Centre for Internet and Society

Investigating Limits to Innovation and Peer Production in India's Mobile Apps Economy

praskrishna — 2016-09-28T14:14:14Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/investigating-limits-to-innovation-and-peer-production-in-indias-mobile-apps-economy

August 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2016-10-02T02:09:36Z

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

Dear readers,

Thank you for reading the Centre for Internet and Society's August newsletter. The past month for us was a very exciting one. We supported and attended Wiki Conference 2016 in Chandigarh, which was a great opportunity to see the variety and scope of various Wiki projects across the country. The Tulu language Wikipedia also went live during this period, making it the 23^rd Wiki in a South Asian language.

We continued our work on telecom with our submission to TRAI on broadband proliferation across the country. We also continued to provide inputs to the media on a range of issues related to UIDAI and online streaming and piracy, e-accessibility and our continuing Wiki work.

We also published two articles on the inaccessibility of public and private phone apps, and the social impact of this, in FactorDaily. I was also honoured to receive the NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awardin the "Persons with Disabilities" category.

All in all, a very productive month. We at CIS look forward to many more to come.

- Nirmita Narasimhan

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan got the NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award in the "Persons with Disabilities" category. Shri Krishan Pal Gurjar, Hon'ble Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment presided over the event, in the presence of Som Mittal, Jury Chair and Chariman, NCPEDP, Dr. Meenu Bhambhani, VP & Head - Corporate Social Responsibility, Mphasis Ltd, and Javed Abidi, Honorary Director NCPEDP, several corporates and winners. Tulu language Wikipedia became the latest entrant in the family of 294 world-language Wikipedia projects after the project went live from Wikimedia Incubator earlier this month. The project waited as long as eight years in the Incubator before becoming the 23rd South Asian language Wikipedia. Wiki Conference India 2016, the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia was held in Chandigarh from August 5-7, 2016. CIS supported this event. Sunil Abraham was a panelist. Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. CIS submitted its comments. CIS wrote an article analyzing India’s alignment with the recommendations of the report of the Group of Governmental Experts. This policy brief attempts to articulate the major policy actions that may be considered by India to further incorporate and implement the principles enunciated in the Report. CIS submitted comments to TRAI Consultation on Proliferation of Broadband through Public WiFi Networks. The comments were prepared by Sunil Abraham, Sharath Chandra Ram, Vidushi Marda, and Thejaswi Melarkode.Shyam Ponappa and Arjun Venkatraman provided advice. As part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series, Abhimanyu Roy has explored the curious interplays between the arranged marriage market in India the rise of matrimonial sites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com.

Highlights

Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan got the NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award in the "Persons with Disabilities" category. Shri Krishan Pal Gurjar, Hon'ble Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment presided over the event, in the presence of Som Mittal, Jury Chair and Chariman, NCPEDP, Dr. Meenu Bhambhani, VP & Head - Corporate Social Responsibility, Mphasis Ltd, and Javed Abidi, Honorary Director NCPEDP, several corporates and winners.
Tulu language Wikipedia became the latest entrant in the family of 294 world-language Wikipedia projects after the project went live from Wikimedia Incubator earlier this month. The project waited as long as eight years in the Incubator before becoming the 23rd South Asian language Wikipedia.
Wiki Conference India 2016, the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia was held in Chandigarh from August 5-7, 2016. CIS supported this event. Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. CIS submitted its comments.
CIS wrote an article analyzing India’s alignment with the recommendations of the report of the Group of Governmental Experts. This policy brief attempts to articulate the major policy actions that may be considered by India to further incorporate and implement the principles enunciated in the Report.
CIS submitted comments to TRAI Consultation on Proliferation of Broadband through Public WiFi Networks. The comments were prepared by Sunil Abraham, Sharath Chandra Ram, Vidushi Marda, and Thejaswi Melarkode.Shyam Ponappa and Arjun Venkatraman provided advice.
As part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series, Abhimanyu Roy has explored the curious interplays between the arranged marriage market in India the rise of matrimonial sites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com.

