Centre for Internet and Society

March 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T05:02:42Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! We bring you updates of our research, news, and events for the month of March 2010 in this bulletin.

News Updates

An Open Answer to Office
OpenOffice with its new features is giving Microsoft Word tough competition, says Deepa Kurup in this article published in The Hindu.
http://cis-india.org/news/open-office

Upcoming Events

CPOV: Wikipedia Research Initiative
The second WikiWars conference will be held in Amsterdam from 26 to 27 March 2010
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov

CI Global Meeting on A2K
CIS is a co-sponsor of the Consumers International Meeting on A2K to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on April 21 and 22, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/events/ci-global-meeting-a2k

Research

India Game Developer Summit Bangalore 2010
The India Game Developer Conference held at Nimhans Convention Centre on the 27th of February, 2010 was attended by Arun Menon who is working on The Gaming and Gold Project at The Centre for Internet and Society. The Developer forum brought together game developers from different sectors of the Game Production Cycle, with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia demonstrating their latest 3d technology and Software developers like Crytek and Adobe demonstrating the latest in developer tools for creating and editing games on multiple platforms.
http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/gaming/india-game-developer-summit-in-bangalore-2010

10 Legendary Obscene Beasts
Nishant Shah analyses a peculiar event of vandalism which has now become the core of free speech and anti-censorship debates in mainland China. Looking at the structure of user generated knowledge websites and the specific event on the Chinese language encyclopaedia, 'Baidu Baike', he shows how, in cities where spaces of political spectacle and public protest are quickly diminishing, the Internet has become a tool for producing new public spaces of demonstration and protest.
http://cis-india.org/research/grants/ISShanghai/itcity4

WikiWars - A report
In this blog, Nishant Shah analyses about the WikiWars, the first of the three events held in Bangalore on January 12 and 13.
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep

Telecom

Understanding Spectrum
What is spectrum and how do government and commercial decisions on this scientific phenomenon affect public facilities and costs? Shyam Ponappa examines this in his latest blog published in the Business Standard on March 4, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/understanding-spectrum

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

The First IJLT-CIS Lecture Series on Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:12:05Z

The IJLT-CIS Lecture Series will be held at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore on 3 April, 2010.

The Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT) is the law and technology journal of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a leading research organisation devoted to the study of the Internet and its interface with the society. The IJLT-CIS Annual Law Lecture Series is an effort to promote a better understanding about crucial legal issues pertaining to the Internet and other emerging technologies.

The core theme of the lecture is Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace. Hon'ble Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar (Judge, Delhi High Court) shall be the Chief Guest and the first speaker. The other speakers are Amit Sachdeva (Advocate, Delhi High Court), Aditya Sondhi (Advocate, Karnataka High Court) and Dr. Lorna E. Gillies (Lecturer in Law, University of Leicester).

The Lecture Series is open to all law students and the general public. There are no charges or fees applicable to participants. However, all participants are requested to register through an e-mail to “editorialboard@ijlt.in”. All student participants shall be provided certificates of participation.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/ijlt-cis-lecture

Critical Point of View: WikiWars II

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:12:17Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore), in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam) is hosting the second Critical Point of View (WikiWars) conference in Amsterdam on March 26 and 27, 2010. In this two day event that seeks to engage with different aspects of Wikipedia across different disciplines and practices, we invite students, researchers, Wikipedians and interested stakeholders to come and join us at WikiWars.

WikiWars brings together more than forty scholars, students, practitioners, artists and experts who have been critically reflecting upon the emergence of Wikipedia in various contexts of education, politics, resistance, art theory and practice, knowledge production, learning, pedagogy and new and alternative forms of interaction and community building.

Dates: 26th, 27th March, 2010.

Venue: Public Library Amsterdam

Programme for the event has International and National delegates presenting in panels on Wiki-Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art, Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debates and Global Issues and Outlooks.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/wikiwars-amsterdam

CI Global Meeting on A2K

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:08:06Z

CIS is a co-sponsor of the Consumers International Meeting on A2K

The Consumers International Global Meeting on A2K 2010 is to be held at the Holiday Villa hotel in Subang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 21 and 22 April 2010.

The meeting will bring together CI members and other NGOs from around the world to discuss and collaborate on issues of access to knowledge (A2K) and communications rights. Highlights will include the launch of the Consumers International IP Watch List for 2010, the launch of CI's new film on A2K, and a preview of the results of our access barrier survey.

Don't miss the most important day on the A2K calendar for the global consumer movement!

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/ci-global-meeting-a2k

An open answer to Office

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:38:15Z

OpenOffice with its new features is giving Microsoft Word tough competition, says Deepa Kurup in this article published by The Hindu on March 14, 2010.

The decade-old OpenOffice was the Free and Open Source riposte to Microsoft's Office that has entrenched itself in the office productivity suite segment.

Originally a proprietary software application that was open-sourced by Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice has come a long way, with the release of its new-improved version 3.2. Today, having crossed 300 million downloads — a third of this over the last year — this community project is among the most successful stand-alone Open Source products.

Data legacy and incompatibility issues, as a majority of office software was already using proprietary applications, and widespread piracy, retarded early growth. Constantly competing with MS Office, it got better with successive iterations, though it has not quite caught up. The latest version, Office 2010, is due for release and offers browser versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, across the PC, mobile phone and browser.

