Centre for Internet and Society

May 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-06-26T01:40:33Z

The Centre for Internet & Society Newsletter for the month of May 2019

Highlights for May 2019

Omidyar Network is investing in in establishing a three-region research alliance co-led by the Institute for Technology & Society, Brazil , the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law, Kenya, and the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), India on appropriate use of Digital Identity. CIS will look at the policy objectives of digital identity projects, how technological policy choices can be thought through to meet the objectives, and how legitimate uses of a digital identity framework may be evaluated. The term Fintech is generally used to describe innovative technology and technological processes being used in the financial services sector. Vipul Kharbanda has presented a detailed analysis of RBI’s Draft Framework on Regulatory Sandbox for Fintech. Centre for Internet & Society's 'Access to Knowledge' wing (CIS-A2K) signed a MoU with PAH Solapur University, Maharashtra to promote content generation in Wikimedia projects among the institutions under University affiliation and develop a platform in the university for outreach programs on digital knowledge, language and technologies, FOSS, unicode, etc. Timely and affordable access to scientific research remains a problem in this digital day and age. Most countries including India, continue to struggle with implementing open access. The latest international initiative (created in Europe) to remedy this problem is Plan S. This has been positioned as a strategy to implement immediate open access to scientific publications from 2021 which India is considering adopting. Anubha Sinha in an article unpacks the disorderly growth of open access in India, and discusses the gap between the Plan's vision and current Indian scenario in some respects Shweta Mohandas was nominated to curate Genderlog's Twitter handle (@genderlogindia). She tweeted about topics related to gender and data, more specifically around AI, big data, privacy and surveillance. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Tim Davies co-authored a chapter titled Open Data and Land Ownership in State of Open Data book which was recently launched at World Bank. The authors have thrown light on how the lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and CIS as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada. Can data ever know who we really are? This is an excerpt from an essay by Zara Rahman, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in May:

How privacy fares in the 2019 election manifestos | Opinion (Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon; May 1, 2019).
Democracy, Digital India and Networks (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 1, 2019).
Why the TikTok ban is worrying (Gurshabad Grover; Hindustan Times; May 2, 2019).
Digital Native: Narendra Modi’s interview by Akshay Kumar is a PR masterpiece (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 5, 2019).
Will the WTO Finally Tackle the ‘Trump’ Card of National Security? (Arindrajit Basu; The Wire; May 8, 2019).
Digital Native: Three things we need to realise about what TikTok is doing to us (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 19, 2019).
Open Data and Land Ownership (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; State of Open Data; May 22, 2019).
Can EVM vulnerabilities be used to game the Indian election? (Karan Saini; Kaarana Blog; May 22, 2019).
The Huawei bogey (Gurshabad Grover; Indian Express; May 30, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Cyber criminals hide in the ‘dark web’ to remain anonymous (Tushar Kaushik; Economic Times; May 2, 2019).
BJP outspends Congress, others in social media advertising (Vidhi Choudhary; Hindustan Times; May 3, 2019).
Three emerging market think tanks to collaborate on Good ID recommendations with Omidyar backing (Chris Burt; Biometric Update; May 8, 2019).
"Aadhaar Reduced Agency in Citizens and Empowered Those in Positions of Authority" (Martin Moore; News Click; May 20, 2019).
In Parts of India, Internet Shutdowns Are a Fact of Life (Megha Bahree; Top10VPN; May 21, 2019).
Artificial Intelligence: Consumer Experiences in New Technologies (Consumer International; May 28, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Copyright & Patent

Blog Entry

Should India adopt Plan S to realise Open Access to Public-funded Scientific Research? (Anubha Sinha; May 29, 2019).

Wikipdedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Wikipedia assignments workshop for Post Graduate students in PAH Solapur University (Subodh Kulkarni; May 3, 2019).
Wikisource Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal (Subodh Kulkarni; May 26, 2019)
MoU between PAH Solapur University & CIS-A2K (Subodh Kulkarni; May 31, 2019).

Jobs

CIS-A2K team is seeking applications for the following posts:

Events

Train-the-Trainer 2019 (Organized by CIS-A2K; Vishakhapatnam; May 31 - June 2, 2019).
Wikimedia Education SAARC conference (Organized by Christ University (Deemed to be University) with the association of CIS-A2K; Christ University; Bangalore; June 20 - June 22, 2019).

Media Coverage

Ahmedabad Wikisource Workshop (Vishwavihar; May 13, 2019).
Youths come forward to augment Assamese Wikisource project (NE Now News; May 17, 2019).
Wikipedia looks to ramp up its Indian language content (Tushar Kaushik; May 28, 2019).
Project Tiger: Wikipedia ropes in locals to contribute articles in Indian languages (Tushar Kaushik; May 29, 2019).

Openness

Publication

Open Data and Land Ownership (State of Open Data; Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 22, 2019).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Digital Identity

Announcement

Announcement of a Three-Region Research Alliance on the Appropriate Use of Digital Identity (Amber Sinha; May 13, 2019).

Event Organized

Picking ‘Wholes’ - Thinking in Systems Workshop (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; May 27 - 28, 2019).

Gender

Blog Entry

Workshop on Feminist Information Infrastructure (Ambika Tandon; edited by Gurshabad Grover and designed by Saumyaa Naidu; May 9, 2019).

Free Speech

Participation in Events

Stockholm Internet Forum 2019 (Organized by Stockholm Internet Forum 2019; Stockholm; May 16 - 17, 2019). Gurshabad Grover was a panelist in the discussion on 'Influencing Internet Governance' co-organised by Article 19.
Consilience 2019 (Organized by the Law and Technology Society; National Law School of India University, Bangalore; May 25, 2019). Gurshabad Grover was a panelist on the discussion on 'Online Content Regulation: Global Perspectives and Solutions'.

Privacy

Research Paper

An Analysis of the RBI’s Draft Framework on Regulatory Sandbox for Fintech (Vipul Kharbanda; May 8, 2019).

Participation in Events

Data Empowerment And Protection Architecture (DEPA) Workshop (Organized by iSPIRT Foundation; May 18, 2019). Pranav Manjesh Bidare attended the workshop.
ABLI Privacy Workshop (Organized by Asian Business Law Institute; Singapore; May 21 - 22, 2019). Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.
HillHacks 2019 (Organized by HillHacks; Bir, Himachal Pradesh; May 24 - 26, 2019). Karan Saini was a speaker.

Artificial Intelligence

Participation in Events

Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face (Organized by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi). Radhika Radhakrishnan attended a roundtable consultation.
AI for Good Workshop (Organized by Swissnex India and Wadhwani AI; Bangalore; May 22, 2019).
MWC19 Shanghai AI and Trust in APAC and China (Organized by Digital Asia Hub; MWC Shanghai; June 27, 2019). Sunil Abraham will be making a presentation at the summit on AI and Trust in APAC and China. Sunil has been invited as a speaker on panel ‘Framing AI for Digital Upstarts’.

Cyber Security

Participation in Event

Shining light into darkness: Encouraging greater transparency of government offensive practices in cyberspace (Organized by Rights Con; Tunis; June 12, 2019). Sunil Abraham will be attending a conversation on encouraging greater transparency of government offensive practices in cyberspace.

Telecom

Article

Democracy, Digital India and Networks (Shyam Ponappa; Organizing India Blogspot; May 1, 2019).

