Centre for Internet and Society

Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication

praskrishna — 2013-09-02T04:19:53Z

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

This article was published in the Times of India on August 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

Snowden fallout

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a programme called PRISM.

Documents leaked by Snowden showed that NSA may have accessed network infrastructure in many countries, causing concerns of potential security threats and data breaches. Even as the new policy is being formulated, there has been no mention yet of how compliance will be ensured.

Several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

A Google India spokeswoman said the company has not been informed about the ban, and hence it cannot comment on speculation. "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation," Google said in an email response.

A senior official in the IT department admitted on condition of anonymity that employees turn to service providers such as Gmail because of the ease of use compared with official email services, as well as the bureaucratic processes that govern creation of new accounts.

"You can just go and create an account in Gmail easily, whereas for a government account, you have to go through a process because we have to ensure that he is a genuine government user."

Last week, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that are directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services. Sibal said there has been no evidence of the US accessing Internet data from India.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agrees with the government's decision to ban Gmail for official communication and that any official violating this needs to be punished.

"After Snowden's revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he said. Abraham, however, called the government's decision a "late reaction", as the use of Gmail and other free email services by bureaucrats has increased in the past.

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-august-30-2013-cyberspying-govt-may-ban-gmail-for-official-communication

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers

praskrishna — 2013-09-19T07:19:11Z

Government workers in India will soon be banned from using Google’s Gmail service for official communication in a move said to be in response to revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US, a national paper reported.

Beatrice Thomas's blog post was published in Arabian Business.com on September 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Two weeks after Dubai announced a ban on private emails by Government staff, a senior official in India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the crackdown would apply to 500,000 government employees, according to The Times of India.

They would be banned from using providers such as Gmail, which had servers based in the US, and instead asked to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, secretary in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, told the Times.

“Currently, we are looking to address this in the Government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data.”

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple through a program called PRISM.

The Times said several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications and IT, Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, had their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

However, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said last week there had been no evidence of the US accessing internet data from India.

The newspaper quoted a senior official in the IT Department saying Gmail was preferred by employees because, compared to official email services, it was easy to set up.

Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that were directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agreed with the ban.

“After Snowden’s revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he told the Times.

It emerged last month that Dubai government employees had been banned from sending and receiving private emails at work, including the use of independent email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.

The new regulations announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, specifically referred to religious and political communication as well as messages relating to charitable causes.

Workers are also not allowed to open unsolicited mail, spam or emails that contain viruses, or alter the date, time, source of destination information on an email.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/arabian-business-september-1-2013-beatrice-thomas-gmail-ban-looms-for-indian-govt-workers

Global Consultation Report on ICTs and Disability Launched at the UN High Level Meeting on Disability and Development

praskrishna — 2014-03-25T10:30:35Z

A new report released on Monday, 23 September 2013 demonstrates how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), have become a positive force of transformation and a crucial element of any personal development, empowerment and institutional framework for inclusive development.

We are acknowledged in this report (see page 69).

“The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework” contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which ICTs can enable and accelerate the social and economic inclusion of persons with disabilities. It lists challenges that are still to be addressed while outlining concrete actions to be undertaken by each group of stakeholders and a set of indicators to help measuring progress towards the achievement of a disability-inclusive development agenda.

This report is the result of collaborative input from the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs (G3ICT), the International Disability Alliance (IDA), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Microsoft, the Telecentre.org Foundation and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The content is based on the information gathered during a global consultation on ICT, Disability and Development, carried out from 20 May to 17 June 2013 in support of the preparatory process of the HLMDD. The consultation gathered over 150 expert inputs from relevant organizations and key individuals stemming from over 55 countries and representing multiple categories of stakeholders, including governments, academic institutions, organizations of persons with disabilities, civil society organizations, the private sector and regional and international organizations.

Click to download the report here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/itu-september-2013-global-consultation-report-on-icts-and-disability-launched-at-un-high-level-meeting-on-disability-and-development

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

praskrishna — 2013-10-04T10:49:51Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of August 2013:

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

The CIS-A2K programme organised a four-day workshop in collaboration with the Goa University for students of M.A. (Konkani) at the Central State Library, Konkani Department, University of Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted this workshop. The event saw 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia, which is incubation. The main objective is to bring this seven-year-old project out of incubation into a live Wikipedia project. Event reports, blog entries, videos, guest column and media coverage arising from the workshop can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

Event Reports

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013):
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013):

Guest Columns

Konkani Wikipedia climbing up the Indian language ladder (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, September 6, 2013).
Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013)

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 19, 2013). The event was organised by Wikimedia Foundation. Subhashish participated in the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (co-organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Organised

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.
Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan taught a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated in the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, DNA, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).

