The Centre for Internet and Society
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Zuckerberg's Plan Spurned as India Backs Full Net Neutrality
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality
<b>Facebook Inc.’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Srivastava was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/facebook-faces-setback-as-india-bans-differential-data-pricing">Bloomberg</a> on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<li>Telecom regulator bans differential Internet data plans</li>
<li>Facebook had lobbied India to approve its Free Basics plan</li>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the company spent months lobbying the country to accept its Free Basics service -- a way of delivering a limited Internet that included Facebook, plus some other tools, for no cost -- India’s telecom regulator ruled against any plans from cellular operators that charge different rates to different parts of the Web.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Telecom operators can’t offer discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and aren’t allowed to enter into agreements with Internet companies to subsidize access to some websites, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf" target="_blank" title="Link to website">said</a> in a statement Monday. Companies violating the rules will be fined, it said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“This is the most extensive and stringent regulation on differential pricing anywhere in the world,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said via phone. “Those who suggested regulation in place of complete ban have clearly lost.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With this decision, India joins countries such as the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands in passing laws that restrict telecom operators from discriminating Internet traffic based on content. It is a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">big blow</a> to Facebook’s Internet sampler plan known as Free Basics, which is currently offered in about <a href="https://info.internet.org/en/story/where-weve-launched/" target="_blank" title="Link to Internet.org page">three dozen</a> countries including Kenya and Zambia, none of which come close to the scale or reach that could’ve been achieved in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With 130 million Facebook users, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t, India is the biggest growth market for the social network, which remains blocked in China.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook said in a statement that it’s “disappointed with the outcome.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the decision won’t cause Facebook to give up on connecting people to the Internet in India, “because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet.” The company will continue to focus on its other initiatives, like extending networks using satellites, drones and lasers.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Freebies Curtailed</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The rule will put an end to prepaid plans that offered free access to services such as Google searches, the WhatsApp messaging application and Facebook. These packages were popular with low-income users by giving them an incentive to get online, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“These types of plans were being used by operators to meet the policy goals of connecting one billion people,” Matthews said. “With these gone, the government needs to tell us what alternatives are there.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator’s decision comes after months of public <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-28/zuckerberg-makes-personal-appeal-in-india-for-free-net-service" title="Zuckerberg Makes Personal Appeal for Free Internet in India (1)">lobbying by Facebook</a> for India to approve Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics was criticized by activists who said it threatened net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible, and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator, which had sought stakeholders’ views, said it was seeking to ensure data tariffs remain content agnostic. Operators will have six months to wind down existing differential pricing services.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Google Unaffected</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Anything on the Internet can’t be priced based on content, applications, source and destination,” R.S. Sharma, the regulator’s chairman, told reporters in New Delhi. Some Internet companies’ plans to offer free WiFi at public venues, like Google Inc.’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/data-too-dear-set-youtube-to-download-in-india-while-you-sleep" title="Data Too Dear? Set YouTube to Download in India While You Sleep">project</a> with Indian Railways, are not affected by this ruling, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Free Basics, one or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans. In India, Facebook had tied up with Reliance Communications Ltd., though the service was suspended in December as the government solicited comments from proponents and opponents.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook bought daily full-page <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">ads</a> in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-eds, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Entrepreneurs, business people and activists took to Twitter to share their views after the decision came out on Monday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Great to see TRAI backing <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">#</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">NetNeutrality</a>,” Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal.com, one of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, said. “Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFacebookInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:18:54ZNews ItemZuckerberg's India Backlash Imperils Free Global Web Vision
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-january-4-2016-zuckerberg-india-backlash-imperils-free-global-web-vision
<b>When Facebook's co-founder proposed bringing free Web services to India, his stated aim was to help connect millions of impoverished people to unlimited opportunity. Instead, critics have accused him of making a poorly disguised land grab in India's burgeoning Internet sector. The growing backlash could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, his ambitious, two-year-old effort to connect the planet.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog post by Bhuma Shrivastava was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/foreign-media-on-zuckerbergs-india-backlash-1260732">published by NDTV</a> on January 4, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian authorities are circumspect because the Facebook initiative provides access to only a limited set of websites -- undermining the equal-access precepts of net neutrality. The telecommunications regulator is calling for initial comments by Jan 7, extending the deadline from today, on whether wireless carriers can charge differently for data usage across websites, applications and platforms.<br /><br /> Losing this fight could imperil Facebook's Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and select services such as Messenger and Microsoft's Bing without a data plan.<br /><br />"The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere," said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit advocacy group. "Activists in other countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia are watching this debate and will seize the momentum created in India."<br /><br /> Zuckerberg's argument for free Web access is based in part on Deloitte research showing that for every 10 people who are connected to the Web, one is lifted out of poverty and one job is created.<br /><br /> Facebook argues that by giving people free access to a small slice of the Internet, they will quickly see the value in paying for the whole thing. Zuckerberg has said his biggest challenge in connecting people to the Web isn't access to cellular networks, but a social hurdle: he needs to prove to people who have never been online that the Internet is useful.<br /><br /> "Who could possibly be against this?" Zuckerberg wrote in an impassioned op-ed in the Times of India this week. "Surprisingly, over the last year there's been a big debate about this in India."<br /><br /> Zuckerberg's pleas underscore what's at stake. Facebook already attracts 1.55 billion people monthly, or about half of the Internet-connected global population. To keep growing, the world's largest social network needs to get more people online. Hence the billions of dollars Facebook is spending on projects to deliver the Web to under-served areas via drones, satellites and lasers. And Internet.org, which now spans 37 nations.<br /><br /> India, as the world's second most populous nation, is arguably the most important piece of Zuckerberg's Free Basics strategy. But the opposition is fierce. Critics note that the Facebook service doesn't offer Web favorites such as Google's search. Facebook has said it would be open to adding more features from competitors, but critics are skeptical of giving the social-networking giant such influence on the Internet.<br /><br /> Critics also say that by offering a limited swath of the Internet at comparatively slow speeds, the company is creating a diluted version of the Web. That could stifle innovation by causing disadvantages for Indian startups building rival apps, or allow Facebook and its telecommunications carrier-partners to act as Internet gatekeepers.<br /><br /> In a sign of the importance he attaches to the issue, Zuckerberg on Tuesday called one of India's most prominent entrepreneurs to make his case.<br /><br /> One97 Communications, the mobile payments startup backed by Alibaba Group Holding, is one of several tech companies that have come out against Facebook's plans.<br /><br /> "We are totally against telcos preferring one developer over another," One97 founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a phone interview before that call. "We are asking for access neutrality. We are hoping that all startups will be treated equally."<br /><br /> Sonia Dhawan, a spokeswoman for One97's payment website Paytm, said the call took place but didn't describe the conversation further. Sharma wasn't available for further comment.<br /><br /> Facebook is now scrambling to drum up support. It's started a "Save Free Basics In India" campaign, asking Indian users to support "digital equality" by filling out a form that shoots an e-mail to regulators. That also has the effect of sending notifications to user's friends unless they opt out.<br /> Facebook has also taken out full-page advertisements, including one featuring a smiling Indian farmer and his family who the ads say used new techniques to double his crop yield.<br /><br /> While countries such as the Philippines have embraced Free Basics, India has been "the outlier and more challenging," Chris Daniels, vice president of Internet.org, said in a Dec. 26 chat on Reddit.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-january-4-2016-zuckerberg-india-backlash-imperils-free-global-web-vision'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-january-4-2016-zuckerberg-india-backlash-imperils-free-global-web-vision</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFree BasicsSocial MediaInternet Governance2016-01-06T14:51:42ZNews ItemYouTube is the answer to what has changed in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-november-12-2013-moulishree-srivastava-you-tube-is-answer-to-what-changed-in-india