CIS in news:

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

Why experts are worried about Aadhaar-based authentication (Citizen Matters; August 2, 2016).
Apps can give personal information to strangers (Mebin John; New Indian Express; August 8, 2016).
Indian companies need to boost encrpytion adoption rate: experts (Koustav Das; Deccan Chronicle; August 9, 2016).
Implementing Indian languages in feature phones will be difficult (Gulveen Aulakh and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; August 10, 2016).
Aadhaar-enabled smartphones will ease money transfer (Neha Alawadhi and Gulveen Aulakh; Economic Times; August 10, 2016).
And now, Aadhaar-enabled smartphones for easy verification and money transfer (Business Insider; August 10, 2016).
Rational Internet laws essential to fulfil India’s digital goals (Krishna Makwana; Deccan Chronicle; August 14, 2016).
Using technology to address issues (The Hindu; August 14, 2016).
Responses to Trai’s consultation paper on free data contain some good suggestions (Asheeta Regidi; First Post's Tech 2; August 15, 2016).
Accessing pirated content might lead to prison term & Rs 3-lakh fine (Alnoor Peermohammed; Business Standard; August 22, 2016).
Extending Aadhaar to more areas is a hare-brained idea, it should be dropped (Seetha; First Post; August 23, 2016).
Festival scan on social media (The Telegraph; August 26, 2016).

Talking Point: Futile Battle Against Torrents (Deccan Herald; August 30, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following articles:

US Copyright law faces constitutional challenge (Anubha Sinha; Spicy IP; August 5, 2016).

South Asia's Largest Wikimedia Conference Kicks Off in India (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; August 5, 2016).
The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; August 5, 2016).

Do I Want to Say Happy B’day? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 7, 2016).
3 Copyright Tips for Students and Educators (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; August 16, 2016).

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପାଇଁ ଓସିଆର: ଛପା ଲେଖାର ଛବିରୁ ଡିଇଟାଲ ଲେଖା (Subhashish Panigrahi; Samaja; August 21, 2016).
Preserving Languages and Cultures in India: The Birth of the Tulu Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 26, 2016).
Meet the Newly Born Tulu Wikipedia, the 23rd in a South Asian Language! (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 28, 2016).

We Tested 18 Government Apps, and Most are not Fully Accessible to the Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Factor Daily; August 31, 2016).
The moral imperative and business case for accessibility in technology (Nirmita Narasimhan; Factor Daily; August 30, 2016).
We Truly are the Product being Sold (Vidushi Marda; Hindustan Times; August 31, 2016).

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

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Report

August 2016 Report (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2016).

►Other

Award

Nirmita Narasimhan gets NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award: NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards were given away in the capital on August 14, 2016. Nirmita Narasimhan got the award in the "Persons with Disabilities" category.

Participation in Events

Bridging the Digital Divide (Organized by Wipro; Bangalore; August 25, 2016). Nirmita Narasimhan spoke on digital accessibility at this All Hands Meet.
Universal Design & Accessibility Conclave (Organized by IIMA in collaboration with Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment; Ahmedabad; August 27, 2016). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker.

Media Coverage

An India Where the Disabled have a Choice (Dataquest; August 5, 2016).
How India’s top firms fare in employing women and persons with disabilities (Sachin P. Mampatta, Amritha Pillay and Ritika Mazumdar; Livemint; August 9, 2016).
Using technology to address issues (Hindu; August 14, 2016).
NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards given away in the capital (India PR Wire; August 15, 2016).
NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards given away in the capital (Hans India; August 17, 2016).
India has a long road ahead in becoming a disabled-friendly country (Sourav Roy; Your Story; August 31, 2016).

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

►Copyright and Patent

Participation in Event

International Conference on Innovation for Shared Prosperity (Organized by O.P. Jindal Global University and Jindal Initiative on Research in IP & Competition; August 20 and 21, 2016; New Delhi). Rohini Lakshane attended the conference.

►Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

Tools orientation for Telugu Wikimedians of Hyderabad (Pavan Santhosh S; August 1, 2016).
WikiConference India 2016 Submission: How to better tell your Wikimedia Community Story using Media as a Tool (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 17, 2016).
WikiConference India 2016 Submission: We, Men, Women: Collective Learning in Bridging Indic Wikipedia Gender Gaps (Elisa Chang; August 17, 2016).
WikiConference India 2016 Submission: Gender Gap in Indian Language Wikipedias – Projects, Outreach and Outcome (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; August 17, 2016).
Community Digest: Tulu Wikipedia Goes Live after Eight Years in Incubator; News in Brief (Subhashish Panigrahi and Ting-Yi Chang; August 24, 2016).
Wikiwomen’s Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka (Ting Yi-Chang; August 31, 2016).