Open Office 3.2

The most in-your-face improvements of Open Office 3.2 Writer are the reduced start-up time (down by 46 per cent, it claims) and more features on Calc, its spreadsheet programme. It offers improved compatibility with proprietary file formats, including password-protected files, and increased compliance with Open Document Format (ODF) standards that have now been adopted by several countries.

Why Open Office?

For starters. OpenOffice is free — as in free beer and freedom/liberty, to roughly borrow the famous Richard Stallman analogy for Free Software. So when MS Office 2007 for home users costs Rs 3,000, and between Rs.14,000 and Rs.17,000 for professionals, OpenOffice is free.

Though the frills and fancies are missing in the user interface, including simple features like a thesaurus, for a regular user what OpenOffice offers is basic and adequate.

As for the “freedom” it offers, OpenOffice has driven localisation in a big way. Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, points out that its support for language computing is key. OpenOffice is available in 26 Indian languages (led by the CDAC's BharateeyaOO team and independent FOSS communities), years before proprietary options were available. Even today, Microsoft's Office Suite offers 12 languages, while OpenOffice offers dictionaries, thesaurus, spelling and grammar check.

Though it has not been widely adopted in the way it is in Europe, there are some success stories, Mr. Abraham says. For instance, the Delhi Government and the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu are migrating to OpenOffice.

New acquisition

With proprietary giant Oracle recently acquiring Sun Microsystems, the FOSS community that has contributed reams of code to Sun's Open Source project — like OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and more importantly MySQL — is apprehensive. But with no competing Office products, there is little reason for Oracle to kill OpenOffice. Michael Bemmer, general manager of Global Business Unit, asserts OpenOffice will remain Open Source and free. “The Oracle Office product family will be the first desktop-to-web-to-mobile solution centred on the ODF document standard — running on any platform, any device.”

Link to the original article in the Hindu

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-office

Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:46:13Z

Is Web accessibility just a Government Mandate? Should private sites be ignored? Wesolowski examines this in light of the steps taken by ictQATAR to make its website accessible to W3C standards, and hopes that Qatar and eventually all other Arab nations will follow suit and make Web accessibility much more of a mandate.

Most web developers know that they should make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities, such as including captions for videos to assist the hearing impaired, designing navigation so it can be done through a keypad as opposed to a mouse and including descriptive captions for the blind. But too often developers choose fancy design over accessibility. In some countries though, accessibility is no longer an option!

In a recent white paper published by my friends at G3ict (thank you again for taking me to see the Center for the Visually Impaired when I was in Atlanta last June – inspiring!), web accessibility is examined from a policy perspective. The white paper’s editor, Nimita Narasimhan from The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, examines web accessibility policies in 15 countries and the EU in terms of scope of policies and the type of policy. Scope refers to how comprehensive a policy. Type refers to the level of enforcement in place for the policy, ranging from being only suggested guidelines to legislative mandates.

Not surprisingly, few countries currently have a high scope and high policy enforcement level (see chart below), but more and more countries are adopting guidelines and are trending towards real enforcement. The white paper notes that W3C has already developed comprehensive guidelines for countries to use, but that in countries that do not use a Latin-based language, such as here in the Gulf, the guidelines often need to be customized to fit specific online language needs.

I found it interesting how so many countries are adopting Web accessibility standards, but also how rarely they seem to have any legislative mandate behind them. In many of the countries that do have a legislative mandate, web accessibility is often tied to a broader piece of legislation dealing with persons with disabilities in general. May be this is the way for more countries to go. I also found it interesting how most legislation makes Web accessibility mandatory only for government sites, but ignores any private sites – this seems to me to very much limit the impact.

In Qatar, we are still at the early stages. ictQATAR has made its website accessible to W3C standards and has encouraged other government agencies and organizations to follow suit. This is clearly just a first step and hopefully Qatar and other Arab countries will start to make web accessibility much more of a mandate.

For original article on Digital Qatar

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/web-accessibility-government-mandate

Narrative and Gameplay in Role Playing Games

praskrishna — 2012-03-13T10:43:48Z

Not all games tell stories but narratives, gameplay, and their relational attributes are a relevant shift observed in the gaming scene, Arun Menon finds out.

This article, the second in a three-part series, examines the elements of role playing games (RPGs), the narrative versus gaming, and the questions of centrality of narratives in RPGs. It focuses and reviews the debates surrounding narratives and gameplay in RPGs.

The section looks at:

Narrative versus gameplay and games as the antithesis of narrative, interactivity and gameplay. The debates of the ludologists and the narratologists; and
Interactivity and narrative, the mechanics of the game not independent to the narrative.

Narrative versus Gameplay

The narrative vs. gameplay debate has been raging for a few years in media scholarship particularly relating to the (video) gaming industry. Where once the narrative was considered the antithesis of gameplay, there is a noticeable shift towards the former. Developers across genres are incorporating the narrative as an essential element of their products, so much so that a few of them brand themselves as the developer with a difference.

The extremely relevant shift, since the incorporation is not limited to RPGs alone, and a merger or hybridization of different genres. Academicians as well as gamers have called for a diversification of genres so that a gamer may be exposed to a broad possibility of experiences. The movement, although, seems to be in the opposite direction with hybridization of genres but without losing out on possibilities of creating multiple experiences. The Ludologists and the Narratologists differ on gaming, storytelling, and narrative structures and its working within these spaces.