<b>Alternative Law Forum’s Lawrence Liang on relaunching Creative Commons, and how it changes the legal landscape of copyright issues. </b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Moulishree Srivastava was published in Livemint on November 20, 2013. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/pB9Jexbdv69o2XHexE6r8M/YouTube-is-the-answer-to-what-has-changed-in-India.html">Lawrence Liang was quoted</a>.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Creative Commons (CC), a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, US, which enables Internet users to share and use the creativity and knowledge of others, on Tuesday relaunched its India chapter after six years. CC provides free copyright licences that give creators a way to share their creative work, on conditions of their choice.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, for instance, Pratham Books, a not-for-profit publisher, licenses its content under a CC licence that allows others to use the content (on certain conditions). And the National Council of Educational Research and Training has created a portal where digital versions of its course material have been uploaded under a CC licence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In an interview, <b><span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Lawrence%20Liang">Lawrence Liang</a></span> </b>, co-founder of Alternative Law Forum and chairman of the board at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, which is one of the CC affiliates in India, spoke about the re-launch, what went wrong the last time, what it means for the country and how it changes the legal landscape of copyright issues. Edited excerpts:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">People all over the world are already using CC licences. What does this relaunch mean for India?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are two things. One is the legal component. The licences have been tailor-made for Indian law. Tomorrow, if someone were to use CC licence and there were violations and it came up in court, this (the CC licence) would be in compliance with the Indian Copyright Act. The other is, we have a very large number of young people who are entering the space of making creative works. The CC means for them to be aware that there are options they have apart from traditional copyright licensing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">How does it impact the legal landscape of copyright issues?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the US, you have something called derivative rights, which is conversion of one medium into another medium. In India, you don’t have that idea; you have the right of adaptation, which is a much more narrowly defined idea. It has the specific definition of what the adaptation is. There is the right to adaptation of a work from, say, literary into dramatic, but it doesn’t mean conversion of a work into any form.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second is in terms of presumption of how you gain ownership over copyright, which is slightly different in India than it is in the US.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India—section 17 (of the Constitution) lays out different classes of work—there are different presumptions of who the owner of copyright is, which becomes very important. For example, if a film-maker wants to license his work, now it has to be clear that he is the owner of the copyright in the first place, because the presumption in India would be that the producer is the owner of the work, whereas in Europe the producer is the first owner of the work. These are some of the small differences that CC attempts to clarify.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What went wrong the last time?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When it was first launched (in India) in 2007, perhaps there wasn’t the momentum. Last time CC was launched as a licence in India, but not as a community, which was the key issue. Second, it was institutionally housed in IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Bombay and it needed being pluralized. You can’t depend on CC being housed in one single institution. It should be in as many institutions as possible, which is what has happened this time. The crucial thing here is that we will be developing a community. A lot more people know about CC now than they did back in 2007.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Why do you think it will succeed?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One is the overall awareness about open source and alternatives. The other one, which is more crucial, is, when CC was launched in the US, it was in response to a very clear crisis. The crisis was that a large number of users were being prevented from using existing works. <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Lawrence%20Lessig">Lawrence Lessig</a></span> (one of the co-founders of CC) felt that there was a need to create a legal alternative. There was already, in a way, a certain kind of environment which allowed CC to automatically speak to a number of people’s concerns. In India, we didn’t have that. Copyright was anyway not being enforced. That’s happening now. So once people could use <span class="brand"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/YouTube">YouTube</a></span>, could create remixes, then they suddenly realized that they have used a film song and other copyrighted content. Then they suddenly realize a need of legal content as alternative. YouTube is the answer to what has changed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What does it mean for the media?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It depends on whether you are looking at it from the perspective of a media producer or a user. From the perspective of a media producer, one of the big things that people assume is that everything is copyrighted until stated otherwise and that you can’t use it. There are a number of people who will be very happy to use it, but they may not want to use it commercially. With a CC licence, the boundaries are clear. What you are allowed to do and what you are not allowed to do is extremely clear. One of the biggest problems in the digital landscape at the moment is opacity. You are not sure. There is an image on a website, which seems to be used in many places. Am I allowed to reproduce it? What is the extent to which I can use the content? A lot of these will be rendered clear for media practitioners.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-november-12-2013-moulishree-srivastava-you-tube-is-answer-to-what-changed-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-november-12-2013-moulishree-srivastava-you-tube-is-answer-to-what-changed-in-india</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2013-11-20T07:00:48ZNews ItemYou will need a license to create a WhatsApp group in Kashmir
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-19-2016-you-will-need-a-license-to-create-whatsapp-group-in-kashmir
<b>The internet rights activists have criticised the move stating it as unconstitutional.</b>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/you-may-need-a-license-in-kashmir-run-a-whatsapp-group">published by Governance Now</a> on April 19, 2016. Pranesh Prakash tweeted on this.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Moving beyond internet ban, Kashmir’s Kupwara district issued a notice asking all admins of WhatsApp news groups to register their groups with the district authority within ten days.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With this move, the authorities are taking power in their hands to monitor WhatsApp news groups owned by private individuals. However, internet rights activists criticised it saying the move is unconstitutional as it breaches freedom of speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The circular is issued under the subject of ‘registering of WhatsApp news group and restrictions for spreading rumours thereof’. The district magistrate said that any spread of information by these WhatsApp news groups, “leading to untoward incidents will be dealt under the law”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">You may need a license in Kashmir to run a WhatsApp group</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/WhatsApp.jpg" alt="WhatsApp" class="image-inline" title="WhatsApp" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The valley witnessed five-day internet shutdown following the Handwara firing incident. Internet ban is a common phenomenon in Kashmir. <br /><br /> “For how long will the government decide whether we can communicate with each other or not? Actually, the authorities do not want us to spread the truth about the army’s atrocities far and wide,” said a resident of Handwara as quoted in Kashmir Reader.<br /><br /> Earlier, parts of Haryan and Gujarat also witnessed internet ban during Jat and Patidar agitation, respectively.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/hard-broad-ban-internet-haryana-jat-agitation" target="_blank"><span>Blocking all internet access </span></a>is clearly an unnecessary and disproportionate measure that cannot be countenanced as a ‘reasonable restriction’ on freedom of expression and the right to seek and receive information, which is an integral part of the freedom of expression,” said Pranesh Prakash.<br /><br /> For instance, he adds, a riot-affected woman seeking to find out the address of the nearest hospital cannot do so on her phone. “Instead of blocking access to the internet, the government should seek to quell rumours by using social networks to spread the truth, and by using social networks to warn potential rioters of the consequences,” he said. <br /><br /> Former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria used WhatsApp to counter rumours spread after circulation of a fake photo in January 2015. <br /><br /> “The way in which the ban is imposed is unreasonable. Problem is in the method that is being used in absence of guidelines, defining circumstances under which they can impose a restriction on internet sites,” says Arun Kumar, head of cyber initiatives at Observer Research Foundation (ORF). <br /><br /> If government formulates these rules or guidelines it will set a threshold for state or central authorities, which will define the urgency of imposing ban on internet services.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-19-2016-you-will-need-a-license-to-create-whatsapp-group-in-kashmir'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-19-2016-you-will-need-a-license-to-create-whatsapp-group-in-kashmir</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceCensorshipWhatsApp2016-04-21T02:34:46ZNews ItemYou Have the Right to Remain Silent
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/down-to-earth-july-17-2013-nishant-shah-you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent
<b>Reflecting upon the state of freedom of speech and expression in India, in the wake of the shut-down of the political satire website narendramodiplans.com.</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah's <a class="external-link" href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/you-have-right-remain-silent">column was published in Down to Earth</a> on July 17, 2013.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">It took less than a day for narendramodiplans.com, a political satire website that had more than 60,000 hits in the 20 hours of its existence, to be taken down. A simple webpage that showed a smiling picture of Narendra Modi, the touted candidate for India’s next Prime Ministerial campaign, flashing his now trademark ‘V’ for <span><s>Vengeance</s> </span> Victory sign. At the first glimpse it looked like another smart media campaign by the net-savvy minister who has already made use of the social web quite effectively, to connect with his constituencies and influence the younger voting population in the country. Below the image of Mr. Modi was a text that said, "For a detailed explanation of how Mr. Narendra Modi plans to run the nation if elected to the house as a Prime Minister and also for his view/perspective on 2002 riots please click the link below." The button, reminiscent of 'sale' signs on shops that offer permanent discounts, promised to reveal, for once and for all, the puppy plight of Mr. Modi's politics and his plans for the country that he seeks to lead.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, when one tried to click on the button, hoping, at least for a manifesto that combined the powers of Machiavelli with the sinister beauty of Kafka, it proved to be an impossible task. The button wiggled, and jiggled, and slithered all over the page, running away from the mouse following it. Referencing the layers of evasive answers, the engineered Public Relations campaigns that try to obfuscate the history to some of the most pointed questions that have been posited to the Modi government through judicial and public forums, the button never stayed still enough to actually reveal the promised answers. For people who are familiar with the history of such political satire and protest online would immediately recognise that this wasn’t the most original of ideas. In fact, it was borrowed from another website - <a href="http://www.thepmlnvision.com/" title="http://www.thepmlnvision.com/">http://www.thepmlnvision.com/</a> that levelled similar accusations of lack of transparency and accountability on the part of Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. Another instance, which is now also shut down, had a similar deployment where the webpage claimed to give a comprehensive view into Rahul Gandhi’s achievements, to question his proclaimed intentions of being the next prime-minister. In short, this is an internet meme, where a simple web page and a java script allowed for a critical commentary on the future of the next elections and the strengthening battle between #feku and #pappu that has already taken epic proportions on Twitter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The early demise of these two websites (please do note, when you click on the links that the Nawaz Sharif website is still working) warns us of the tightening noose around freedom of speech and expression that politicos are responsible for in India. It has been a dreary last couple of years already, with the passing of the <a href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/cis-india.org/internet-governance/intermediary-liability-in-india" target="_blank">Intermediaries Liabilities Rules</a> as an amendment to the IT Act of India, <a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/spy-in-the-web/888509/1" target="_blank">Dr. Sibal proposing to pre-censor the social web</a> in a quest to save the face of erring political figures,<a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/two-girls-arrested-for-facebook-post-questioning-bal-thackeray-shutdown-of-mumbai-get-bail/1033177/" target="_blank"> teenagers being arrested for voicing political dissent</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aseem_Trivedi" target="_blank">artists being prosecuted</a> for exercising their rights to question the state of governance in our country. Despite battles to keep the web an open space that embodies the democratic potentials and the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and expression in the country, it has been a losing fight to keep up with the ad hoc and dictatorial mandates that seem to govern the web.</p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Namo.png" alt="Narendra Modi Plans" class="image-inline" title="Narendra Modi Plans" /></th>
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<td>Above is a screen shot from narendramodiplans.com website</td>
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</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We have no indication of why this latest piece of satirical expression, which should be granted immunity as a work of art, if not as an individual’s right to free speech, was suddenly taken down. The website now has a message that says, “I quit. In a country with freedom of speech, I assumed that I was allowed to make decent satire on any politician more particularly if it is constructive. Clearly, I was wrong.” The web is already abuzz with conspiracy theories, each sounding scarier than the other because they seem so plausible and possible in a country that has easily sacrificed our right to free speech and expression at the altar of political egos. And whether you subscribe to any of the theories or not, whether your sympathies lie with the BJP or with the UPA, whether or not you approve of the political directions that the country seems to be headed in, there is no doubt that you should be as agitated as I am, about the fact that we are in a fast-car to blanket censorship, and we are going there in style.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What happens online is not just about this one website or the one person or the one political party – it is a reflection on the rising surveillance and bully state that presumes that making voices (and sometimes people) invisible, is enough to resolve the problems that they create. And what happens on the web is soon going to also affect the ways in which we live our everyday lives. So the next time, you call some friends over for dinner, and then sit arguing about the state of politics in the country, make sure your windows are all shut, you are wearing tin-foil hats and if possible, direct all conversations to the task of finally <a href="http://bollywoodjournalist.com/2013/07/08/desperately-seeking-mamta-kulkarni/" target="_blank">finding Mamta Kulkarni</a>. Because anything else that you say might either be censored or land you in a soup, and the only recourse you might have would be a website that shows the glorious political figures of the country, with a sign that says “To defend your right to free speech and expression, please click here”. And you know that you are never going to be able to click on that sign. Ever.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/down-to-earth-july-17-2013-nishant-shah-you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/down-to-earth-july-17-2013-nishant-shah-you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent</a>
</p>
No publishernishantFreedom of Speech and ExpressionSocial MediaInternet GovernanceIntermediary Liability2013-07-22T06:59:53ZBlog EntryWill You be Paid to Post a Picture?
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-february-18-2014-nishant-shah-will-you-be-paid-to-post-a-picture
<b>The wave of free information production on the web is on the wane.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/will-you-be-paid-to-post-a-picture/99/">published in the Indian Express</a> on February 18, 2014</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The age of volunteerism is officially over. The last decade of the mass adoption of the internet has been fuelled by endless human hours being spent in producing information which is the new currency of our times. The big transition to Web 2.0 began when the individual “user” became more than either an individual or the user. The individual found herself as a part of a collective, finding a voice and a community of others to belong to. Simultaneously, instead of being a passive consumer of the web, the user started producing data — blogs, videos, tweets, content management systems, online discussion boards, massively multiple online role-playing platforms, social network transactions — all of which became a part of the new Web’s widespread popularity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Almost everything that we understand as the social web today is contingent upon people producing data in their interactions with the world around them. From knowledge producing websites like Wikipedia to entertainment platforms like YouTube, visualisation and data gathering spaces like Pinterest to photographs of self, food and cute animals on Instagram, political and social commentaries on Tumblr to Listicles and memes on Buzzfeed, the internet is a veritable smorgasbord of new information forms, formats and functions that are generated by the users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What is possibly the most exciting about this burgeoning information universe has been the amount of free labour that goes into it, and often remains invisible. As digital labour scholar Trebor Schulz points out, the internet has become both a factory and a playground, where our leisure time is capitalised into producing work that sustains the new attention and information economies. For instance, the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook, does not produce any of its contents. It is, in fact, a system of information mining and sorting, which works as long as a growing user base continues to produce information on it. Tomorrow, if all of us stop producing Facebook, and only lurk on it, the platform will collapse. Which is why, Facebook continues to acquire new platforms and applications to be integrated into its universe.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Similarly, the real effort that goes into the sustenance of sites like Wikipedia, which has become the de facto reference for global knowledge systems, is carried out by unsung and invisible editors who patiently, meticulously, and without almost any expectation, continue to add, verify, strengthen and curate reliable information that we can use. When the non-profit organisation WikiMedia Foundation prides itself in running one of the least expensive websites in the top 10 most visited sites in the world, it is signalling its deep appreciation for the countless human hours that have made Wikipedia possible.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But, in recent years, there is noticeable stagnation in the wave of free information production on the Web. Oh, don’t get me wrong. We are producing an unprecedented amount of data — we are constantly being watched by surveillance technologies that detect biometric and genetic make-up of all our transactions, or we are inviting people to watch us on social network sites where we reveal some of our deepest secrets and desires, or we are watching ourselves, quantifying everything from things we ate to the number of hours we sleep. And yet, as we live in a world of Big Data, there is a definite decrease in people contributing to production of free information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the digital natives move from the web to mobile phones, traditional websites are already facing a crisis. News and media agencies that have celebrated the global citizen media networks have started realising that the individual user is more interested in local networks and information ecologies which are independent of mainstream conglomerates. And people are realising that their time and effort is worth money. They can be easily compensated for their online activities and gain reputation and importance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The tension only becomes more palpable when people start realising that there are others who are being paid to work on the platforms that they are contributing to. We all knew that this model of depending on free information was not a sustainable one. But it seems the day has arrived, especially with the recent drives on Wikipedia to build specialised knowledge editors. In the last few months, we have seen people in the FemTechNet project — an academic activist feminist project that seeks to remind us of the intersections of feminism and technology in network societies — carry out “Wikistorming”, where students are adding pages of women’s contribution to technologies on Wikipedia. More recently, medicine students at University of Chicago have taken to correcting and adding accurate information to Wikipedia, which is often a source of health information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Both of these are fantastic efforts to add to the platform that was the underdog that overthrew the mammoth encyclopaedia like The Encyclopaedia Britannica. We hope more specialised users in different locations, fields, disciplines and languages continue to edit and contribute to Wikipedia. However, it is also a signal that the generalist information producer is on the decline. We are transitioning into a new age, where people are going to need rewards, incentives and benefits for performing information transactions on the web. The user is no longer going to be available for free labour, and it is time we started thinking of “paid usership”.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-february-18-2014-nishant-shah-will-you-be-paid-to-post-a-picture'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-february-18-2014-nishant-shah-will-you-be-paid-to-post-a-picture</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial MediaInternet Governance2014-03-06T11:58:41ZBlog EntryWill India win net neutrality battle?
