Centre for Internet and Society

As somebody who thinks he is quite “with it” when it comes to digital technologies, my universe was slightly shaken by a bunch of screen-agers. I asked them if they blogged. There were 10 seconds of awkward silence, in which they exchanged looks, cleared throats and fidgeted. I thought I had perhaps crossed a line and they might be uncomfortable sharing their personal blogs with me. The universe of blogs is often restricted to close friends. I was just about to reassure them that they did not have to share theirs, when a bold one looked me in the eye and said, “You still blog? You must be so old! Blogging is, like, so 20th century!” The school kids, their pockets bulging with iPods, PSPs, cellphones and Bluetooth devices all nodded in unison.

It was a startling realisation that about a decade ago, there were young people, largely in schools and universities, for whom blogging was the coolest thing. Sites like LiveJournal, Blogspot and Wordpress were the hottest addresses. People formed communities, interest groups, meet-up platforms, swap groups and cool-kids’ clubs while providing detailed insights into their personal life and incisive commentary on the world around them. Blogging has been accepted by all sectors of society; governments use them for the dissemination of policies and reports, marketing companies use them to share reviews and invite feedback, schools and universities use them as teaching tools.

However, after this unsettling adventure, I decided to figure out where the younger generation was spending its time. A little bit of prodding and the screen-agers guided me to interfaces that were more than just screens to access the internet. And so I was introduced to FourSquare, the geo-tagging application that rides on your cellphone and publishes information about your physical location. An app which has become a rage around the world. With the easy availability of smart phones and cheap GPRS access, it has become easy to triangulate one’s position using Global Positioning Systems (via satellite) or your Internet Service Providers. FourSquare, like many other applications, blurs the ever decreasing gap between virtual reality and real life, and now allows users to “check in” at locations that they pass through and publish information about their whereabouts, on sites like Facebook or especially dedicated sites.

For the digital native it has become a way of forming a support group and a peer network like never before. Of the six digital natives I spoke to, at least two keep track of their close friends through this app. All of them have participated in flash parties, one met his girlfriend because they happened to be in the same coffee shop and sent each other messages. Two confessed to “stalking” somebody in school using the app. And then one told me the story of how FourSquare helped her in a sticky situation. Let’s call her R.

One night, after a study session with her friends, R and her roommate started their 2 km walk home. On the way, they became aware of a group of boys following them. They were only half-way home and the streets were completely deserted, since it was past midnight. R posted about it on FourSquare, and marked the route she was taking home and sent it to all the people who had checked in at different places on that route. And to her relief and surprise, she immediately received messages on “how to be safe”. One enterprising user asked all the users still awake on the route that R and her friend were taking to come out and stand at their gates. In a matter of minutes, R was delighted to see the streets no longer deserted. On the short walk home, she encountered 17 people, mostly young, standing by and seeing them home to safety. R recalls the incident with pleasure.

When I asked her about the possibility of somebody else harassing them because they knew they were vulnerable, she looked a little perplexed and said, “but they were all my friends,” despite the fact that she did not know any of them and had never met them. They were together in a design of trust that the application provided and because of their digital commonalities, they had become friends and neighbours and communities of support for each other. “And now you are going to blog about it, aren’t you?” asked R, as all of them burst into giggles.

Read the original in Indian Express

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/you-are-here

Internet, szabadon

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T09:25:49Z

A polgárjogi aktivisták konfrontálódtak és panaszkodtak, a Google és a Facebook hárított és panaszkodott az Internet at Liberty konferencián, amelyet kedden és szerdán rendezett a Google és a CEU Budapesten.

– Célunk a szabad, nyílt és biztonságos internet. A Google igyekszik maximalizálni az információhoz való szabad hozzáférést, bár néha hibázunk. Útelágazáshoz érkeztünk, valószínű, hogy az internet korlátozottabb lesz, és a felhasználókat megfosztják hatalmuktól. 2002-ben még csak négy, 2010-ben már 40 ország – köztük Irán, Törökország, Oroszország és Kína – kormánya blokkol tartalmat a neten. Azon vannak, hogy kiépítésék saját, államilag támogatott és feltehetően cenzúrázott keresőiket. A Google célja, hogy a net szabad maradjon – röviden ezt mondta David Google Drummond, a Google jogi igazgatója, egyben a Google egyik alelnöke a Google és a CEU és a Google által szervezett nemzetközi konferencián, az Internet at Liberty 2010-en kedden Budapesten.

Hát ezért kár volt ilyen messzire jönni.

De még mielőtt a hallgatóság egy emberként a laptopjába bújt volna, hogy a Farmville-ben bekkelje ki az elkövetkező két napot, szerencsére kiderült, hogy a jelenlévők között akad rengeteg polgárjogi aktivista, netes szabadságharcos és született privacymániás a világ minden részéről. Ők gondoskodtak róla, hogy személyes, országos, sőt globális volumenű panaszaikkal árnyalják a süppedő padlószőnyegből és az erdei gigantposzterből áradó, felelősségteljes corporate derűt.

„Az internet önmagában nem változtat meg semmit. Ki kell menni az utcára, és a vérünkkel kell fizetnünk!”; „Legalább mondják meg, mi a szart csinálnak!”; „Tudja maga, milyen rendőrségünk van nekünk Pakisztánban?” - ilyen és ehhez hasonló hozzászólások árnyékolták be a felelősségteljes corporate derűt. Amely a sötét fellegek ellenére egészen kedd estig kitartott; de ne szaladjunk ennyire előre.

A jó, a csúf és az illegális

Az internetes szólásszabadság története a jó, a csúf és az illegális története, mondta a konferencia első beszélgetésén Rob Faris, a Harvard Berkman internetes központjának kutatási igazgatója és a nyílt internetért ügyködő OpenNet Initiative munkatársa. A legfontosabb feladat Faris szerint eldönteni azt, hol húzódik a határ a csúf, de még törvényes, és az illegális tartalom között. Erre a legjobb példa a netes pornó helyzete az Egyesült Államokban: az USA Legfelsőbb Bírósága kétszer is megsemmisítette a betiltást célzó törvényeket, és most ott tart az ügy, hogy csak az iskolákban és a könyvtárakban elérhetetlen a pornó, egyébként alkotmányos védelmet élvez. Nem úgy, mint Indiában, de ne szaladjunk ennyire előre.

Faris szerint ugyanakkor világszerte mostanában jelennek meg az internetszabályozás második generációs módszerei, amelyek között ott vannak a szerzői jogi alapon benyújtott eltávolítási kérelmek, sőt az aktivisták és a médiaszájtok ellen intézett kibertámadások is. Az egyes országok kormányai finomítottak szűrési módszereiken, Bahreinben és Jemenben például a választások idején csak speciális szájtokat és információt blokkoltak, Argentína eljutott odáig, hogy néhány éve sikerült a Yahooból elérhetetlenné tennie a Diego Maradonára vonatkozó találatokat. Faris konklúziója: nemzetközi megoldásokra van szükség. De ne szaladjunk ennyire előre.