Narrative: The Antithesis of Gameplay

Jesper Juul argues that computer games are not narratives and rather narratives in computer games isolates the ‘computer game-ness’. (I interpret Juul’s computer game-ness as gameplay, can also be read as the mechanics of the game). Juul’s comments are similar to many Ludologists who argue for a focus on the mechanics of gameplay rather than the study of games as media for storytelling as is done by the Narratologists. The focus on the mechanics of the game is derived from the argument that the experience of the game does not solely rest with the experience of the story. Often the narrative limits gameplay and character progression (which includes quest progression where applicable). Reading whole games as entire narratives may be problematic. Narratives may be present in minimal quantities localized within the game. Narrative structures are altogether another medium used to deliver the story. As Jenkins notes:

"Game designers don't simply tell stories. They design worlds and sculpt spaces. It is no accident, for example, that game design documents have historically been more interested in issues of level design than plotting or character motivation."

The delivery of the story through interactive game worlds create a certain process for the narrative to play out. Readings of the narrative alone without the mechanics of gameplay and its contribution would be incomplete. Henry Jenkins seems to term designers more in terms of narrative architects rather than just storytellers. Narratives within games do not conform to the classical modes of narratives, which are used when reading/interpreting games. Such a reading becomes problematic because of the heavy handed import of theory without proper application. A certain amount of incorporation of theory without sufficient examination of the process (or the architecture in Jenkins words) through which the story is told.

Interactivity and Narrative

Interactivity is the process where the game’s world responds to the player and the choices made by the player. The structure is so set up that in addition to the narrative, interactivity allows a certain response/consequence. The consequence or response of the game world does two things: a) increase the potential for an immersive environment where the gamer emotionally engages with the game and b) there are separate plot lines depending entirely on choices made by the player. For example in an epic fantasy RPG, I can ally with the good hero or the bad hero and have different choices and content that follows dependent on this and the following moral decisions. Interactivity is determined by contribution of the player (engagement with the game world, and the subsequent choices in character development/progression) and the narrative is often construed as the one set by the developer and therefore, has credible authorship (questions of authorship of the developer and the co-authorship of the player) and as such both (interactivity and narrative) are different from each other.

As noted by Henry Jenkins in his article Game Design as Narrative Architecture there is a need to acknowledge a few basic points when talking about narratives and storytelling in games. Often when talking about narratives the discussion tends to meander into irrelevant areas locating a narrative in every game where most probably none exists, narrative and storytelling are not intrinsic to the game and not all games tell stories. In one where A throws a ball to B (either can be the player or the NPC [NPC stands for non-player character(s), often found within the game, and does not necessarily have to be graphically coded in text based games. An example of this would be Eternal Duel]), the ball is not expected to bounce up and down, narrating its history and its present predicament, pleading the players character to venture out on a righteous quest [Inspired by Markku Eskelinen “… if I throw a ball at you, I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories”]. It is then important to see that these aspects are limited to specific instances and specific products which in this case would be RPGs. To quote Jenkins:

"You say narrative to the average gamer and what they are apt to imagine is something on the order of a choose-your-own adventure book, a form noted for its lifelessness and mechanical exposition rather than enthralling entertainment, thematic sophistication, or character complexity."

The conceptualization of what a narrative is and how it operates within games need to be rethought since classical influences still dictate theorizations of what narratives (in games) are. The application of film theory to videogames has no doubt led to game studies being influenced particularly in areas of immersive structures and storytelling through comparison to other media.

However, such is its literal interpretation that often ‘the lenses’ used to examine a phenomenon irrevocably colours the reading. The study of a narrative does not mean that storytelling is featured above other aspects of gameplay and the experience of the playthrough is not limited to the experience of the story alone. Immersiveness necessarily does not depend only on the story but also on the fact that a story plays a relevant part in the immersiveness experienced in a role playing game. The operation of narratives in a role playing game would be far more extensive than in any of the other genres.

The ‘role-play’ in RPG involves stories on the character and its present predicament with snapshots of the past which fall into place through progression. Such a model may be observed in Bioshock. The epic fantasy genres allow more freedom largely because the central narrative, if there is one at all, is a loose structure that allows progression any one way. Progression here may be linked to moral choices that the reader makes and the characterization that the reader creates. For instance in Dragon Age: Origins a point comes when the character meets an NPC ‘Sten’ [An NPC character, who murdered an entire family including the children] who agrees to join the group and battle Darkspawn. There are points in the dialogue when Sten argues that death is his redemption and the character depending on how the player has created and visualized the character has to make a choice to either kill Sten for his crime, allow him to join the party, or just leave him caged to be a bait for Darkspawn attacks. This opportunity of making moral choices also affects gameplay and content. Including or excluding Sten in the party means access to different content.

This is where the relational aspects of interactivity and narrative play a part. Two gamers making similar choices will have different experiences based largely on those choices. Dialogue choices, character choices, events in different orders and so forth make up for different playthrough experiences for different individuals even if convergent plotlines are encountered.

Most games do have narrative aspirations. Jenkins argues that game narratives seek to tap into the emotional residues of narrative experiences in other mediums. As such there is an effort to create immersive environments (Immersive environments denote the emotional engagement/investment of the reader/gamer in the game world). Often it is not sufficiently translated into experience. All narratives would be, in this framework, a set of attempts to link with other narratives even as a baser residual or experiential form. Residual narratives are the memories of alternate predecessor narratives engaged by the gamer in the same or other mediums. For example, The Tales of Middle Earth (T.O.M.E) would be more accessible for a gamer, who has read Tolkein and watched the movies. This can also be seen in RPG formats. On a careful examination, most plotlines have some similarity with Dungeons and Dragons, one of the first and successful RPGs. There is a possibility of multiple narratives operating in the same game, experienced through an interactive mode. This is noticed in some of the new releases such as Neocore [The developers of ‘King Arthur: The Role Playing Wargame] and Bioware.

