Access to Knowledge Blogs
GCIP15 Day 2: Fixing the problems in Trade Negotiations
This post documents the interesting discussions that took place in the Trade Negotiations Panel at day 2 of the GCIP 2015.
GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest
At the third plenary session of GCIP15, the discussion revolved around challenges in re-articulating ‘public interest’ dimension in IP law and policy.
GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access
The Global Congress is a confluence of academics, policy advocates and activists working in the sphere of IP and Public Interest.
GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session
The 2015 Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest kicked off with its inaugural plenary session, on 14th December, 2015. With over 400 registered participants, ranging from established academics to activists to students gathered in the auditorium in National Law University, Delhi, Phet Sayo, a Senior Fellow at IDRC and a panelist at the session rightly observed that if a bomb were to go off at this venue, "there goes IP activism".
Leading Up To The GCIP: A Chat With Jayashree Watal
The fifth discussion in our pre-GCIP discussion series is with Jayashree Watal.
Leading Up To The GCIP: A Chat With Shamnad Basheer
The next discussion in our pre-GCIP discussion series is with Prof. Shamnad Basheer.
Leading Up To The GCIP: A Chat With Michael Geist
Continuing the lead-up to the GCIP, the following discussion is with Dr. Michael Geist.
Leading Up To The GCIP: A Chat With Zakir Thomas
With only a few more days to go for the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015 (“Congress”), we will be putting out a number of blog posts as a precursor of things to come. In this first series, Job Michael Mathew approaches some of our keynote speakers for their thoughts on their work areas and contemporary developments in their fields.
Leading Up To The GCIP: A Chat With Susan K. Sell
After Mr. Zakir Thomas and Dr. Michael Geist, our third discussion is with Prof. Susan K. Sell.
Intellectual Property Rights & TRIPS: An Overview
The Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff began in 1986 with a Ministerial Deceleration in Punta del Este.
Abuse of Dominant Position in Indian Competition Law: A Brief Guide
Every car owner would give a knowing nod when spoken to about the struggle of finding reasonably priced spare parts for their cars. While original parts can only be found at limited dealerships (which would invariably be miles away from home), once found, a small block of plastic would be worth a proverbial fortune.
Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon
As part of the "Sau Dhuni Teen Project" a multilingual Wikipedia Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised at the Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune.
TTT 2015
The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) conducted a four day training workshop for Wikimedians all over India in order to facilitate conducting and organising outreach activities for promotion of Wikimedia activities within Indian language communities. Wikimedians from 21 language communities had participated in this training workshop including Wikipedians working for Nepali and Maithili Wikipedia.
Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ University and St. Aloysius College, Managalore
CIS-A2K conducts Wikipedia in Education programme at St. Aloysius colege, Mangalore. This partnership is unique as it provides to us a pool of editors for three Wikimedia projects, i.e: Kannada, Tulu and Konkani.
Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs
University of Mysore considered to be one of the most prestigious institutions in the country has been famous for its innovative pedagogic techniques and opening up for students various avenues of knowledge acquisition.
Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada Wikisource
CIS-A2K has initiated a community consultation in order to prioritise and streamline the work on Wikisource projects across FLA. Due to the commitment of volunteers from the respective FLA and the institutional partnerships that A2K has developed we have been able to bring a large corpus of content under free licence into our Wikisource projects. CIS-A2K promotes both content donation and content acquisition strategies in order to bring in free licence content.
30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource
The article was published in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal on Odisha on December 4, 2015.
Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted to re-license under a free license Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0 for 30 volumes of his notable works. The author, popularly known as “J P” or “JP Das” has been honored with Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Academy award for his significant contribution in fiction, historical research of Odisha’s cultural heritage in his books Puri Paintings, Chitra-Pothi and Palm-leaf Miniatures apart from his Odia books “Prathama Purusa” and “Bhabanatha O Anyamane”.
“I made a rather late and hesitant entry into the internet and digital world, but it has since become an integral part of my life. My introduction to digital books was through Srujanika’s digitised version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha – all of 95,00 pages in seven volumes — which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how wonderful it would be to have all Odia books available on the internet that could be easily accessible to every interested reader”, says Das.
“As a beginning I decided to put my own writings on the internet. Many of our young Odia writers are are quite active on the social media. I hope they will take the initiative to get more and more Odia books available on the internet with the help of Odia Wikisource”, he adds.
This contribution opens up a whole new window to his books being accessible to readers for free online. Recently the scanning of the original books were made by the Bhubaneswar based non-profit and science education research organization Srujanika which will now be made available after converting them into text form.
Apart from Dr Das, many other notable individuals like Padma shree Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Dr Subrat Prusty, Manoj Panda, Bharat Majhi and organisations like Aama Odisha, Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa have taken the noble step of sharing their works online with free licenses using Odia Wikisource as a platform.
Odia Wikisource, a sister project of the Odia Wikipedia, is available online at or.wikisource.org. There are over 238 books already and all of the books are either under Public Domain or under the above mentioned Creative Commons Share-Alike license which gives the freedom of accessing the works for free, reuse them and even correct if any mistakes found, of course following the guidelines made by the Wikisource community. Currently about 10 Wikisourcers are actively contributing to digitize books of various genre, ranging from science to fiction to even the Odia classics.
With more authors generously opening up their work online, it feels like they are worried of the books becoming obsolete from the new generation leaving them with no way to learn about their own language and literature. Regional languages like Odia are facing the struggle to selling more books with the growing trend of English-centric education and rat race for jobs. In such a tough situation more popular Odia literary content is certainly going to give a boost to readership and will take the language to more people.
Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional Partnership
Incorporated in 2013, Guru-G is the world’s first gamified platform for teaching and teacher training.
Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books
As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.
ORF India-UK Technology Partnership Conference
As the consequence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much anticipated visit to the United Kingdom, representatives from stakeholder groups such as government and industry came together at Observers Research Foundation, Delhi, to deliberate upon various facets of India-UK Technology Partnership.