Events Organized

Focus on India—WikiConference produces new apps; state government adopts free licenses (Organized by by the Community of Wikimedians in India, supported by Wikimedia India and CIS; August 5 - 7, 2016; Chandigarh).
Wikipedia WikiMeetup at Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore; August 14, 2016).

Participation in Events

WikiConference India 2016 (Organized by Community of Wikimedians in India; August 5 - 7, 2016; Chandigarh). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Tulu Wikipedia Conference in Mangaluru (Organized by Times of Kudla; August 13 - 14, 2016; Malki, Mangaluru). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a presentation on Tulu Wikipedia.

Media Coverage

WikiConference India 2016 Starts Friday in Chandigarh (Indo Asian News Service and NDTV; August 4, 2016).
Tulu Wikipedia Goes 'Live' (Wikimedia Blog; August 5, 2016).
India's 23rd regional Wikipedia, in Tulu, goes live (IANS and Business Standard; August 6, 2016).
After eight years, Tulu Wikipedia goes live (Raviprasad Kamila; Hindu; August 7, 2016).
In Tulu, India's 23rd Regional Wikipedia Goes Live (Naina Chaturvedi; Huffington Post; August 7, 2016).
ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯಲ್ಲೂ ಬಂತು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ (Asianet Suvarna News; August 7, 2016).
India's 23rd Regional Wikipedia Launches (CMM.net; August 8, 2016).
ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಮನ್ನಣೆ! (Mumbai News World; August 8, 2016).
Wikipedia launches in Tulu, its 23rd Indic language (Vivek Pai; Medianama; August 9, 2016).
Telugu Wikipedians create Articles on Punjab in Telugu Wikipedia (Sakshi; August 11, 2016).
Telugu Wikipedians create Articles on Punjab in Telugu Wikipedia (Eenadu; August 11, 2016).
Tulu gets official Wikipedia page, but Mumbai linguists say more is needed (Anju Maskeri; Mid-Day; August 21, 2016).
Punjab edit-a-thon & Telugu Wikipedia success (Andhra Jyothi; August 26, 2016).
Data Xgen launches paid Hindi email service (Sneha Johari; Medianama; August 29, 2016).

►Openness

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

Submission

Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016 (Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 31, 2016).

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

►Privacy

Blog Entries

Policy Brief on the Report of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on ICT (Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda; August 23, 2016).
Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges (Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Elonnai Hickock Vanya Rakesh and Japreet Grewal; August 31, 2016).

Event Organized

UIDAI and Welfare Services: Exclusion and Countermeasures (Institution of Agricultural Technologists; Bangalore; August 27, 2016).

Participation in Events

IGF Academy Regional Workshop (Organized by LIRNE Asia; Colombo; August 4, 2016). Sunil Abraham made a presentation.
Public Panel Discussion: Digitalisation for Social Change (Co-organized by Mount Carmel College, Bangalore and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office; Bangalore; August 22, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

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

Submission

Submission to TRAI Consultation on Proliferation of Broadband through Public WiFi Networks (Sunil Abraham, Sharath Chandra Ram, Vidushi Marda, and Thejaswi Melarkode; August 28, 2016).

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

Blog Entries

101 Ways of Starting an ISP:* No. 53 - Conversation, Content and Weird Fiction (Surfatial; August 3, 2016).
The Curious Incidents on Matrimonial Websites in India (Abhimanyu Roy; August 30, 2016).

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

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

WhatsApp ruling: Experts seek privacy law

praskrishna — 2016-09-27T02:35:06Z

On August 25, Whatsapp updated its policy to share user content with social network; the decision opened new monetisation models for the messaging app.

The article by Apurva Venkat and Moulishree Srivastava quoted Sunil Abraham. It was published in the Business Standard on September 24, 2016.

The recent Delhi High Court ruling that messaging app Whatsapp cannot share user data highlights the need for legislation on privacy, according to experts.

On August 25, Whatsapp, a platform with 70 million users in India that was acquired by Facebook in 2014, updated its policy to share user content with the social network. The decision opened new monetisation models for the messaging app.

