December 2016 Newsletter
Welcome to the December 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).
Dear readers,
Wishing you a happy and prosperous New Year. As the New Year unfolds we are glad to bring you developments from the last month of the year gone by for your reference. Thank you for reading the Centre for Internet and Society's (CIS) December 2016 newsletter.
Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
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CIS in the news:
- Lack of clarity about cashless and online transactions makes digital payments more worrisome (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; December 1, 2016).
- Changing the typographic landscape of a country: one letter at a time (Pooja Saxena; Storyweaver; December 1, 2016).
- No laws in India to protect customers if they lose money during digital transactions (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; December 2, 2016).
- Fake Narendra Modi apps aplenty, but it’s up to users to protect themselves (Indian Express; December 2, 2016). Also see Nandini Yadav's blog post in BGR on December 3, 2016.
- Your digital wallet can be a ‘pickpocket’ (The Hindu; December 5, 2016).
- Most popular smartphone apps inaccessible to disabled: Study (ET Telecom; December 7, 2016).
- English gottila,job illa (Regina Gurung; Indian Express; December 7, 2016).
- Bumpy road ahead for RFID Tags in vehicles (Smriti Sharma Vasudeva; Statesman; December 7, 2016).
- India's Tech Policy Entrepreneurs (Rohin Dharmakumar; The Ken; December 8, 2016).
- Vijay Mallya cries foul after his Twitter and email accounts are hacked (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; December 10, 2016).
- విజ్ఞాన నిధి వికీపీడియా.. (Namaste Telangana; December 11, 2016).
- వికీపీడియాతో విజ్ఞాన విప్లవం (Andhra Bhoomi; December 11, 2016).
- Wikipedia is a Newspaper (Namaste Telangana; December 11, 2016).
- Wikipedian Pavan Santhosh says Telugu Wikipedians are creating Knowledge revolution (in Telugu) (Andhra Jyoti; December 12, 2016).
- Wikipedia Event in Mangalore (Vijaya Karnataka; December 18, 2016).
- With power, phone and internet services affected, Chennai is still recovering from Cyclone Vardah (Vinita Govindarajan and Sruthisagar Yamunan; Scroll.in; December 20, 2016).
- पीजी जूलॉजी विभाग में एक दिवसीय समागम का आयोजन (Hindustan, December 20, 2016).
- How private companies are using Aadhaar to try to deliver better services (but there's a catch) (M. Rajshekhar; Scroll.in; December 22, 2016).
- ‘IT hub’ K’taka ranks No 12 in e-deals (Christin Philip Mathew; New Indian Express; December 27, 2016).
- India’s ruling party takes online abuse to a professional level (Samanth Subramanian; December 31, 2016).
CIS members published the following articles:
- Digital native: The View from My Bubble (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; December 4, 2016).
- Indian Newspapers' Digital Transition (Zeenab Azeez; Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; December 9, 2016).
- The Digital Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Questions Raised by the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in India (Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda; GIS Watch; December 9, 2016)
- The Curious Case of Poor Security in the Indian Twitterverse (Udbhav Tiwari; The Wire; December 17, 2016).
- Pranay Raj record in 100 days-100 articles (Pavan Santhosh; Andhra Jyoti; December 17, 2016).
- Digital Native: People Like Us (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; December 18, 2016).
- వంద రోజులు.. వంద వ్యాసాలు - తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో మోత్కూరు యువకుని రికార్డు (100 Days...100 Articles: Wikipedian from Motkur created record in Telugu Wikipedia) (Pavan Santhosh; Andhra Jyoti; December 18, 2016).
Jobs
CIS is seeking applications for:
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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.
Event Co-organized
- International Accessibility Summit of Shaastra 2017 (Organized by CIS and IIT, Madaras; December 31 - January 3, 2017). Nirmita Narasimhan was a panel moderator.
Participation in Event
- Best Practices in Digital Accessibility (Organized by IIM, Bangalore; December 19, 2016). Nirmita Narasimhan was a panelist.
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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.
►Copyright and Patent
Statements
- 25th Session of the WIPO SCP: Statement on Assessment of Inventive Step (Rohini Lakshané; December 15, 2016).
- 25th Session of the WIPO SCP: Statement on Future work (Rohini Lakshané; December 16, 2016).
Participation in Event
- 7th Emerging Markets Finance Conference (Organized by Finance Research Group in association with Vanderbilt Law School; Mumbai; December 15, 2016). Anubha Sinha was a panelist.