Bioware is the developer of Mass Effect and Mass Effect2, both modern RPGs with revolutionary design. Revolutionary in terms of ability to carry over a narrative into the second release by importing a saved game and observing the consequences of actions taken in the previous game, as well as cater to new players by allowing creation of new characters and entirely new interactive, responsive narratives. The same company also designed Dragon Age: Origins, which is a more traditional RPG in terms of storyline and characterizations. The Traditional RPGs follow the set models that have similarities to J. R. R. Tolkeins fictionalized world and the RPG precursor dungeons and dragons. As mentioned earlier this translates into multiple/different experiences with consecutive engagement with the same game. Since, the possibility of multiple narratives operating within the same game, through interactivity, is noticed in new releases by developers such as Neocore and to an extent in Bioware.

To conclude, narratives in games have been conceptualized and read through different perspectives. An emphasis on the mechanics of the game is relevant with any approach to the narrative in the game. Since, the narrative is not independent of the architecture that delivers it, it is important to acknowledge that narratives in games require completely different approaches.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/narrative-and-gameplay

Indians Get Particular about Online Marriage

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T06:48:58Z

The article quotes Nishant Shah's views on online behaviour of people seen elsewhere in the world.

From the overweight and transsexuals to people with HIV and those supposedly afflicted by negative planetary positions, the Internet dating game in India increasingly has a website for everyone.

And with Valentine's Day on Sunday, the specialist sites are seeing a rise in hits.

"There's always an increase in activity around this time of year," said Megha Singhal, who with her sister runs a portal for larger lonely hearts -- www.overweightshaadi.com.

"Valentine's Day is still a big deal here. Everyone wants a date," the 21-year-old economics student told AFP from New Delhi.

Marriage -- or "shaadi" in Hindi -- remains a cornerstone of society in conservative India, with hundreds of matchmaking sites concentrating on finding their members suitable life partners rather than casual dates.

Long-established portals like www.shaadi.com, www.bharatmatrimony.com and www.jeevansathi.com offer general searches. Would-be brides and grooms can be selected by age, caste, religion, language or where they live.

But Singhal and others say that niche matrimonial sites can often be more effective.

Yazdi Tantra, a computer consultant in Mumbai, runs www.theparsimatch.com, one of a number of websites for the dwindling community of followers of the ancient Zoroastrian faith.

"Essentially, Parsis like to marry within the community. It saves time rather than trawling through other multicultural sites to get a profile," he said.

Sanjeev Pahwa, head of the New Delhi-based firm Strikeone Advertising, said targeting niche groups made business sense as he realised smaller start-ups like his couldn't compete with the major players.

The result was www.bposhaadi.com, for call centre workers working unsociable hours, and www.govtshaadi.com, targeting state sector employees looking for love.

Another came about from the belief in Indian astrology that a Manglik -- a person born when Mars was in an inauspicious position in the skies -- is a bad match for marriage but that two Mangliks can cancel out its negative effects.

Now, www.manglikshaadi.com has more than 14,000 members, he said.

Since starting five years ago, Pahwa has introduced more sites, including for people with disabilities and the over 30s, who have preferred to further their careers before getting married.

Elsewhere, there are sites for hijras -- transsexuals and transvestites commonly known in India as eunuchs -- people with HIV and those who shun the officially banned, but still widely practised, dowry system.

Satya Naresh, who set up www.idontwantdowry.com, said the site is helping to break down traditional attitudes and a practice that can place an intolerable financial strain on families.

"We've been very successful in changing the mindset of people and hope it continues," he said from the southern city of Hyderabad.

For these Internet entrepreneurs, web access in India -- although still small at about 14 percent for broadband connections -- is good news for those looking for love.

"The Internet does make the access to a pool of suitable people much easier than matrimony in other times," said Singhal.

Nishant Shah, director of research at the Centre for Internet and Society, based in the IT hub of Bangalore, said the phenomenon reflected online behaviour already seen elsewhere in the world.

"As more and more people are going online they're going to replicate tight and personalised communities which are very local and bound by existing structures at the same time as trying to look more globally," he explained.

"The matrimonial sites are fairly indicative of that. We find people not going on to general websites but very narrow ones.

"It's not just matrimonial sites. Facebook, for example, looks like a very large community of users but when you look at friend networks you realise people connect in small and specialist networks.

"It reflects the old idea of 'birds of a feather stick together'."

For link to the original article

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

Community Informatics: Successfully Applying Information and Communications Technologies as a Support to Local Economic and Social Development

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:13:17Z

Dr. Gurstein will present a talk on the current state of development in Community Informatics and facilitate a broader discussion on community based ICTs for local development and community empowerment as are currently applied in India and worldwide.

Community Informatics (CI), also known as community networking, electronic community networking, community-based technologies or community technology refers to an emerging field of investigation concerned with principles and practices related to information and communication technology (ICT) as it applies to enabling or empowering communities or groups. It draws on insights on community development from social sciences disciplines and applies these in the areas of Information Studies and Information Systems. It is a cross- or interdisciplinary approach interested in the utilization of ICTs for different forms of community action, as distinct from pure academic study or research about ICT effects.