In response to a PIL, the court ordered WhatsApp to delete data of users who chose to opt out of its policy changes before September 25. It also orderedWhatsApp not to share data collected before September 25 with Facebook for users who had not opted out.

"The decision makes a strong statement on privacy," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet Society. According to him, a user trusts a platform and provides access to his data. As another firm acquires the platform, it gains access to the data.

"Facebook owns Whatsapp. It has to look at ways of monetising it," said Nikhil Pahwa, co-founder of SavetheInternet.in.

"With so much digital data being generated, there is a need for a privacy law in the country," said Pahwa.

"Facebook's consent interface is confusing. It can make a person who wants to opt out let the company access his data," said Abraham, adding a law would take care of such intricacies. The government is working on a privacy bill.

Saroj Kumar Jha, partner, SRGR Law Offices, said there were few judgments on privacy in India based on constitutional rights.

"While the Information Technology Act enables courts to pass judgments on global companies on privacy, enforcing the orders is difficult," he said.

"What is required is a privacy law that can protect user data and uphold the individual's right to privacy," he added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-24-apurva-venkat-and-moulishree-srivastava-whasapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law

When the war’s on WhatsApp

praskrishna — 2016-09-25T16:36:01Z

Slick, jingoistic videos are whipping up pro-war rhetoric on social media after the Uri terror attack.

The article by Manju V was published in the Times of India on September 25, 2016. Nishant Shah was quoted.

It packs a meaner punch than any 140-character tweet. In 140 jingoistic seconds, the cleverly packaged YouTube film veers from Mohammed Rafi to Chandra Shekhar Azad drumming up pro-war rhetoric to avenge the Pathankot attack. Set to the tone of chirping crickets on a moonlit night somewhere along the western border that India shares with its neighbour, the short film has two armymen in fatigues deliberate over the absolute need to respond with a counter attack. It ends in a staccato military drumbeat with a voiceover quoting Azad: "If yet your blood does not rage, then it is water that flows in your veins."

Posted about 10 days after the Pathankot attack in January, the video was resurrected last week after the country woke up to the Uri attack that killed 18 Indian soldiers in the deadliest assault on security forces in Kashmir in over two decades. Even as photographs of a grenade smoke-filled valley, tricolour-draped coffins, grieving sons, daughters and widows made the rounds in media outlets scores of Indians marched onto social media, some armed with incendiary prose and other with slick videos that expressed more anger than anguish.

In another video doing the rounds, a jawan, or someone in uniform, sings a poem warning Pakistan. His mates join in the refrain: "Kashmir toh hoga, lekin Pakistan nahi hoga."

These videos of jawans threatening to decimate Pakistan were shared by thousands. WhatsApp profile pictures and statuses were changed, Facebook posts got longer and vitriolic, Twitter #UriAttack exploded with expletives as the enough-is-enough sentiment peaked. It heralded the beginning of an era where the dynamics of Indo-Pakistan relations will play out not just in the diplomatic corridors of Delhi and Islamabad, the valley of Kashmir or the barracks of security forces; but also on the mobile phones, tablets and laptops of millions of Indians.

When contacted for a comment, the makers of the war-mongering 'Pathankot Tolerance' video didn't endorse war outright. "My individual opinion is that war is not a solution," said producer Santosh Singh, who heads the Mumbai-based V Seven Pictures. "Before we resort to war, we have to solve our internal problems. How can we let infiltration take place so blatantly?" he asked. Why then does the video not talk about this? Singh said that when one hears about such attacks, the instant reaction is to retaliate. "The video is based on that sentiment."

An electronics engineer, Singh also owns an IT recruitment firm. His film production company, which he runs along with his friend Vivek Joshi, made the Mauka Mauka World Cup video that went viral and also produces short films and videos for clients. "We have no political affiliations, in fact we turned down a couple of political parties who approached us," says Singh, adding that his company has made 30-35 films in less than two years. "Of these, about 10 are on issues close to our heart, like those on Afzal Guru and the Pathankot attack. We upload them on YouTube, they are aired without ads. We don't earn money from them," he adds.

Ugly gets outlet

Nitin Pai, director of Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy, says that social media and some television studios have enabled people to express their subconscious fears and desires. "It is not just today that the people of India have been angry with Pakistan for fomenting terrorism in our country. But it is only now that they have ways to express this anger; unfortunately, social media dynamics amplify this anger in a grotesque, distorted manner, allowing the ugly and less-sensible views to rise to the top of the public discourse," said Pai.

