mechanism.

A website called ‘Support Aadhaar‘ and its Twitter handle sought to collate opinions supporting Aadhaar and quell those speaking against it. However, most of their messages appear to evade or deflect the concerns that critics have raised by touting the benefits of the system and portraying critics as having a poor understanding of the benefits of technology.

Many Twitter users have also begun noticing patterns in the pro-Aadhaar posts:

Meanwhile, several critics of Aadhaar have repeatedly been trolled by anonymous handles on Twitter. These ‘sock puppet’ accounts seemed to be targeting those who criticise Aadhaar on social media.

One of the most active trolls issued an open challenge to reveal their identity with just their Aadhaar number. Technology entrepreneur Kiran Jonnalagadda accepted the challenge and found that ‘@Confident_India’, one of the many anonymous troll Twitter handles, is Sharad Sharma, the co-founder and director of iSPIRT Foundation (Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable), the software lobby that built the backbone of the Aadhaar ecosystem.

Sharma accidentally tweeted a denial from the troll account which has since been deleted. He then tweeted again from his personal handle which was captured.

iSPIRT officially denied allegations by Jonnalgadda that the “evidence presented is a deliberate misreading of our intent to engage with those speaking against India Stack.” India Stack is the digital infrastructure that has been built over Aadhaar.

But several other Twitter users have confirmed that Sharma's phone number is linked to ‘@Confident_India’. By their own admission, iSPIRT seemed to have an officially sanctioned project intended to systematically challenge anti-Aadhaar campaigners in online platforms. But they refuse to term these actions as “trolling”.

However, Sharma later made an apology for trolling and called it a “lapse of judgement”. CIS Executive Director Sunil Abraham seemed to appreciate the message. He tweeted: Bravo to @sharads for this! All of us at @cis_india look fwd to collaborating with @Product_Nation & @sharads to serve Indian s/w sector. https://twitter.com/sharads/status/866943195678035968 …

iSPIRT is an initiative which finds far-reaching support from several IT industry leaders in India. What is worrying is that there is still no clarification from iSPIRT on the identities of the other anonymous trolls and their position on trolling against genuine concerns raised by citizens.

More than a week after the trolling revelations, iSPIRT announced on its website, the results of an investigation carried out by an Internal Guidelines and Compliance Committee over the allegations against Sharma of operating the anonymous handles, ‘@Confident_India’ and ‘@Indiaforward2′. Jonnalgadda was one of the trolling victims who testified in the internal meeting. A summary of the investigation was posted bafflingly by the accused himself in which he says that project Sudham has been dissolved and that he has been told to not make public appearances on behalf of iSPIRT for four months while he remains Director and the face of the organisation. FactorDaily reported that iSPIRT members on the condition of anonymity said that Pallav Nadhani (Founder, Chief Executive, FusionCharts) and Naveen Tewari (Co-founder, InMobi) who quit iSPIRT were upset with their excessive focus on India Stack.

One wonders whether this kind of behavior would be treated differently if it took place offline. Is intimidating those who appear to be ‘detractors’ the most effective way of dealing with criticism? Why is a software lobby taking it upon themselves to defend the idea of Aadhaar and India Stack through such means?

Many are hoping that experts on both sides of the issue can find a way to debate questions around the privacy and security of Aadhaar's technology — that affect some 1.3 billion people — in a more democratic way.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/global-voices-rohith-jyothish-may-31-2017-online-troll-attack-critics-of-indias-aadhaar-state-id-system

Online Telugu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2015-02-19T15:47:05Z

Online Telugu Wikipedia

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Online space for Odia

praskrishna — 2016-06-12T15:39:21Z

From a few hundred articles in 2002 to over 10,600 articles on various aspects of Odisha today, Odia Wikipedia has certainly made a mark as far as promotion of the language is concerned. Wikipedia, the volunteer driven web-based multilingual encyclopedia project, is an important reference source on the Internet for all kinds of information.