Panaszfal extra

Nem kellett sok idő hozzá, hogy a konferencia egyetlen hatalmas panaszfallá változzon, vicces és kevésbé vicces panaszrohamokkal. A kirgiz meghívott, Tattu Mambetalieva elmondta, hogy Kirgizisztánban kevesen neteznek, mert drága. Sunil Abraham, az indiai meghívott elmondta, hogy náluk blokkolják a pornót, különös tekintettel a Savita Bhabhi kalandjait ábrázoló képregénysorozatra [Warning: Not safe for work - adult content]. Sazad Ahmad, a pakisztáni meghívott elmondta, hogy a náluk a kormány blaszfémiára hivatkozva blokkol, de mindig kiderül, hogy politikai okok állnak a háttérben.

Egy szíriai aktivista arra panaszkodott, hogy a tunéziai kormány 12 millió dollárért vett a netes forgalom ellenőrzésére szolgáló szervert, és hogy a fejlődő országokban a tartalomszűrésre használt szoftvert nyugatról szerzik be. Egy jemeni aktivista arra panaszkodott, hogy a yemenportal.net-et blokkolja a kormányzat, és hogy a világ semmit nem tud az országban zajló tömegtüntetésekről, nem beszélve a helyi LGBT-közösségéről és a rockegyüttesekről. Tunéziában az a probléma, hogy ha tömegmegmozdulás szerveződik a neten, húszezren feliratkoznak ugyan rá, de csak tízen mennek el. Törökország több száz szájtot blokkol, köztük a YouTube-ot és a Google számos szolgáltatását (Docs, Books, Translate). Azerbajdzsánban két bloggert bebörtönöztek írásaik miatt, és azért nem engedik ki őket, mert nem számítanak újságírónak. A Facebook törli a szoptató anyákról készült képeket, és a Wikipédián az emberi anatómiát taglaló szócikkeket illusztráló fotókat egyre gyakrabban váltják fel rajzok.

Csodák csodájára a panaszok úgy pattantak le a jelen lévő politikusokról, diplomatákról és üzletemberekről, mint eltévedt golflabda a moha lepte kőkerítésről: a Facebook, a Google és a francia külügyminisztérium jelen lévő képviselői, részben tehát a közvetlen címzettek végig ügyesen hárítottak. Folyamatosan hangoztatták, milyen irtózatosan nehéz dolguk van ebben az egyre globálisabb világban, ahol diktatúrák és demokráciák között kell zsonglőrködniük, mindenkinek a kedvében járniuk, és ők mindent megtesznek ugyan, de hát Kína, ugye. Meg Irán. Főleg Irán. Így aztán nem hozott érdemi vitát a Facebook és a Google közös színpadi szereplése sem, pedig a két cég magas szinten képviseltette magát: a Google-től Drummond, a Facebooktól egyenesen Lord Richard Allan, Hallam bárója, volt brit parlamenti képviselő jött el Budapestre, akivel interjút is készítettünk [2].

Még a kritikus sem kritizál

„Nem áll szándékomban a privacy-vel kapcsolatos kritikát megfogalmazni”, mondta nekik kérdésnek látszó expozéjában Marc Rotenberg, az Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) igazgatója, akitől joggal lehetett várni, hogy rendesen megszorongatja a Google és a Facebook tökét. Rotenberg a két cég képviselőihez intézett beszédében annyit mondott, hogy nem feltétlenül hasznos a szólásszabadságot és a magánszférát két ütköző, egymással kiegyensúlyozandó területként felfogni. Szerinte a kettő inkább kiegészíti egymást: az anonim véleménynyilvánítás joga például olyan terület, ahol kéz a kézben jár a magánszférához fűződő jog és a szólásszabadság.

Rotenberg szerint még a privacy semmibe vételével folyamatosan vádolt Facebook sem az ördögtől való, olyannyira, hogy ő maga is fent van rajta. „A Facebook olyan, mint a telefon vagy az email. Használjuk csak politikai aktivizmusra, de legyünk tisztában a hiányosságaival” - mondta Rotenberg, aki szerint a kritikánál többet használ a dialógus.

Mindeközben Lord Allan of Hallam szorgalmasan jegyzetelt az általa csak fPadként emlegetett, Facebook-kék színű füzetbe, Drummond a Google-től pedig atyai stílusban oktatta: „Sok-sok hibát fognak még elkövetni – mondta a Google főjogásza a brit bárónak. – De idővel majd beletanulnak”.

A példátlan kultúrdialógus-kényszerben szinte elsikkadt az egyik legeredetibb résztvevő, Jevgenyij Morozov mondanivalója, pedig Morozov a techvilág jelenleg talán legnépszerűtlenebb álláspontját képviseli: azt hangoztatja, hogy az internet hozzásegíti a diktatúrákat ahhoz, hogy megerősítsék saját hatalmukat A belorusz származású blogger, újságíró és kutató általában szkeptikusan gondolkodik az internet demokratizáló hatásáról. Morozov, aki a tavalyi TED konferencián egész előadást [3] tartott arról, hogyan élnek vissza a diktatúrák a modern technológiai eszközök és a web általában jótékonynak tartott adományaival, azt mondja, hogy az internet egyszerre autonóm erő, és egyszerre a hatalom eszköze. A kutató szerint túlságos leegyszerűsítés a kérdést az aktivisták és a kormányok közötti harcra lebontani. Először meg kell érteni a kultúra, a vallás, a nacionalizmus közötti kapcsolatokat, és csak utána kitalálni, hogyan vonatkoztatható mindez az internetre. A tanulság: tovább kell tanulmányozni a kérdést. Morozov nézeteit nem mindenki osztotta, egy hozzászóló szerint például Iránban kifejezetten jót tesz, hogy a bloggerek fényképeznek, írnak és az anyagot feltöltik a netre, legalább el tudják mondani, hogy a világ figyeli őket. És ez már önmagában reményt kelt.

Read the original in index

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/internet-szabadon

Hogyan szűrik a kormányok az internetes tartalmakat?

praskrishna — 2010-10-13T12:01:00Z

Az internet szabadságáról tartanak háromnapos konferenciát Budapesten a Google és a Közép-Európai Egyetem (CEU) szervezésében. Kedden az internetes tartalmak szűrése volt a legfontosabb téma a rendezvényen.

Rob Faris az amerikai Open Net Initiative nevű szervezet képviseletében beszélt kedden a kormányzati internetszabályozásról. Faris különböző országok eljárását vizsgálta, és a befolyásolás, a tartalomszűrés három generációját különítette el.

Az első lépés az egyszerű szűrés volt, amely szoftverek segítségével találta meg és tiltotta le a nemkívánatos tartalmakat. A második generáció már valamivel kifinomultabb, de továbbra is részben az elsőn alapul. A szoftveren kívül azonban más eszközökkel, például jogi fellépéssel lehetetlenítette el az állam ezekben az országokban azokat a szájtokat, amelyek a kormányzatnak nem tetszettek.

Egyes országokról is szólt Faris. Kiemelte Argentína esetét, amikor bizonyos időszakokban lehetetlen volt Maradonára keresni a dél-amerikai országból, illetve bizonyos argentin verziójú keresőprogramokon. A sportolón kívül néhány argentin politikusra sem adott találatot a szóban forgó keresőprogram.