Other guest columns:

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and CIS-A2K, September 13, 2013).
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi.

Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

About CIS

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

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

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

To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org.

To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-august-2013

Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T09:52:17Z

US-based email services seen as too risky.

This article by Neil McAllister was published in the Register on August 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The government of India is reportedly planning to bar its employees from using Gmail and other foreign-based email services, amid concerns over surveillance by US spy agencies.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, India's secretary of electronics and information technology, told the Times of India. "Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data."

The Indian government currently employs some 500,000 people, many of whom use Gmail for their primary email addresses. A quick glance at the contact page for the country's Department of Electronics and Information Technology reveals at least eight senior officials using Gmail, and still others with Yahoo! addresses.

Under the new directive, government employees will be asked to stick to official email addresses provided by India's National Informatics Centre (NIC). But an unnamed senior government IT official told the Times of India that many government workers choose Gmail and other foreign services because they are easier to use, and setting up accounts is much faster than working within the bureaucratic process of the NIC.

The move toward locally run email for Indian government workers comes in the wake of a string of revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Among the recent disclosures has been details of US electronic surveillance of foreign governments on US soil, where the National Security Agency even went as far as to snoop encrypted communications from United Nations headquarters in New York City.

No doubt equally concerning was a motion filed by Google in a US district court earlier this month, in which the Chocolate Factory asserted that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties" such as Gmail.

But Sunil Abraham of the Bangalore-based think tank the Centre for Internet and Society said that foreign spying wasn't the only reason why government officials should be required to use a homegrown email.

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives," Abraham told the paper. "Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

When contacted for comment, a spokeswoman for Google India said the company had not been informed of the proposed ban, adding, "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation." ®

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-register-neil-mc-allister-august-30-2013-indian-govt-to-bar-politicians-from-using-gmail-for-official-business

August 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T06:26:30Z

Our newsletter for the month of August 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the eighth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we are glad to bring you the final report on banking and accessibility submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, a research paper on India’s obligations under bilateral investment treaties, a report from a Wikipedia workshop held at the Konkani Department in Goa University, a report on the sixth privacy roundtable held in New Delhi, recent news coverage, and updates on our upcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

As part of its project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you three new draft chapters on Assam, Manipur and Puducherry. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 3 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the below chapters:

The Assam Chapter (by CLPR, August 28, 2013)
The Manipur Chapter (by CLPR, August 29, 2013)
The Puducherry Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 31, 2013)

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Reports

Banking and Accessibility in India: A Report by CIS (by Vrinda Maheshwari, August 12, 2013). This is the final report submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Opening New Avenues for Empowerment (by UNESCO, August 31, 2013). UNESCO has published a global report on higher education titled “Opening New Avenues for Empowerment”. Nirmita Narasimhan was the coordinating author for the Asia Pacific region.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

As part of its project on developing the growth of Indic language communities with Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K held six Wikipedia workshops. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge
Research Paper

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools (by Gavin Pereira, August 31, 2013).

Column

Copyrights and Copywrongs Why the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain (by Pranesh Prakash, Yojana, Issue: August 2013).

Media Coverage

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry (by C.H. Unnikrishnan, Livemint, August 26, 2013). CIS work on Access to Knowledge is mentioned.

Blog Entries

Are Indian Consumer Laws Ready for the Digital Age? (by Vipul Kharbanda, August 8, 2013).
Do You Have the Right to Unlock Your Smart Phone? (by Puneeth Nagaraj, August 7, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

The A2K team consists of four members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Syed Muzammiluddin, and one team member Nitika Tandon who works from Delhi.

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013.
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013. Thirty-eight students took part in the wiki editing workshop.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Hosted

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated for the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).
Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 – 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is teaching a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".
You too can write on Wikipedia! — Orientation Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, September 15, 2013).

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).

Openness

Event Hosted

Open Hardware Lab: Play & Invent + Bonus Film Screening (CIS, Bangalore, August 4, 2013). A hangout was done with CIS Lab Community and with members of the Computer Club of India and Arduino enthusiasts.

