April 2019 Newsletter

Highlights for March 2019

• The unprecedented growth of the fintech space in India has concomitantly come with regulatory challenges around inter alia privacy and security concerns. Aayush Rathi and Shweta Mohandas have co-authored a report which has analysed the privacy policies of 48 fintech companies operating in India to better understand some of these concerns.
• In today’s increasingly digitized world where an increasing volume of information is being stored in the digital format, access to data generated by digital technologies and on digital platforms is important in solving crimes online and offline. One such mechanism for international cooperation is the Convention on Cybercrime adopted in Budapest (“Budapest Convention”). Vipul Kharbanda has provided a deeper analysis on this in his research paper.
• CIS has responded to ICANN's proposed renewal of .org Registry. CIS has found severe issues with the proposed agreement. These centre around the removal of price caps and imposing obligations being currently deliberated in an ongoing Policy Development Process. Akriti Bopanna drafted the response.
• The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion released a draft e-commerce policy in February for which stakeholder comments were sought. CIS responded to the request for comments.
• CIS Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) has submitted its proposal form for the year 2019 - 2020 to the Wikimedia Foundation. CIS thanks all community members who gave valuable suggestions and inputs for drafting this proposal.
• In 2017–2018, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and Google collaborated to start a pilot project in India, working closely with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Wikimedia Indiachapter (WMIN). This project, titled Project Tiger was aimed at encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. CIS-A2K team submitted Project Tiger final report.
• The r@w blog features works by researchers and practitioners working in India and elsewhere at the intersections of internet, digital media and society, and highlights and materials from ongoing research and events at the researchers@work programme at CIS. On the r@w blog we featured an essay titled 'The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination' by Divij Joshi, as part of a series on Studying Internet in India (2015); and audio recording of a session titled #ObjectsofDigitalGovernance by Khetrimayum Monish Singh, Rajiv K. Mishra, and Vidya Subramanian which was part of the Internet Researchers Conference, 2017.
  

Jobs

CIS is hiring:

• CIS-A2K Finance Officer: Call for application (Only women candidates).
• Internship - applications accepted throughout the year.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in January:

• Delayed Cash Flows and NPAs (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 3, 2019).
• To preserve freedoms online, amend the IT Act (Gurshabad Grover; April 16, 2019).
• Digital Native: Getting through an election made for the social media gaze (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 21, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

• Reddit, Telegram among websites blocked in India, say internet groups (Sai Sachin Ravikumar; Business Standard; April 3, 2019).
• Data leaks could wreak havoc in India, so why aren’t they an issue this election? (Aria Thaker; Quartz India; April 4, 2019).
• Cookies, not the monster you may think (Sweta Akundi; Hindu; April 8, 2019).
• TikTok craze a ticking time bomb for city (Gulam Jeelani with inputs from Priyanka Sharma and Ajay Kumar; India Today; April 17, 2019).
• Almost every social network has a porn problem—so why is India banning only TikTok? (Ananya Bhattacharya; Quartz India; April 19, 2019).
• Child protection and cyber-grooming: Indian court rescinds its own Tiktok ban (Leon Kaiser; Netzpolitik.org; April 24, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

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.

Wikipdedia

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).

Project Proposal / Reports

• Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program/Report (Gopala Krishna A; April 5, 2019).

• CIS-A2K proposal to Wikimedia Foundation for 2019-2020 (Ananth Subray; April 15, 2019).

Blog Entries

• Wikimedia projects orientation session at Tata Trust's Vikas Anvesh Foundation (Subodh Kulkarni; April 9, 2019).
• Indic Wikisource Speak: Sushant Savla (Jayanta Nath; April 10, 2019).
• SVG Translation Workshop at KBC North Maharashtra University (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2019).
• Content Donation Sessions with Authors (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2019).
• Indic Wikisource speak : Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Jayanta Nath; April 11, 2019).

Internet Governance

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.

Cyber Security

Research Paper

• International Cooperation in Cybercrime: The Budapest Convention (Vipul Kharbanda; April 29, 2019).

Event Organized

• Internet Speech: Perspectives on Regulation and Policy ( Organized by CIS; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; April 5, 2019).

Blog Entry

• DIDP #33 On ICANN's 2012 gTLD round auction fund (Akriti Bopanna; April 4, 2019).

Researchers at Work (RAW)

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:

Announcement

• Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 6, 2019).

Blog Entries

• The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination (Divij Joshi; April 21, 2019).
• #ObjectsOfDigitalGovernance (Khetrimayum Monish Singh, Rajiv K. Mishra, and Vidya Subramanian; April 21, 2019).

Telecom

Article

• Delayed Cash Flows and NPAs (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 3, 2019 and Organizing India Blogspot; April 4, 2019).

Participation in Event

• BIF conference on “Substitutability of OTT Services with Telecom Services & Regulation of OTT Services (Organized by Broadband India Forum; Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road, New Delhi; April 5, 2019). Anubha Sinha was a panellist at a BIF conference on “Substitutability of OTT Services with Telecom Services & Regulation of OTT Services”.

About CIS

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.

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