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle
<b>There is more than what meets the eye in Facebook’s ‘noble mission’ of providing internet for all.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Pratap Vikram Singh and Taru Bhatia was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle">published by Governance Now</a> on January 5, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India is gearing up for an era of startups and entrepreneurship and the man pushing it as one of his biggest development and self reliance agenda is none other than prime minister Narendra Modi, who launched the ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign this year. Few technology giants, led by the likes of Facebook and some telecom service providers, however, have thrown a technology spanner. It is important to note that a significant number of the startups in India are internet-based – next only to the US and China in having maximum number of tech startups, according to industry body NASSCOM.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For these to flourish and for India to have next Facebook or Google it is important to have an open and neutral internet, believe digital rights experts. A network which doesn’t discriminate between the data packets (smallest unit of information sent in binary format over a network) and provides level playing field for all. “It is critical for the Startup India campaign. If we let the principles of net neutrality be compromised, then it makes it very difficult for entrepreneurs and startups to compete against established players, who can close off the market for upstarts by schemes like differentiated pricing and zero rating (toll free access to websites or apps),” said Vishal Misra, associate professor, department of computer science, Columbia University.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">A prerequisite for startups</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A few months from now, country’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), is going to decide whether internet would remain neutral and whether it will continue to foster innovation. A major threat to net neutrality, according to civil society and digital rights experts, comes from zero rating – toll free access to a few selected websites or apps, a strategy adopted by internet service providers or internet platforms to hook users to those select few sites. For telecom and internet service providers zero rating is a new stream of revenue, a way to secure optimal return on investment from their existing subscriber base – without requiring additional investment. The ISPs are arguing that they should be given more flexibility in managing their network – in a way they should be allowed to assume the role of gatekeeper of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For ISPs, net neutrality is an obsolete and utopian idea. Facebook, which has grown into a mammoth internet platform since its inception in 2004, has recently joined this bandwagon. Under its Free Basics initiative (erstwhile internet.org), the internet giant provides toll free access to a set of websites (including Facebook obviously!) handpicked by itself to the users. In India so far it has partnered with Reliance Communications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook by far is the most audacious and aggressive proponent of ‘zero rating’ scheme. From lobbying the prime minister to giving back-to-back ads in television channels and two-page ads in national dailies to circulating a vaguely written letter in support of Free Basics on its social media site, Facebook is pitching for ‘digital equality’ by giving access to 'basic internet’ or say a slice of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cautioning against zero rating, Prabir Purkayastha, chairperson, Society for Knowledge Commons, said the way zero-rating is being discussed, it seems Indians are only the consumers of internet, which is not true. “Indians are also the innovators on internet,” said Purkayastha. “Internet has given the innovators the right to connect to the users without having a huge amount of money. This is the character that will be destroyed if zero-rating will be implemented,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That’s true. Be it US-based Facebook or Google or Indian Flipkart or PayTm or SnapDeal, had it not been for open and neutral internet they wouldn’t have become what are today.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Raman Jit Singh Chima, global public policy director, Access Now, a New York-based firm working for digital rights, said the idea is to prevent a telco or an internet platform from assuming a role of a gatekeeper and control access. Misra, too, has written extensively on the counter-productiveness of zero rating: stifling of innovation and service providers loosing incentive to improve service and keep prices low. Both Misra and Chima testified their views on net neutrality to the standing committee on IT in August after the department of telecommunications submitted an expert committee report on the neutrality issue.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Whither public consultation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To formulate a regulation on how internet will shape up, the TRAI has come out with two consultation papers concerning net neutrality in the last nine months. The first consultation paper on ‘regulatory framework for over the top players (OTTs)’, which came in March, was written in favour of telecom and internet service providers. “It was embarrassing,” said Purkayastha. Over 1.2 million people wrote to the regulator. This was result of the savetheinternet.in campaign ran by free internet activists and lawyers, who were later joined by All India Bakchod (AIB) whose video on net neutrality went viral on YouTube (the video has received three million views in last eight months). This was unprecedented in the history of TRAI consultations. However, the fate of those responses is still unclear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In December the regulator brought another paper. This time it was titled ‘regulation on differential pricing’. Contrary to the initial paper, this paper is far more objective and reasonable, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder, MediaNama portal and a key volunteer behind savetheinternet.in campaign. The regulator has sought comments on its second paper by December 30 and counter-comments by January 7. Till the time a final call is taken, the telecom regulator has instructed Reliance Communications, Facebook’s India telecom partner, to put Free Basics on hold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The savetheinternet.in campaign has formulated the responses to the new consultation paper and has made it available for everyone favouring net neutrality to send it to the TRAI. The AIB team has released another video titled ‘Save the Internet - 2 – Judgement Day’, which has been viewed close to one million times in just four months.<br /><br />The neutrality debate started in India in December 2014 when Airtel, country’s largest telco, announced – although it later backtracked – that the company would charge consumers more for using VOIP services, on top of the data charges. Later, it went on to launch Airtel Zero, wherein it struck deal with online services providers for user access at zero rate. Facebook had already introduced internet.org by then. While it was initially led by civil society, the debate was later joined by politicians – Naveen Patnaik, M Chandrashekhar, Jay Panda, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal – who strongly came out in support of net neutrality. <br /><br />Facebook has termed its zero rating platform as a philanthropic activity intended to connect billions of unconnected population so that they can access education, health and employment related information. It has urged users to sign a petition, cautioning them against "a small, vocal group of critics" lobbying to prevent 1 billion people from accessing 'affordable internet'. Under Free Basics, Facebook claims, it doesn't charge app developers and includes them if they comply to its 'objective tech specs'.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics: A camouflage?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Critics, however, call it a walled garden. In providing free access to close to a hundred websites it continues to play the role of a gatekeeper. It is not the poor who decide what to access but Facebook! While it says that it is not making money out of Free Basics as it doesn't display ads in the Free Basics version of Facebook, it keeps the option of monetisation open in the future.<br /><br />“It [Free Basics] has been camouflaged as charity," said a senior TRAI official, in an off the record conversation. While speaking to the Guardian on Facebook’s zero rating in December, Tim Berners Lee, founder of world wide web (www), said, “In the particular case of somebody who's offering... something which is branded internet, it's not internet, then you just say no. No it isn't free, no it isn't in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something... [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”<br /><br />Speaking in favour of zero rating, Payal Malik, associate professor, economics, Delhi University, said that it is wrong to assume that all consumers will get hooked to zero rated sites. “In a way you are saying that all humans have same preferences and likes and dislikes, which is very unlikely,” said Malik. <br /><br />Experts representing telecom industry argue that the net neutrality regulation should be geography specific and the telecom players should be given more flexibility in dealing with the network. Mahesh Uppal, a senior telecom consultant and director, ComFirst India, while speaking at a round table discussion in Delhi, said that a majority of population in the West including countries opting for strict net neutrality – including Netherlands, Slovenia and the US – are already connected. "The data connectivity is primarily through fixed lines - copper, co-ax cable or optical fibre wired — wherein it is easier to add capacity to meet traffic growth. However this is difficult to do so for wireless networks," said Uppal. In developing countries, including India, mobile telephony and internet majorly runs on wireless. Hence, he argued, telecom and internet service providers should be given flexibility to zero rate. For Uppal, if zero rating or sponsored content is implemented properly “it can be one of the ways to scale up internet access” to the unconnected regions.<br /><br />Neutrality proponents, however, differ. “It is basic economic theory, and zero rated sites get a price advantage. There are studies that show customers stay within the world of zero rated sites and never venture outside or are aware of the full internet,” professor Misra said.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Zero or equal rating?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So is there a middle ground? Are there ways to increase access without tampering with open and neutral character of the internet? Experts believe there are. Some of the solutions are not completely black and white, but in between. While there is a fierce opposition to zero rating, it might work, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director, centre for internet and society (CIS), if provided with an amount of equal rating (giving free data pack to users so that they can access any site or app they want). <br /><br />Mozilla Foundation advocates equal rating. The foundation has sought to create such an alternative in Bangladesh and countries in Africa within the Firefox OS ecosystem. The foundation has tied up with telecom operator Grameenphone in Bangladesh to provide 20 Mb data per day for free to users, in exchange for viewing an advertisement. The model could be easily replicated in India, said Pahwa of MediaNama.