The article by Diana Sahu was published in New Indian Express on June 10, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

Recently, Odia Wikipedia (https://or.wikipedia.org) celebrated its 14th anniversary in Bhubaneswar where the focus was on capacity building of Wikipedia contributors, volunteers and enhancing the content.

While the event brought all the active contributors under one roof, it also provided a platform to new users to learn the basics of Wikipedia editing, technical aspects, uploading and adding images to articles and dealing with copyright issues on Wikipedia.

Odia Wikipedia is free for anyone to create articles on notable topics related to Odisha, edit and enhance them. Topics covered so far are varied, from elaborate rituals in Jagannath temple of Puri to medical science.

Sister Projects

Currently, there are two sister projects of Odia Wikipedia - Odia Wikisource (an online library that already has over 300 volumes of text) and Odia Wiktionary, an online dictionary that has over one lakh entries in the language.

With these two projects, the community is bringing a digital revolution in Odia by sharing valuable content online and many language tools. Odia Wikipedia, the flagship project was started as one of the first four Indian language Wikipedias along with Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi Wikipedia in 2002, a year after the English Wikipedia went live.

The project remained dormant for more than nine years till a group of youths revived it in 2011. Subsequently, the project became popular among Odias and they joined in writing and editing articles on different subject areas in the language.

"Odia Wikipedia is part of the 292 language Wikipedia family and a larger global family of hundreds of other free knowledge projects that are collectively known as Wikimedia projects," said Mrutyunjaya Kar, one of the administrators of the project, during the event.

Tools for Writers

Apart from writing and editing articles, the Wikipedia contributors have created several tools and resource manuals over the years. The script encoding converters that they have built is helping online users to share their Odia writings.

"Before these converters were built, people were stuck with outdated encoding systems like Shreelipi and Akruti," says Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian, and Programme Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru.

New Projects

"The next big goal is to enhance the quality of the existing articles by adding more images, references from external sources and expanding small articles by adding more information," said a contributor, Shitikantha Dash. Dash, who is also an administrator of Odia Wiktionary said, "It is important that more people contribute to the Odia Wiktionary so that words of all genres, especially the technical and burrowed words, make their way into this free multilingual dictionary. A 10-day campaign will be organised soon to celebrate the 11th anniversary of Odia Wiktionary. "This time, our focus will be that every Wikipedia editor adds at least one word to the Odia Wiktionary. We are also using these words to create a spell check facility in Odia Wikipedia that will be freely available for everyone to use," he added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-june-10-2016-diana-sahu-online-space-for-odia

Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham

praskrishna — 2014-11-02T02:27:12Z

Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society’s executive director, on privacy laws and Internet penetration.

Anirban Sen's article was published in LiveMint on May 19, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a research thinktank that primarily focuses on issues of Internet governance, is pushing to revise the provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act and make a stronger case for privacy laws and free speech in India, an issue that has caused widespread concern after the government tried to restrict access to more than a 100 websites last year with little justification.

“We want to revise the IT Act...that’s the toughest one and that’s not going to happen very soon because the government is treating it like an ego battle now. They no longer listen to the others,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of CIS.

The IT Act has been at the centre of debate, with some of its provisions such as Section 66A, which criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online or electronically, coming under criticism from rights advocates for being too vague and subject to interpretation.

CIS, which will complete five years on Monday and is organizing a four-day event focusing on issues such as cyber security, surveillance in India and privacy, said it also was working towards creating a privacy law for India within the next 3-4 years. India, which is estimated to have Internet penetration of just 10%, is the third-largest Internet market in the world.

“We’re getting closer and closer to that (privacy law),” said Abraham, adding that privacy should not come at the cost of security.

Over the past five years, Bangalore-based CIS has also been part of some government committees such as the Justice AP Shah Committee, which focused on privacy laws in India, and is also currently working on the country’s telecom policy. The non-government organization, which receives grants from international bodies such as the Wikimedia Foundation, has also worked on policies for the government of Iraq and is currently also doing policy work for the government of Burma.

