Centre for Internet and Society

CIS Survey

praskrishna — 2015-03-20T13:50:59Z

CIS Survey

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

CIS Submission to the Expert Committee: Broadening of Definitions in the Proposed Broadcast Treaty Compared to Other International Conventions

praskrishna — 2015-02-02T16:52:51Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-submission-to-expert-committee.pdf

CIS Study 2

praskrishna — 2018-01-01T01:27:03Z

CIS Study 2

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/CISStudy2.png

CIS Study 1

praskrishna — 2018-01-01T01:24:51Z

CIS Study 1

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/CISStudy1.png

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:15:54Z

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai.

Institutional partnerships (especially in the higher education context) is a cross-cutting activity across A2K's various language plans and also the pilot project. A2K Team is happy to share with you an important outcome on this front.

CIS-A2K has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions. The objective is to enhance digital literacy in the Indian languages and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and free dissemination. A2K along with TISS will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this. Further, within TISS campuses we will endeavour to bring teaching-learning processes onto free and open digital platforms, including Indian language Wikipedias. The A2K team would like to acknowledge the pivotal role played by our Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana in buildig this collaboration.

We'll keep you posted as and when new developments shape up and would like to actively involve Mumbai Wikipedians in planning, designing and rolling out Wikipedia training programmes.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-tiss-mou

CIS Signs MoU with Goa University

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T10:57:46Z

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Goa University.

As part of this MoU, Goa University and CIS-A2K will work together to digitize “Konkani Vishwakosh” under Creative Common license and build a Digital Knowledge Partnership in order to enhance digital literacy in the Konkani language and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and disseminate the same free of cost through Kokani Wikipedia (currently under incubation). Goa University and CIS-A2K will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this objective.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-signs-mou-with-goa-university

CIS Response to Draft Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration

praskrishna — 2015-11-29T06:32:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-response-to-draft-proposal-to-transition-the-stewardship-of-the-internet-assigned-numbers-authority-iana-functions-from-the-u-s-commerce-department2019s-national-telecommunications-and-information-administration

CIS Request to DIPP (3)

praskrishna — 2015-04-14T17:05:32Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-request-to-dipp-3.pdf

CIS Request to DIPP (2)

praskrishna — 2015-04-14T16:49:08Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-request-to-dipp-2.pdf

CIS Request to DIPP (1)

praskrishna — 2015-04-14T16:24:33Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-request-to-dipp-1.pdf

CIS representation at ICANN 58

praskrishna — 2017-03-28T14:22:22Z

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) organized ICANN 58 at Copenhagen from March 9 to March 16, 2017. On behalf of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Vidushi Marda participated in the event and made a presentation.

CIS' focus at ICANN can broadly be divided into four heads: human rights, jurisdiction, transparency and accountability. Since March last year, we have also been pushing for changes in ICANN's expected standards of behavior, along with adoption of an anti harassment policy. After the IANA transition in September last year, the community is now divided into sub groups (SGs) that look into different issues for ICANN post transition, including the 4 that CIS works on. More information on ICANN 58 can be accessed here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cis-representation-at-icann-58

CIS Presentation on Cyber Security

praskrishna — 2018-10-02T05:58:59Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/cis-presentation-on-cyber-security

CIS PNG Logo

praskrishna — 2013-08-14T10:23:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/logos/cis-png-logo

CIS Participation at ICANN 54

praskrishna — 2016-01-18T12:47:19Z

Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India participated in the 54th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held at the Convention Center in Dublin from 17 October 2015 to 22 October 2015. Pranesh Prakash, Jyoti Panday and Padmini Baruah attended the meeting.

CIS representation was possible at the meeting due to the generous support of MacArthur grant, NCUC ICANN Travel Grant and financial support from the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). The issue-wise detail of CIS engagement is set out below.

At the Public Forum, Jyoti Panday asked the ICANN Board to clarify its role and the role of the community in the development of the proposal with Verisign on its role as the Root Zone Maintainer. ICANN CEO confirmed what many feared, that there will be no community involvement on this proposal as ICANN's relationship with Verisign is an "implementation" detail. He added the assurance that post transition, on the decision of renewal of the contract and whether it will be awarded to Verisign, ICANN will seek inputs from the community. Jyoti's statement is replicated below:

"I want to ask the Board why when asked by the NTIA to develop a draft proposal for the with Verisign on its Root Zone Maintainer role, did you not pass on that mandate to the community, to the CWG which already exists, and ask the community to draft out the proposal with VeriSign? Will the ICANN Board seek public comments on the final proposal before it is approved? After all, ICANN cannot claim that it is an inverted pyramid where all decisions start from the community and flow up to the Board when on a crucial issue like this, the ICANN Board and staff have not taken the community in confidence nor invited its participation."