Tracing the many origins of this phenomenon, psychiatrist Harish Shetty says that in an angst-ridden, globalized world, we need a whipping boy. "With the Uri attacks, the entire nation had a common enemy. In expressing collective anger, there's catharsis." The current outpouring is not just over the deaths of soldiers; such an incident also opens up older wounds, he says. "For a long time, Indians have found their leaders to be helpless. It's like a family that is attacked again and again by a neighbour, but the father does nothing about it. There has been a lack of strong response from 'papa figures' across time, which has led to a sense of anger and rage. After the Uri attacks, the collective self-esteem of the country took a beating, and people felt a need to assert themselves on social media. At such times strong action is viewed as legitimate, valid and free of guilt," he adds.

Amplifying angst

If social media brought together protesters in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab spring, in democratic India it has turned into a platform for expressing mass disenchantment with the government, especially in the wake of such attacks.

Social media plays several roles in times of crises, says Nishant Shah, professor of digital media and co-founder of the Centre for Internet & Society, Bengaluru. One, it amplifies what is already being said in friend circles and living-room conversations in front of the telly, but spreads it to a larger audience. "The second role it plays is distribution: social media allows people to inherit other people's opinions, thus exposing them to new ways of thinking but also find corroborators for their own viewpoints," he says. The third is catalysis — social media also has the capacity to generate new information. "The format creates new kinds of truths. Things that can be caught in Snapchat videos, or visuals which can be remixed, all become a part of this zeitgeist," Shah says.

Virtual wars

But in India at least, social media is no indicator of considered public opinion, points out Pai. Shah adds: "What we are seeing is a filter bubble of a privileged set of people who are engaging in this debate."

Then again, what's said on social media needn't be endorsed in real life. Vivek Joshi, who wrote and directed the Pathankot video, says nobody in the world would want a war. "But when it comes to the lives of our soldiers, an answer has to be given. If the government had taken any visible action, then there would have been no need to put out a video like this," Joshi adds. And therein probably comes the new-age heuristic of venting out on social media.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-september-25-2016-manju-vi-when-the-war-is-on-whatsapp

Fuel Gilt Conference 2016

praskrishna — 2016-09-25T03:27:38Z

Fuel Gilt Conference 2016 was organized by the Fuel Project is being held in New Delhi on September 24 and 25, 2016. This is the fourth conference in series. Subhashish Panigrahi made a presentation at this event.

Technical and other interface strings that fall under the ambit of FUEL are actually a subset of several other localization projects. They can also be used for bettering the corpus of machine translation. And there is a need for collaboration between communities and institutions -- both free and open source, and the proprietary ones -- to help grow their corpus. More and more collaborations in place will help the volunteer localizers even more as the localization suggestions will increase drastically with partnerships are more. Two existing such partnerships could be Pontoon by Mozilla and Content Translation by the Wikimedia Foundation. When the former shows localized strings from memory as suggestion and even include translations by proprietary organizations like Microsoft, the latter helps Wikipedians create Wikipedia articles faster by translation suggestions sourced from the corpus of Apertium and Yandex. Bettering collaboration needs strengthening two major aspects; a) growing professional and mutual bonding with other communities/organizations that are there in the same domain, and b) creating technical infrastructure to address the aforementioned pluralism. In my talk, I will detail about my own experience and best practices from working with several communities beyond borders and lessons learned from from my own work and the work of many others. A larger discussion with other colleagues at the Conference will hopefully shape into creating a manual or a few Open Educational Resources of some kind to help the future localization leaders. For more info, click here.

Video

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2016

LITD 17 Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards Meeting

praskrishna — 2016-10-07T01:38:00Z

Vanya Rakesh attended the LITD-17 committee meeting (committee on Information Systems Security and Biometrics) organised by the Bureau of Indian Standards on 23 September 2016 in Bengaluru.

The agenda for the meeting included presentation of the draft data privacy standard for India which was proposed before the BIS and its members. Elonnai Hickok and Vanya are a part of the drafting committee for the same. The draft standard was accepted by BIS and would now be circulated for further comments. Click here to read the Agenda.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/litd-17-committee-bureau-of-indian-standards-meeting

To embed a tweet or not?

praskrishna — 2016-09-23T01:08:13Z

Experts say it would amount to copyright infringement if the fair use clause is exploited.