“Five years ago we were making noise from outside the room, we were not inside any policy making space. That has also changed. From an organization that was mostly outside the room, we’re increasingly being trusted by our own government,” said Abraham, who was one of the most vocal critics of the government’s unique identification (UID) project when it was first launched. Abraham had raised concerns over its overtly broad scope and issues over privacy in the project.

For CIS, one of the biggest achievements over the past five years was being part of the policy framework for the government of India’s draft national policy on open standards for e-governance, said Abraham, adding that the organization was working towards increasing Internet penetration in the country, especially in rural areas.

“We’re hoping that every single mobile phone user in the country will become an Internet user. We’re planning for that future,” he said.

The CIS event starting on Monday will include speakers such as legal researcher and advocate Lawrence Liang and Vibodh Parthasarathi, an associate professor at the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at the Jamia Millia Islamia university. Both Liang and Parthasarathi are members of the board at CIS.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-anirban-sen-may-19-2013-online-privacy-should-not-come-at-the-cost-of-security

Online outcry forces government to withdraw draft encryption policy

praskrishna — 2015-10-01T02:05:01Z

The article by Naina Khedekar discussing encryption policy was published in First Post on September 23, 2015. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted.

Read the original published by First Post here.

Yesterday, the government released a draft encryption policy aimed at keeping a tab on the use of technology by specifying algorithms and length of encryption keys used by ‘all’. It wanted businesses, telcos and Internet companies to store all encrypted data for 90 days in plain text which should be presented before the law enforcement agencies whenever asked to. Moreover, failing to do so would mean legal action as per the laws of the country.

After a huge outcry, most of us woke up to the new proposed addendum this morning wherein the government has clarified to exempt products such as social media sites including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter; payment gateways; e-commerce and password based transactions and more from the draft policy.

Finally, the government has decided to withdraw the draft encryption policy.

I have written for that draft to be withdrawn, made changes to and then re-released: RS Prasad : ANI pic.twitter.com/W2IP4meEGb

— Firstpost (@firstpost) September 22, 2015

Some sort of encryption policy is there all over the world: Ravishankar Prasad pic.twitter.com/cDvsOWtjcM

— Firstpost (@firstpost) September 22, 2015

What’s fascinating is how the whole process felt like déjà vu. Haven’t we seen the drama unfold before. While the dust on the net neutrality sage has barely settled, we’re already facing newer issues related to encryption and privacy. We never learn from our mistakes, do we? A new draft policy, public outcry, and then comes the much-needed changes.

The Indian government hasn’t just caused anxiety and chaos among the netizens, but the initial draft completely misguided people. According to TheNextWeb, “The Indian government has made a fool of itself and caused anxiety among citizens with a woefully misguided proposal for a national encryption policy that it’s just released to the public for feedback.”

While we sit back and talk about Digital India, smarter cities and so on, the makers of the law seem to be clueless about some major by-products concerning these initiatives such as security, privacy and likewise. Each time the government talks about a new initiative meant to bring in some law and order pertaining to digital rights, it somehow manages to come up with implications that could affect us far worse.

In this case, the Indian government is trying to ensure that its law enforcement agencies have easy access to encrypted information whenever required, but this could easily compromise security and privacy in the process.

Moreover, each time the government releases a proposal for our digital lives, it’s people who remind the government about the adverse implications it could have. Does the expert panel writing these reports know nothing about privacy and how it possibly works? Or is the government simply looking at a trial balloon policy to gauge reactions by people. So, next time we don’t react, a draconian rule might just be governing our digital lives.

The whole net neutrality saga continued for months with assurance from the government on how it supports free and equal Internet, and eventually made ‘certain changes’. This seems headed on a similar path. Though the new addendum comes with changes, it still leaves us as muddled as before.

Pranesh Prakash of the CIS has tweeted out how the new clarification clarifies nothing.

This clarification by the govt does not clarify anything, but further muddles the encryption policy. pic.twitter.com/1KK8AFRp6Q

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) September 22, 2015

All OSes will be illegal in India (IV.6 + V.3 of draft encryption policy) unless Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, etc, sign agreement w/ govt.

