January 2017 Newsletter
Welcome to the January 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).
Dear readers,
We are pleased to bring you the Centre for Internet & Society's January newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
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CIS in the news
- India’s Digital ID Rollout Collides With Rickety Reality (Gabriele Parussini; Wall Street Journal; January 13, 2017).
- Millions of Indians move from cash to digital payments. But some ask whether it’s safe (Rama Lakshmi; Washington Post; January 14, 2017).
- Sunil Abraham on Aadhaar's misuse during demonetisation (Economic Times; January 14, 2017)
- The soon-to-be launched Aadhaar Pay will let you make purchases using your fingerprint (Indulekha Aravind; January 15, 2017).
- Lost your phone? Here's how you can make your mobile theft-proof (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; January 16, 2017).
- The Dangers Of Aadhaar-Based Payments That No One Is Talking About (Mayank Jain; Bloomberg; January 17, 2017).
- Supreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp, Centre on data privacy (MJ Antony, Ayan Pramanik and Apurva Venkat; Business Standard; January 17, 2017).
- Demonetisation: Cost Vs Benefit (NDTV; December 24, 2016). Sunil Abraham took part in the Big Fight programme aired by NDTV. The video was published on January 17, 2017.
- For India’s complaints department, visit Facebook Live (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; January 23, 2017).
CIS members wrote the following articles:
- Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017).
- Digital Native: The Dream of the Cyborg (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 8, 2017).
- Digital transitions in the newsroom: How are Indian language papers adapting differently? (Zeenab Aneez; London School of Economics and Political Science; January 16, 2017).
- Digital native: Back at it Again (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 22, 2017).
Jobs
- Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
- Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood
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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.
Blog Entry
- Digital accessibility in the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act 2016 (Nirmita Narasimhan; January 23, 2017).
Participation in Event
- Workplace Solutions Champions Consultative Workshop (Organized by Enable India, January 21 - 22, 2017; Ecumenical Christian Centre, Bangalore). Nirmita Narasimhan attended the workshop.
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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
Blog Entry
- Super Cassettes v. MySpace (Redux) (Anubha Sinha; January 16, 2017).
Event Organized
- Seminar on Rethinking Copyright and Licensing for Digital Publishing Today (Organized by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, and CIS; New Delhi; January 23, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
►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
- WikiSangamotsavam 2016 (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
- Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Hyderabad Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
- Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Rajahmundry Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
- Mini Workshop on Tools: Wikipedia Monthly Meetup, Hyderabad (Manasa Rao and Pavan Santhosh; January 18, 2017).
- Meet Telugu Wikipedian Surampudi Meena Gayathri – the first South Indian Wikiwoman completing 100 Wikidays Challenge (Ting-Yi Chang; January 23, 2017).
Event Organized
- Odia Wikipedia and Orientation Training Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K team; Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal; January 31, 2017).
►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.
Participation in Event
- CBGA - Consultation on Opening Up Access to Budget Data in India (Organized by CBGA; January 27, 2017; New Delhi). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a speaker.
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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
Submission
- Comments on the Report of the Committee on Digital Payments (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha; January 12, 2017).
Blog Entries
- The Design & Technology behind India’s Surveillance Programmes (Udbhav Tiwari; January 20, 2017)
- Workshop on ‘Privacy after Big Data’ (Amber Sinha; January 27, 2017).
Events Organized
- Discussion on Ranking Digital Rights in India (India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi; January 7, 2017).
- Rankathon on Digital Rights (CIS office, New Delhi; January 8, 2017).
Participation in Events
- Global Governance Futures 2027 - Session 3 (Organized by Global Public Policy Institute and supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung; New Delhi; January 17, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay joined Ankhi Das (Facebook) and Arun Mohan Sukumar (Observer Research Foundation) to discuss the "data governance" scenarios developed by the GGF 2027 Fellows.
- CPDP (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection) 2017 (Organized by Privacy International; Brussels, January 26, 2017). Amber Sinha participated as a panelist.
►Big Data
Blog Entry
- New Media, personalisation and the role of algorithms (Amber Sinha; January 2, 2017).
Participation in Events
- Training programme for Chairs, Convenor and Experts for International Standardization Work (Organized by National Institute of Training for Standardization, under the Bureau of India Standards; January 19 - 20, 2017; NOIDA). Udbhav Tiwari attended the training programme.
- Seminar on Understanding Financial Technology, Cashless India, and Forced Digitalisation (Centre for Financial Accountability; New Delhi; January 24, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay spoke on the emerging architecture of FinTech in India.
►Free Speech & Expression
Submission
- Comments on the Proposed ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy (Padma Venkataraman, Rohini Lakshané, Sampada Nayak and Vidushi Marda; January 13, 2017).
Blog Entry
- Social Media Monitoring (Amber Sinha; January 13, 2017).
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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:
Article
- Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; January 5, 2017).
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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:
Event
- Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selected Sessions (Organized by Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy and CIS; IIIT, Bangalore; March 3 - 5, 2017). Eleven sessions have received 10 or more nominations.
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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.