A harmadik generációs internetszűrés már igazán kifinomult technológiát alkalmaz. Ez bizonyos politikai nézetek terjesztésén és a közvetítő eszközök "nem túl kemény" befolyásolásán alapul. Ilyen, Vlagyimir Putyint támogató kormányzati propaganda folyik például Oroszországban Faris szerint.

A szakember úgy véli, Kína a legjobb példája annak, hogy a szűrés és szabályozás mindhárom generációja "együtt él" - bizonyos szájtokat teljesen blokkolnak, máshol a tartalmat szűrik, és a harmadik generációs módszerek is megjelentek az ázsiai országban.

Faris előadása után indiai, pakisztáni és kirgiz hozzászólók árnyalták a képet: a pakisztáni Shahzad Ahmad, a Bytes for All szervezet munkatársa arról az esetről beszélt kimerítően, amikor egy bíró a szélsőséges csoportoktól befolyásolva betiltotta szinte az egész Facebook és sok más internetes oldal elérését is Pakisztánban. Végül a legfelsőbb bíróság felülbírálta ezt az ítéletet, amit Ahmad nagy sikernek tekint.

Sunil Abraham az indiai Centre for Internet and Society képviseletében viszont arról beszélt, hogy az indiai szoftverfejlesztés központjában a Microsoft szakértői képzik a bírókat az internetes jog alkalmazására, Indiában tehát más a helyzet, mint a szomszédos Pakisztánban.

A kirgiziai Tattu Mambetalieva a Civil Initiative on Internet Policy képviseletében oroszul szólalt fel, a tolmács és az ő szavaiból kiderült, hogy Kirgizisztánban az ötmillió lakos közül nyolcszázezren neteznek. Viszont ott is van negatív példa: egy internetszolgálató kiadta felhasználóinak adatait a kormányzati szerveknek, és sokan ezután börtönbe kerültek a volt Szovjetunió közép-ázsiai utódállamában.

Read the original in hvg.hu

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hogyan-szurik

નિશાંત શાહ: ડિજિટલ પેઢીનો ઉદય

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T10:31:25Z

‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ થઈ ગયા બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. હવે સમય આવી ગયો છે કે આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે.

એક નવા પ્રકારની ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’નો ધીમે-ધીમે ઉદય થઈ રહ્યો છે. ડિજિટલ ટેકનિક આપણી નવી પેઢીના સામાજિક ડીએનએનો એક ભાગ બની ચૂકી છે. આ પેઢીએ ટેક્નોલોજીની દુનિયામાં જ જન્મ લીધો હોવાથી તેમનો તેની સાથેનો સંબંધ તેમની અગાઉની પેઢી જેવો નથી. દુનિયાના ઘણા બધા લોકોને અસર કરનારી ઓગસ્ટની એક ઘટના જાણવા જેવી છે. તેઓ જ્યારે પોતાનાં કમ્પ્યૂટરો,પીડીએ, આઈપેડ અને લેપટોપ પર ઓનલાઈન થયાં ત્યારે તેમને અહેસાસ થયો કે તેમની વાતચીત,ગપ્પાંબાજી, ચેટિંગ, શેરિંગ સહિતની અનેક બાબતોની તાસીર કોઈ પણ જાતની પૂર્વ સૂચના વગર રાતોરાત બદલાઈ ગઈ છે.

એક નાનકડા પરિવર્તને અનેક આયામો ખોલી નાખ્યાં છે. દુનિયાના કરોડો લોકો માટે દોસ્તી કરવાનો, સંબંધ બનાવવાનો, વ્યવસાયિક નેટવર્કની સ્થાપના કરવાનો, મનોરંજનનો, યાદોનો સંગ્રહ કરવાનો અને એક-બીજા સાથે આપ-લેનું માધ્યમ બનેલી વેબસાઈટ ફેસબુકે પોતાના પ્રાયવસી સેટિંગમાં એક નાનકડું પરિવર્તન કરીને અનેક લોકોને નવી સુવિધા પૂરી પાડી છે. જેના દ્વારા તેઓ જ્યાં ઇચ્છે ત્યાં ‘જિયો ટેગ’ (એક એવી પ્રણાલિ જેના દ્વારા ફોટા, વીડિયો, વેબસાઈટ જેવા વિવિધ મીડિયા કે આરએસએસ ફીડમાં ભૌગોલિક ઓળખના ડેટાને જોડી શકાય છે) નો ઉપયોગ કરી શકે છે.

બદલાઈ રહેલી દુનિયામાં આ પ્રકારની સુવિધાઓ મહત્વની બની રહી છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો વચ્ચે આ બાબતો ચર્ચા અને કેટલીક વખત અફવાનો વિષય પણ બની જતી હોય છે, જેની પાછળ ચર્ચા કરવામાં યુવાનો પોતાની ઘણી ઊર્જા ખર્ચી નાખે છે. વેબદુનિયામાં તમને એવા અનેક લોકો મળી જશે જે ટિન ફોઈલની ટોપી પહેરીને ફરતા હોય છે અને નવા માધ્યમમાં જૂની માન્યતાઓ અંગે વાતો કરતા હોય છે. તેમને માટે આ નવી ટેકનિકલ સુવિધાઓનો અર્થ છે રોજિંદા જીવનના અનુભવો અને વિચારોને એક-બીજા સાથે વહેંચવાનો વધુ એક નવો વિચાર.

‘જિયો-ટેગિંગ’ જેવી સુવિધાઓનો ઉપયોગ કરતા લોક વાસ્તવિક જીવન અને કલ્પનાઓની સરહદોને એક-બીજા સાથે મિલાવી દેવાનું પસંદ કરે છે. આપણામાંથી ઘણા લોકો એવા હશે જેમને આ બધી બાબતો વિચિત્ર લાગે એમ છે. તેઓ વિચારશે કે આ પ્રકારની પ્રતિક્રિયાઓનું શું કારણ છે? છેવટે લોકો આટલી સામાન્ય બાબતોમાં કેમ રસ દાખવે છે? આ પ્રકારની ફાલતું બાબતો માટે લોકોને સમય ક્યાંથી મળે છે? જે લોકો ડિજિટલ દુનિયાથી અપરિચિત છે કે જેમને તેની સાથે કોઈ સંબંધ જ નથી, તેમની સામે હું માથું નમાવ્યા સિવાય કશું કરી શકું તેમ નથી.

પરંતુ પોતાનો ઘણો બધો સમય ફેસબુક, માયસ્પેસ અને ટ્વિટર જેવી સોશિયલ નેટવર્કિંગ સાઈટ પર વિતાવનારા, ગેમ્સ રમતા, બ્લોગ લખતા કે બીજાના બ્લોગ પર પોતાનો અભિપ્રાય વ્યક્ત કરતા, પોતાના ફોટો એકાઉન્ટને અપડેટ કરતા રહેતા અને પોતાની ડિજિટલ ઓળખને વધુ વિસ્તારતા રહેતા ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો’ માટે આ તમામ બાબતો અત્યંત મહત્વની છે.