<br /><br />For African countries, the foundation has partnered with Orange. Both allow Africans to purchase $40 Firefox OS smartphones that come packaged with free three to six months of voice calling, text, and up to 500 Mb of monthly data. Purkayastha of Knowledge Commons said that zero-rating plan by telecom operators only makes sense when government services are provided for free through it. “That is the form of zero-rating I would support.”<br /><br />There are a few platforms which are reimbursing data in megabytes to users accessing partnering apps. The user can then use the free data pack to access any other site or app. Some of them include: mCent, Gigato and DataMi. mCent, owned by Boston-based firm Jana, is a pioneer in this area. It is being used by 30 million users cross 98 countries. In India, according to Jana, one out of every 10 internet users has subscribed to mCent. <br /><br />Yes, it does violate neutrality as it puts those app providers not having enough money at a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis to those having deep pocket to reimburse data to users. “I think it’s a grey area,” said professor Misra. On the surface it seems to be just like Free Basics, however, Gigato (or mCent) is making no pretense that what they are doing is philanthropy of increasing access, said professor Misra, adding that it is still acceptable as user will have the data to venture out of the walled garden. The senior TRAI official too finds it acceptable. “In my opinion, Facebook should become like Gigato,” he said. <br /><br />If the regulator is going to protect consumers’ right and also not stifle startups and entrepreneurism, it will have to ensure some broad, core principles of the internet. It will have to prevent both the ISPs and the internet platforms from becoming gatekeepers. It must not allow any throttling, blocking, fast and slow lanes, discrimination based on price or quality of service and distortion of level playing field. How and whether TRAI is going to do these would be clear in a few months.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionTRAINet NeutralityInternet Governance2016-01-11T02:28:44ZNews ItemWill Facebook, Twitter relocate servers to India?
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-23-2016-taru-bhatia-will-facebook-twitter-relocate-servers-to-india
<b>The debate to relocate offshore servers of internet and social media firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter has revived.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Taru Bhatia was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/will-facebook-twitter-relocate-servers-india">Governance Now</a> on April 23, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Home minister Rajnath Singh has requested the social media companies, located outside India, to maintain servers in the country, in order to expedite the process of getting information on accounts which spread mischievous messages posing a threat to law and order situation. The move has come in the backdrop of delayed or no response to the government’s requests to these companies, for extracting information of some of its users on security grounds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In February, the minister claimed Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed’s involvement in the anti-national slogans that were allegedly raised in the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The claim was based on a tweet that appeared on a fake twitter account of Saeed (@HafeezSaeedJUD), which was later deactivated by Twitter. But the US-based social media company has still not replied to the Indian government as to who was running the account.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is interesting to note here that India shares mutual legal assistance treaty with the US, wherein, the duo can share information for the purpose of criminal investigation, via judicial route. The process, however, is lengthy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Given the nature of the content, sometimes the government cannot afford to wait. The process of issuing direction to get information or blocking certain content from public view is lengthy. The Indian government under the IT law is empowered to ask these companies to maintain servers in India,” says senior advocate, supreme court, and cyber law expert, Pavan Duggal, terming it as a legitimate concern related to national security. As India is a big market for all these companies, it shouldn’t be a problem for them to have servers in India, he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“If the police or security agencies want information from these companies, it becomes tall orders since they are not operating from India. They step back and say they are not accountable,” says Virag Gupta, a senior supreme court lawyer, adding that ministries of telecom and finance must join the home ministry in its request and spearhead the matter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Gupta has filed a petition in the Delhi high court asking such offshore companies to register themselves under the Indian law. On the other hand, Pranesh Prakash, policy director at center for internet and society (CIS), a non-government research organisation supported by Google, feels that instead of requesting these companies to maintain servers in India, it is best for the government to figure out ways to speed up judicial process of the treaty, when it comes to internet governance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From July to December 2015, India issued 141 requests to Twitter to retrieve information of its users’ accounts for criminal investigation purpose, as per the company’s transparency report. But the compliance rate was only 42 percent, the report says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While India seeks information on national security grounds, the law here does not clearly define national security, which is still vast and ambiguous.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I do believe that there is a need for a much clear definition of national security. If the government really wants to have servers of these companies in India then appropriate guidelines must exist, so that companies should not be taken by surprise,” says Duggal.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Security concerns</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Data localisation is witnessing a growing trend among many countries. Last year, Russia enforced law to mandate internet companies to store its citizens’ data within the country. The move is generally taken in fear of losing country’s data to hackers. It also means that it would be easier for the government to get information from these internet companies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And so protecting data and privacy of individuals within the country is also a matter of concern. Not having a strong data privacy law in place could lead to violation of internet rights of citizens.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Privacy is a legitimate concern but at the end of the day the government is well empowered in the interest of protecting cyber security under the IT Act. But it is necessary for the government to look at the issue from a holistic perspective. There is a need for balancing privacy and security of an individual on one hand and national security on the other hand,” adds Duggal.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-23-2016-taru-bhatia-will-facebook-twitter-relocate-servers-to-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-23-2016-taru-bhatia-will-facebook-twitter-relocate-servers-to-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2016-04-23T15:26:39ZNews ItemWikipedia Editing as Assessment Tool in the Indian Higher Education Classroom
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-as-assessment-tool-in-indian-higher-education-classroom
<b>Getting students to create and edit Wikipedia entries in English and Indian languages can be a comprehensive assessment tool at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. Both levels of higher education require the demonstration of the ability to present knowledge in encyclopaedic form, which can be done by a good review of relevant literature and the showcasing of key arguments in the field.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Using the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dublin-descriptors.pdf" class="internal-link">Dublin competency level descriptors</a>,<a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a> we can put down what sorts of <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education">higher education</a> skills Wikipedia editing can help evaluate. The most commonly accepted descriptors internationally are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Demonstration of Knowledge and understanding </li>
<li>Applying knowledge and understanding </li>
<li>Making judgements </li>
<li>Communication abilities</li>
<li>Learning skills relevant to higher education</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a> allows for assessing the ‘depth’ of an article which is the measure of the quality of an entry. The depth is a function of several parameters like the number of edits an article has seen, the length of discussion in the talk pages, the number of footnotes, references, hyperlinks and editors active on that page. In addition to this, providing Wiki-interlinks to key concepts within an article and categorization of articles exposes the students to a "semantic web" of interconnections between various fields of knowledge. Although, it may not be a complete substitute for the more formal modes of assessment, it provides a more rounded form of evaluation for student assessment. The ‘depth’ indicator also shows the relative significance of an article for the larger community of users, thereby providing a better model for student assessment in the long run.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Bachelor's Level</h3>