Community Informatics is very closely linked to broader strategies for ICT for Development that is the use of information and communications technologies as a support to economic and social development among and within less developed countries, regions and marginalized populations.

Dr. Gurstein will give a brief introduction to the current state of development in Community Informatics and facilitate a broader discussion on community based ICTs for local development and community empowerment as they are currently being applied in India and internationally.

The Speaker

Dr. Gurstein is currently Executive Director of the Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (CCIRDT) in Vancouver, Canada; Research Professor in the School of Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark); Research Professor in the Faculty of Management at the University of Quebec (Ouatouais); and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. The CCIRDT has an affiliated organization based in Cape Town, South Africa, and Memorandums of Agreement with Izandla Zethu (Pretoria, SA) and currently being finalized with the the Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID) and with IT for Change (IT4C) an NGO based in Bangalore, India.

He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Community Informatics and Foundation Chair of the Community Informatics Research Network. He currently has a continuing Advisory relationship with the (Canadian) Northern Indigenous Communities Satellite Network in the creation of its Research Consortium and is an Advisor to the EU funded N4C project looking at telecommunications services for underserved and indigenous people in Northern and Central Europe. He has consulted to the governments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Nepal and Jordan; to the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the UN Development Program, and the European Union; and to Nortel, Mitel, Bell Canada, and Intel among others.

Date and Time

February 25th, 2010, 05.00 pm to 07.00 pm.

Venue

Centre for Internet and Society, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 71

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/community-informatics-information

Your Signature Could Help 70 Million Read

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:10:48Z

A humble signature campaign in the city intends to take on a law that prevents the print-impaired from reading. You too can join in and support the cause.

Picture this: You are on a lazy weekend getaway with easy access to a hammock, cool lemonade and your favourite book. This might sound like oh-so common bliss to you, but this scenario is off bounds for over 70 million Indians. The "print-impaired", or in other words, those who cannot read due to a disability, don't have access to nearly 99% of material printed today. A campaign is currently on in Mumbai to change the law, and your endorsement could make a difference.

"The issue facing a print-impaired person is that when you have a book in standard print, it poses a problem to read," says Dr Sam Taraporevala, Associate Professor and Head of Department, Sociology at St Xavier's College.

Changing the format of a standard book is considered illegal under the Copyright Act of 1957. The Act does not permit conversion of books into a format that can be accessible for the print-impaired (through Braille, screen readers or a digital talking book format, to name a few). To counter this issue and make books accessible to all, Dr Taraporevala (also Director of the Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged), has launched a signature campaign.

"The advantage technology offers is that if an author or publisher wants to make his work accessible, he can do so in real time." The campaign, which is part of a global initiative by the World Blind Union (WBU), Sight Savers International and other organisations, is the first of its kind for the city. It aims at collecting 500 signatures of authors and publishers, who will be directly responsible for bringing about a change. Signing the intent form does not in any way mean that the author is handing over the rights of his book.

"There is a concern among authors about providing an accessible copy of the book, that it might lead to piracy," says Dr Taraporevala. "I don't condone piracy but it's a reality and this will not add to it significantly. Why allow injustice to prevail because of an artificial fear?"

Three hundred signatures down and 200 more to go, the race is on for the January 22 deadline. But Dr Taraporevala remains unperturbed. "We will do it. I don't know how but I want to believe anything is possible."

See the original article on Mid-Day.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/your-signature-could-help-70-million-read

Free Copyright Control to Help Blind Students: Xavier's Resource Centre

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:10:36Z

This article throws light on the fact that even though technology has made it possible for visually challenged to access print material, there is little awareness among authors and publishers to make it accessible, and hence, only an amendment in copyright laws can bring about this awareness.

Technology has made it possible for the visually challenged to access the print. But there is little awareness among publishers and authors about the need to make printed documents accessible to all. An amendment in copyright laws is needed to bring about this awareness.

To make it happen, the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC) has urged authors and publishers to support the global Right to Read [RTR] campaign initiated by the World Blind Union and Sight Savers International among others.

“The proposed amendments to the Indian Copyright Act are yet to be tabled in Parliament. But it is not just the law that needs to change,” said Dr Sam Taraporevala, XRCVC director. “There needs to be a quantum leap in the mindset, where people are thinking of accessibility across diverse dimensions.”

The XRCVC has urged authors and publishers to sign the RTR declaration. Technology can convert print into audio, larger print or Braille. But very little content has been converted into formats accessible to the print impaired.
The RTR campaign seeks to bring about changes to copyright laws, increase public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired, and gather support for the treaty for the blind proposed by the WBU at the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

The XRCVC feels that amendments to the Indian Copyright Act should take interests of all stake holders into consideration. “A coordinated effort is required by all the stake holders, like the government, the copyright owners, persons with print impairment and organisations representing them, and the public,” Taraporevala said. “Signing the declaration does not involve handing over rights but indicates a statement of intent in support for the cause.”