કદાચ તમારામાંથી ઘણા લોકોએ આ અગાઉ ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ અંગે સાંભળ્યું નહીં હોય, પરંતુ આ કોઈ કપોળ કલ્પિત વાત નથી. ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. આ કારણે તે કમ્પ્યૂટર, ઇન્ટરનેટ, મોબાઈલ ફોન, એમપીથ્રી જેવી ટેક્નિકલ સુવિધાઓથી સંપૂર્ણપણે વાકેફ છે. સામાન્ય રીતે ૧૯૭૦ બાદ જન્મેલાને ડિજિટલ પેઢી કહેવામાં આવે છે, પરંતુ ૨૧મી સદીની માહિતી ક્રાંતિમાં ઊછરેલી પેઢી માટે આ વ્યાખ્યા ફિટ બેસે છે.

‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ શબ્દનો સૌ પ્રથમ ઉપયોગ માર્ક પ્રેન્સ્કીએ વર્ષ ૨૦૦૧માં પોતાના પુસ્તક ‘ડિજિટલ નોટિંગ્સ, ડિજિટલ ઇમિગ્રન્ટ્સ’માં કર્યો હતો. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકોનાં સામાજિક ગુણસૂત્રોમાં જ આ ટેક્નોલોજી સમાઈ ચૂકી છે. તેની સાથે નવી પેઢી એટલી વણાયેલી છે કે તેમને તે કૃત્રિમ ઉપકરણ નથી લાગતાં. આ ટેક્નોલોજી તેમની જીવનશૈલીનો એક ભાગ બની ચૂકી છે. ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ના સૌથી મોટી ઉંમરના સભ્યો તે છે જેમણે પોતાની ઉંમરના ત્રણ દાયકા પાર કરી દીધા છે.

જ્યારે સૌથી નાની ઉંમરના તેમને કહેવાય જેમણે તાજેતરમાં જ દુનિયાને જાણવા-સમજવાની શરૂઆત કરી છે. શક્ય છે કે દુનિયાનાં અનેક મહત્વનાં દસ્તાવેજોમાં હજુ તેમના નામનો સમાવેશ પણ થયો ન હોય. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. કદાચ તેઓ એવી માહિતીઓ અને જાણકારીઓના સ્ત્રોત છે જેમને આપણે વિકીપીડિયા પર વાંચીએ છીએ.

ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો સંપૂર્ણ રીતે નવી ટેક્નોલોજીમાં ઊતરી ચૂકેલા છે, નિપુણ છે. તેમને માટે ભૌતિક દુનિયામાંથી આભાસી-કાલ્પનિક દુનિયામાં પહોંચી જવું ડાબા હાથનો ખેલ છે. સમય અને સ્થળની મર્યાદાઓ તેમના માટે કોઈ અર્થ નથી રાખતી. તેઓ ધીમે-ધીમે, ચુપચાપ પરંતુ નિરંતરતાની સાથે આપણી દુનિયાની રૂપરેખાઓને બદલી રહ્યા છે. આ ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ આપણી દુનિયાના સ્થાયી નાગરિક છે અને હવે તેમની વાતો પર ધ્યાન આપવાનો સમય આવી ગયો છે. આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે.

નિશાંત શાહ, લેખક સેન્ટર ફોર ઇન્ટરનેટ એન્ડ સોસાયટીના સંશોધન ડાયરેક્ટર છે.

This column on Digital Natives by Nishant Shah appeared in the Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-native-in-divya-bhaskar

Konferencia az internetes szólásszabadságról Budapesten

praskrishna — 2010-10-13T11:03:16Z

Az internet és szólásszabadság viszonyát vitatják meg Budapesten, a Közép-Európai Egyetem és a Google szervezte, háromnapos konferencián

Az internet és a szólásszabadság viszonyát, az internetes tartalmak korlátozásának nemzetközileg egyre elterjedtebb gyakorlatát vitatják meg a Közép-Európai Egyetem (CEU) és a Google által közösen szervezett háromnapos budapesti konferencián.

A hétfői előkészítő műhelybeszélgetések után a konferenciát hivatalosan kedden nyitotta meg John Shattuck, a CEU rektora. Köszöntőjében úgy fogalmazott, hogy egyeteme "a szabad kifejezés laboratóriuma", melyet egy elnyomó rendszer romjain hoztak létre. Mint mondta, akár az internet, a CEU is határokon átnyúlik, diákjai a világ minden részéről érkeznek. Kifejtette, hogy az internetes szólásszabadságért folytatott küzdelem rendkívül összetett és állandó érdekellentétektől - így a biztonság, a privát szférához való jog és a kifejezés szabadsága gyakori ütküzésétől - terhes.

"Az internet az emberi szabadságért vívott küzdelem fontos eszköze lehet egy olyan korban, melyben a jövő rendkívül bizonytalan" - zárta bevezetőjét Shattuck. A CEU rektora után David Drummond, a Google alelnöke köszöntötte a résztvevőket. Drummond arról beszélt, hogy az internetes tartalmakat egyre több ország korlátozza valamilyen mértékben: míg 2002-ben még csak négy ilyen állam volt a világon, addig ma már negyven. Törökország, Kína, Oroszország és mások eközben saját, államilag támogatott keresőmotort terveznek kifejleszteni - tette hozzá.

Drummond hangsúlyozta: a Google célja a szabad önkifejezés és az információhoz való hozzáférés lehetőségeinek lehető legnagyobb mértékű kiterjesztése, a "szabad, nyitott és biztonságos internet" megvalósítása. Az első tematikus blokk egyik résztvevője, Sunil Abraham, az indiai Centre for Internet and Society (Internetért és Társadalomért Központ) munkatársa élesen bírálta a fejlett országokat: úgy vélte, csak addig támogatják a nyitott, korlátozásoktól mentes internetet, ameddig nem sérülnek a szellemi tulajdonjogaik és az azok utáni bevételek. Emlékeztetett arra, hogy a szabad internet és az online szólásszabadság nemcsak emberi jogi, de súlyosan gazdasági kérdés is.

Rob Faris, az amerikai Open Net Initiative (Nyitott Hálózat Kezdeményezés) munkatársa szerint nyilvánvaló, hogy az interneten megtalálhatók illegális, illetve sértő, bántó, de még legális tartalmak is; a kérdés, hogy hol lehet meghúzni ezek között a határt, és kinek van ehhez joga - tette fel a kérdést. Az Egyesült Államokban - említette példaként - a kongresszus kétszer is megpróbálkozott az pornóoldalak betiltásával, a legfelsőbb bíróság azonban mind a kétszer visszadobta a tervezetet - a kompromisszumos megoldás végül az lett, hogy iskolákban, könyvtárakban és hasonló helyeken letiltották ezeket az oldalakat, máshol viszont nem.

Rob Faris is kiemelte, hogy a szabad internetezés korszaka végérvényesen lezárult, a hatóságok ma már a címek letiltásától a tiltott tartalmakat megjelentetők fizikai zaklatásáig számtalan eszközzel korlátozzák a világhálót. A rohamosan terjedő kép- és videomegosztó, illetve közösségi oldalak ellen egy másik - például Kína által követett - stratégia az alternatív, helyi szoftverek kifejlesztése - magyarázta Faris. Az amerikai szakember kifejtette azt is: a szabályozási kérdéseket bonyolítja, hogy a közösségi oldalak saját - sokszor az általános hatóságinál szigorúbb - szabályzatot alkotnak felhasználóik részére.