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) September 21, 2015

If India enacts that National Encryption Policy, their global back-end and support business will be drastically reduced. If it survives.

— Lin S (@Just_this_time) September 21, 2015

A new Medianama report also points out loopholes in the changes announced. The report adds how any encrypted service would have to sign an agreement with the government. With the heavy mobile penetration and increasing number of encrypted mobile services that people use, it is really feasible for the government to ink an agreement with all the services that are based outside the country.

Problems with the update to India's draft anti-privacy policy http://t.co/gKus1o3uaC pic.twitter.com/adqVJTedFI

— Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin) September 22, 2015

In the past, we’ve seen the blame game around the laws, usually the ‘hurriedly’ changed laws passed (after the inability to monitor encrypted messages during the Mumbai terrorist attacks) in the winter session of 2008 without any debate or discussion by bears the brunt. Earlier this year, we saw the government crack down the Section 66A of the 2008 Information Technology Act describing it “unconstitutional” and “hit at the root of liberty and freedom of expression, the two cardinal pillars of democracy.”

Why can’t all the thinking be done before drafts are penned down for public review. A well thought out report would help avoid retractions later.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/first-post-naina-khedekar-september-23-2015-online-outcry-forces-government-to-withdraw-draft-encryption-policy

Online gag:Existing rules give little freedom

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T05:42:05Z

Even as the controversy over Kapil Sibal's attempt to get internet giants such as Google and Facebook to prescreen user-generated content to weed out 'offensive' material rages, a yet-to-be-published study by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society reveals that rules already in place can have "chilling effects on free expression on the internet".

The study set out to examine if the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011, notified in April 2011, could create a gagging effect on websites that provide a platform for user-generated content in the form of opinion and comments. Websites such as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube and Twitter fall under this category. The study was commissioned by the Centre for Internet and Society, which was invited to comment on the department of information technology when it framed the seminal Information Technology Act 2000.

The study author set out to test the process of 'takedown' (requesting an internet entity to remove material that can be interpreted as 'hateful', 'disparaging', 'defamatory', etc) by notifying seven separate internet entities of content linked to their websites or hosted by them that could, in very loose terms, be deemed offensive. The entities are not named in the study.

This first-of-a-kind experiment included actions such as sending search engines a takedown notice alerting it to results on searching the keywords 'online gambling' and alerting a news website about comments on a news story related to the Telangana dispute.

In six of the seven cases, the intermediaries and hosts - technical terms for websites that host content - acted promptly to not only remove the 'offensive' content without due processes of investigation but in some cases went beyond their brief to remove all content connected with the one mentioned in the takedown notice.

For instance, a news website that was sent a takedown notice about a well-argued and non-abusive comment to an article on the Telangana issue took down not just that comment, but all 15 comments published below the article In the case of the results of a search for 'online gambling', despite the fact that intermediaries are exempted from being implicated in such cases, one search engine notified took down not just the three links mentioned in the notice but another 25 sub-domains as well, "presumably to avoid legal risk and to err on the side of caution," the CIS report says.

"Our criticism is of the policy and not of the websites and Internet entities that are forced to err on the side of caution when faced by such notices," says Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society. "We are aware that they do not always have the legal and manpower resources necessary to monitor the enormous volumes of content they host." These companies often overstep their brief in order to avoid legal hassles resulting from what Abraham calls "unconstitutional limits on free speech".

The original story was published by the Times of India on 9 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in it. Read the story on Times of India here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/online-gag

Online Free Content in Telugu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2015-02-19T15:51:32Z

Wikimedians gathered at Tirupati for a strategic meet. This was covered by the regional newspaper Andhra Jyothy

Click to read the article published on the website of Andhra Jyothy.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/andhra-jyothy-february-16-2015-online-free-content-in-telugu-wikipedia

Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T03:51:20Z

Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.

This article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on February 8, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police, indicating that more arrests may follow.