For link to the original story on DNA.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/free-copyright-control-to-help-blind-students

The Cultural Politics of Neo-Pentecostalism in India

praskrishna — 2013-08-21T11:04:26Z

Talk by Pradip Ninan Thomas

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore invites you to a talk by Pradip Ninan Thomas on The Cultural Politics of Neo-Pentecostalism in India. Harvey Cox, the scholar of religions, has described pentecostalism as ‘a religion made to travel’ and as the global face of Christianity today. While there is little hard data available in India on any changes in Christian denominational membership, there is evidence available via the Pew Study on Global Pentecostalism and any amount of soft data that indicates that there has been a massive expansion in new churches in India predominantly linked to the Pentecostalist and neo-Pentecostalist traditions.

This brief lecture is based on a study of Christian fundamentalism and Communications in India that Pradip Ninan Thomas had carried out in 2006. This lecture will explore the cultural politics of neo-Pentecostalism in India including its organizational strategies, ideological struggles, communicative practices and correspondences between the global and the local.

The religious marketplace in India has experienced extraordinary growth over the last two decades. Christianity too has been affected by this growth and Pradip Ninan Thomas argues that the commodification of Christianity is tied into Church planting, the numbers game and contestations with Hindutva in India.

Speaker

Pradip Thomas is Joint Director of the Centre for Communication & Social Change, University of Queensland, Brisbane. His research trajectory primarily comes out of the political economy of communication tradition and he has written/co-edited a number of books and papers on issues related to media ownership, intellectual property, religion and the media and communication and social change. A forthcoming book that will be published by Sage is entitled ‘Political Economy of Communications in India: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. He is currently in India carrying out interviews related to a book project on Communication Rights Movements in India. He has had a long standing research interest in issues related to religion and media, particularly religious fundamentalism and the media.

Time and Date

Wednesday, 24 February, 2010; 5.00 to 7.00 pm

Venue

Centre for Internet and Society, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 71

VIDEO

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/cultural-politics-neo-pentecostalism-india

Right to Read, Now in Mumbai

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:46:02Z

The third phase of the 'Right to Read' campaign in India held in Mumbai was coordinated by the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC). The Mumbai Phase of the Right to Read Campaign was launched on 1st January 2010 and ran till the 27th of January 2010.

India has over 70 million persons who are unable to read printed materials and published information due to some forms of physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities. This includes the blind, visually impaired, persons with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and persons who are unable to use their hands or the upper part of their body and hence, cannot hold books. For these persons, information has to be converted into formats such as Braille, large print, audio, electronic and other formats which they can access using assistive technologies.

The ‘Right to Read' campaign was started for such persons. The campaign is part of a global initiative by the World Blind Union (WBU), Sightsavers International (SSI) and other such organizations. In India it is being spearheaded by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Daisy Forum of India (DFI), Inclusive Planet and Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC).

The campaign seeks to accelerate changes in copyright law, raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired and gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The XRCVC as part of its work in the field of creating an accessible and inclusive society and promoting print access has campaigned for this cause mainly in Mumbai and Western India. This report focuses on the genesis and outcome of the Mumbai chapter of the global Right to Read campaign.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/mumbai-phase-of-right-to-read-campaign

The print-impaired millions and their right to read

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:10:56Z

Books, books everywhere, but not a word to read. This is the scenario for the approximately 70 million print-impaired in India, a sizeable population that includes the visually-impaired young people as well the elderly — whose vision depletes with advancing age.

If you are visually impaired and want to read the latest bestseller, the chances are that you would be staring at a blank, almost-impenetrable wall. The reason: hardly about 500 to 700 of the approximately one lakh titles that are published in India every year are converted to formats like Braille, audio books and e-books for the benefit of this population, as well as versions with large prints for those with weak vision.

Now, as the Budget Session of parliament is likely to consider amendments to the Copyright Act, those advocating a ‘right to read’ for the print-impaired are hoping that among the changes would be a permission to convert books to various accessible formats like Bookshare or Daisy Book Forum for this population that want to travel into the magic world of words but are forced to be out of it.

A National Right to Read Campaign, backed by the Global Right to Read Campaign (GRRC), is already on the job, creating public awareness against what activists call the ‘exclusion’ of millions of Indians from the ‘fundamental right’ to read books.

While there are technologies and software that have enabled this population to access print materials in electronic formats that are read aloud by the machine, it is still illegal for the print-impaired people to, say, scan a book and read it using a screen reader software (such as Adobe Read Aloud) or share it with others. The matters are complicated even more by lack of international laws that allow cross-border sharing of accessible-format books between libraries in India and other countries.

“Even though the International Publishers Association is looking for a licensing system, specifically for conversion of books to accessible formats for the visually impaired, publishers are not publishing in these versions,” says Chris Friend, chair of the GRRC and World Blind Union (WBU) representative.

However, 600 authors — including Arun Shourie, Tarun Tejpal, Meghnad Desai and Girish Karnad — and publishing houses like Harper Collins, Marg Publications, etc have pledged support to the campaign.

Persons who cannot read print are not only the blind, as is the popular perception. A print impaired person can be either visually impaired or those who have other physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities such as dyslexia, autism, learning disabilities, etc, point out Sam Taraporevala and Nirmita Narasimhan of the Centre for Internet and Society, which is spearheading the Right to Read Campaign along with the Daisy Forum.

Dismal scene

In developed countries, according to WBU estimates, only about five per cent of published books are available to print-impaired persons. In developing countries like India, the percentage is reduced to a dismal 0.5 per cent. There is increasing global attention on the issue in the form of a Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, which is being discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) of the UN, and for which India has expressed its support.

Disabled rights activists like Javed Abidi are for faster availability of books in other formats, and say that it’s a ‘matter of shame’ that it has not been the norm despite India moving fast along the information highway.