The article by Vidhi Choudhary was published by Livemint on September 23, 2016. Vidhushi Marda was quoted.

On 20 September, a user on Twitter put out details of her intriguing conversation with the driver of a leading cab hailing service that she had used. Simply put, their conversation led to the revelation of a possible scam with a direct competitor of the said cab service.

The subject of the detailed chat easily had the makings of an investigative story and, therefore, a digital news website in India reproduced the string of tweets put out by the user in the form of a story on its platform.

This was done without her consent and hence the user asked the digital platform to take that story down.

In the light of this episode, let’s take a look at the laws governing such a situation. The question is, does the use of the tweet by the digital news website amount to copyright infringement or not? Or, whether Twitter is liable or not?

As it turns out, Twitter has a safety net within the terms of service that a user must agree to before they sign up onto the platform. A company spokesperson confirmed that Twitter was not liable if a user’s Tweet is used by someone else. “On the issue of consent, one (individual/organization) needs to take consent from the other user before using his\her tweets,” the spokesperson said.

Media lawyer Apar Gupta agreed and said that Twitter’s terms of service clearly state a clause in favour of the platform which means it is not legally liable in the above mentioned situation. “They have a worldwide, irrevocable license to publish content on their platform, which is also provided for third party affiliates,” said Gupta.

The next question is whether a user’s tweet published by someone else amounts to copyright infringement.

“The law that’s applicable in such a situation is the Copyright Act. For the purpose of reportage you can path your use within the fair dealing section (52) of the Copyright Act. Secondly, if the content used was a work of literary nature and creative, it would be up for copyright protection, just a mere Twitter rant or factual statements might not be that plausible,” said Anubha Sinha, program officer, at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Both Gupta and Sinha agreed that the ownership of the tweet rests with the user and only the user. “It would amount to copyright infringement if the fair use clause is exploited,” said Gupta.

To be sure, globally, too, media has been grappling with the issue. In a September 2013 article published on leading media platform, Poynter stated, “The legal rights to re-use content really only extend to Twitter, its official partners and anyone pulling tweet data through the Twitter API. So if you embed a tweet using the official Twitter-provided embed code, you should be fine. However, if you just copy and paste the text of a bunch of tweets, or download a Twitter photo and upload it to your own CMS, you may be on shakier ground. The “fair use” exceptions to copyright may still protect you depending on the circumstances, but you might have to prove it.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/livemint-september-23-2016-vidhi-choudhary-to-embed-a-tweet-or-not

Young Scholars' Programme, CPRSouth 2016

praskrishna — 2016-09-23T01:03:13Z

Rohini Lakshané took part in the Young Scholars' Programme organized by Communication Policy Research South from September 6 to 7, 2016 in Zanzibar.

CPRsouth 2016 Young Scholar Awards

Following highly successful joint Afro-Asian CPR conferences in Mauritius in 2012, and India in 2013, CPRafrica and CPRsouth formally merged under the banner of CPRsouth in 2014. Since then, CPRsouth has hosted conferences in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa (2014), and at the Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence at Yuan Ze University, Taiwan (2015).

This year’s conference is co-hosted by COSTECH and TCRA in Zanzibar from 8-10 September. It will include sessions on cutting-edge developments in ICT policy and regulation in the South and discussion of the research-policy interface.

As part of the capacity building initiative, 30 Young Scholars from Africa and the Asia-Pacific region have been selected to participate in a tutorial programme. They will be taught by recognised scholars and practitioners from Africa and Asia, and will be attending the main conference thereafter. Congratulations to the Young Scholars of 2016. See the list here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/young-scholars-programme-cpr-south-2016

First Working Group Meeting on "An Internet Free and Secure"

praskrishna — 2016-09-23T00:38:57Z

Vidushi Marda attended a face-to-face meeting organized by the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) on September 7, 2016 in Strasbourg. The FOC has three working groups (WG), and Vidushi is part of the first WG - An Internet Free and Secure.

The group has been working together to come up with recommendations to shift the debate from “finding the balance” between cybersecurity and human rights to one that recognises that cybersecurity and human rights are mutually reinforcing. More info about the WG and the outcome documents here.