Participation in Event

Live [Closed]: TRAI Open House Discussion on OTT Regulation - Delhi (Organized by TRAI; New Delhi; May 20, 2019). Anubha Sinha attended the event.

Researchers at Work (RAW)

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Essay

Can data ever know who we really are? (Zara Rahman; May 22, 2019).

Blog Entries

War Driving in Lhasa Vegas (Oxblood Ruffin; May 11, 2019).

#DotBharatAdoption (Dr. Amit Prakash, K.A. Dayanand, Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, Dr. V. Sridhar, and Vivek Pani; May 11, 2019).
#MaterialisingWriting (Dibyadyuti Roy, Indrani Roy, Padmini Ray Murray, and Puthiya Purayil Sneha; May 21, 2019).
The Shadow that Social Media Casts: The Doubled Offlines of Online Sociality (Karandeep Mehra; May 21, 2019).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and 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, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2019-newsletter

May 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-06-12T14:03:24Z

CIS newsletter for the month of May 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) has published a collection of stories of the impact of internet shutdowns on people's lives in the country. The stories were provided by 101 Reporters. The project was funded by Facebook and MacArthur Foundation. The report edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah can be accessed here. Anubha Sinha on behalf of CIS participated in the 36th Session of WIPO SCCR at Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018. CIS made statements on Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities, Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Limitations and Exceptions Agenda, and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. CIS was one among the 14 NGOs which circulated a letter that raised concerns about the draft Broadcasting Treaty. India's Department of Telecommunications released a draft new telecom policy, titled ‘Draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018’. Anubha Sinha wrote an analysis on this in the Wire on May 6, 2018. Singapore based Asian Business Law Institute published a compendium on “Regulation of cross-border transfer of personal data in Asia”. The compendium contains 14 detailed reports. The chapter titled Jurisdictional Report India was authored by Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok. The purpose of privacy notices and choice mechanisms is to notify users of the data practices of a system, so they can make informed privacy decisions, wrote Saumyaa Naidu in a blog post which was edited by Elonnai Hickok. Divij Joshi wrote a report that assesses the compliance of the Indian intermediary liability framework with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability, and recommends substantive legislative changes to bring the legal framework in line with the Manila Principles. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah. Data is potentially a toxic asset, if it is not collected, processed, secured and shared in the appropriate way wrote Amber Sinha in an article published in the Economic & Political Weekly. Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha wrote a report titled AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India which seeks to map the present state of use of AI in the banking and financial sector in India. The report was edited by Shyam Ponappa. Mapping was done by Shweta Mohandas. Pranav M Bidare, Sidharth Ray, and Aayush Rathi provided research assistance in preparing this report. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam focuses on updating the list of Indian citizens in the state. Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nazifa Ahmed wrote a research paper that has provided a discourse analysis of media content and user opinions on Facebook, and media responses on the NRC official website. All posts related to this study can be found here.

Highlights

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) has published a collection of stories of the impact of internet shutdowns on people's lives in the country. The stories were provided by 101 Reporters. The project was funded by Facebook and MacArthur Foundation. The report edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah can be accessed here.
Anubha Sinha on behalf of CIS participated in the 36th Session of WIPO SCCR at Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018. CIS made statements on Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities, Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Limitations and Exceptions Agenda, and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. CIS was one among the 14 NGOs which circulated a letter that raised concerns about the draft Broadcasting Treaty.
India's Department of Telecommunications released a draft new telecom policy, titled ‘Draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018’. Anubha Sinha wrote an analysis on this in the Wire on May 6, 2018.
Singapore based Asian Business Law Institute published a compendium on “Regulation of cross-border transfer of personal data in Asia”. The compendium contains 14 detailed reports. The chapter titled Jurisdictional Report India was authored by Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok.
The purpose of privacy notices and choice mechanisms is to notify users of the data practices of a system, so they can make informed privacy decisions, wrote Saumyaa Naidu in a blog post which was edited by Elonnai Hickok.
Divij Joshi wrote a report that assesses the compliance of the Indian intermediary liability framework with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability, and recommends substantive legislative changes to bring the legal framework in line with the Manila Principles. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah.
Data is potentially a toxic asset, if it is not collected, processed, secured and shared in the appropriate way wrote Amber Sinha in an article published in the Economic & Political Weekly.
Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha wrote a report titled AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India which seeks to map the present state of use of AI in the banking and financial sector in India. The report was edited by Shyam Ponappa. Mapping was done by Shweta Mohandas. Pranav M Bidare, Sidharth Ray, and Aayush Rathi provided research assistance in preparing this report.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam focuses on updating the list of Indian citizens in the state. Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nazifa Ahmed wrote a research paper that has provided a discourse analysis of media content and user opinions on Facebook, and media responses on the NRC official website. All posts related to this study can be found here.

Articles:

The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).

India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).
India's Data Protection Framework Will Need to Treat Privacy as a Social and Not Just an Individual Good (Amber Sinha; Economic & Political Weekly, Volume 53, Issue No. 18, 05 May, 2018).
Digital Native: Web of Wander (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 20, 2018).

CIS in the News:

India's National ID Project Brings Pain to Those it Aims to Help (Aayush Soni; Ozy.com; May 11, 2018).
Aadhaar Remains an Unending Security Nightmare for a Billion Indians (Karan Saini; Wire; May 11, 2018).
More errors in Aadhaar data in Andhra Pradesh than in voter database (U Sudhakar Reddy; Times of India; May 18, 2018).
Putting women human rights activists on the world map (Sarumathi K.; Hindu; May 19, 2018).
An open data ecosystem can boost India's GDP by $22 B and double farmer income (Sohini Mitter; Your Story; May 23, 2018).
Complying with Europe’s GDPR will be a “matter of survival” for Indian IT firms (Ananya Bhattacharya; Quartz India; May 24, 2018).
Don't blindly forward WhatsApp messages. You could be sued (Rajitha Menon and Surupasree Sarmmah; Deccan Herald; May 29, 2018).
Alexa’s recording leak in US ‘echoes’ privacy issues here (Mugdha Variyar; Economic Times; May 29, 2018).
Election Experiment Proves Facebook Just Doesn't Care About Fake News In India (Visvak; Huffington Post; May 30, 2018).
India Proposes Law to Give Indians Complete Control of their Digital Health Data (Madhur Singh; India Spend; May 31, 2018).
Patanjali's Kimbho swiftly retreats over security scare, ripped on Twitter (Alnoor Peermohamed and Manavi Kapur; Business Standard; May 31, 2018).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

CIS participated in the 36th SCCR held in Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018 and made the following statements:

Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2018).
NGOs circulate letter at WIPO SCCR/36 raising serious concerns about draft Broadcasting Treaty (Anubha Sinha; May 29, 2018).
Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
Statement on the Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
Statement on Limitations and Exceptions Agenda (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).

Participation in Event

RightsCon Toronto 2018 (Organized by RightsCon; Beanfield Centre at Exhibition Place, Toronto; May 17, 2018). Maggie Huang, Amba Kak, Rohini Lakshané, Vidushi Marda, Elonnai Hickok and Anubha Sinha were among the speakers at the event. Amber Sinha remotely participated in a private meeting on 'Strategizing Civil Society Roles in the Artificial Intelligence Debate'. Anubha Sinha, Maggie Huang, Rohini Lakshané and Vidushi Marda presented their findings from the Pervasive Technologies project in a panel titled "Cheap and Chipper: IP in India's Affordable Smartphones". Prof Michael Geist moderated the session. Anubha Sinha and Vidushi Marda participated remotely. Elonnai Hickok participated in these sessions: IDRC cyber policy meeting; GNI board meeting; GNI learning session on MLATs; FOC-AN meeting; GNI session on Intermediary Liability.