Publishers like Cambridge University Press and Sage, while joining the movement for making books accessible for the print impaired, are a little apprehensive about the potential of abuse of the converted formats by book pirates as well as violation of rights of authors, whose permissions are necessary to convert any book to another format under the law.

“Publishers fear leakage of accessible formats into the open market,” says Manas Saikia of CUP. Something that Friend completely pooh poohs. “It’s a myth that we visually impaired are going to rob authors’ rights or leak the books into the open market. The Daisy format watermarks every converted production, and any leakage can be traced back to the source. Also, some publishers are opposing the WBU treaty at WIPO saying we want free books. That is another myth. We are ready to pay, just give us books to read,” he says.

But the debate in public space seems to be creating some impact. Even as publishers and authors are coming out in large numbers to support access of books to the print impaired, the human resource development ministry is working on providing an exception for conversion to various formats if it is for the print impaired.

In fact, G R Raghavendra, registrar for copyrights at the ministry, confirms that such a move is afoot to remove this ‘unfortunate’ lacuna in the law. Quite naturally, everyone who loves the printed word is hoping that the print-impaired book worms will sooner than latter witness sunnier days.

For the original article in the Deccan Herald

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/print-impaired-millions

De facebook

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:41:13Z

Facebook used to be our playground but privacy concerns are now souring that fantasy. Why do we trust a clutch of new corporations with such phenomenal amounts of personal data?

The age of privacy is over, Facebook’s fresh-faced founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared a couple of months back. Social norms have shifted. We are now used to living out loud. “When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, ‘Why would I want to put any information on the internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’” he said.

That paranoid past is behind us, claimed Zuckerberg, justifying Facebook’s controversial new decision to fling open the curtains and make maximum visibility the new normal. “In the last five or six years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and (there are) just all these different services that have people sharing all this information,” he said.

In other words, get over the stage fright. Everyone else is out there over-sharing, arguing, preening, and generally acting out online.

In June last year, Facebook sneaked in a feature called the Everyone update. This makes it much like Twitter, and also allows it to share with and sell information to search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo. “Facebook’s privacy changes are relevant as it tries to compete with real-time search on platforms like Twitter. It does give you an option to work around that though I am certain the whole process of setting privacy preferences could be a lot more intuitive,” says Sidharth Rao, digital industry watcher and CEO of internet marketing firm Webchutney.

On the surface, the new Facebook settings are better and much more malleable, if you can figure out how to work them — you can now choose, per post, what you want different sets of people to see. They have eliminated regional networks which would unwittingly expose you to an entire city sometimes (meaning that not everyone who is on the Delhi network, say, has automatic access to your information if you are in Delhi). But on the other hand, the default setting that Facebook recommends is deeply problematic. You, your profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of are all “publicly available information”. Earlier, you could make sure only your friends saw the rest of your friends — now, that option no longer exists as a setting.

Wasn’t privacy once a Facebook fundamental? Unlike the seedier environments of Orkut or Myspace, Facebook grew out of a small Harvard community, expanded to cover other East Coast schools, then conquered companies and countries. In September 2006, Facebook opened registration to anyone with an email address. But it was extremely cautious about how it engineered interaction. In essence, you were meant to socialise with people you already knew.

“It felt safer. It wasn’t about random people sending you scraps and stalking you, like on Orkut or whatever. Facebook reflected my real world. It kept you loosely, comfortably connected to so many people”, says Nomita Sawhney, a young Delhi-based architect. Unlike the threat of cyberstalking, intimidation, and impersonation that stalk less selective networks, Facebook remained clear of what media scholar Danah Boyd calls ‘stranger danger’. Only two years back, Zuckerberg told tech blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick that privacy “is the vector around which Facebook operates”.

I Like To Watch

Why are these changes such a big deal? Zuckerberg’s claim about privacy rings true for most unself-conscious Facebookers. After all, only recently, bra colour status updates were the big buzz on Facebook, ostensibly in support of breast cancer awareness. Now, it’s doppelganger week, where you tell the world what celebrity you most resemble. You can take dippy quizzes, remember birthdays, discuss the news, giggle over pictures. Grim warnings about corporate avarice and government spying sound faintly ridiculous in this pleasant context.

Social networks and blogs have certainly reconfigured privacy. Anyone who’s spent time on Facebook knows the impulse to meander through the pages and pictures of people in that amorphous category called ‘friends of friends’. In just a few years, we have got used to the thought that our lives are externalised and sprawled out for near-strangers to see.

In fact, Facebook is now the largest photo site in the world. When you join Facebook, under its Terms of Service, you give it a “license” (that is, legal permission) to use your content “on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.” It takes some effort to realise how recent all this is, that it’s still a great unfolding experiment, and that we are granting these companies fabulous power.
In his recent book, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors, cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki describes the digital glasshouse: “Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook. It’s blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn sites, virally spread digital movies of a fat kid pretending to be a Jedi Knight, cell phone photos — posted online — of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and citizen surveillance. Peep is the backbone of Web 2.0 and the engine of corporate and government data mining.”