A felszólalók egyetértettek abban, hogy az internet szabályozása terén nagyon sok a megválaszolatlan kérdés, ezért a konferencia után létrehoznak majd egy honlapot, ahol folytatódhat az eszmecsere.

See the original in Hirado Online

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/konferencia-az-internetes

How the UID project can be a cause for concern

praskrishna — 2018-04-09T12:59:02Z

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, is the UPA government's most ambitious project, where one billion Indians are branded with a unique identity number.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh handed over the first of the Aadhaar cards at Tembhli village in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. This mammoth project aims to provide Indian residents with a unique 12-digit identification number that will serve multiple purposes.

Given the reach and the impact of such an exercise there is much excitement around the Unique Identity (UID) number (also known as Aadhaar) drive, along with some confusion.

However, there remains some concerns of identity theft.

For example, the number is linked to their fingerprints and the patterns in their eyes. Since those markers are unique to each of us, no one will steal their rations and wages again. They will be issued only after verification. But our eye's Iris patterns change, with age, disease or malnourishment. Fake fingerprints can very easily be made. Hence, the unique element of these numbers can be tampered.

Sunil Abraham, Director, Centre for Internet and Society said, “If I leave my fingerprints around, my identity can be stolen and transactions done on my behalf.”

Activists claim that in a few years, banks, insurance companies, cell phone providers and hospitals will demand UID number before doing business with you. They could use that number, to share information about anybody.

Hence, Abraham said, “An insurance company and a hospital can merge databases. If you have AIDS or TB, they can bump up your premium, or refuse you cover.”

Usha Ramanathan, lawyer said, “Say I go to Srinagar six times in a month. That information could be accessed by the government because the airlines asked for my number before booking a ticket. And that could make me a suspect. There's something wrong in being treated as a suspect for no other reason, than state paranoia.”

Interestingly, even though India seems excited about this project, Britain recently stopped attempts at biometric based identification systems, after warnings that such a database could easily be hacked.

See the video here.
See the original coverage in IBN Live

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/uid-project-concern

In new Facebook features, a comeback for community

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T09:58:34Z

Nearly 750 tweets bombard the web every second. Internet traffic is growing by 40 per cent a year. People post 2.5 billion photos on Facebook every month. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube. But who owns all that data? Until now, big business was in complete control and used the data to monetise operations. But all that is set to change. With Facebook launching two new features, ‘Groups' and a ‘Download your information,' the community is making a comeback.

More control over data

If Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is to be believed, users now have more control over who sees their data and how much. They can also bundle up their entire social graph (as a zip file) and walk away to another service.

‘Groups' tries to tackle one of Facebook's long-standing problems. On Facebook, everyone, from your boss to your long-lost school friend, is a “friend.” And this means annoying, sometimes embarrassing situations.

An easy way to form small private groups on a social network, as we do in real life, is the “biggest problem in social networking,” Mr. Zuckerberg told journalists after the announcement.

The Groups feature allows you to form small circles of friends. Up to 300 Groups per user are allowed, and the tool also allows Group chat and emails. The groups can be open, closed, or secret, depending on the privacy settings.

Gaurav Mishra, Director (Digital and Social Media), MS&L Group, Asia-Pacific, says this step is important for Facebook, given the rising competition in social networking.

With alternatives on the horizon, such as Diaspora, which is being designed as an open-source, privacy-conscious social network, and Google's plans to integrate social networking elements into its services through ‘Google Me,' Facebook has to take up this “strategic pre-emptive move,” says Mr. Mishra.

But the Groups feature comes with its own baggage. It is not ‘opt in.' A friend can add you to the Group, and you get to decide whether you want to be in it or not. It appears that in the trade-off between giving the user more control and encouraging use, Facebook has chosen the latter.

Users will also have to be prepared for more noise as the new features offer a mirage of secure conversation space that will encourage them to share more personal details.

“The amount of sharing will go up massively and will be completely addictive,” Mr. Zuckerberg predicted.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, says: “Facebook has always taken a more promiscuous approach to configuring our social behaviour online, the primary motivation being the maximisation of user transactions and consequently profits.”

According to him, the logic of adding a user to a group without seeking permission first makes a lot of assumptions, including that you check your account regularly to do early damage control and that your friends follow best security practices.

“I would warn people not to do anything on a Facebook group — open, closed or secret — that they would not do on email.”

Read the original in the Hindu

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/new-facebook-features

Technical Aspects of UID: A Public Talk

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T07:23:15Z

Prof. K Gopinath from Indian Institute of Science and Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet and Society will give a lecture on the technical aspects of UID on 20 October 2010 at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Prof. Gopinath and Sunil Abraham will give a lecture on the technical challenges in realizing UID-like systems. Given the publicly available information, the speakers will evaluate the realizability of an online pan-India UID system and identify some issues that may need to be addressed.

About Prof. K Gopinath

K Gopinath is a professor in computer science and automation at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. His research interests are in operating systems and related systems such as security. To know more about Prof. Gopinath, visit his homepage.

About Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS),in Bangalore. He is the founder of Mahiti, a social enterprise aiming to reduce the cost and complexity of information and communication technology for the voluntary sector by using free software. For three years, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

VIDEOS

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/technical-aspects-of-uid

University Students create New Wiki Entries and Blog about It

praskrishna — 2010-10-07T07:34:12Z

Nearly 60 students doing the New Media Practices course of the New Media Masters at Media Studies in the University of Amsterdam had an assignment to write a new Wikipedia entry and write a blog post about their experience on a collaborative blog called Masters of Media. This blog which was founded in September 2006 is now in use by the fifth generation of students.

These blog posts are now online!
See the profile of Masters of Media and the pictures of all the three classes.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/new-wikipedia-entries

The silent rise of the Digital Native

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T10:31:14Z

In late August, this year, the world shook for many when they went online (on their computers, PDAs, iPads, laptops) and realised that the comfortable zone of talking, chatting, sharing and doing just about everything else, had suddenly, without a warning, changed overnight (or afternoon, or morning, depending upon the time-zone they lived in). With a single change in its privacy and location settings, Facebook, home to billions of internet hours consisting of relationships, friendships, professional networks, social gaming, entertainment trivia, memories and exchanges, allowed its users to geo-tag themselves when on-the-move.

Much energy, rumour and panic has gone into the introduction of this feature. The interweb has been abuzz with people wearing tin-foil hats (or the digital equivalent of it) and shouting as loud as they can, about the old paranoia of Big Brother in new settings like Facebook. It is of almost no consequence that the feature is not really indulging in any private tracking but was offering an interesting mix of bringing together the everyday physicality of life on to the Facebook feed.

Geo-tagging, a term which refers to your ability to expose your location (voluntarily) using mapping visualisation tools that can triangulate your position using GPS or IP address systems, while accessing internet platforms or games, is being widely used by users of technology who enjoy blurring the lines between real life and virtual reality.

Facebook’s Places feature allowed users, accessing Facebook from their mobile phones, to ‘check-in’ to places near them, calculated on the position of their mobile phones, thus making it available for them to share where they are (or were) with their friends. While the panicwallahs who were going blue in their face have started breathing again, there is something in this panic about being located and marked, that needs further probing. I am aware of the possibilities of abuse it might lend itself to, if, say, for instance, I had stalkers (I have none, though), or if somebody accusing me of stealing their pig and my lawyer can prove that I (or at least my phone) was in a particular location at the time the crime was being committed.