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Internet Governance
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►Privacy

Reports

Methods workshop on researching Future of Work in India (Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi; May 10, 2018).
AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India (Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; May 14, 2018)
Indian Intermediary Liability Regime: Compliance with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability (Divij Joshi; May 20, 2018). The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah.
Jurisdictional Report India (Compendium on Regulation of Cross-Border Transfers of Personal Data in Asia; Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok; May 31, 2018).

Blog Entry

Design Concerns in Creating Privacy Notices (Saumyaa Naidu; May 29, 2018). The blog post was edited by Elonnai Hickok.

Participation in Events

Meeting of Coalition for an Inclusive Approach on the Trafficking Bill (Organized by Alternative Law Forum; Bengaluru; May 3, 2018).
Fairness, Transparency and Accountable AI (Organized by DeepMind; London; May 10, 2018). Amber Sinha participated remotely in the inaugural meeting.
Rootconf 2018 (Organized by HasGeek; Bengaluru; May 11 - 12, 2018). Gurshabad Grover, Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi attended the event.
Inter Movements Open Forum: Trafficking Bill (Organized by Sangram, Naz Foundation, NNSW, Tarshi and VAMP; India International Centre, New Delhi; May 18, 2018).
IETF Indian Community Meetup: RFCs We Love (IoT edition) (Organized by Indian IETF Community; Zoomcar's office; Bengaluru; May 19, 2018). Gurshabad Grover and Sandeep Kumar attended 'RFCs We Love Meetup'.
Emerging Technologies: Issues & Way Forward (Organized by Technology Policy team at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; Bengaluru; May 23 - 24, 2018).
Privacy in the Digital Age: Addressing Common Challenges, Seizing Opportunities (Organized by DG Justice and Consumers and European Union; New Delhi; May 25, 2018).

►Free Speech and Expression

Report

Internet Shutdown Stories (Edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah; Foreword by Sunil Abraham; May 17, 2018). Case studies from the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, West Bengal, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Uttar Pradesh have been highlighted in this compilation.

Blog Entry

DIDP Request #30 - Enquiry about the employee pay structure at ICANN (Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna; May 26, 2018).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Articles

The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).
India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).

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Researchers at Work
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Draft Research Paper

Infrastructure as Digital Politics: Media Practices and the Assam NRC Citizen Identification Project (Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nafiza Ahmed; May 15, 2018).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2018-newsletter-1

May 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-06-17T02:46:03Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for May 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS compiled a report that highlighted four government projects run by various government departments that have made sensitive personal financial information and Aadhaar numbers public on the project websites. Article 19 had put out a call for applications for its Internet of Rights Fellowship in February 2017. Vidushi Marda was selected for Internet of Rights Fellowship. CIS gave inputs on a document on implementing digital accessibility to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on May 2, 2017. The 34th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was held in Geneva from May 1 to 5, 2017. Anubha Sinha participated in the event and a summary report is available here. She made statements on behalf of CIS on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment. CIS-A2K’s widely well-regarded flagship skill building program, Train The Trainer and MediaWiki Training was conducted in Kolkata earlier this year. Tito Dutta captured the developments in a blog post. Although it has made the topographic maps or the Open Series Maps available to general public, Survey of India’s (SoI) Nakshe portal will have to go through a variety of litmus test, as the initiative fails to implement the mandates of public sharing of government data using open standards and open license as put forward by the NMP 2005 and NDSAP 2012, said Sumandro Chattapadhyay in an interview with Geospatial World on May 02, 2017. In an interview with nettime.org, Geert Lovink discussed with Ramesh Srinivasan Tech Anthropology Today and "how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins". In an article published in the Business Standard on May 3, 2017, Shyam Ponappa examined whether policies can be better framed to harness the market potential. Why is so much investment flowing into India's securities markets?

CIS in the news:

130 Million Aadhaar Numbers Were Made Public, Says New Report (The Wire; May 1, 2017 and MensXP.com; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar Details Of 13.5 Crore People Available On Government Sites (Mahima Kapoor; Bloomberg Quint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (Press Trust of India; May 2, 2017).
Details of 135 million Aadhaar card holders may have leaked, claims CIS report (Hindustan Times; May 2, 2017).
UIDAI remains silent on #Aadhaarleaks of 13 crore users through government portals (Shruti Menon; Newslaundry; May 2, 2017).
১৩ কোটি আধার তথ্য ফাঁস চার সরকারি পোর্টাল থেকে! বিস্ফোরক দাবি রিপোর্টে (Amar Bazar Patrika; May 2, 2017).
13 crore Aadhaar numbers on four government websites compromised: Report (Akram Mohammed; New Indian Express; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (DNA; May 2, 2017).
Biggest blast on Aadhaar leak so far: govt sites leaked data of 13 crore people (Jikku Varghese Jacob; Manorama; May 2, 2017).
Around 13 crore Aadhaar numbers easily available on government portals, says report (Scroll.in; May 2, 2017).
What privacy? 13 crore Aadhaar numbers accessible on government portals (Anusha Ravi; Oneindia; May 2, 2017).
Govt may have made 135 million Aadhaar numbers public: CIS report (Komal Gupta; Livemint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (The Times of India; May 2, 2017)
Aadhaar data leaks not from UIDAI: Centre (Krishnadas Rajagopal; Hindu; May 3, 2017).
135 MEELLION Indian government payment card details leaked (Richard Chirgwin; The Register; May 3, 2017).
Aadhaar data of over 13 crore people exposed: New report (Indian Express; May 3, 2017).
In The Biggest Data Leak, Info Of 13 Crore Aadhaar Card Holders Has Been Compromised And Is Available Online (Bobins Abraham; The Times of India; May 3, 2017).
Around 130-135M Aadhaar Numbers published on 4 sites alone (Nikhil Pahwa; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar's the largest biometric database globally but it is leaky by design (Rohith Jyotish; Global Voices; May 2, 2017 and Business Standard; May 5, 2017).
Why Aadhaar leaks should worry you, and is biometrics really safe? (Rakesh Mehar; Newsminute; May 4, 2017).
Indian Government says it is still drafting privacy law, but doesn’t give timelines (Vivek Pai; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
आधार नंबर, नाम, पता, बैंक अकाउंट और दूसरी संवेदनशील जानकारियां लीक: CIS रिपोर्ट (Aaj Tak; May 4, 2017).
With digitisation at the forefront, government departments need to be cautious about digital security (Manas Pratap Singh; NDTV; May 4, 2017).
Kashmir: Telecom firms struggle to block 22 banned social media sites (Aijaz Hussain; Livemint; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar data of 130 millions, bank account details leaked from govt websites: Report (India Today; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar: Are a billion identities at risk on India's biometric database (Soutik Biswas; BBC News; May 4, 2017 and Rawlson King; Biometric Update.com; May 5, 2017).
135 million aadhaar details, 100 million bank accounts "leaked" from government websites: Researchers (Counterview; May 5, 2017).
Suicide videos: Facebook beefs up team to monitor content (Kim Arora; The Times of India; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar assurances fail to assuage privacy concerns (Anirban Sen; Livemint; May 5, 2017).
A 13-year-old's rape in TN highlights the major threat online sexual grooming poses to children (Priyanka Thirumurthy; May 6, 2017).
Experts stress on need for enhanced security (New Indian Express; May 6, 2017).
Taking Cognisance of the Deeply Flawed System That Is Aadhaar (Shreyashi Roy; Wire; May 10, 2017).
Plug data leak before imposing Aadhaar (Deccan Herald; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar data leak: Take precautions while sharing info on websites, MEITy tells all depts (Indian Express; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar security: Here's how your private information can be protected (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 11, 2017).
Online Trolls Attack Critics of India's Aadhaar State ID System (Rohith Jyothish; Global Voices; May 31, 2017).
India is building a biometric database for 1.3 billion people — and enrollment is mandatory (Shashank Bengali; Los Angeles Times; May 12, 2017).
Watch: Aadhaar has become a whipping boy: Nandan Nilekani (Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan; Business Standard; May 13, 2017).
Partnership on AI Adds Corporate, NGO Members, Charts Initial Course (Benjamin Romano; Xconomy; May 16, 2017).
WannaCry: ATMs not to shut down, clarifies RBI, but how safe are our machines? (Soumya Chatterjee; May 16, 2017).
Google, Facebook's AI group adds new members (Jens Meyer; Axios; May 16, 2017).
22 companies join Partnership on AI, begin to study AI's impact on work and society (Alison DeNisco; TechRepublic; May 17, 2017).
Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony and others join the grand AI partnership club (CIOL; May 17, 2017).
IT companies in Bengaluru on high alert over WannaCry ransomware (Kiran Parashar K M & Shruthi H M; New Indian Express; May 17, 2017).
Partnership on AI adds new organizations to its network (Madison Moore; Software Development Times; May 17, 2017).
Intel, eBay, SAP, Salesforce y Sony colaborarán en inteligencia artificial (Monica Tilves; Silicon; May 17, 2017).
22 nieuwe leden voor Partnership on AI (Telecom Paper; May 17, 2017).
Provide hacker details, outfit that claimed data leak told (Mahendra Singh; The Times of India; May 18, 2017).
UIDAI asks Centre for Internet & Society to provide hacker details (Mahendra Singh; Economic Times; May 18, 2017).
Hack exposes Zomato's weak protection of customer data, say Cyber experts (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; May 19, 2017).
What’s Hard To Digest About The Zomato Hacking (Aayush Ailawadi; Bloomberg Quint; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI puts posers to CIS over Aadhaar data leak claim (Press Trust of India and Financial Express; May 19, 2017).
Faking it on WhatsApp: How India's favourite messaging app is turning into a rumour mill (Samarth Bansal; Hindustan Times; May 19, 2017).
Debate over #Aadhaar Turns Nasty as Critics Accuse Supporters of Online Trolling (Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprahasta; The Wire; May 19, 2017).
Hacker steals 17 million Zomato users’ data, briefly puts it on dark web (Kim Arora and Digbijay Mishra with inputs from Ranjani Ayyar; The Times of India; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI goes after org that disclosed government departments were releasing Aadhaar data (Nikhil Pahwa; May 19, 2017).
Developer releases WannaCry key-recovery tool for Windows XP (Cirilo Laguardia; Hoyen TV; May 20, 2017).
Will Aadhaar leaks be used as an excuse to shut out scrutiny of welfare schemes? (Anumeha Yadav; Scroll.in; May 20, 2017).
Microsoft says WannaCry ransomware must be a wake-up call for governments (Journaldu Maghreb; May 20, 2017).
Noida cyber cell gives tips on preventing WannaCry attack (Juana McKenzie; World News Journal; May 20, 2017).
Chinese state media says U.S. should take some blame for cyber attack (Ellis Neal; Villages Suntimes; May 21, 2017).
Zomato hack: You need to enhance online security with a password manager (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 23, 2017).
Sharad Sharma Apologises for Trolling Aadhaar Critics; Unmasking Ispirit's Controversial Trolling Program (Shweta Modgil; Inc 42; May 23, 2017).
iSpirt's Sharad Sharma: Sorry, I trolled Aadhaar critics (Shalina Pillai and Anand J; The Times of India; May 24, 2017).
Sharad Sharma's case shows how rampant troll culture has become under Modi (Catch News; May 25, 2017).
Aadhaar Card: One Identity, Multiple Disorders (Gaurav Raj; India Saga; May 25, 2017).
Tweets from the afterlife (Heena Khandelwal; DNA; May 28, 2017).
BBMP faces ire for publishing pourakarmikas' Aadhaar details on website (Bharat Joshi; Economic Times; May 29, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Aadhaar Case: Beyond Privacy, An Issue of Bodily Integrity (Amber Sinha and Aradhya Sethia; Quint; May 1, 2017).
Digital native: Free speech? You must be joking! (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 14, 2017).
Digital native: Look before you (digitally) leap (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 28, 2017).

-------------------------------------
Accessibility & Inclusion
-------------------------------------
India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

Comments on the draft Policy on IT Accessibility for People with Disabilities (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 19, 2017).

►Copyright

Blog Entries

34th SCCR: A Summary Report (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Proposal for Analysis of Copyright related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).

Participation in Event

Fixing Copyright for Education (SCCR34 Side Event) (Hosted by Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; May 5, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar (Pavan Santhosh; May 1, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics (Subodh Kulkarni; May 1, 2017).
Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District (Subodh Kulkarni; May 4, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; May 10, 2017).
Train The Trainer 2017 (Manasa Rao; May 10, 2017).
Continuing community engagement: Communities of interest and Quarrying (Manasa Rao; May 19, 2017).
Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India (Ting-Yi Chang; May 22, 2017).
MediaWiki Training 2017 (Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray; May 23, 2017).
Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata (Tito Dutta; May 23, 2017).

Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of May.

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Blog Entry

SoI’s Open Series Maps Fails to Implement Public Sharing of Govt Data (Geospatial World; May 4, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was interviewed.

-----------------------------------

Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Freedom of Speech and Expression

Submission

Comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement (Vidushi Marda with inputs from Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham; May 31, 2017).

Event Organized

Communication Design and Visualising Information (CIS, Bengaluru; May 5, 2017). Saumyaa conducted a session on the broad principles of communication design and visualising information.

Participation in Events

World Press Freedom Day 2017 (UNESCO and the Digital Empowerment Foundation; New Delhi; May 3, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari participated in the event.
Consilience 2017 - A Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (Organized by National Law School of India University; May 20, 2017). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report (Srinivs Kodali and Amber Sinha; May 2, 2017).

Blog Entry

(Updated) Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information (Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali; May 1, 2017).

Events Organized

Stand Shielded of Digital Rights (CIS; New Delhi; May 5, 2017). Amutha Arunachalam gave a talk.
Meeting on Proactive Disclosure and Personal Data (CIS; New Delhi; May 13, 2017).