Event Participated

e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government (organised by Google, July 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness (by David Eaves, Tech President, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share (by Glyn Moody, Techdirt, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project

Event Report

Sixth Privacy Roundtable (co-organised by CIS, FICCI and DSCI, New Delhi, August 24, 2013). Bhairav Acharya and Prachi Arya participated in this event. The discussions and recommendations from the six round table meetings will be presented at the Internet Governance meeting in October 2013.

Newspaper / Magazine Columns

Freedom from Monitoring: India Inc Should Push For Privacy Laws (by Sunil Abraham, Forbes India Magazine, August 21, 2013).
Out of the Bedroom (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, August 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

'Ethical Hacker' Saket Modi Calls for Stronger Cyber Security Discussions (by Kovey Coles, August 5, 2013).
Ethical Issues in Open Data (by Kovey Coles, August 7, 2013).
FinFisher in India and the Myth of Harmless Metadata (by Maria Xynou, August 13, 2013).

Events Organised

The Hackers Way of Reshaping Policies (CIS, Bangalore, August 2, 2013). Bernadette Langle gave a talk on different ways to reshape policies.
Chennai: Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (Asian College of Journalism, Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013). A Crypto Party was organised.
The Phishing Society: Why 'Facebook' is more dangerous than the Government Spying on You - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, August 7, 2013). Maria Xynou gave a talk on phishing society.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (ACJ - Asian College of Journalism, Second Main Road (Behind M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013).
Privacy Meeting: Brussels – Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore, August 14, 2013). Gertjan Boulet and Dariusz Kloza gave a talk on privacy.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2013). A Crypto Party was held at CIS.

Events Participated In

Summer School 2013 (organized by the Research Center of Media and Communication at the University of Hamburg, Germany, July 29 – August 2, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session on "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Pirates, Pornographers, Terrorists and the IT Act in India".
Meeting of a Sub-committee on DNA Profiling Bill (Hyderabad, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting for discussing the draft bill.
Surveillance: Privacy Vs Security (organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals, India International Centre, New Delhi, August 17, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Crypto Night (by Rahul M., Caravan, August 1, 2013). Pranesh Prakash and Bernadette Langle are quoted.
Facebook: Limiting access to social media can restrict freedom of speech (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Token disclosures? (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, August 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Memeâ€™s the word now (by Padmaparna Ghosh, The Times of India, August 4, 2013). Nishant Shah is quoted.
Chinese hackers baiting Indian govt, corporate employees: report (by Moulishree Srivastava and Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests (NDTV, August 16, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui discussed the grey areas of the IT Act.
Balancing vigilance and privacy (by Prashant Jha, The Hindu, August 18, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
How Next-Gen Smartphone Users are Being Bought and Sold (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 13, 2013, and IBN Live, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Dear Milind Deora, Prakash Javadekar Deserved The Truth (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India, August 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, August 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India's Internet Privacy Woes (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 26, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication (The Times of India, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business (by Neil McAllister, The Register, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interview

Part 9: Interview with Saikat Datta (August 5, 2013).

Telecom

CIS has published one newspaper column in the Business Standard and also made a submission to TRAI:

Newspaper Column

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets (by Shyam Ponappa, originally published in the Business Standard, July 31, 2013 and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot, August 1, 2013).

Submission

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum (by Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa, August 31, 2013). The submission was made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 21, 2013.

Digital Humanities

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

Blog Entries

Digital Humanities Talk (by Sara Morais, August 1, 2013). Sara wrote about her talk in this blog entry.
Theorizing the Digital Subaltern (by Sara Morais, August 2, 2013).

Event Organised

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by CIS-A2K, HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CCS-Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013). Errata: We had got the name of one of the co-organisers wrong in our previous newsletter. We have corrected this now.

Event Participated In

South Asia Conference on Higher Education (organised by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Ford Foundation Office, New Delhi, August 5 – 7, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this conference.

About CIS

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

*Support Us*

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

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2013-bulletin

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:32:39Z

Wikimedia India in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society is organising a workshop on "Digitization of books for Indic language WikiSource" on August 18, 2013, 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

This workshop will be conducted by Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran. Anyone interested in learning about the process of digitising old manuscripts, books and creating text based documents could join this workshop. The workshop will cover the following topics:

Best practices in capturing images using a camera and tripod through demonstration;
An introduction to the types of scanners;
How to hold books and the need to treat old books with proper care;
Discussion on image formats and some basic comparison (i.e. djvu, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF);
Introduction and practical use of SM Tether (using Nikon dSLR) in capturing images;
Practical demonstration of using Scan Tailor (a free software) in post-processing of scanned pages. Splitting, deskewing, rearranging borders, and de-speckling of scanned pages;
Some basic discussion on copyright and introduction to Wiki Source;
Importance of online archival resources (DLI, DSAL, Archive.org, etc) and when to do or not to redo scanning of books (i.e., image resolution) that are already available in scanned format;
OCR and Indian languages.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/digitization-of-books-for-indic-language-wikisource

Wikimedia Asia Meeting

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:11:56Z

An unedited text of the conversations which happened at the Wikimedia Asia Meeting in 2013.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimedia-asia-meeting.txt

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:24:45Z

T.Vishnu participated in the Telugu meet-up held in Hyderabad on August 25, 2013, via Skype.

Click to read the original published by Telugu Wikipedia here

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా నెలవారీ ముఖాముఖీ సమావేశం. సమావేశానంతరం/ముందు మినీ వికీపీడియా వర్కుషాపు ఉంటుంది.

వివరాలు

ప్రదేశం : థియేటర్ ఔట్రీచ్ యూనిట్ (టి.ఓ.యు), గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్ అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాద్
తేదీ : 25:08:2013; సమయం : 3 p.m. నుండి 6 p.m. వరకూ.

చర్చించాల్సిన అంశాలు

హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు - విష్ణు
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాలు - ECHO; AFT; VISUAL EDITOR - విష్ణు
తెలుగు రంగస్థలం - వికీపీడియా - ప్రణయ్ రాజ్, రామారావు మరియు శేఖర్ బాబు.
తెలుగు ప్రముఖుల ప్రాజెక్టు సమీక్ష - రాజశేఖర్
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ సమీక్ష - పోటీలో విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రదానం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పని యొక్క ప్రస్తుత పరిస్థితి.
విక్షనరీలో నెలవారీ కార్యక్రమ ప్రణాలిక.

ఇంకా ఏమయినా విషయాలు దీని పైన చేర్చగలరు

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

Rajasekhar1961 (చర్చ) 13:12, 17 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

పైన మీ పేరు చేర్చండి

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

(నమోదు తప్పనిసరికాదు కాని నిర్వాహకులకు సహాయంగా మరియు ఇతరులకు ప్రోత్సాహంగా వుంటుంది. పైన మార్చు నొక్కి మీ పేరు చేర్చవచ్చు)

తప్పక

వాడుకరి:Maheshwar Reddy (చర్చ) 12:05, 22 జూలై 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

Skype ద్వారా చర్చలో పాల్గొనదలచినవారు

విష్ణు (చర్చ) 14:33, 23 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

బహుశా

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

పాల్గొనటానికి కుదరని

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

స్పందనలు

<పై వరసలో స్పందించండి>

నివేదిక

స్కైప్ ద్వారా విష్ణుగారు పాల్గొని హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు, వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధికోసం జరిగిన చర్చల గురించి తెలియజేశారు.

అనంతరం ఈ క్రింది అంశాల గురించి వివరించారు.

తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపులేదు. తెవికీలో ఉన్న ప్రాజెక్టులలోని కొన్ని వ్యాసాలను (పల్లెవాసుల జీవన విధానం మొ.) ఆంగ్లంలోనికి అనువదించి, ఆంగ్ల వికీపీడియాలో చేర్చడంద్వారా గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపు తీసుకురావడం. వచ్చే వికీమానియాలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు ప్రముఖస్థానం వచ్చేలా కృషిచేయడం.
లీలావతి డాటర్స్ అనే పుస్తకంలోని 64 మంది మహిళా సైంటిస్టుల గురించి వ్యాసాలను రాయడం.
తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో చురుగ్గా పనిచేస్తున్న ఇంజనీర్స్ ను తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మెంటర్స్ గా తయారుచేయడం.
తెలుగు భాషాభివృద్ధికి తోడ్పడే ప్రాజెక్టులను ఎంపికచేసుకొని, ఆ ప్రాజెక్టుల నిర్వాహణకు గ్రాంట్ వచ్చేలా చూడడం.
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాల ఉపయోగాలు. 1. ECHO (Notification Tool, రాసిన వ్యాసాల గురించిన సవరణలను చూపించే ఉపకరణం). 2. AFT (Article Feedback Tool, వీక్షకులు, పాఠకులు తమ అభిప్రాయాలను రాసే ఉపకరణం). 3. VISUAL EDITOR (వ్యాసాన్ని వ్యాసపు పేజీలోనే సవరించేందుకు ఉపకరణం).