The three men were charged under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which applies to “offensive” messages being sent through communication services, and Section 506 of the Ranbir Penal Code, which applies to criminal intimidation. Mr. Pandita said that it had been easy to track the I.P. addresses of the Facebook users.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, is planning to sue the top religious leader in Kashmir, who called for the fatwa, for “demonizing Kashmir before the international community” and for “running a parallel judicial system in the valley.”

Mr. Imroz told India Ink that human rights organizations like his needed support from the international community to highlight their concerns, and such fatwas reflected badly on the Kashmiri society. “He is diverting attention away from real issues of human rights to nonissues like music and purdah,” Mr. Imroz said.

The fatwa against the band was issued by the Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad.

In his fatwa, Mr. Ahmad advised women to only sing inside the house to other female members of the family, and wear a veil whenever they left the house. “They must stay within limits,” he said.

Following the band’s first live performance in December, Aneeqa Khalid, Noma Nazir and Farah Deeba, 10th-grade students who are 15 and 16 years old, became the target of abuse and threats on Facebook by people who accused them of being un-Islamic because they had performed in public, especially before men. Some commenters called them “sluts” and “prostitutes;” others suggested that they should be raped.

The band Praagaash, which means “darkness into light,” disbanded following a national controversy surrounding these threatening messages. The threats were condemned by many, including the state’s chief minister.

To many Kashmiris, both the fatwa and the arrests by the government are unnecessary. Some say that the controversy erupted after the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, got involved by expressing his support for the band on Twitter and then calling for investigation against those writing the threatening messages.

“Nobody here had a problem with the rock band,” said Aala Fazili, a doctorate student at Kashmir University, pointing out that the band’s performance in December had not led to any protests or physical threats against them.

Mr. Fazili, 32, added that people shouldn’t be arrested for writing abusive posts on Facebook. “You cannot call an abuse a threat,” he said.

Mr. Pandita, the Kashmir police spokesman, said the investigators were making a distinction between a threat and abuse on the basis of “gravity.”

Pranesh Prakash, from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, asked whether people who hold protests calling for the death of the author Salman Rushdie should also be arrested for making threats.

“I would hold that no expression of violent thoughts, online or offline, should be made criminal, even if it is repugnantly misogynistic, unless it takes the form of a credible threat that causes harm, or is harassment that constitutes harm,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ny-times-feb-8-2013-betwa-sharma-online-abuse-of-teen-girls-in-kashmir-leads-to-arrests

Online @ India

praskrishna — 2011-12-12T07:48:55Z

I haven't yet heard of anybody in India going on a rampage because somebody in Pakistan started an 'India hate' page. However, I have seen people kill and destroy because they got incited to violence and hatred through offline religious propaganda, cinema and cricket.

I suggest it might be more useful to ban all these three institutions before looking at online networks," says Nishant Shah, Director of Research at Centre for Internet and Society. Shah's sarcastic quote is in response to the Information Technology minister Kapil Sibal's demand earlier this week that Internet companies censor content - leading to a huge outcry both online and offline.

Sibal cites "offensive content" on the internet as the reason for censorship, but what exactly is unacceptable or offensive and, as a noisy democracy, how slanderous are we as a people? What is the modern India's online psyche?

Hindustan Times-C fore survey

For many, India's growing presence on the net - from 97 million earlier in the year to almost 121 million by this year end (IMRB report) -translates into a "vomiting revolution", in the words of Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India and Chairman, ASSOCHAM Cyberlaw Committee. Accoding to Duggal, "Indians today on social media are vomiting everything about their lives, social, personal, professional, otherwise. It is only a matter of time before people realize what they have said could impact them for times to come."

While Duggal says that "Indians are currently on the learning curve when it comes to behaviour in the online environment and a large number, in emotional states of mind, post information on the Internet which they later regret", sociologist Susan Visvanathan believes that it's a tool for instant satisfaction, especially the young. "Everyone knows that what goes online is recorded. However, that doesn't stop them from saying what they feel. This is verbosity in another form," says Visvanathan.