Participation in Events

4th National Standards Conclave Evolving a Comprehensive National Strategy for Standards Sectoral and Regional Inclusiveness (Organized by Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Industry; May 1 - 2, 2017).
Stockholm Internet Forum 2017 (Organized by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; Stockholm; May 15 to 18, 2017). Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session, "Private sector and civil society collaboration to advance freedom online".
Open house on information breaches (Organized by Has Geek; Bengaluru; May 26, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari was a speaker.
T20 Germany and Beyond: Digital Economy (Organized by GIZ and EPF; May 29 - 30, 2017). Elonnai Hickok participated in a round-table discussion.

-----------------------------------

Telecom
-----------------------------------
CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

Policies to Sustain India's Market (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 3, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; May 4, 2017).

-----------------------------------
Researchers at Work
-----------------------------------
The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Blog Entry

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar (Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan; nettime.org; May 16, 2017).

Participation in Event

Consultative Meeting for a Digital Archive Lab (Organized by Ambedkar University, New Delhi; May 20, 2017). P.P. Sneha participated in the meeting.

-----------------------------------

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2017-newsletter

May 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2016-06-10T19:34:10Z

Welcome to the May 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS along with 20 other organisations petitioned the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information Technology to bring in accessibility considerations within the draft Procurement Bill. Pavishka Mittal wrote a blog post on the legality and implications of the Reserve Bank of India's proposed classification of Peer-to-Peer lending companies as non-banking financial institutions. The sixth section of our extended survey of digital initiatives in the practice of arts and humanities in India is now online. The final report will be published serially, and will comprise seven sections in total. CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore how we study the Internet in India today. Please send the abstracts (no more than 200 words) to raw@cis-india.org by Sunday, June 12, 2016. CIS will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on Monday, June 20, 2016. CIS filed RTI applications seeking information from institutes such as IIM Bangalore; NLU Jodhpur; NLSIU; IIT Kanpur; IIT Kharagpur; NALSAR; NUJS; Delhi University; and IIM Ahmedabad. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg wrote an article for the Wire in which they analyzed the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. They argue that the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and hindering other opportunities offered by maps. CIS sent its comments on the Draft New ICANN By-Laws in which it observed that the draft by-laws are overwrought and that rather than producing a broad constitutional document for ICANN the by-laws read like the worst of governmental regulations and create more problems than they solve.

CIS in the News

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

Exercise to correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (The Hindu; April 28, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website on May 1, 2016.

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5 (Mathrubhumi; May 1, 2016).
Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil (The Times of India; May 5, 2016).
Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam' (New Indian Express; May 6, 2016).

Why India’s attempt to police digital maps and satellite images is a ‘dumb’ idea (News Minute; May 6, 2016).
Google, Apple and Microsoft may need licence for satellite mapping in India (Aman Sharma and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; May 9, 2016).
Geospatial Info Regulation Bill will hurt start-ups, small firms (Varun Aggarwal; Hindu BusinessLine; May 10, 2016).
Why The New Government Policy Mandating Panic Buttons On Phones Isn’t Going To Protect Women (The Ladies Finger; May 14, 2016).
India's Proposed Map Law Prompts Outcry (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 17, 2016).
Suckfly Attacks National Stock Exchange Tech Vendor, Among Others (Rohit Pathak; The Quint; May 21, 2016).
India Seeks to Limit Use of Maps and Satellite Images (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 27, 2016).
How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities (The Times of India; May 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; February 2016). The post was mirrored in Global Voices. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian.
A Large Byte of Your Life (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 3, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.

A four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia (Sailesh Patnaik; Opensource.com; April 15, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website recently.
Online Censorship on the Rise: Why I Prefer to Save Things Offline (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.
Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 8, 2016).

Wikipedia’s 15th birthday inspires Bangla translators; Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (Nahid Sultan and Shailesh Patnaik; Wikimedia Blog; May 9, 2016).

Identity of the Aadhaar Act: Supreme Court and the Money Bill Question (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; May 9, 2016).
Criminal Defamation and the Supreme Court’s Loss of Reputation (Bhairav Acharya; The Wire; May 14, 2016).
Before Geospatial Bill: A Long History of Killing the Map in Order to Protect the Territory (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg; The Wire; May 16, 2016).
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; The Wire; May 17, 2016).
Women's Safety? There is an App for That (Rohini Lakshané; Gender IT.org; May 19, 2016).

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଏନସାଇକ୍ଲୋପିଡ଼ିଆ "ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ" ବିକାଶ ପାଇଁ ଏକାଠି ହେଲେ ପୁରୀର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀ (Subhashish Panigrahi; YourStory Odia, May 20, 2016).

Celebrating 13 Years of the Kannada-language Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; DNA; May 22, 2016).
Modi’s New Intellectual Property Rights Policy Will Only Benefit Players with Deep Pockets (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2016).

►NVDA and eSpeak

May 2016 Report

►Other

Accessible ICT Procurement (Pranesh Prakash; May 9, 2016).

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

CIS gathered information from various educational institutions in response to several RTI applications. All of these have been published as different blog posts:

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from JNU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kharagpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NALSAR (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NUJS (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Delhi University (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Ahmedabad (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 17, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Bangalore (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 21, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLU, Jodhpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 26, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLSIU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 27, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kanpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 31, 2016).

Nisha S. Kumar assisted in the preparation of all these documents.

Participation in Event

National Confererence on Competition & IPR in ICT, Telecom and Mobile Sets (Organized by CMAI; May 18, 2016; Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi). Rohini Lakshané and Anubha Sinha attended this conference.

Other Blog Entry

Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; May 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Images and Links Matter Quality (Rahmanuddin Shaik; May 4, 2016).
Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles (Tito Dutta; May 9, 2016).
Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; May 19, 2016). Ananth Subray contributed to this blog.

-----------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Freedom of Expression

Submission and Comment

Comments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards (Amber Sinha; May 28, 2016).
Submission by the Centre for Internet and Society on Draft New ICANN By-laws (Pranesh Prakash, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Swati Muthukumar with inputs from Sunil Abraham; May 30, 2016).

Blog Entry

Criminal Defamation Remains and so does the Debate (Japreet Grewal; May 19, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Privacy Issues with DRM (Jalaj Pandey; May 3, 2016).

Event Organized

Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges (Organized by Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU and CIS; May 26 - 27, 2016; New Delhi). The event was supported by the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Free Software Movement of India, Knowledge Commons, PEACE, and Center for Advancement of Public Understanding of Science & Technology.

Announcement

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 20, 2016).

Blog Entries

New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice (P.P. Sneha; May 19, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Summary (Pavishka Mittal; May 18, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Legality and Implications (Pavishka Mittal; May 23, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Data Security and Privacy Concerns (Vipul Kharbanda; May 31, 2016).