వచ్చే నెలలో తెలుగు రంగస్థలంపై ప్రాజెక్టు నిర్వహించదలచామని రాజశేఖర్ గారు ప్రతిపాదించగా, రంగస్థలానికి చెందినవారిని వాడుకరులుగా చేర్పించి వారితో వ్యాసాలను రాయించాలనీ, అందుకోసం రంగస్థల అధ్యాపకులైన పెద్ది రామారావు గారి సహయం తీసుకుందామని విష్ణుగారు సూచించారు.
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రధానంకోసం, ఎంపికైనవారు వారివారి చిరునామాను పంపించవలసిందిగా వారి వాడుకరి/వ్యాసపు పేజీలో రాయడం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పనిలో భాగంగా 4 స్కంధాలు పూర్తయ్యాయని, మిగతావి మరో వారం రోజుల్లో పూర్తి చేస్తానని రాజశేఖర్ గారు చెప్పారు.
రావూరి భరద్వాజ గారి గురించి, ఆయన రచనల గురించి తెవికీలో రాయడంపై బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్ తో రాజశేఖర్ గారు చర్చించగా, తన వద్దవున్న సమగ్ర సమాచారాన్ని అందించగలనని శ్రీనివాస్ హమీ ఇచ్చారు.

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొన్నవారు

విష్ణు (Skype ద్వారా)
Rajasekhar1961
గుళ్లపల్లి నాగేశ్వరరావు
Pranayraj1985
బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/telugu-wiki-meet-up-hyderabad-august-2013

International Summer School: "Digitization and its Impact on Society"

praskrishna — 2013-11-20T10:00:59Z

Dr. Nishant Shah will be the key note speaker in the session "Social Networks and the Revolution of Political Communication". The event is being hosted by the Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics from September 29 to October 5, 2013.

Click to read the full programme schedule published by the Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics. More details on the program here.

The Summer School takes place on the TUD campus, mainly in the buildings of the Faculty of Computer Science (Nöthnitzer Straße 46) and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (Nöthnitzer Straße 38).

Co - Conveners and Scientific Committee

Noah Bubenhofer, Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics, TU Dresden
Thomas Bürger, Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB)
Wolfgang Donsbach, Chair of Communication Studies I, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Katrin Etzrodt, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Horst - Peter Götting, Chair of Civil Law and Intellectual Property Law, Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Media Law, TU Dresden
Lutz Hagen, Chair of Communications Studies II, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Thomas Köhler, Professorship for Educational Technology, Institute for Vocational Education, TU Dresden
Holger Kuße,Chair of Linguistics and History of Slavonic Languages, Institute of Slavonic Studies, TU Dresden
Claudia Lange, Chair of English Linguistics, Institute of English and American Studies, TU Dresden
Rebecca Renatus, Institute of Media and Communication, TU Dresden
Anne Lauber-Rönsberg, Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Media Law, TU Dresden
Joachim Scharloth, Chair of Applied Linguistics, Institute of German Studies, TU Dresden
Eric Schoop, Chair of Business Informatics, esp Information Management, Faculty of Business and Economics
Marcel Thum, Chair of Public Economics, TU Dresden

Coordination: Dresden Center for Digital Linguistics, Joachim Scharloth, Noah Bubenhofer, Yvonne Krämer

Website: http://linguistik.zih.tu-dresden.de/digitization/
Email: summerschool.gsw@tu-dresden.de

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digitization-and-its-impact-on-society

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T11:01:35Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore welcomes you to a mobile training workshop in its office in Bangalore on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar will conduct the workshop from 12.00 p.m. to 2.00 p.m.

Social media tools provide us with a huge opportunity to make our voices heard farther and faster. Social media campaigning has been used successfully to bring about changes that traditional campaigning methods have been unable to. Keerthana Chandrashekar will talk about successful online and offline campaigning.

Agenda for Training

Case studies of successful mobile campaigns including studies relevant for CIS programmes.
Highlighting major components in a successful mobile campaign.
Outlining general communication flow of a mobile campaign.
Presentation of a sample campaign idea.
Presentation of detail campaign flow for that campaign idea.
Campaign data analysis.