To many, this might seem some sort of an exaggerated reaction. How can people be so interested in trivial things like these? How can people have time to actually be doing ‘all this stuff’? To those digitally dissonant I offer a tilt of the head but to the Digital Natives who occupy, seamlessly, their social networking sites, their everyday material life, their MMORPGs (games, in shorthand), their blogs, their photo accounts and their multiple distributed digital selves, these things are important.

You might not have heard of the phrase Digital Natives, but they are here and among us. The generation that grew up with digital technologies as a part of their social (and in some case, biological) DNA relate to technologies differently. Rather than external prostheses or tools of function, technologies are their ways of being.

The oldest Digital Native has turned 30 this year, and the youngest Digital Native is still gestating, visible only in sonograms and medical records that document its presence. Digital Natives are everywhere and they might be producing knowledge that you and I read off Wikipedia. They might be playing games and immersing themselves in fantasy universes. They might be forming communities that transcend geographies and lifestyles. They might be orchestrating political campaigns that affect the fates of nations. They might be changing the notions of ownership and property even as we read this. They are embroiled in new technologies, they move from the physical to the virtual with effortless ease. They are slowly but relentlessly changing the contours of the worlds we all occupy. Digital Natives are here to stay and it is time we start listening to them, about who they are, what they do, how they think of themselves and how they are shaping the futures of the days to come.

Read the original in Daily News and Analysis

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/silent-rise

The geek shall inherit the earth

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T10:34:03Z

Demystifying the mysterious -agents changing the world around you.

I met somebody last night who called herself a digital dinosaur. She grew up in the ’80s, got her first computer in the ’90s, trained herself as a geek, found a career as a coder (moonlighted as a hacker), helped people create their personal web pages, and has worked in the IT industry for more than a decade now. In her day, she was the cyber-guru, instructing friends, families, acquaintances and people who wrote to her on the dos and don’ts of cyber-living. And now, she finds herself strangely disconnected from Web 2.0, which is expanding faster than we can understand it.

Her relationship with Internet technologies was one of creation; coding, cracking, hacking, controlling the world in binaries, in bits and in bytes, and that world is now receding.

The new wave of Internet users, who are Born Digital, relate to technologies in new ways. Coding has become the domain of the professional developer and programming is limited to a handful of geeks.

These digital natives occupy environments where it is more about game and expression. Their relationship with the internet is about creation and dissemination of information. They create networks and webs of relationships, with machines and people alike. They treat their gadgets as extensions of themselves and map their physical lives on to their virtual worlds. They are different, even from the earlier generation of technocrats, in how they relate to and understand the new technologies.

Digital natives are everywhere. They are in universities and colleges, multitasking, preparing a classroom presentation while chatting with friends and tracking their online gaming avatars. They occupy offices, glued with equal passion, to dating or social networking sites, and moderating geek mailing lists.

We chance upon them in homes and bedrooms, sharing their most intimate details using live cam feeds and audio/video podcasts. If these images are familiar to you, you have encountered a digital native. It might have, recently, been a child who knows how to use the mobile phone more effectively than you do, or a teenager who can connect your machine online while thumb-typing on the cell-phone, in a language which is not very familiar to you.

It could also be the saucy colleague in office, who is always on the information highway, making jazzy presentations or playing games with his virtual avatar, or the taxi driver who has learned the power of GPS maps or even the chaiwallah who uses his mobile phone to download new music and conduct a romantic affair.

It is no surprise then that the digital natives appear mystifying, slightly frightening figures to those around them. Parents are concerned that they are losing touch with these youth who inhabit first and Second Lives seamlessly. Teachers lament that they value everyday cultural production on YouTube and blogs over canons and classics.

Policymakers are worried that they unwittingly break law and regulations through peer-to-peer sharing of information. Cultural industries are startled at how they produce as much as they consume, using easily available inexpensive tools to push the boundaries of cultural production; remixing, distorting, morphing and harvesting the potential of digital objects.

While many of these concerns are serious and need to be addressed, this column tries to focus on demystifying the digital native. Across borders, digital natives have been responsible for changing the contours of our world. They have fought repressive governments, like we saw in Iran’s Twitter revolution. They have mobilised people to challenge fundamentalism (the Pink Chaddi campaign in India). They have come to the aid of the needy and the ailing, like we saw during the recent natural disasters in Chile and Taiwan.

Digital natives are behind awareness initiatives to protect their privacy and right to information on social networking sites like Facebook.

They have changed the way knowledge is produced and consumed on online encyclopaedias like Wikipedia. They demand better education, transform their societies and show us the familiar through strange and uncanny lenses. Around the globe, in developed and developing information societies, digital natives are introducing radical changes that recalibrate our reality even as we live it.

Read the article in the Indian Express

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/geek-inherit-earth

Stiff Resistance Dogs India's ID Plan

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T09:59:06Z

An article about the UID project by Indrajit Basu in Asia Times Online.

Tembhali is little known beyond its neighborhood in northern Maharashtra. Yet, as Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi descended by on Wednesday, the tiny hamlet with less than 1,500 residents suddenly became the center of attraction in the global arena of e-governance.

India's prime minister and the ruling Congress party's leader were helicoptered in to officially flag India's most ambitious attempt to transform the way the state reaches its citizens - and also the world's largest identity program.

The so-called Unique Identification (UID) mission, which has been dubbed locally as "Aadhar" ("foundation"), the project will create unique biometric identification numbers for each and every one of India's 1.2 billion people.

Ambitious yet highly controversial, UID numbers will be linked to fingerprints, iris scans, personal information, a microchip for easy scanning, and more. Led by a new government agency called the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the project is spearheaded by Nandan Nilekeni, one of India's most famous techie-entrepreneurs as the co-founder of Infosys, who has been given ministerial powers and a magnanimous (rumored to be US$3 billion or more) budget to implement the grand plan.

According to Nilekeni, among the scores of advantages for the country's people, the millions of India's poor who are without access to the government's plethora of welfare schemes would benefit the most from the new identification system. Much like the mobile telephony, the UID number would connect the poor to the broader and advancing economy of India, he says.

"The government has taken up this project for two reason; one is there are large number of Indians specially those who are urban migrants and rural poor who do not have any form of acknowledged existence by the state and therefore they face the challenge of harassment in their lives. They do not get access to public services either. So the one of the main purposes of this program is to make life easier for the millions of poor, migrants and marginalized (expected to be over 300 million) people. As well as to give inclusion to them," said Nilekeni.

The other is to make all government welfare schemes far more efficient by ensuring that they reach "each and every deserving poor", he says.

Even as the impoverished tribal farming community in Tembhali - many of whom do not even own the land they till - wonder how a unique identity, as Manmohan declared on Wednesday, "can change their lives", UID is meeting stiff resistance from civil liberties groups, privacy advocates, and legal eagles.

Critics condemn the UID as a blatant intrusion to privacy, a tool that will increase bureaucracy and corruption, and say that in addition to being hugely expensive and even illegal, the UID goes against basic human values.