<p>By getting students to edit on Wikipedia at the Bachelor’s Level, you can test the following, and appropriate weightage can be given to each aspect of the work:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Comprehension of the theory, concepts and processes pertaining to a field or fields of learning </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Demonstration of knowledge, supported by the use of advanced textbooks and other reading materials, of one or more specialised areas </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to apply this knowledge and comprehension in a manner that indicates a thorough and informed approach to the work, and have competences typically demonstrated through devising and sustaining arguments</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to gather and interpret relevant data to inform independent judgements which include reflection on relevant social, scientific or ethical issues </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialist and non-specialist audiences [in the case of Wikipedia, the audience would usually be a non-specialist one]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Master's Level</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">By getting students to edit on Wikipedia at the Master’s Level, you can test the following, and appropriate weightage can be given to each aspect of the work:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Demonstration of knowledge and comprehension that is founded upon, extends and enhances that associated with the Bachelor’s level and is at the forefront of a field of learning </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Critical awareness of current problems and new insights, new tools and new processes within their field of learning (ability to do a good literature review, which can be seen through the citations provided for a Wikipedia entry)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to apply their knowledge, comprehension, and critical awareness in broader or multidisciplinary areas related to their fields of study </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to integrate knowledge and handle complexity, to formulate judgements with incomplete or limited information, with an awareness of the social and ethical responsibilities linked to the application of their knowledge and judgements </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to communicate their conclusions, and knowledge, rationale and processes underpinning these, to specialist and non-specialist audiences clearly and unambiguously</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to reflect on one’s own writing by engaging with feedback received from a collaborative network.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Ability to form peer knowledge networks through collaboration and interaction with other contributors</li>
</ul>
<h3>Risks and Mitigation</h3>
<p>It is helpful to be aware of the typical risks a faculty may face in using Wikipedia entries as an assessment tool.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">New article creation: Wikipedias, especially the <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia">English Wikipedia</a>, are closely monitored by thousands of volunteers from across the world. Often, articles created by new users come under a lot of scrutiny. It is advisable to first encourage the students to edit and improve the existing articles before creating a new article all by themselves. Also taking the help of an experienced Wikipedian will go a long way in mentoring the students on the nuances of the Wikipedia platform and the volunteer community that strives in good faith to preserve the quality of entries. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Copyright violation: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control-C">Ctrl+c</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut,_copy,_and_paste">Ctrl+v</a> (i.e., <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism">plagiarism</a>) is a major challenge for the higher education sector across the world. Often the students find that copy-pasting the content from various sources is an easy way of doing an assignment. On Wikipedia, plagiarism is taken very seriously and a student editor can get banned from further contribution to Wikipedia, which may de-motivate the entire class. It’s useful for the faculty to give a detailed orientation on this aspect before encouraging the students to take up writing a Wikipedia entry as an assignment. There are numerous resources (text and videos) made available by Wikimedians across the world explaining the problem of plagiarism. These could be used by the faculty. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">If you are encouraging students to write an entry in an Indian language Wikipedia, special attention and support needs to be planned to train the students in typing in that particular Indian language script. Wikipedias have a useful tool called <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector">Universal Language Selector</a> (ULS) which makes it very easy for the student to start typing in any script using the transliteration method. There is increasing support for Indian language scripts, however. You could check whether your University computer lab has Unicode compliant computers/systems. This will help the students to work offline on their assignment, if required.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">One of the biggest challenges for a teacher is to get the student to see the value of taking up a Wikipedia entry as an assignment. Some of the students may see this as an additional task or extra-curricular activity and may not put in a committed effort, which could affect the goals you have set for your course. Faculties are encouraged to find various means of integrating/dovetailing the Wikipedia assignment into the curriculum or course. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Faculty may also feel this as an additional burden on them, especially in terms of evaluation of the assignment. There are various tools available to measure most of the assessment parameters set out above, which will not take much time. It is in fact possible to save faculty time if the evaluation is planned meticulously. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A pragmatic challenge for the faculty would be to deal with a scenario where the entire class submits the assignments on Wikipedia on the last day. This will not only increase burden on the faculty but can also result in a lot of plagiarism. An effective way to address this challenge is to make the Wikipedia entry assignment part of a formative assessment, whereby the student develops the entry over a period of time (e.g. one month or during the course). There are various tools through which you can track the students’ contribution continuously and share feedback with them periodically.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>].Available at <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tcd.ie/teaching-learning/academic-development/assets/pdf/dublin_descriptors.pdf">http://www.tcd.ie/teaching-learning/academic-development/assets/pdf/dublin_descriptors.pdf</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-as-assessment-tool-in-indian-higher-education-classroom'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-as-assessment-tool-in-indian-higher-education-classroom</a>
</p>
No publisherDr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashwin Kumar A.P. and T. Vishnu VardhanSocial MediaHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpenness2014-01-30T10:06:40ZBlog EntryWhy the Internet is Making India Furious
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ozy-february-19-2016-sanjena-sathian-why-internet-is-making-india-furious
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore is a kind of hacker club for wonks and lawyers obsessed with issues of digital rights and global development. Not exactly the mainstream kids’ lunch table. But the Center was brought into sudden relief this week, thanks to … Mark Zuckerberg. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read Sanjena Sathian's blog post <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ozy.com/pov/why-the-internet-is-making-india-furious/67211">published by Ozy </a>on February 19, 2016</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a splashy bit of news, India’s telecom authority <a href="http://www.ozy.com/presidential-daily-brief/pdb-67802/net-result-67817" target="_blank"><span>rejected a program called Free Basics</span></a>, which the Facebook team had been promoting as a way to get free Internet to the masses. (Here on the subcontinent, more than 300 million people use the Internet — but that’s only about a quarter of the population.) The idea: Facebook would allow free access to a handful of websites (the “basics”) to everyone; users would pay for further content. The objections: On the dramatic end came comparisons to <a href="http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/the-surprising-gift-of-a-colonial-education/39554" target="_blank"><span>colonialism</span></a>; on the wonkier, objections based on the principles of net neutrality, or the idea that all Internet content should be treated the same. The threat the critics saw in Free Basics was that of the Web as a two-lane highway — the free stuff for the poor folks, and the good stuff for those who can afford it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mumbai-based Sanjena Sathian spoke to CIS cofounder and policy director Pranesh Prakash about the changing landscape of web rights that led up to the news.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h3>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; ">Tell us what you’re thinking in the wake of India’s decision.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash:</h4>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">The order seemed to fix the issue with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. It over-regulates and bans things that are beneficial along with that that aren’t. They should have aimed for <em>discriminatory </em>pricing, but they’ve instead eliminated all differential pricing, even when it’s not discriminatory.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">What should come next, in my opinion — it is imperative to ensure that governmental resources are used to provide free access to the Internet. If you’ve taken away something that could have helped and said no, no, no, it’s not good for you, then you are under an obligation to provide a replacement.</p>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">How do you think the larger political conversations going on in India right now seep into the debates about digital rights?</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many people think the largest divider is between those who are from a developing country or a developed country. I think the larger divide is between those who are politically skeptical of states — more libertarian — versus those who are more trusting of states and see states as having a role to play in Internet governance. How you think the poor in India should get Internet — should that be provided by government or by market mechanisms — well, your political philosophies will play a role. In India, one tends to find fewer free-market fundamentalists than one would meet in, say, San Francisco.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I think, increasingly, post-Snowden in particular, people think of digital rights as human rights. Where do you see things going wrong on a rights front here in India?</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Oh, wow … so many ways. In India we have a situation where, right now, more than 3,000 websites were blocked by the government, but no one knows what these sites are. No one knows whether they were blocked through mechanisms that ensure accountability. There is no transparency around any of these. And this is just the visible tip of the iceberg. And how do I know this? I sent a right-to-information request to the government and they gave me this answer. But beyond this, they put in place a few years ago a law which allows for websites and any kind of web content to be censored by <em>anyone</em>. And all they have to do is send a request to any “intermediary,” which could be anything from your ISP to your web host to your DNS provider.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wait, so what does that mean? I get annoyed at a site — where do I go to lodge my complaint?</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All these websites are required by the law to appoint a particular person as a “grievance redressal officer.”</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What a title!