This meeting was held to discuss the following agenda items:

FOC overview.
WG1 Priorities - mandate, scope, further priorities and areas of focus.
Endorsements - status/next steps and last push prior to the Annual Conference in Costa Rica.
FOC WG 1 video - as part of the group's efforts to gather support and endorsements, we looked into the possibility of a video, discussed content and carried out review of script.
FOC Annual Meeting - This will take place October 17, 18 in Costa Rica. Tracks, role for WG members.
Post-Costa Rica WG priorities - brainstorming on future focus areas.
WG Platform for recommendations - review, connective text, next steps.

The participant list was as follows:

Lea Kaspar (Global Partners Digital)
Matthew Shears (Center for Democracy and Technology)
Tatiana Tropina (Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law)
Stefania Milan (University of Amsterdam)
Mallory Knodel (Association for Progressive Communications)
Gigi Alford (US Department of State - Technology, Human Rights and Media)
Vidushi Marda (Centre for Internet and Society)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/freedom-online-coalition-meeting

The Future of Privacy in the Age of Big Data

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T23:24:16Z

A study tour on privacy and big data was organised by Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom from September 3 to 10, 2016 in Berlin and Hamburg. Vanya Rakesh was one of the participants from South Asia who went for the tour.

List of Participants

Shahid Ahmad, Deputy Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation
Shahzad Ahmad, Country Director, Bytes for All
Shivam Satnani, Senior Analyst, Data Security Council of India
Vanya Rakesh, Senior Policy Officer, Centre for Internet & Society
Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project
Tshering Cigay Dorji, CEO, Thimphu Tech Park
Vrinda Bhandari, Lawyer and Journalist, Chambers of Trideep Pais (Anwaltskanzlei)
Tahsin Ifnoor Sayeed, Head of Business Intelligence, DNet

Click to see the Agenda

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/study-tour-on-future-of-privacy-in-age-of-big-data

Study Tour on Big Data and Privacy

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T23:23:04Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/study-tour-big-data-privacy.pdf

Law and Economy Policy Conference 2016 (LEPC - 2016)

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T01:48:08Z

The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) is organising India’s first “Law Economics Policy Conference (LEPC-2016)”. The aim is to bring together legal, economic and policy thinkers to consider policy issues in a holistic manner.

The conference is guided by an eminent Steering Committee constituting Mr. Bahram Vakil (Senior Partner, AZB & Partners), Justice B.N. Srikrishna (Former Judge, Supreme Court of India), Prof. Rathin Roy (Director, NIPFP), Mr. Somasekhar Sundaresan (Advocate, Independent Legal Counsel), Mr. Rajeev Kapoor (Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration), Ms. Sunanda Nair (Director, INET) and Prof. Ajay Shah (Professor, NIPFP).

The conference will be organized from September 28 to 30, 2016 at India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. The draft programme is available here. Keynote Speech will be given by Shri Arun Jaitley - Honourable Minister of Finance, Government of India. Sunil Abraham will be serving as a discussant on the "Towards a privacy framework for India" session of this conference.

For more information, log on to Macro/Finance Group: Meetings

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/law-and-economy-policy-conference-2016

Law Economics Policy Conference

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T01:41:51Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/law-economics-policy-conference

Tulu Wikipedia Goes 'Live' after 8 Years on Incubator

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T01:33:29Z

Eight years after being created in the Wikimedia Incubator, the Tulu-language Wikipedia is now live as the 23rd Indic language.

The Tulu Wikipedia page is available here. The project has a total of 1285 articles contributed by 198 editors.

Other news in brief:

Ongoing India At Rio Olympics 2016 Edit-a-thon promises to plant one tree for every 20 new articles created.
Wiki Loves Monuments returns to India after three years.
WikiConference India 2016, the largest Wikimedia community gathering of the year in South Asia comes to an end.
Ashutosh Sarangi , the youngest Wikimedian from the oldest Indian-language Wikipedia community.

“Made in India” Innovation Policy

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T01:15:40Z

In this post they emphasize upon the need for data-driven IP policy making in India.

This blog post written by Prof Collen Chien and Prof Contreras, and published this week (September 19, 2016) on SpicyIP mentions CIS' patent landscaping study.