-----------------------------------
About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2016-newsletter

May 2015 Report

praskrishna — 2015-06-19T15:57:17Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/may-2015-report.pdf

May 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T04:59:03Z

Our newsletter for the month of May is below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the fifth issue of the newsletter (May) for the year 2014. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

We have published a summary of the various landmark judgments given by the Supreme Court and some of the high courts in a blog post as part of our National Resource Kit project.
CIS submitted its comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines to the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.
The Access to Knowledge team from CIS has signed a memorandum of understanding with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College to introduce “Indian Language Wikipedias in the Indian Under Graduate and Post Graduate Classroom”.
Sunil Abraham wrote an article “Net Freedom Campaign Loses its Way” in the Hindu Businessline which analyses the recently concluded NETMundial.
Divij Joshi gives a comparative analysis of the United States of America and India with regards to search and seizure and the right to privacy in digital age.
Anirudh Sridhar has produced an essay “Binary Code Invades the Universal Problematic” looks at language as an archive and posits, through a reading of Foucault, Derrida, Saussure and Jakobson that the means of perceiving language in the digital has changed.
As part of its Making Change project CIS is holding a public exhibition of stories of change from all over Asia, where the first of its Production Sprints will take place. The exhibition will be held at CIS office in Bangalore on June 7, 2014.
Earlier this year (February 11 – 17) we organized the second Institute on Internet in Pune. A draft of the Knowledge Repository on Internet Access was presented at the event. We are uploading digital versions of the repository for archival purposes. Three units (The Body in Cyberspace, Access to Knowledge and Openness) have been published.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the first draft of the kit (29 states and 6 union territories). The chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for May (by Suman Dogra, May 31, 2014).

National Resource Kit

Blog Entry

Summary of Judgements on Disability Rights (by CLPR, May 15, 2014).

Other

Blog Entries

The Road to Financial Inclusion (by Amba Salelkar, May 12, 2014).
Open House with George Abraham: Mainstreaming Persons with Disabilities (by Anandhi Viswanathan, May 22, 2014).

Event Organized

An Open House Session with George Abraham (co-organized by Ashoka India and CIS, Ashoka-Innovators for the Public, Bangalore, May 21, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Submission

Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (by Sunil Abraham and Nehaa Chaudhari, May 28, 2014). The comments were submitted to the NMEICT, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

Blog Entry

France, Greece, India and the European Union Sign the Marrakesh Treaty (by Nehaa Chaudhari, May 2, 2014).

Participation in Event

OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference (co-organized by Web Foundation, World Bank, and UKP-PPP, Bali, May 6 – 7, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session on “Open Data in Asia-Pacific: a Cross-Country Learning Discussion”.

Media Coverage

WIPO: Scope and rights of potential broadcasting treaty clarified (by Alexandra Bhattacharya, SUNS – South-North Development Monitor, May 5, 2014 and cross-posted in Third World Network, May 6, 2014).
At WIPO, Authors, Civil Society Watchful of Rights for Broadcasters (by Catherin Saez, IP Watch, May 1, 2014).
Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1) (by Michael Canares, Open Government Partnership, May 6, 2014 and cross-posted in Open Data Research Network, May 27, 2014).

Wikipedia

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation:

Announcement

CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, May 27, 2014): to introduce “Indian Language Wikipedias in the Indian Under Graduate and Post Graduate Classroom”. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on April 21, 2014.

Articles

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, May 2, 2014).
GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGLAM, May 27, 2014).
Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Open Education Working Group, May 27, 2014).

Event Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop (co-organized by CIS-A2K and the Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi, May 25, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

Wikipedia in UG Education program at Christ University (Prajavani, May 15, 2014).
Subhashish Panigrahi joins Open GLAM Working Group: Subhashish recently joined the OpenGLAM Working Group (a global network of people who work to open up cultural data and content.) as a member and OpenGLAM Local (a local affiliate of OKFN's OpenGLAM project) as an ambassador for India. Both the positions will be voluntary.

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

FOEX Live

As part of our MacArthur project on free speech and expression we are posting a selection of news from across India implicating online freedom of expression and use of digital technology:

News Compilation

May 26-27, 2014; May 28-29, 2014

Articles

Net Freedom Campaign Loses its Way (by Sunil Abraham, Hindu Businessline, May 10, 2014).
Networks: What You Don’t See is What You (for)Get (by Nishant Shah, DML Central, April 17, 2014 and cross-posted in Hybrid Publishing Lab, May 13, 2014).

Blog Entries

European Court of Justice rules Internet Search Engine Operator responsible for Processing Personal Data Published by Third Parties (by Jyoti Panday, May 14, 2014).
Net Neutrality, Free Speech and the Indian Constitution – III: Conceptions of Free Speech and Democracy (by Gautam Bhatia, May 18, 2014).

Participation in Events

Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference 2 (organized by Yale Law School, May 2-4, 2014). Pranesh Prakash participated as a discussant in the session “Speech and Safety Laboratories”.
Re:publica 2014: Looking for Freedom (organized by Re:publica in partnership with DAIMLER, Global Innovation Gathering, Microsoft and Science: Lab, Berlin, May 6 – 8, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker at the session “The Architecture of Invisible Censorship: How Digital and Meatspace Censorship Differ”.
Does Size Matter? A Tale of Performing Welfare, Producing Bodies and Faking Identity (organized by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, May 13, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk on “Does Size Matter? A Tale of Performing Welfare, Producing Bodies and Faking Identity”.
The Future of Cyber Governance (organized by Hague Institute for Global Justice in association with the Observer Research Foundation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands, and the Netherlands Institute for International Relations – Clingendael, The Hague, May 13 – 15, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session “Do users of major social media platforms have adequate protection of their rights to privacy and freedom of expression?” and “Expert Panel on the Future of Cyber Governance”.
WSIS+10 High-Level Event: Open Consultation Process (organized by ITU, UNESCO, United Nations and UNDP, WIPO Conference Room, Geneva, May 28 – 31, 2014). Jyoti Panday participated in this event.

Event Organized

National Elections 2014: How Technology Powered Campaigns (organized by HasGeek and CIS, Bangalore, May 23, 2014). Vijay Grover, founder of Bangalore Media Foundation, Viral Shah, part of Nandan Nilekani's campaign management team, and BG Mahesh, founder and managing director at Oneindia.in, made presentations.

Privacy

Articles

Filtering content on the internet (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, May 6, 2014).
Legislating for Privacy - Part II (by Bhairav Acharya, The Hoot, May 20, 2014).

Blog Entry

Search and Seizure and the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age: A Comparison of US and India (by Divij Joshi, May 31, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Civil Society Pushes for Privacy Panel (by Laxmi Ajai Prasanna, The Times of India, May 6, 2014).
Students lead the way with apps for ideas (by Sruthy Susan Ullas, The Times of India, May 21, 2014).
India needs better cyber police (by Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, May 23, 2014).
Digital death: Log off in peace (by Purnima Sharma, The Times of India, May 25, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is 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 Entry

Binary Code Invades the Universal Problematic (by Anirudh Sridhar, May 26, 2014).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

An Infrastructure Road Map (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, April 30, 2014 and Organizing India Blogspot, May 1, 2014).

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

As part of our research (with Ford Foundation) on the origins of the Internet in India, its impact on the Indian GDP and topics and debates surrounding the Internet in today's world we published the following units:

The Body in Cyberspace (by Nishant Shah, May 13, 2014).
Access to Knowledge (by Anirudh Sridhar, May 22, 2014).
Openness (by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Anirudh Sridhar, May 30, 2014).

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
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@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. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2014-bulletin

May 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-13T11:51:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fifth issue of its newsletter for 2013. We bring you an overview of our research, report of events held by us and announcement of upcoming ones, events we participated in, and recent media coverage.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
CIS is now 5 years old and we just celebrated this by holding an open exhibition in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, showcasing our work and accomplishments over the period. We had about 170 visitors from the general public coming in to our office. Renowned artists like Tara Kelton, Kiran Subbaiah, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra and Sharath Chandra Ram exhibited their work. The four day event attracted press coverage: Bangalore Mirror (May 18, 2013), DNA (May 19, 2013), Hindu (May 22, 2013), Prajavani (May 23, 2013), Udayavani (May 25, 2013) and Bangalore Mirror (May 31, 2013). Download all posters that were part of the exhibition here.