"This project, has been initiated without any prelude: there is no project document; there is no feasibility study; there has been no cost-to-benefit analysis and there are serious concerns about data and identity theft," said Gopal Krishna, Member Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties.

Worse, Krishna added, a project "that could change the status of the people in this country, with regard to security and constitutional rights has been initiated without any legal authorization; just on the basis of an executive order".

The strongest opposition to the project has been generated by the fact that it aims to create a huge digital database containing sensitive personal information in one central location. This is a security risk of "immense" proportions, according to critics.

"Given that the country has hardly any capability in securing its digital database, and an absence of privacy laws, UID's plans of storing its data in one centralized database is an immense risk," said Sunil Abraham, an activist at the People Union for Civil Liberties. "The trouble with a centralized infrastructure is that if it is compromised, then all of it will be compromised, which can result in the collapse of the country's information systems."

Nilekeni deflects these criticisms, saying that the UID Authority will use "the best expertise for security and we also have a policy of proactively publishing strategy policy report and committee reports on our website as well." But arguments against the project stretch on.

"The other opposition is the use of biometrics for ID," says Abraham. "Our fear is that most parts of the country do not have power and if the system mandates that every time a rural resident has to prove his identity biometrically for say collecting subsidized food, chances are that the process will be slower and more prone to failure because of lack of infrastructure."

That, according to critics, could give rise to newer complication or even manipulation of the biometric data - and hence an additional opportunity for corruption.

"A typical unlettered person does not understand the complexities of biometric data collection and verification," says Jiti Nichani, a researcher and an advocate, Alternative Law Forum. "Given the rampant bureaucracy and corruption in the country, this would give yet another reason for the corrupt to siphon off the largesse of a welfare scheme elsewhere; corruption will increase manifold as a consequence."

Still, its flip side is not really devoid of selling points; some of UID's beneficial characteristics are undeniable.

For one, experts say, for every rupee spent on the government's welfare schemes, lack of identity of a poor Indian results in just 15 paisa reaching them. UID then can really revolutionize the way government services are delivered.

Besides, inability to prove identity is not only one of the biggest barriers that prevent the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies, or stymie the government from reaching out to the deserving. It also stops the government formulating appropriate welfare polices, plugging leakages, and above all, eliminating fraud and duplicate identities.

UID, say its proponents, will no longer allow someone to represent themselves differently across a number of agencies, which could solve a lot these problems.

"A UID will enable the poor grab the right to education, get jobs on migration, get medical benefits and even open a bank account and get a mobile phone connection," said Nilekni. "The transformative capability of the UID scheme can be enormous."

Nevertheless, providing an identity to one billion plus Indians in a country so devoid of basic infrastructure is a Herculean task.

Its real challenge may not lie in the concerns that critics have raised, but perhaps in the politics of governance and its reforms. Experts say the success of the project depends on the effective use of political authority, and how Nilekeni and Manmohan manage to address corruption in the political and official systems.

Nilekeni though is undaunted. "I am aware that there are a lot of challenges and this is a humongous project," he said. "But there is a lot of political will and support, and the government is firmly convinced that this project could change the face of India."

Read the original in Asia Times Online

Note: Sunil Abraham does not work for People's Union for Civil Liberties

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/stiff-resistance

Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T09:59:30Z

Glover Wright of the Center for Internet and Society talks about Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India at the Innovate/Activate Unconference in New York Law School on 24 September 2010.

Video

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/data-activism-grassroots

September 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T07:22:30Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this bulletin we bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and announcement of events organised in the month of September 2010.

News Updates

Conference: Internet at Liberty 2010: This conference is being held in Budapest from 20 to 22 September 2010. It is co-sponsored by Google and Central European University. Sunil Abraham and Anja Kovacs are attending the conference.
http://bit.ly/afo0WY

INDIA Fears of Privacy Loss Pursue Ambitious ID Project: Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.
http://bit.ly/dnJDRu
Innovate / Activate: The event will be held on 24 and 25 September 2010 at New York Law School. http://bit.ly/cbICFq
Webinar: Closed for Business: A Global Panel Discusses International Copyright Laws and Their Impact on the Open Internet
http://bit.ly/a3ZFBw
The madness of software patents
India’s patent law excludes software per se, yet over a thousand patents have been granted, writes Lata Jishnu in an article published in Down to Earth.
http://bit.ly/cpHd7R
Why piracy is tough to rein in
“Video market is being treated as a poor cousin of the film industry”
http://bit.ly/aDUpiY
Transparency and MDGs: the Role of the Media and Technology
Key quotes from sixth panel
http://bit.ly/b3a0YC
Copyright bill restricts Net access
Law to curb piracy may fetter creativity
http://bit.ly/cFj3rD
科技改變社會數位原生代計畫
The Chinese language press covered the Digital Natives workshop in Taipei.
http://bit.ly/bPhEO4
科技改變社會數位原生代掀波
The Chinese press published an article on Digital Natives.
http://bit.ly/bHaQor
Information is Beautiful hacks in India with David Cameron
The Prime Minister took some of the UK's top hackers and data experts with him to India this week. David McCandless was with them.
http://bit.ly/dr3AJ2

Events

International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT: ICT workshop in New Delhi from 27th to 29th October, 2010...Registrations open!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK
A Talk by Philipp Schmidt: Philip Schmidt of Peer 2 Peer University will be giving a lecture at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on 6 October, 2010.
http://bit.ly/aVyzMq

Research

On Talking Back: A Report on the Taiwan Workshop: What does it mean to Talk Back? Who do we Talk Back against? Are we alone in our attempts or a part of a larger community? How do we use digital technologies to find other peers and stake-holders? What is the language and vocabulary we use to successfully articulate our problems? How do we negotiate with structures of power to fight for our rights? These were the kind of questions that the Talking Back workshop held in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan from 16 to 18 August 2010 posed.
http://bit.ly/daE4dM
The Binary: City and Nature: A continuation of the last post wherein I am looking at various other representation of the city in both classical and popular medium, today I am writing my views on the analysis of certain Miniature paintings.
http://bit.ly/b5FP5D
Of the State and the Governments - The Abstract, the Concrete and the Responsive: This post examines the concepts of state and government to lay the ground for understanding responsiveness enforced through transparency discourses and the deployment of ICTs, the Internet and e-governance programmes. It also lays the context for understanding why and how ICTs. Internet and e-governance have been deployed in India for improving government-citizen interfaces, eliminating middlemen, delivering services electronically and for introducing a range of similar reforms to institute transparency and a responsive state.
http://bit.ly/cNLKcY
The Responsive State --- Introduction to the Series: This post is an introduction to a series of posts on the concept of the 'responsive state'. In this series, I try to explain the various meanings that the term responsiveness has come to acquire when it is used in relation with the discourses surrounding transparency and the deployment of ICTs and the Internet to enforce transparency and thereby create a responsive state. Understanding the notion of responsiveness requires us to revisit and analyze certain concepts and the relations that have been drawn between concepts such as state, government, politics, administration, transparency, effectiveness, government-citizen interface, ICTs and effectiveness, among others.
http://bit.ly/agBOiq
Attentional Capital in Online Gaming: The Currency of Survival
This blog post by Arun Menon discusses the concepts of production, labour and race in virtual worlds and their influence on the production of attention as a currency. An attempt is made to locate attentional capital, attentional repositories and attention currencies within gaming to examine 'attention currencies and its trade and transactions in virtual worlds. A minimal collection of attention currencies are placed as central and as a pre-requisite for survival in MMOs in much the same way that real currency become a necessity for survival. The approach is to locate attentional capital through different perspectives as well as examine a few concepts around virtual worlds.
http://bit.ly/aaGZj8
What's in a Name? Or Why Clicktivism May Not Be Ruining Left Activism in India, At Least for Now: In a recent piece in the Guardian titled “Clicktivism Is Ruining Leftist Activism”, Micah White expressed severe concern that, in drawing on tactics of advertising and marketing research, digital activism is undermining “the passionate, ideological and total critique of consumer society”. His concerns are certainly shared by some in India: White's piece has been circulating on activist email lists where people noted with concern that e-activism may be replacing “the real thing” even in this country. But is the situation in India really this dire?
http://bit.ly/9a3I0G
Sexuality, Queerness and Internet technologies in Indian context: This blog post lays out the discursive construction of sexuality and queerness as intelligible domains in the Indian context while engaging with ideas of visibility, representation, exclusion, publicness, criminality, difference, tradition, experience, and community that have come into use with the critical responses to queer identities and practices in India.
http://bit.ly/byfPye