About Jhatkaa

Jhatkaa is a new advocacy group committed to building citizen power across India in effective and innovative ways. We look to organize people to rapidly respond to issues in ways that maximise their collective power in a given situation. We look to achieve this goal of mobilizing citizens through the use of digital technology which will help bridge the gap of distance and time. Some of the tools that we are looking to utilize are email, mobiles, radio, social media, etc. Our belief is that through sustained collective action, huge change is possible.

The Speakers

Keerthana Chandrashekar

Keerthana is a telecommunication engineer. She graduated in 2012 from CMR Institute of Technology, Bangalore. She was trained as a data and business analyst in Mu Sigma Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and worked there for six months before joining Jhatkaa as a campaigner. Currently she works as a campaigner and is setting up the mobile platform for Jhatkaa.

Rachita

Rachita graduated from the University of Delhi with a Bachelors in Mass Media and Mass Communications last year. Thereafter, she worked with Greenpeace India in the Digital Media Team and now works as a campaigner with Jhatkaa.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/mobile-training-workshop

The Habit of Care: Technologies of Living and Laboring Cyborgs at World Social Science Forum 2013

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T09:19:43Z

The World Social Science Forum 2013 organized by International Social Science Council will take place in Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Canada from October 13 to 15, 2013. Dr. Nishant Shah is participating in the event as a panelist and will speak on "The Habit of Care: Technologies of Living and Laboring Cyborgs".

This was published on the World Science Forum website.

Within the larger discourse around digital cultures, much attention is given to care. Care infrastructure includes physical infrastructure of access to remote spaces, regulatory and policy environments to control the digital spaces, redesigned geographies to house the new populations created by the ICT industries, and is discussed in disciplines as varied as Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change. Care Technologies find obvious resonances with the Foucaultian idea of ‘Technologies of the Self’, reminding us of the normative nature of measurement, cognition, discipline and punishment that is an inherent part of care.

The responses to Care Technologies and the Labor of Caring are not uniform. Some clearly identify the emergence of Care Technologies as a new form of alienation of labour, leading to discrimination and inequity. Others celebrate the ways in which the penetrative nature of the digital – from deep space probes to the sub-molecular conception of the human – allow us to imagine social interactions and our relationships with our own bodies in new ways.

In all the discourse around Care, there is silence about its form, function and nature. While attention is given to infrastructure, labour, politics, production and the intelligibility of care practices, we haven’t yet tried to fathom the conditions and generation of care, relegating it to the realm of the private and the subjective. Combining practice and theory, in different parts of the Global South, and inspired by gender and sexuality studies, this panel looks at Care as a Habit. We focus on the ‘care of technologies’, showing how the forced separation of care and technology needs to be revisited to look at conditions of being human, being social and being political. Working through diverse geographical and political contexts, the panel illustrates the tensions in understanding and engaging with Care and why there is a need to find new vocabularies and relationships to deal with this area.

Coordinator:

Dr. Nishant Shah

Dr. Radhika Gajjala

Organization/Institution:

Centre for Internet and Society and Bowling Green State University

Schedule:

Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - 09:00 - 10:45

Room:

520AD

Nishant Shah

Dr. Nishant Shah is the co-founder and Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. He is an International Tandem Partner at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany and a Knowledge Partner with the Hivos Knowledge Programme, The Netherlands. He is committed to producing infrastructure, frameworks and collaborations in the global south to understand and analyse the ways in which the emergence of digital technologies have shaped the contemporary social, political and cultural milieu. He edits a series of monographs on ‘Histories of Internet(s) in India’ that examine the complicated relationship that technologies have with questions of gender, sexuality, body, city, governance, archiving and gaming. He was the principle researcher for a research programme that produced the four-volume anthology ‘Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?’, examining the ways in which young people’s relationship with digital technologies produces changes in their immediate environments. Nishant is on the steering committee of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Project (USA) as well as on the Media Art Histories collective (Latvia). He is involved with the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium (Taiwan/S. Korea/Hong Kong) and the global Network of Centres for Internet and Society housed at the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, USA. He is committed to encouraging multi-stakeholder dialogue and hence regularly does public consultations and trainings for civil society and NGOs, governments, academic partners and private corporate entities. He is a regular speaker at events like Re:publica and Video Vortex and a columnist with India’s leading English language newspaper The Indian Express. His academic and research publications reflect his political stance on open access and open knowledge infrastructure and are all available for free download and distribution under open license.