</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yes … and there are more than 40 grounds for grievances that have been listed in the law, including things such as “causing harm to minors” and certain speech being “disparaging.” Now, I engage in disparaging speech at least 12 times a day. And that’s perfectly legal under Indian law!</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Eep. Any good news, though?</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, [involving a young woman named] Shreya Singhal. There was a section 66A, quite an odious provision, that allowed for any kind of “offensive” or “annoying” speech to cause that person to be put in prison for up to three years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Two teenage girls in Maharashtra, upon the death of a politician, put out a comment on social media. The death had caused a <em>bandh</em>, a curfew of sorts in Mumbai, and done not officially by the government but by political party workers. One girl said on Facebook, sure, go ahead, respect this politician, but why inconvenience so many citizens? Her friend liked this. And a case was launched against them. Similarly, some cartoons by an anticorruption activist were challenged and he was imprisoned briefly and released on bail.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">OZY:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It’s always the cartoonists.…</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; ">PP:</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yes, and one professor in Calcutta — for <em>forwarding </em>a cartoon, he was placed under this law too. Many cases of perfectly fine political speech were made illegal thanks to this law. Eventually, though, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court struck down this law, and this is the first time in almost three decades that the Supreme Court has struck off an entire law for being unconstitutional.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But, yes. Mostly? It’s not been pretty.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ozy-february-19-2016-sanjena-sathian-why-internet-is-making-india-furious'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ozy-february-19-2016-sanjena-sathian-why-internet-is-making-india-furious</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFree BasicsFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceSocial Media2016-02-28T03:01:59ZNews ItemWhy NPCI and Facebook need urgent regulatory attention
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-june-10-2018-sunil-abraham-why-npci-and-facebook-need-urgent-regulatory-attention
<b>The world’s oldest networked infrastructure, money, is increasingly dematerialising and fusing with the world’s latest networked infrastructure, the Internet. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/banking/why-npci-and-facebook-need-urgent-regulatory-attention/articleshow/64522587.cms">Economic Times</a> on June 10, 2018.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the network effects compound, disruptive acceleration hurtle us towards financial utopia, or dystopia. Our fate depends on what we get right and what we get wrong with the law, code and architecture, and the market.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Internet, unfortunately, has completely transformed from how it was first architected. From a federated, generative network based on free software and open standards, into a centralised, environment with an increasing dependency on proprietary technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In countries like Myanmar, some citizens misconstrue a single social media website, Facebook, for the internet, according to LirneAsia research. India is another market where Facebook could still get its brand mistaken for access itself by some users coming online. This is Facebook put so many resources into the battle over Basics, in the run-up to India’s network neutrality regulation. an odd corporation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On hand, its business model is what some term surveillance capitalism. On the other hand, by acquiring WhatsApp and by keeping end-toend (E2E) encryption “on”, it has ensured that one and a half billion users can concretely exercise their right to privacy. At the time of the acquisition, WhatsApp founders believed Facebook’s promise that it would never compromise on their high standards of privacy and security. But 18 months later, Facebook started harvesting data and diluting E2E.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In April this year, my colleague Ayush Rathi and I wrote in Asia Times that WhatsApp no longer deletes multimedia on download but continues to store it on its servers. Theoretically, using the very same mechanism, Facebook could also be retaining encrypted text messages and comprehensive metadata from WhatsApp users indefinitely without making this obvious.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">My friend, Srikanth Lakshmanan, founder of the CashlessConsumer collective, is a keen observer of this space. He says in India, “we are seeing an increasing push towards a bank-led model, thanks to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and its control over Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is also known as the cashless layer of the India Stack.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">NPCI is best understood as a shape shifter. Arundhati Ramanathan puts it best when she says “depending on the time and context, NPCI is a competitor. It is a platform. It is a regulator. It is an industry association. It is a profitable non-profit. It is a rule maker. It is a judge. It is a bystander.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This results in UPI becoming, what Lakshmanan calls, a NPCI-club-good rather than a new generation digital public good. He also points out that NPCI has an additional challenge of opacity — “it doesn’t provide any metrics on transaction failures, and being a private body, is not subject to proactive or reactive disclosure requirements under the RTI.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Technically, he says, UPI increases fragility in our financial ecosystem since it “is a centralised data maximisation network where NPCI will always have the superset of data.” Given that NPCI has opted for a bank-led model in India, it is very unlikely that Facebook able to leverage its monopoly the social media market duopoly it shares with in the digital advertising market to become a digital payments monopoly.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, NCPI and Facebook both share the following traits — one, an insatiable appetite for personal information; two, a fetish for hypercentralisation; three, a marginal commitment to transparency, and four, poor track record as a custodian of consumer trust. The marriage between these like-minded entities has already had a dubious beginning.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Previously, every financial technology wanting direct access to the NPCI infrastructure had to have a tie-up with a bank. But for Facebook and Google, as they are large players, it was decided to introduce a multi-bank model. This was definitely the right thing to do from a competition perspective. But, unfortunately, the marriage between the banks and the internet giant was arranged by NPCI in an opaque process and WhatsApp was exempted from the full NPCI certification process for its beta launch.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Both NPCI and Facebook need urgent regulatory attention. A modern data protection law and a more proactive competition regulator is required for Facebook. The NPCI will hopefully also be subjected to the upcoming data protection law. But it also requires a range of design, policy and governance fixes to ensure greater privacy and security via data minimisation and decentralisation; greater accountability and transparency to the public; separation of powers for better governance and open access policies to prevent anti-competitive behaviour.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-june-10-2018-sunil-abraham-why-npci-and-facebook-need-urgent-regulatory-attention'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-june-10-2018-sunil-abraham-why-npci-and-facebook-need-urgent-regulatory-attention</a>
</p>
No publishersunilSocial MediaInternet GovernancePrivacy2018-06-12T02:07:42ZBlog EntryWhen the war’s on WhatsApp
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-september-25-2016-manju-vi-when-the-war-is-on-whatsapp
<b>Slick, jingoistic videos are whipping up pro-war rhetoric on social media after the Uri terror attack.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Manju V was <a class="external-link" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/When-the-wars-on-WhatsApp/articleshow/54502035.cms">published in the Times of India</a> on September 25, 2016. Nishant Shah was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Posted about 10 days after the Pathankot attack in January, the video was resurrected last week after the country woke up to the <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Uri-attack">Uri attack</a> 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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These videos of jawans threatening to decimate Pakistan were shared by thousands. <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/WhatsApp">WhatsApp</a> 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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Ugly gets outlet</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Amplifying angst</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Virtual wars</h3>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-september-25-2016-manju-vi-when-the-war-is-on-whatsapp'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-september-25-2016-manju-vi-when-the-war-is-on-whatsapp</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaWhatsAppInternet Governance2016-09-25T16:36:01ZNews ItemWhen the virtual world wakes up the real one
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-malini-nair-november-24-2013-when-the-virtual-world-wakes-up-the-real-one