Google Policy Fellowship
CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India fellow who will be selected by July 1, 2013. The Fellowship focus areas include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and other similar organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Sikkim and Odisha:

The Sikkim Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, May 30, 2013).
The Odisha Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, May 31, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Banking Accessibility

Survey on Banking Accessibility (by Vrinda Maheshwari, May 30, 2013). G3ict is a survey on accessibility of financial services in banks for persons with disabilities around the world. The survey is available here.

Event Organised

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. 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 (Wikipedia)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one team member Nitika Tandon who is working from Delhi office. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer has left the organisation. April 24, 2013 was her last working day.

Announcements

Access to Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014): CIS has announced its detailed plan detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.
WMF-A2K Revised Budget (draft) and Utilization (Sept 2012 - Feb 2013): In our effort to increase transparency with the working of CIS-A2K programme, we are sharing with you the A2K Programme Budget along with the Utilization for the period Sept. 2012 to February 2013. The proposed revisions to the budget along with some notes are here.
WMF-A2K Grant Budget and Utilization (Sept 2012 – February 2013): CIS has given an open disclosure of the Access to Knowledge budget to Wikimedia India and the global community.
CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai: has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions.
India Access to Knowledge IRC can be accessed here: May 13, 2013 (All Language Discussion) and May 26, 2013 (Odia Language Discussion).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 11, 2013).
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians (by Nitika Tandon, May 20, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 30, 2013).

Event Organised

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (April 29, 2013, Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led the workshop and gave a talk on Kannada Wikipedia

Event Participated In

Kannada IRC Meet (organised by the Wikipedia Community, May 7, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Upcoming Event

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Press Coverage

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Prajavani (Prajavani, May 23, 2013). Prajavani published a report of Dr. U.B. Pavanja’s talk “From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada”.
CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Udayavani (Udayavani, May 25, 2013). Udayavani published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)
Blog Entry

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit (by Ujwala Uppaluri, May 27, 2013).

Openness
Research Papers

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers (by Subbiah Gunasekharan and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 27, 2013).
Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings (by Madhan Muthu and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 28, 2013).

Comments

Draft ICAR Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, May 28, 2013). The comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Event Hosted

RHoK Global Event (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, June 1 – 2, 2013). A report of the event would be published soon.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. We began two new projects earlier this year. The first one, with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression and the second one with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto on mapping of cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia:

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

An Interview with Christopher Soghoian (May 28, 2013).

Upcoming Event

The Geopolitics of Information Controls: A Presentation by Masashi Crete-Nishihata (TERI, Bangalore, June 19, 2013).

Privacy

Comparative Analysis of DNA Profiling Legislations from Across the World (by Srinivas Atreya, May 23, 2013).

Events Co-organised

3rd Privacy Round Table meeting (co-organised with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Data Security Council of India, Chennai, May 18, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event and gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations.
Consilience – 2013 (co-organised with the Law and Technology Committee of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 25, 2013).

Events Participated In

ICT, Law and Innovation: Recent Developments, Challenges and Lessons Learned (organised by Bilgi University, Istanbul, May 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker on the Internet Governance panel at Towards a Global Network of Internet and Society Centres.
India’s Politics of Free Expression (co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Centre, Free Speech Debate, the Oxford India Society and Ideas for India Oxbridge Exchange, May 31, 2013 at Nissan Lecture Theatre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Lectures on 'India's Politics of Free Expression'.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, Mumbai (Mayfair Banquets, Mumbai, June 15, 2013).

Blog Entry

The Surveillance Industry in India: At Least 76 Companies Aiding Our Watchers! (by Maria Xynou, May 2, 2013).

Media Coverage

Sex on-the-go (by Anand Holla, Mumbai Mirror, May 4, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
CIS anniversary (Hindu Business Line, May 5, 2013).
Central Monitoring System to make government privy to phone calls, text messages and social media conversations (by Indu Nandakumar, May 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Messaging apps find another foe in India’s market regulator (Quartz, May 8, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
India's Rs 400-crore Central Monitoring System to snoop on all communication (Tech 2, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is India's government becoming Big Brother? (by Talia Ralph and Jason Overdorf, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Worldwide Playground (Telegraph, May 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
NGO invites public to peruse its accounts (by Vandana Kamath, May 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham (by Anirban Sen, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
A lifetime of five years on the internet (by Subir Ghosh, DNA, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
CIS highlights changes ushered in by the Internet (Hindu, May 22, 2013).
Burma to host first Internet freedom forum (by Chan Myae Khine, Asian Correspondent, May 22, 2013).
INET Bangkok to Explore Internet’s Impact on Thailand’s Economy and Society (BusinessWire, May 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is participating in this conference.
Shooting cyber cafes before they die (by Bangalore Mirror, May 31, 2013). CIS’s film on Cyber Cafes is mentioned in this article.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project on Internet Access. It covers the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access and will touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). The agenda for the event has been finalised.

The following unit was published recently:

Network Connections and Modes of Access (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, May 30, 2013).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility of telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

Configuring a 'Non-Toothless' Regulator (TRAI) (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 9, 2013 and Organizing India Blogspot, May 10, 2013).

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

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/may-2013-bulletin

May 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:59:29Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of May 2012! In the current issue, we bring to you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, and media coverage:

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Copyright Amendment Bill

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012
Pranesh Prakash
There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era. The analysis was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012.

Op-ed in Indian Express

Copyright Madness (Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala, Indian Express, May 22, 2012): India’s Copyright Act allows owners of content the right to prevent infringement through the use of injunctions, but these injunctions have to be narrowly construed and applied only to specific instances of infringement. This is to say, take down the infringing video, not the whole website, and don’t intimidate the host. When injunctions threaten freedom of speech and expression, then free speech should necessarily trump copyright claims — and the courts cannot be used as convenient shopping forums for maladies that don’t exist.

Call for Participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Event Participated

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles (Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany, May 14 and 15, 2012). The event was organised by the University of Minnesota and Max Planck Institute. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

News & Media

Will the Copyright Law Help the Starving Artist?:(by Margherita Stancati, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2012): "The singers and producers of...unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars."
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers? (FirstPost, May 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Blog Entries

Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled by Rahul Cherian.
An FAQ on the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2012, for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities by Dr. Sam Taraporevala and Rahul Cherian.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Article in the Indian Express

Cancel the Subscription (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Indian Express, May 8, 2012): It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available... In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

Event Organised

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi (National Museum, New Delhi, April 20, 2012): The event was organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society. Sunil Abraham was a panelist and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation.

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications: CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012. The focus areas for the present fellowship programme include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. The duration of the fellowship will be for about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

Events Participated

Internet at Liberty 2012: Promoting Progress and Freedom (Newseum, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest Washington, D.C., May 23 – 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a speaker in Plenary IV, Debate 3: In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?
Meeting on Internet Governance (Conference Hall No. 4009, Dept. of Electronics & Information Technology, CGO Complex, New Delhi, May 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in this meeting.