Accessibility

Enabling Access to Education through ICT - A Conference in Delhi: The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from 27 to 29 October 2010. The event is sponsored by Hans Foundation. Registration for the conference has begun.
http://bit.ly/bmrkf7

Access to Knowledge

Pre-grant Opposition Filed for a Software Patent Application by Blackberry Manufacturers: A pre-grant opposition was filed against a software patent application filed in the patent office by Certicom, a wholly owned subsidiary of Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturers of Blackberry. The opposition was filed on August 31, 2010 by the Software Freedom Law Centre which has recently expanded its operations to India. This exciting development was announced by Mishi Choudhary from SFLC on the lines of the seminar on “Software Patents and the Commons” organised on 1 September 2010 in Delhi jointly by SFLC, the Centre for Internet and Society, the Society for Knowledge Commons and Red Hat. Filing more such oppositions to software patents in India was in the pipeline and this is just the beginning of a movement to take on monopolisation of knowledge and ideas through patenting software, the organisers said.
http://bit.ly/9wE1Xs
First Post-Bilski Decision - Software Patent Rejected: In the first decision post-Bilski, the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) rejected a software patent claimed by Hewlett-Packard. The ruling in this case has buttressed the fact that the Bilski decision furthered the cause of narrowing the patentability of software even though the Supreme Court of the United States totally avoided mentioning software patents or the applicability of the machine or transformation test for software patents in its decision.
http://bit.ly/cnPw7E
The Bilski Case - Impact on Software Patents: The Supreme Court of the United States gave its decision in Bilski v Kappos on 28 June, 2010. In this case the petitioners’ patent application sought protection for a claimed invention that explains how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The Court in affirming the rejection by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit also held that the machine- or-transformation test is not necessarily the sole test of patentability. The Court’s ruling of abstract ideas as unpatentable and its admission that patents do not necessarily promote innovation and may sometimes limit competition and stifle innovation have provided a ray of hope. In the light of the developments, the Bilski decision as far as patentability of software is concerned may not be totally insignificant, says Krithika Dutta Narayana.
http://bit.ly/bjrPGh

Openness

Free Access to Law—Is it here to Stay? An Environmental Scan Report: The following is a preliminary project report collaboratively collated by the researchers of the "Free Access to Law" research study. This report aims to highlight the trends, as well as the risks and opportunities, for the sustainability of Free Access to Law initiatives in each of the country examined.
http://bit.ly/9VVzkk
Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do?: The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
http://bit.ly/ciohYy

Internet Governance

Moldova Online: An Interview with Victor Diaconu: In this interview for Russian Cyberspace, set up with the help of Sunil Abraham (Executive Director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India), computer software professional Victor Diaconu explains the nature of Internet use, state control and the development of blogging and social media platforms in Moldova. Victor works at Computaris in Chisinau. He is Moldova educated, and has travelled to several western countries (including lengthy stays to US, UK) to learn about and understand what there is to be done in Moldova. Sudha Rajagopalan interviewed Victor Diaconu.
http://bit.ly/cgIvXT
Presentation of the UID project by Ashok Dalwai – A Report: On Tuesday, 7 September 2010, Ashok Dalwai, the Deputy Director General of the Unique Identification of India (UIDAI), gave a lecture at the Indian Institute for Science in Bangalore. Representing the UID Authority, his presentation explained the vision of the project and focused on the challenges involved in demographic and biometric identification, the technology adopted, and the enrolment process. Elonnai Hickok gives a report of his presentation in this blog post.
http://bit.ly/aAy5DG
Beyond Access as Inclusion: On 13 September, the day before the fifth Internet Governance Forum opens, CIS is co-organised in Vilnius a meeting on Internet governance and human rights. One of the main aims of this meeting was to call attention to the crucial, yet in Internet governance often neglected, indivisibility of rights. In this blog post, Anja Kovacs uses this lens to illustrate how it can broaden as well reinvigorate our understanding of what remains one of the most pressing issues in Internet governance in developing countries to this day: that of access to the Internet.
http://bit.ly/cgS9py
Summary of UID Public Meeting, August 25 2010: A summary of the "No UID" public meeting that took place on Aug. 25th at the Constitution Club, New Dehli.
http://bit.ly/9epHTz
No UID Campaign in New Delhi - A Report: The Unique Identification (UID) Bill is not pro-citizen. The scheme is deeply undemocratic, expensive and fraught with unforseen consequences. A public meeting on UID was held at the Constitution Club, Rafi Marg in New Delhi on 25 August, 2010. The said Bill came under scrutiny at the meeting which was organised by civil society groups from Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi campaigning under the banner of "No UID". The speakers brought to light many concerns, unanswered questions and problems of the UID scheme.
http://bit.ly/97HwbS
Wherever you are, whatever you do: Facebook recently launched a location-based service called Places. Privacy advocates are resenting to this new development. Sunil Abraham identifies the three prime reasons for this outcry against Facebook. The article was published in the Indian Express on 23 August, 2010.
http://bit.ly/adXVjB

Telecom

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Conference: Internet at Liberty 2010

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:00:01Z

This conference is being held in Budapest from 20 to 22 September 2010. It is co-sponsored by Google and Central European University. Sunil Abraham and Anja Kovacs are attending the conference.

The conference Internet at Liberty 2010 will explore creative ways to address the boundaries of online free expression, the complex relationship among technology, economic growth and human rights, ways in which dissidents and governments are using the Internet, the role of Internet intermediaries, and pressing policy and legal issues such as privacy and cybersecurity. The event will bring together grassroots global activists alongside representatives of NGOs, academic centers, governments and corporations. The Centre for Media and Communication Studies is playing a core role in the organisation of the event.

Download the agenda

For further information, see CMCS website

Also see, Internet at Liberty 2010 website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/internet-at-liberty-conference