<b>The unprecedented wave of voices speaking up against sexual harassment in recent times has as much to do with technology as the determination to seek justice. From Twitter to Tumblr, and blogs to pastebin, the internet's anonymity, reach and speed allow small, personal stories of abuse to swell into big stories.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Malini Nair was <a class="external-link" href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-11-24/deep-focus/44411700_1_social-web-sexual-harassment-editor-tarun-tejpal">published in the Times of India</a> on November 24. Nishant Shah is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The outrage over the Tehelka case started with a post on pastebin, an anonymous document sharing site, on Wednesday evening. It contained the email managing editor Shoma Chaudhury had sent to the Tehelka staff with editor Tarun Tejpal's "atonement" letter appended below. A few hours later, the story had ballooned into a heated debate, and the outpouring forced what was being dismissed as an "internal matter" to be treated as a criminal case.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The two <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Women">women</a> who recently spoke up against harassment at the hands of a retired Supreme Court judge also used Facebook and the blogosphere to tell their stories, ensuring that the real world was actually moved into taking action. "The social web's biggest comfort is that we are no longer alone," says Nishant Shah, director, Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. "No matter what has happened to us, it has happened to somebody else. The possibility of finding credulous and empathetic audiences who but share our pain, understand it, and respond to it is unprecedented." Retweets and comments have often been described as the digital equivalent of holding hands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shah's pick of web campaigns that highlighted the problems include Blank Noise which calls women to talk of small, everyday stories of harassment, the Pink Chaddi drive and Why We Need Feminism, a web venture across American universities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The other reason why the net encourages victims of abuse who might otherwise have stayed quiet to speak out is its "pseudonymity", as Shah terms it. In societies where there is shame attached to talking about sexual assault, the online space saves women from having to put themselves out in the "physical space" while ensuring that the perpetrator is exposed, he points out.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A plus for social web is that it gets other victims to speak up as well, gathering force and magnitude in the process. This happened in the instance of the legal interns. Another instance that surfaced just a month ago was of two American women science bloggers Danielle Lee and Monica Byrne. When Lee refused to write a piece for free for Biology Online, she was called "urban whore" by an enraged editor. She blogged about it and the ensuing storm over social media got her huge support. After Lee's expose, Byrne blogged about an acutely sexual conversation a powerful science writer inflicted on her. The outrage this provoked abated only after he made amends.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As an article in Gender and Culture blog project puts it: "( The digital world provided) a <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Forum">forum</a> for these victims to document their abuse, and a courtroom where the abusers have been judged and found guilty by public opinion".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course there are problems with the internet's version of justice — it tends to play judge, jury and executioner with giddy recklessness. In the Tehelka case, the first questionable moment came when the survivor's email was tweeted and re-tweeted with no concern for her requests for anonymity. "The problem with Twitter and Facebook is the incredible and gross violations of privacy of the survivor. And otherwise responsible adults join lynch mobs calling either the <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Survivor">survivor</a> or the accused names, making ridiculous allegations, desperately looking for an easy narrative to hang everything on," says author Nisha Susan, who led the Pink Chaddi campaign.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Commentator Santosh Desai says that it is tough to choose between an unbridled but powerful social web and one that is cautious and governed by norms. "Earlier, there were receivers and broadcasters who were few and governed by licenses and a code of behaviour. Now everyone is a broadcaster, everyone is a circulator and everyone is an aggregator. Having no oversight here could be problematic," he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Susan says communities need to go beyond social media in such situations. "It should also be a time for us to reflect. On what we would do in such a situation, how we could perhaps prevent it, on the sense of entitlement powerful men have all over the world, on the awful pressures young women face. We should all be reflecting. Instead we are just re-tweeting."</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-malini-nair-november-24-2013-when-the-virtual-world-wakes-up-the-real-one'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-malini-nair-november-24-2013-when-the-virtual-world-wakes-up-the-real-one</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2013-11-30T09:35:06ZNews ItemWhen politics gets social
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-march-11-2014-chanpreet-khurana-when-politics-gets-social
<b>In the run-up to the general election, social media companies explain how the political campaigns this time are very different from what they were five years ago. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Chanpreet Khurana was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/FhyPs4evRTV3HtgVIN1ZMK/When-politics-gets-social.html">published in Livemint </a>on March 11, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Okay, I didn’t gain anything. I lost,” Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Arvind%20Kejriwal">Arvind Kejriwal </a></span>conceded disarmingly during a town hall meeting on Facebook last week. He was responding to a question from Candidates 2014 host <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Madhu%20Trehan">Madhu Trehan </a></span>on his much critiqued <i>dharna </i>(sit-in protest) during his 49-day chief ministership of Delhi.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even as elections to 543 constituencies approach, political parties and politicians are putting their online campaigns in top gear. Sample some of the activity in just the last week. On Sunday, the Indian National Congress party asked voters to share their thoughts on what to include in the party’s Lok Sabha election manifesto—on Twitter. On 8 March,<span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/%20Narendra%20Modi"> Narendra Modi</a></span>, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, held the second session in his Chai Pe Charcha with NaMo series—this time on women’s empowerment. And All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s “Girls are our assets” post on Facebook was liked more than 22,000 times.</p>
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<p>Recognizing the high level of engagement around politics on social media, companies like Facebook and Google are driving initiatives on this theme in peak election season—polling starts on 7 April. The Facebook Talks Live’s Candidates 2014 series (also broadcast on NDTV), which in its first week featured Kejriwal, Banerjee, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Lalu%20Prasad">Lalu Prasad </a></span>and the Samajwadi Party’s <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Akhilesh%20Yadav">Akhilesh Yadav</a></span>, is one example.</p>
<p>There are many new services being launched online in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.</p>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Know your candidate</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On 20 April 2011, US President <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Barack%20Obama">Barack Obama </a></span>appeared on Facebook Talks Live, opening the floodgates for a new kind of engagement between political leaders and the electorate. Cut to almost three years later, and the Facebook-led “town hall” meeting has come to India. On 4 March, Candidates 2014 launched with Kejriwal taking questions on issues like women’s safety, reservation for the backward classes and the plight of contractual workers, and detailing his vision for the country. A video of the town hall is available on Facebook and YouTube and has been viewed at least 30,000 times. As part of the format of the town hall, the questions came in equal parts from the live audience, Trehan and from a pool of questions submitted on the Facebook India page.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To the agile leader then, social media can be more than just another pulpit to broadcast views and give a speech from. It’s something <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Sunil%20Abraham">Sunil Abraham</a></span>, executive director of The Centre for Internet And Society, a non-profit research organization, can’t stress enough. “Social media provides unmediated access; in that sense it is a tremendously effective tool,” says Bangalore-based Abraham in a phone interview. “The question is, are political parties agile enough to take advantage of it?”</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-march-11-2014-chanpreet-khurana-when-politics-gets-social'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-march-11-2014-chanpreet-khurana-when-politics-gets-social</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2014-04-04T07:52:46ZNews ItemWhatsApp ruling: Experts seek privacy law
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-24-apurva-venkat-and-moulishree-srivastava-whasapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law
<b>On August 25, Whatsapp updated its policy to share user content with social network; the decision opened new monetisation models for the messaging app.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Apurva Venkat and Moulishree Srivastava quoted Sunil Abraham. It was <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/whatsapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law-116092400750_1.html">published in the Business Standard</a> on September 24, 2016.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The recent<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Delhi+High+Court" target="_blank">Delhi High Court<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><span>ruling that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Messaging+App" target="_blank">messaging app</a><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">Whatsapp<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><span>cannot share user data highlights the need for legislation on privacy, according to experts.</span><br /> <br /> <span>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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>In response to a PIL, the court ordered<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><span>to delete data of users who chose to opt out of its policy changes before September 25. It also ordered</span><a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><span>not to share data collected before September 25 with Facebook for users who had not opted out.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"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.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"Facebook owns Whatsapp. It has to look at ways of monetising it," said Nikhil Pahwa, co-founder of SavetheInternet.in.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"With so much digital data being generated, there is a need for a privacy law in the country," said Pahwa.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"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.</span><br /> <br /> <span>Saroj Kumar Jha, partner, SRGR Law Offices, said there were few judgments on privacy in India based on constitutional rights.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"While the Information Technology Act enables courts to pass judgments on global companies on privacy, enforcing the orders is difficult," he said.</span><br /> <br /> <span>"What is required is a privacy law that can protect user data and uphold the individual's right to privacy," he added.</span></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-24-apurva-venkat-and-moulishree-srivastava-whasapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-24-apurva-venkat-and-moulishree-srivastava-whasapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaWhatsAppInternet GovernancePrivacy2016-09-27T02:35:06ZNews Item