Op-ed in Down to Earth

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures (Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, May 31, 2012): The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Columns by Nishant Shah

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You! (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, May 22, 2012): When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.
The Private Eye (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 14, 2012): As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online.

Video

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet: Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012. The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV and featured on YouTube.

Letter

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in ITU’s WCIT (by Center for Democracy and Technology): Academics and civil society groups wrote to the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications process.

Blog Entry

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom (by Sunil Abraham): This blog entry is based on a presentation made in the Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Media Coverage

Why this blocking di? (by R Krishna, Daily News & Analysis, May 27, 2012): “Unlike the Calcutta High Court order in March this year, which specified the 104 websites that should be blocked, a John Doe order doesn’t mention any specific website. In some cases, the websites are being blocked without any evidence (of copyright infringement). Courts need to be informed of what people with John Doe orders are doing. We need to be specific about what can be blocked and what can’t be.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Daily News & Analysis

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Urges PM To Withdraw India’s Proposal For UN Committee On Internet-Policy (by Anupam Saxena, Medianama, May 16, 2012): An interview that Medianama had with Pranesh Prakash is cited in this blog post.
MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions (Times of India, May 18, 2012): “The IT minister has promised to hold consultations but the ideal way to do so would have been to scrap the rules and start from scratch... It's not only about language in these rules. There is a problem with provisions like the one that empowers intermediaries to remove content without notifying the user who had uploaded the content or giving users a chance to explain themselves.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Times of India.

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, May 18, 2012): “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Legally India.

Vimeo Ban: More Web Censorship (by Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012): “Shutting websites merely on the basis of suspicion amounts to private crackdown on free speech of the web...Why didn’t the telecom ministry repeal or object to the move, knowing that the court didn’t spell out the websites to be blocked?”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Wall Street Journal.
Taming the Web, are we? (by Javed Anwer, Economic Times, May 13, 2012): "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery."
Sunil Abraham quoted in the Economic Times.

Cordon tightens: Rajya Sabha nod to harsh IT rules (Anil Sharma and Aishhwariya Subramanian, Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2012): "The trouble with Indian government's proposal to address issues such as network neutrality, privacy and freedom of expression, is top-down. Unlike other countries where internet policies have always been developed with consultation with other stakeholders, here the government imposes its will."
Sunil Abraham quoted in Daily News & Analysis.
"It is an ironical situation where India is not following domestically what it is proposing internationally." Pranesh Prakash quoted in the same article in Daily News & Analysis.

Empires: Individuals in Search of Society (Marc Lafia, Huffington Post, May 18, 2012).
Cyber Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru (Deccan Herald, May 9, 2012): “The state IT secretary has passed more than 80 orders. They include both cases of phishing and orders against cyber cafes for not adhering to rules under the IT Act. The Adjudicator has held that ‘section 43 of IT Act is not applicable to a body or Corporate’, after the amended IT Act came into force in 2008.” Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Deccan Herald.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Columns by Nishant Shah

Digitally Analogue (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 27, 2012): While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option.
We Are All Cyborgs (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 29, 2012): The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Citizen Action

Resisting Revolutions: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Development, Volume 55, Issue 2, May 2012): In this peer reviewed journal article, Nishant Shah looks into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action that have emerged in the last few years. He seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State–Citizen–Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status quo rather than radically undermining it. He examines a campaign against corruption in India to see how the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present is produced in citizen action.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Course

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India: Ford Foundation has given a grant of $200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India over a period of two years. The project involves creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience, organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues and using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Column in Business Standard

The Coming Telecom Monopoly (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 3, 2012): “The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.”

Event Organised

3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at NLSIU, Bangalore (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 27, 2012): Organised by CIS in association with the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. Professor Rohan Samarajiva delivered a lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia.
The Awesome Contracts Project (Geekup @ CIS, May 18, 2012): CIS co-organised the event with Has Geek. Vivek Durai, co-founder at Awesome Contracts gave a public lecture. Amith Narayan participated through Skype.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2012-bulletin

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2011-bulletin

May 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:00:54Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and information on our events in this bulletin of May 2010

News Updates

India slowly gets to grips with ecommerce
Growth in computer use and Internet penetration will help e-commerce.
http://cis-india.org/news/India-gets-to-grips-with-ecommerce
World Wide Web Consortium for All
Indian web designers have long ignored needs of people with different disabilities but a new dedicated wiki aspires to change that, writes Malvika Tegta
http://cis-india.org/news/www-for-all
Biometry Is Watching
In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.
http://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching
What Women Want: The ability debates
In this article published in the Hindu, Deepa Alexander argues that the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (1957) are restrictive and discriminatory.
http://cis-india.org/news/what-women-want
CIS – Internet is neither good nor bad
This post is also available in: French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil)
http://cis-india.org/news/Internet-not-good-not-bad
Right to Read event in Brussels
A 'Right to Read' event is being held at the European Parliament, Brussels on 4 May 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/right-to-read-brussels
Mapping the things that affect us
'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India
http://cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things
'UID is being forced'
CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced
ID programme faces first challenge over privacy, data
The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor
http://cis-india.org/news/id-programe-faces-challenge
Their India has no borders
Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know
http://cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders
Scrap UID project, say people's organisations
The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction.
http://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project
UID info can be misused
Public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens feel UID may become an easy database for anti-social elements.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-info-can-be-misused
UID project draws flak from civil rights activists
The unique identification project is drawing a flak from civil rights activists.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-project-draws-flak
Citizens' forums want UID project scrapped
Citizens' forums and groups have stepped up their attack on the Unique Identification Project calling for the complete scrapping of the project.
http://cis-india.org/news/citizens-forums-want-UID-scrapped
Disability rights groups oppose changes to Copyright Act
Disability rights groups are up in arms against a Bill proposing an amendment to the Copyright Act, 1952, reports Aarti Dhar in an article published in the Hindu on April 23, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/disability-groups-oppose-copyright-amendments
Centre for Study of Culture and Society seeks Programme Associate
The Higher Education Cell, Centre for Study of Culture and Society is looking for a Programme Associate to help develop e-content and conduct training programmes for projects under its Social Justice and Networked Higher Education Initiatives.
http://cis-india.org/news/position-announcement

Research

Digital Natives at Republica 2010
Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet and Society, made a presentation at the Re:Publica 2010, in Berlin, about its collaborative project (with Hivos, Netherlands) "Digital Natives with a Cause?" The video for the presentation, along with an extensive abstract is online.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrepub

Accessibility

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report
The European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue supported an event sponsored by seven MEPs in the European Parliament to discuss the way forward for EU to support the Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled which has been proposed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-europe

Intellectual Property

The 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/2010-special-301

Exceptions and Limitations in Indian Copyright Law for Education: An Assessment
This paper examines the nature of exceptions and limitations in copyright law for the purposes of the use of copyrighted materials for education. It looks at the existing national and international regime, and argues for why there is a need for greater exceptions and limitations to address the needs of developing countries. The paper contextualizes the debate by looking at the high costs of learning materials and the impediment caused to e-learning and distance education by strong copyright regimes.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/exceptions-and-limitations

Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/tpm-copyright-amendment

Telecom

China Club instead of Bombay Club?
Emulate China's coordinated policies for strategic sectors, and we'll rely less on commodity exports, says Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard on May 13, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/China-club-Bombay-club

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2010-bulletin