Schedule Overview

Saturday, October 12
15:00-18:00 Pre-Registration

Sunday, October 13 (Day 1)
09:00-19:30 Registration
11:00-12:45 Plenary I
11:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
13:00-14:45 Panel Session 1
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 2
17:30 Opening Ceremony and Reception

Monday, October 14 (Day 2)
08:30-17:30 Registration
09:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
09:00-10:45 Panel Session 3
11:00-12:45 Plenary II
13:00-14:45 Panel Session 4
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 5
17:00-18:45 Panel Session 6
20:00 Movie Night with the NFB

Tuesday, October 15 (Day 3)
08:30-17:30 Registration
09:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
09:00-10:45 Panel Session 7
11:00-12:45 Panel Session 8
13:00-14:45 Awards Luncheon
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 9
17:00-18:45 Plenary III
18:45 Closing Ceremony and Reception

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wssf2013-october-15-2013-panel-habit-care-technologies-living-and-laboring-cyborgs

Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T08:42:56Z

In wake of the recent arrests of UP-based scholar Kanwal Bharti and Andhra-based PUCL activist Jaya Vindhyala over their Facebook posts, NDTV aired a discussion on the grey areas of the IT Act. Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui

The video was published by NDTV on August 16, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The NDTV anchor asked Pranesh that this notice — the indicator coming from the government is that nobody seems to really know what section 66A is all about...and at the end of the day we are going to make a case by case decision.

Pranesh said that:

"This not just about 66A. This is actually about rule of law. We see that the arrest of Kanwal Bharti is actually a legal arrest. It goes against a judgment of the Allahabad High Court saying that routine arrests shouldn't be made in cases where the imprisonment term is less than 7 years. He actually hasn't been charged under 66A, he was charged under the IPC. It is not just about Internet censorship. It also very much about the rule of law and that completely breaking down in India and ... people's persectives and government's perspectives many times are withering away when it comes offensive content or what they deem offensive or communal content being posted online...and if something like what Kanwal Bharti posted is actually deemed to be illegal under those provisions then lots of statements that the Prime Minister of India has said should also be deemed to be equally illegal."

Watch the full video below:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ndtv-the-social-network-mixed-signals-supreme-court-notices-to-states-on-facebook-arrests

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:20:24Z

Terms not defined in draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions leaves room for misinterpretation

The article by C.H.Unnikrishnan was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society's work on access to knowledge is mentioned.

Could the simple Latin phrase, per se, which translates as “in itself”, lead to confusion in verifying whether a computer-related invention deserves a patent or not? Some members of the $108 billion Indian information technology industry, intellectual property (IP) law firms and anti-patent lobby groups say it can.

The inclusion of some terms that are not defined by local laws in the government’s draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions (CRIs) leaves room for ambiguity and misinterpretation when examiners grant or reject such a patent, they say. The guidelines were released in early August.

The terms include ‘per se’, algorithm, hardware, firmware —and CRI itself.

CRI “has not been defined in any of the Indian statutes and is construed to mean, for the purpose of these guidelines, any invention which involves the use of computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus and includes such inventions, one or more features of which are realized wholly or partially by means of a computer programme/programmes”, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) acknowledged in the draft guidelines, and called for feedback from industry stakeholders by 8 August.

	Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent. IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se. The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent.

IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se.

The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Software, instead, is protected by the Copyright Law, similar to literary and aesthetic works.

In the feedback, a copy which was reviewed by Mint, India’s largest software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), said it “is happy to note that IPO is taking the right steps in the direction of protecting inventions...Moving from the notion of ‘Computer Implemented Invention’ to ‘Computer Related Invention’ itself is a positive shift...”

	“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback. It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback.

It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

According to Rajiv Kumar Choudhari, a lawyer specializing in IT patent law, a computer program is software ‘per se’ because there may be no transformation of data/signal/input, or there is no tangible benefit to the device if this software is run on the device. “The benefit to the device may be in terms of efficiency, or increase/decrease in certain attributes,” he said in a blog in SpicyIP where he analyzed software patenting position in India earlier.

In such cases, if the applicant fails to define the exact benefit to the device in a tangible manner, the examiner may refuse to grant a patent. In January 2012, for instance, the Delhi patent office rejected a software patent application filed by Netomat Inc., on grounds that it did not fulfil the requirement of Section 3(k).

According to section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act, “a mathematical or business method or computer programs per se or algorithms” are not inventions.

Between 2006 and 2011, the latest available data, 34,967 IT patent applications were filed with the Indian patent office. It granted about 5,594 patents during the same period.