Padmini Baruah reiterated CIS message at the Public Forum on the lack of diversity observed through the transition and presented new data. Padmini's statement is replicated below:
Today, more than 50% of Internet users are in the Asia-Pacific region, and less than 10% are in North America. Yet, when one studies diversity within the ICANN community and in ICANN processes, one finds that diversity is sorely lacking, and it is dominated by people from the United States of America. Take the IANA transition, for instance. CIS studied participant data from ICANN, NRO, and IETF's lists related to the IANA transition. Of the substantive contributors, of which there were 98, we found:
* 1 in 4 (39 of 98) were from a single country: the United States of America.
* 4 in 5 (77 of 98) were from countries which are part of the WEOG grouping, which only has developed countries.
* None were from readily identifiable as being based in Eastern European and Russia, and only 5 of 98 from all of Latin American and the Caribbean.
* 4 in 5 (77 of 98) were male and 21 were female.
* 4 in 5 (76 of 98) were from industry or the technical community, and only 4 (or 1 in 25) were identifiable as primarily speaking on behalf of governments.
It would be a travesty of language to call this the "global multistakeholder community".
Further this problem is pervasive in the ICANN community:
* 66% (34 of 51) of the Business Constituency at ICANN, as per their own data, are from a single country: the United States of America.
* 3 in 5 registrars are from the United States of America (624 out of 1010, as of March 2014, according to ICANN's accredited registrars list), with only 0.6% being from the 54 countries in Africa (7 out of 1010).
* 45% of all the registries are from the United States of America! (307 out of 672 registries listed in ICANN’s registry directory in August 2015.)
Please take this as your top priority, since ICANN's legitimacy depends on being able to call itself globally representative.

CIS attended also raised a series of concerns at the following sessions:

Enhancing ICANN Accountability Open Engagement: CIS intervened with its stance on jurisdiction and their enforcement models, and our concerns about transparency.
GAC sessions
NCSG meeting
IANA Transition Stewardship Transition Engagement Session
CCWG Accountability Working Session
Illicit Internet Pharmacies
NCUC Meeting+engagement with Larry Strickling: Jyoti Panday asked about the dual role of Verisign as a Root zone maintainer and TLD operator. Padmini Baruah asked him about jurisdiction. He said the US Congress will not support a shift in ICANN's jurisdiction.
NCSG/gNSO (CIS work on DIDP got public mention)
Contractual Compliance Programme Update
CWG Stewardship working session
Role of Voluntary Practices in Combating Abuse and Illegal Activity
Joint meeting of the ICANN Board and NCSG

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/icann-54

CIS Participated in T20 Mumbai, Regional Consultation Meeting, October 19, 2015

praskrishna — 2015-10-20T13:54:39Z

This is the first time that a T20 event, which is a series of preparatory meetings towards G20 summits, is taking place in India. Sumandro Chattapadhyay represented CIS in this consultation, and was a discussant in the session on Technology, Services, and Skills.

"On 19 October 2015, over 50 experts from foreign and Indian think tanks, business leaders from India, and government representatives from the G20 countries will gather at Gateway House in Mumbai to discuss issues of global economic governance and foreign economic policy at India’s first Think20 (T20) meeting. The keynote address for the meeting, “Global Economy and Challenges for Multilateral Policies” will be delivered by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. This is a Think-20 (T20) regional consultation meeting. The G20 is a multilateral forum comprising the world’s 20 major economies, and is recognized as the “premier global economic governance platform”. This year, Turkey is the president of the G20 forum (2015). The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

The T20 Mumbai event will be co-hosted by Gateway House, in collaboration with the leading Turkish think tank – Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). TEPAV is the official Turkish Think Tank responsible for coordinating the activities of the T20 in 2015 with think tanks from all the G20 member countries.

India will join the T20 group for the first time, by hosting the meeting in Mumbai, and Gateway House is honoured to initiate this select event. Observations and recommendations from the dialogue will be officially submitted to the Turkish G20 presidency, and incorporated into the discourse for the G20 Leaders Summit scheduled for 15-16 November, 2015, Antalya, Turkey."

This meeting is significant for India: it reinforces India’s role as a key participant in multilateral economic fora and contributor of solutions for global economic issues...

Participants will include Gateway House members comprising business leaders and individuals from India. The Indian government will be represented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of External Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, and EXIM Bank. Diplomatic representation is expected from G20 countries, SAARC countries and several multilateral financial institutions.

The sessions will commence with a keynote by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, followed by a joint think tank and business session on the impact of geopolitics and business. Starting at noon will be five working sessions for the think tank experts to discuss a range of global economic issues under the G20 mandate such as global trade and investments, inclusive business models, financing sustainable infrastructure and building skills for a technology and services-driven economy."

Press release: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/

Event page: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/

Agenda: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/

Notes from Sumandro's Statement

The problem of creating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities in today's technology-mediated global economy is not simply one of skill-enabling the existing and emerging workforce to take part in the growing service sector.
It is crucial to recognise that the contemporary growth of service sector in economies across countries is being fundamentally shaped by access to technology, and access to information and services via technological devices and networks.
A key barrier to effective access to technology in the developing world is the rent-seeking business strategies that permeate global technological industries: from technologies of communication, to those of agriculture, to those of medicine.
Apart from removing such barriers, global and national strategies towards skill development for achieving meaningful and sustainable employment must focus on two things: 1) enabling self-learning through open educational resources, and public infrastructures supporting the same, and 2) a broad-based national innovation system that incentivises businesses to create and effectively use intellectual properties, as appropriate for the local context.
Skill-enabling of new entrants to the labour market (or existing one) must not be understood in terms of special purpose vocational training, that is narrow education for presently existing job opportunities. Neither can online self-learning programmes succeed without building public infrastructures for social learning.
Various recent commentators, most famously The Economist, have flagged the ineffectiveness, and even negative impacts, of the global intellectual property rights regime. An effective and democratic national innovation system must neither treat innovation in a sector-specific manner, nor as a general strategy driven by the needs of particular industries in a particular stage of their development of operations and IP ownership.
Skilling of the existing and emerging workforce must enable them to take part in the global knowledge economy, and its technological basis, in a holistic way.
Openness in policy-making and collaborative implementation, not only between public and private agencies but also between public agencies, are absolutely essential for the success of any such initiative to develop skills of the national workforce.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015