Web 2.0 was the clunky name for a whole range of liberating personal expression platforms — from Flickr and Youtube to Livejournal and Facebook. These companies provide the space and you bring the party. They encourage you to feel right at home and treat these platforms like your lounge, confessional or salon. Meanwhile, they also collect and refine data about you, and often wield it without your awareness.
In its over-eagerness, Facebook has blundered into several privacy minefields before this—when it first introduced Newsfeed, pushing a steady stream of your friends’ status updates at you, it embarrassed and annoyed many. Boyd compared it to the experience of shouting to be heard at a party, when the music abruptly stops and everyone else can suddenly hear your careless small talk. Of course, it turns out Zuckerberg was right when he told users to “calm down and breathe”, and Newsfeed has been naturalised into the Facebook experience. Another, more scarring experience was Beacon — its attempt to track what users in the US bought on partner sites — and tell on them to their friends. After an avalanche of protests, Facebook backed down and modified the ad platform. It even employs a chief privacy officer to address our fears.

In the early days, Facebook generated awkwardness because it didn’t respect context — the fact that you wear and cast off selves depending on who you’re interacting with, your crazy roommate or your conservative grand-aunt who decided to befriend you online. “It is the problem that arises when worlds collide, when norms get caught in the crossfire between communities, when walls that separate social situations come crashing down,” writes Chris Peterson of the University of Massachusetts, who has studied Facebook’s privacy architecture.

But now you can tweak settings and set up differential access. People have figured out how to work Facebook and not get burnt. “Profile pictures flatter, tagged pictures shatter,” says Priya Singh, a twenty-something law student, with a laugh. “You never know what someone’s going to put up and who’s going to see what. I don’t want everyone to see drunken party pictures, and so I’ve just learnt to place family on a new level of privacy settings.” And that’s the general pattern on Facebook: most people have learnt to adjust to the public glare, after some initial blinking and bemusement.

Privacy from Whom?

You can segment your social world as minutely as you like, but that doesn’t mean your life is any more private. It’s not just the fact that potential employers can scan and dismiss you, or current employers keep tabs — though such stories abound. For instance, MIT’s Gaydar research project discovered that you can identify a person’s sexual preferences by studying who their friends are on Facebook, even if they have avoided sharing that information in their profile.

But perhaps we have been gulled into thinking that the whole privacy fuss is about each other. “It’s very clever of Facebook to foreground this aspect of control. Your other friends, pictures, the games you play — that’s something we regularly give out anyway”, says Nishant Shah, director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. “But Facebook is not a single entity — it is a collection of third party apps (applications) that we have no control over. A simple birthday calendar can harvest all your data, all your online traces and you grant it access without knowing it,” he says. So Facebook makes a big show of protecting you from your acquaintances, even as it sells your information continuously.

This becomes a much bigger possibility when it comes to search engine integration, which allows the open flow on Facebook to be harnessed for perfect reach and recall.

To get a clearer sense of what’s at stake with these influential corporations, take a more powerful example: Google.com. Every day, we confide our trivial confusions, our deep doubts to one willing ear. And these billions of broken questions can add up to an eerily accurate picture of the world. But do you search Google or does Google search you? “Google can track you across applications: email, search, blogs, pictures and books read. That means they can profile you in a very detailed, exhaustive way, and they do,’ says Rahul Matthan. “They never delete information, and they’re getting progressively more intelligent about you, as they make search more relevant with features like Google Suggest.” As technology scholar Siva Vaidyanathan puts it, “we have to realise that we are not Google’s customers. We are its product. We are what Google sells to advertisers.” These behaviourially targeted ads are the most perfect, evolved form of advertising so far and in concept, the least annoying, because they are customised to you. Google has promised that its information is utterly secure and that search logs are anonymised after a certain period.

It provides limited disclosure of outside ads, lets users manage the categories that Google has assigned to them and tinker with it for a more accurate picture and also provides an opt-out option. But Search 2.0 is a scary beast — it can also facilitate social control and surveillance. Your online activities are not scattered across applications any more, Google can hear what you tell Facebook.

While selling us stuff more efficiently is probably a good thing, what happens when this intimate knowledge shades into active surveillance? Even if we live in countries where rights are respected, “we give out enough personal information in an innocuous way to a single repository. They are sitting on top of a very valuable resource, and all this information can easily be reverse-engineered to reveal specifics about you,” says Rahul Matthan, technology lawyer and founder-partner of Trilegal.

In India, we are even more oblivious to such stealthy watching. “Privacy concerns here are lesser than in the West, where they’re so dependent on digital ID. There, if someone impersonates you or overdraws credit limits, it could affect your house, your job,” says Matthan.

Privacy legislation doesn’t really exist in India — the right to keep personal information confidential has only been articulated as protection against state action. “There’s no easy legal recourse to being thoroughly spied on by a company,” says Matthan (Europe has enforced data protection directives since 1984 — you can control what information is gathered about you, and how it is used. While the US has somewhat diluted laws, personal information is still strongly guarded). While it’s tempting to think that you have nothing to hide, you are acceding to a set-up where outliers can be identified and dealt with. Privacy matters, no matter how unexceptionable your own life. So what’s to be done? “Holding Facebook and other companies to account is crucial. We must set up legislations by which people can look back, ask exactly what about their activity is being tracked. They have to treat consumers as peers,” says Shah. “If Facebook can gaze at us, we must be given the right to gaze back at its functioning — it has to be a peer-to-peer relationship.”

So far, Facebook and the Googleverse and Twitter are still our friends and enablers. But as they amass more and more power, it is better to see them as fallible companies rather than confidantes, and to make sure that they account for our information.

For original article on the Indian Express

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