“We hope that through this consultation (feedback) the prevailing evaluation methods for computer related inventions will become more efficient and encourage the Industry to file and protect their IP. However, we have some major concerns related to the draft guidelines,” said Nassom, the country’s software lobby body.

Overall, the guidelines appear to be “restrictive and may be a hindrance to grant of patents in India, even when such rights would be granted in other countries like Europe, Japan, etc,” said Nasscom, adding that “over a period of time”, it will discourage innovative activities from being carried out in India.

For instance, Nasscom pointed out that since the patent office has not defined ‘per se’, the phrase “computer program per se” should mean a set of instructions by itself or computer program by itself. “This meaning is generally accepted even in the UK and before the EPO (European Patent Office),” it added. The software lobby body has suggested that the scope of the “per se” limitation in Section 3(k) should be changed to cover hardware features, irrespective of whether the features are novel or not.

The guidelines, said Nasscom, seem to imply that for computer program-related claims to be allowed, the software needs to be “machine specific”, which “will unfortunately exclude patent protection for any computer-implemented invention designed to be interoperable across platforms, and not specific to a machine”.

In its feedback to the patent office, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an organization that works on Internet privacy-related issues, underscored the complexity that new technologies could introduce by citing the example of CRIs in the field of data storage.

The first compact disc (CD) was invented in 1982, the digital video disc (DVD) in 1995 and the flash drive in 1999.

“While each of these inventions was far superior to their predecessor, the time between each incremental innovation has drastically reduced,” CIS noted in its feedback

“If an invention can become obsolete in as little as 2 years, it would make little sense to grant monopoly rights for 20 years. So even if a CRI passes the three tests of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, it needs to be evaluated from the perspective of its possible obsolescence. In such a scenario, the examiner should look at the history of innovation in that particular field to ascertain that the invention does not become obsolete in a short time.”

Also consider for instance the term, “business methods”. It involves a whole gamut of activities in a commercial or industrial enterprise relating to transaction of goods or services but “the claims are at times drafted not directly as business methods but apparently with hitherto available technical features such as Internet, networks, satellites, tele-communications, etc”, the draft stated.

“The exclusions are carved out for all business methods and, therefore, if in substance the claims relate to business method even with the help of technology, they are not considered patentable,” the guidelines added.

The Japan intellectual Property Association, in its reaction to the India’s new CRI patenting guidelines, also noted that recent computers, including processors or memories, mostly do not rely on any specific programs.

“In addition, software-related inventions should be patentable originally for their functioning on the basis of novel computer programs in combination with general purpose devices. However, these computer-related inventions would be excluded from protection under the new standards for patentability,” it cautioned.

The draft guidelines “have interpreted and applied Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act 1970 in a more restrictive way to conclude as to what is patentable, which is a cause of concern to various stakeholders”, said Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in its reaction.

Software patents remain an emotive issue.

Their proponents argue that patents promote investment in research and development, accelerate software development by making previously unknown and not obvious software inventions public and protect IP of software companies. They also encourage the creation of software companies and jobs and increase the valuation of small companies, the proponents add.

Critics counter that traditional copyright has provided sufficient protection to facilitate massive investment in software development and that most software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.

Globally, patents in the IT and software sector are being revisited due to litigation and compensation claims over misuse of patents including the much-hyped patent battle of Apple Inc. with Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. with Microsoft Corp.

In June 2008, technology companies including Google, Intel Corp, Oracle Corp, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Co. set up the ‘Allied Security Trust’ to address the risk of patent-infringement suits by buying those patents which they feel are most important to their businesses.

AST has 26 members from Europe, North America and Asia. It buys patents that its members have expressed interest from the patent holder, and the cost would be deducted from those companies’ Escrow accounts. AST argues that non-practicing entities, or NPEs, also known as patent trolls, produce no products or services of their own, and yet acquire patents—sometimes hundreds of them—with the sole intention of asserting their right and conduct patent litigation to extract settlements or licensing fees.

In 2008, AST estimated that it costs operating companies an average of $3.2 million through the end of discovery and $5.2 million through trial to defend cases in which there is more than $25 million at stake.

The costs of determining if a particular piece of software infringes any issued patents are too high and the results too are uncertain. A software patent costs, on average, around $20,000, it said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-ch-unnikrishnan-dictionary-words-in-software-patent-guidelines-puzzle-industry

Text to Speech Synthesizer

praskrishna — 2014-04-01T03:31:59Z

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer (May to August 2013)

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer (March to May 2013)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/text-to-speech-synthesizer-reports