A few weeks ago we were honored to participate in Jindal Global Law School’s Conference on “Innovation for Shared Prosperity”. Much of the conversation was centered on the important topic of how intellectual property (IP) policy can best support manufacturing and entrepreneurship initiatives like the “Startup India” and “Make in India”. In turn, we believe it’s also important to think about how best to foster IP policies that are truly “made in India”. In light of India’s history of implementing certain IP policies because it had to, not because it wanted to, for example recent homegrown commitments to strengthen the patent system by reducing the time to patent are notable.

The record is already replete with examples of indigenous innovation by Indian policymakers. Whether section 3(d), Form 27 patent working disclosures, or the “Middle Path” approach to requiring deposits in standards essential patent disputes – agree or disagree with them, these Indian approaches to innovation policy are themselves innovative.

But one problem that we have observed is that the data available to develop and evaluate Indian IP policies tends to be thin. With respect to patents, for example, it is hard to access patent records, as there are often long delays before patent applications, patent working disclosures and other documents are uploaded to the Indian Patent Office (IPO) web site, notwithstanding statutory requirements and IPO policies. While there have been some published reports of cases and published decisions (Mathur 2007, Ghosh 2012), it is generally hard, as it is in other jurisdictions, to match patent filings to them to court filings, assignment records, citations, prior art and other metrics of interest. This isn’t true just of India but many other countries. But to support world class, data-driven policy making, support for analytical work, combined with data access, is needed. This is particularly important given the demonstrated gap between rules on the books, which may appear harmonized, and rules in practice, which are not.

In developing policy, it is often useful to start with the ultimate policy goal – whether it be further improving the country’s ranking on the Innovation Index or taking a place at the international standard setting table – and then developing data-based metrics to demonstrate progress toward that goal. The assumptions behind conflicting policy positions can then be tested and vetted against actual experience within the Indian setting. It is through these processes that a “made in India” innovation policy will be truly indigenous, reflecting not only political mandates and theories, but the demonstrated experience of India’s technical, business, and legal communities.

Historically, there have been relatively few empirical studies to support data-based policy making. In the non-exhaustive list below, we highlight several studies and reports (some our own) that demonstrate the usefulness and power of empirical data:

One topic about which there have been an exceptional number of empirical studies is the Indian pharmaceutical sector. Duggan and collaborators (2012, 2014) studied the relationship between drug prices and pharmaceutical patent issuances in India, and Lanjouw and Cockburn (2000) and Nandkumar and Srikanth (2011) explored the relationship between Indian patent issuance and strength and R&D spending. Recently Sampat and Shadlen have found that policies to discourage so-called “secondary” drug patents in India and Brazil have had little direct effect.

With the initiation by foreign patent holders a few years ago of infringement suits against a variety of domestic Indian and Chinese smartphone manufacturers, many wondered how much of the Indian mobile device patent landscape was already in the hands of foreign companies. Contreras, together with Rohini Lakshané of the Centre for Internet and Society, conducted a study to find out. Their results were telling: of approximately 23,500 total Indian patents and published patent applications in the mobile device sector, only 50, about 0.00% were owned by Indian companies. It is hoped that this eye-opening result will help mobilize Indian firms and policy makers to address the lack of Indian participation in international technology standardization efforts.

WIPO publishes statistics yearly about India’s relative rank with respect to a number of innovation metrics. While many are aware that India ranked 66th in this year’s Global Innovation Index, up 15 places from 2015 (Switzerland ranked 1st), WIPO’s 2015 IP indicators report contains other findings: that India ranks in the top 15 globally in terms of patent filing activity, that non-residents are using the Indian Patent Office more heavily than are residents (Fig. 2, p. 23) and that recent filings have been dominated by computer technology, organic fine chemistry and pharmaceuticals. Others have relied on WIPO statistics to compare India’s performance with that of China and other BRIC countries.

India is by nature an innovative nation. Its innovative spirit manifests itself both in terms of technology creation as well as policy development. Nevertheless, without robust, reproducible and broadly accessible data, policy decisions will continue to be based on intuition, guesswork and partisan advocacy by those having the most to gain from the system. We encourage the Indian government and academy to continue to devote resources to develop a robust data culture within the Indian intellectual property community and to make the underlying data as widely available as quickly as possible.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/spicy-ip-september-19-2016-prof-colleen-v-chien-and-prof-jorge-l-contreras-made-in-india-innovation-policy