Centre for Internet and Society

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011 — India Report

praskrishna — 2012-01-02T08:48:45Z

Pranesh Prakash prepared the India report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011. The report was published on the A2K website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-watch-list-2011.pdf

Consumers International Global Meeting 2012

praskrishna — 2012-04-03T07:54:56Z

Pranesh Prakash participated in the Consumers International Global Meeting held in Kuala Lumpur on March 8 and 9, 2012. He spoke on UN Consumer Guidelines. Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter and Guilherme Varella were the other speakers in the session.

Wednesday 7 March

6:45pm	Anwar Fazal speech on 50th anniversary of JFK Consumer Rights
7:00pm	Dinner hosted by FOMCA

Thursday 8 March

8:30am	Registration
9:00am	Welcome (Helen McCallum)
9:30am	Introduction and overview (Jeremy Malcolm)
10:00am	Introduction to Digital Personal Property (Paul Sweazey)
11:00am	Break
11:30am	UN Consumer Guidelines (Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter, Pranesh Prakash, Guilherme Varella)
1:00pm	Lunch
2:00pm	Consumer Protection and IP Abuse Prevention under the WTO Framework (George Tian)
3:00pm	Internet governance and consumers (Peng Hwa Ang)
4:00pm	Break
4:30pm	Public Interest Representation in the Information Society (Norbert Bollow)
5:30pm	Consumers in the information society (Jeremy Malcolm)
6:30pm	Break
7:30pm	Cultural and culinary outing to pasar malam

Friday 9 March

8:30am	Registration
9:00am	M-Lab (Lih Shiun Goh from Google Singapore)
10:00am	Internet and human rights (Alan Finlay from Association for Progressive Communications)
11:00am	Break
11:30am	Global consumer survey on broadband (Jeremy Malcolm, Veridiana Alimonti, Elise Davidson, Marzena Kisielowska-Lipman)
1:00pm	Lunch
2:00pm	Cyber-security concerns for consumers and businesses (Raj Kumar, IMPACT)
3:00pm	Broadband nutrition label (Benjamin Lennett, New America Foundation)
4:00pm	Break
4:30pm	Reporting back – open time for member presentations
6.00 pm	Close

Abstracts and biographies

United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection

This paper provides background to the proposed amendments to update the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection for the digital age. A soft-law instrument, the Guidelines provide an influential standard for the dissemination of good practices in consumer protection, as a mechanism to foster and promote social and economic development. They outline eight areas for developing policies for consumer protection, which are reflected by the eight consumer rights declared by the global consumer movement: rights to satisfaction of basic needs, safety, choice, information, consumer education, redress, representation and a health environment.

The paper outlines the current global regime of public policy developmment and regualtion relating to access to knowledge. Indicating that many of the issues of concern in terms of access to knowledge are essentially consumer issues it argues that amendments to the Guidelines would form the basis for progress. The paper then details the proposed amendments explaining the basis for each one.

Joining Robin Brown on the panel will be representatives from our research partners in India, Brazil and South Africa who will be contributing to our research on the Guidelines.

Robin Brown has 25 years of experience in consumer and business regulatory affairs. He spent 10 years as the chair and chief executive of Australia’s national consumer body, the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations. Robin has been involved in projects to advance consumer protection and competition policy and regulation in a number of developing countries. In recent years Robin has served as a Councilor of the Australian Consumers’ Association. He holds a BA and a Master of Public Policy from the Australian National University.

Pranesh Prakash is Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He is a graduate with a degree in Arts and Law from National Law School, Bangalore, with a keen interest in the law, economics, and culture of intellectual property rights. He helped found the Indian Journal of Law and Technology, and was part of its editorial board for two years. He is most interested in interdisciplinary research on IP and property law, freedom of speech, and privacy. He has worked with practising lawyers, civil society organizations, and law firms.

Tobias Schönwetter is a Senior Manager within PricewaterhouseCoopers' South African practice performing legal advisory services specifically relating to innovation, technology and intellectual property (copyright and trademarks). Tobias has studied and practised law in Germany, the US and South Africa and he has led the copyright division at UCT's Intellectual Property Law and Policy Research Unit for several years. His international experience, together with his leadership roles in a number of intellectual property-related projects and research collaborations such as the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project and the Open AIR (African Innovation Research and Training) project, has secured his place as an industry expert within the intellectual property and technology sector.

Guilherme Varella is a lawyer at Idec (Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense) in telecomunications, Internet and access to knowledge and Master's student in public policies of culture in the Law School of Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo - USP).

The event was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute and IDRC/CRDI. For more information, see here on the Access to Knowledge website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/consumers-international-meeting-2012

Consumers 5

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:20:58Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/c5.JPG

Consumers 4

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:19:13Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/c4.JPG

Consumers 6

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:24:51Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/c6.JPG

Consumers

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:17:16Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/c3.JPG

Consumer Reactions

praskrishna — 2016-12-14T16:17:51Z

Consumer Reactions

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ConsumerReactions.png

Consumer Protection and Privacy

praskrishna — 2014-04-29T06:55:27Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consumer-protection-privacy.zip

Consumer Protection

praskrishna — 2014-09-07T03:58:18Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consumer-protection.zip

Consumer Privacy Research

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T07:07:24Z

About our research on consumer privacy.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-research.pdf

Consumer Privacy Invite

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T07:03:16Z

Consumer privacy invite in New Delhi.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy-invite

Consumer Privacy Agenda

praskrishna — 2012-07-31T10:54:13Z

The agenda of the consumer privacy event organised in Delhi

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy-event

Consumer Privacy

praskrishna — 2012-09-13T09:21:26Z

This chapter will examine the present legal state of consumer privacy in India and seek to understand the gap between policy and implementation of policy. In doing so, it will look at what are the existing avenues for protection of consumer privacy in India, how is the definition of consumer privacy evolving through case law and public opinion, and what are the current challenges to consumer privacy in India. Traditionally speaking, and according to the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, in India, a consumer is a broad label for any person who buys goods or services with the intent of using them for non-commercial purposes. In the typical sense, when people think of themselves as being consumers, they think about transactions with a vendor through a physical exchange of money in a store or through an online exchange for a product or service. Certain services that consumers use put an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information into the hands of vendors.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy.pdf

Consumer International Conference

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:13:32Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/c2.JPG

Consultative Meeting for a Digital Archive Lab

praskrishna — 2017-06-08T13:07:57Z

A meeting for a digital archive lab was held at the Centre for Community Knowledge, Ambedkar University in New Delhi on May 20, 2017. P.P. Sneha participated in the meeting.

The proposed Digital Archive initiative at AUD will work as an interdisciplinary archive, working across schools and divisions. There is a need to create a specialized set of skills within AUD for archiving, cataloguing, digitization and conservation. This consultative meeting is envisaged for identifying skills and staff needs, timeframe, direction, outreach and a support network. Outcomes of this consultative meeting will help to finalise the resources required for setting up an online archival platform on the AUD server. Click to see the agenda.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/consultative-meeting-for-a-digital-archive-lab