The "Argumentative Indian", Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's book, celebrated the Indian tradition of public debate. But while this culture of discourse is seen in everything from our yap-happy expert panelists on tv to political debate, does the argumentative Indian become an obnoxious, intolerant lout when unmonitored online?

According to Mahesh Murthy, online marketing expert, this is not true. "The young generation believes in live and let live. They respect opinions, and move on," says Murthy.

In India, everything from our history, cross border issues, nationalism, cricket, bollywood, religion, society and politics stirs emotions says Tarun Abhichandani, Group Business Director of the research firm IMRB International - "but it is the net that has the power to give it a cascade effect." As examples, Abhichandani refers to Kolaveri Di or content such as the anti-islamic post on FB which reportedly led to riots on the street in Dungarpur.

Here's where some people believe that the net becomes "tricky." Of religious discussion, says Abhichandani, "online we tend to be obnoxious when we are put in a setting where we need to differentiate ourselves from others."

However, defenders of net freedom - and they seem to far outnumber those who prescribe censorship - believe that even online religious dissent is not a cause for concern in a healthy democracy like ours. "The most extreme religious views online are actually from NRIs," says Murthy. He also points to the latest Google Transparency report for India where of the 355-plus items that the government asked to be removed, "only 3 were religious, the rest were political."

A survey conducted by Indiabiz, with a sample size of 1200 of India's youth (18-35 years) found that the youth saw social media as a space for change. Anti-corruption has emerged as the most prominent social cause endorsed by 32 per cent of the respondents.

India with its 100 million internet users comes third after China (485 million) and the US (245 million). In India 65 million of the active Internet users are in urban cities, ie . nearly 35% of the active Internet users are located in top eight metros, (IMRB). In comparison with other south east asian countries there are so many geographies of access and consumption within India for which finding a common spectrum is difficult. According to the latest IAMAI report, in rural India (24 million users), entertainment was the key driver. In urban India, 71 % of internet users indulged in social networking and 64% used internet for educational purposes. Shah however highlights, "One of the biggest differences that we can see is in the linguistic restrictions in India." For countries like China, S. Korea, Japan, Thailand, the web is essentially a local experience with the tools and language localised, while in India, with social media being used primarily in English, it is restricted to the urban elite.

The uprising in the middle east and, in comparison to communist China, which has blocked international social media sites, is something that India won't see for a long time feel experts. "We haven't as yet seen a revolution caused by the internet. The closest we came to it was when the 2G scam broke and the Anna Hazare movement. In Syria, Tunisia etc. because of totalitarian governments, the internet was crucial in the revolution, we are far from that because we are clear of censorship. For now," says Murthy.

Revolutions aside, online intellectual property rights and online slander which are rampant do cause a lot of trouble. "Indians need to believe in legal consequences of their postings," says Duggal who adds that almost six out of ten users in India would have faced some kind of undesirable content directed at them. "We've also seen cases where people, in a fit of anger, publish the most dirtiest of all expletives. People need to appreciate that the Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 has provisions which make such online behaviour unacceptable."

In April this year, the government attempted to put down rigorous laws when the "Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011" was set up. The rules require intermediaries, ie companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo that provide the platform for users to comment and create their own content, to respond quickly if individuals complain that content is "disparaging" or "harassing," among other complaints. If the complainant's claim is valid, these companies must take down the offensive information within 36 hours. And when required, the intermediary shall provide information or assistance to government agencies authorised for investigative, protective, cyber security activity.

However, critics of filtering of content say that most social networks already have evolved guidelines; the law is in place; and also that monitoring of the net is not just required, it is virtually technologically impossible.

While offensive is not an absolute category and because online space transcends national boundaries and puts us together in a non-space, it still is the best platform for public debate, according to most. As says Visvanathan: "The young will always have something to say via arts, music and slogans online. Our online experience reflects the openness of a democracy."

This article by Sharon Fernandes was published in the Hindustan Times on December 10, 2011. Nishant Shah was quoted in this. Read the original in the Hindustan Times here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/online-at-india