►Wikipedia
As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).
Blog Entries
- Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign (Tito Dutta; December 8, 2016).
- A Shortcut to Freedom (Tito Dutta; December 14, 2016).
- Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Kolhapur (Subodh Kulkarni; December 16, 2016).
- Ongoing Proof-reading Effort by ALC Student Wikimedians in Telugu Wikisource (Pavan Santosh and Ting-Yi Chang; December 30, 2016).
►Openness
Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.
Submission
- Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products (Anubha Sinha, Rohini Lakshané, and Udbhav Tiwari; December 11, 2016).
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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.
►Privacy
Blog Entries
- Privacy and Security Implications of Public Wi-Fi - A Case Study (Vanya Rakesh; December 9, 2016).
- Habeas Data in India (Vipul Kharbanda and edited by Elonnai Hickok; December 10, 2016).
- Workshop Report - UIDAI and Welfare Services: Exclusion and Countermeasures (Vanya Rakesh; December 14, 2016).
- Enlarging the Small Print: A Study on Designing Effective Privacy Notices for Mobile Applications (Meera Manoj; December 14, 2016).
- Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps (Hitabhilash Mohanty and Edited by Leilah Elmokadem; December 15, 2016).
- ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 27 Working Group Meetings - A Summary (Vanya Rakesh; December 16, 2016).
- Deep Packet Inspection: How it Works and its Impact on Privacy (Amber Sinha; December 16, 2016).
Participation in Events
- Industry Consultation Panel on Data Retention - DSCI (Organized by Data Security Council of India; New Delhi; November 23, 2016). This was mirrored on the website on December 6, 2016. Udbhav Tiwari was a panelist.
- 11th DSCI-NASSCOM Annual Information Security Summit 2016 (Organized by DSCI and NASSCOM; December 14, 2016). Udbhav Tiwari was a panelist.
- Workshop on Center for IT and Society (Organized by IIT, Delhi; December 20, 2016). Amber Sinha attended the event.
►Free Speech & Expression
Blog Entries
- ISIS and Recruitment using Social Media – Roundtable Report (Vidushi Marda, Aditya Tejus, Megha Nambiar and Japreet Grewal; December 15, 2016).
- Inputs to the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policy Issues Pertaining to the Internet (WGEC) (Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda, with inputs from Pranesh Prakash; December 17, 2016).
Participation in Event
- Myanmar Digital Rights Forum (Organized by Phandeeyar, You Can Do IT, Engage Media and Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business with support from the Embassy of Sweden; December 14 - 15, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
►Big Data
Participation in Events
- "Decoding the Digital" (Organized by Centre for IT and Public Policy at IIIT; Bangalore; December 12 - 14, 2016). Vanya Rakesh attended the event.
- The EU and Free Flows of Data - Data Protection, Trade and Law Enforcement (Organized by the Department of European Studies; Bangalore; December 14, 2016). Ameila Andersdotter gave a talk.
Blog Entry
- The Technology behind Big Data (Geethanjali Jujjavarapu and Udbhav Tiwari; December 1, 2016).
►Cyber Security
Blog Entries
- Developer team fixed vulnerabilities in Honorable PM's app and API (Bhavyanshu Parasher; December 4, 2016).
- Incident Response Requirements in Indian Law (Vipul Kharbanda; December 28, 2016).
- Mapping of India’s Cyber Security-Related Bilateral Agreements (Leilah Elmokadem and Saumyaa Naidu; December 29, 2016).
- Mapping of Sections in India’s MLAT Agreements (Leilah Elmokadem and Saumyaa Naidu; December 31, 2016).
Event Organized
- Multistakeholder Consultation on Encryption (Organized by CIS with ORF and Takshashila Institution; TERI, Bangalore; December 17, 2016).
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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:
Submission
- CIS Submission to TRAI Consultation Note on Model for Nation-wide Interoperable and Scalable Public Wi-Fi Networks (Japreet Grewal, Pranesh Prakash, Sharath Chandra, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Udbhav Tiwari, with expert comments from Amelia Andersdotter; December 12, 2016).
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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:
Research Paper
- Mapping Digital Humanities in India (P.P. Sneha; December 30, 2016).
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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.
► Follow us elsewhere
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
- Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
- Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
- Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
- E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: [email protected]
- E-Mail - Researchers at Work: [email protected]
- List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers
► Support Us
Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.
► Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at [email protected] (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at [email protected] (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at [email protected].
CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.
