November 2016 Newsletter
Welcome to the November 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).
Dear readers,
As we bring in the new year here at CIS, we thank you for your continued interest and support.
Over the course of the previous year, government services and functions became more dependent on information technologies, concerns over cybersecurity and the vulnerability of electronic infrastructure grew, and new developments and challenges arose in the fields of Internet governance and free speech and expression.
In the wake of this major year of developments, the work that CIS does is even more important. We look forward to engaging with these and other emerging issues, in 2017 and beyond.
Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
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CIS in the news:
- Using Kannada in technology made easier with smartphones (New Indian Express; November 1, 2016).
- 'Delink ICANN from US jurisdiction' (Deccan Herald; November 12, 2016).
- Google, Facebook will not place ads on sites distributing fake news (John Riberio; IDG News Service and CIO; November 14, 2016).
- How The U.K. Got A Better Deal From Facebook Than India Did (Payaswini Upadhyay; Bloomberg Quint; November 17, 2016).
- The thrill of saving India from cybercrime (Peerzada Abrar; Hindu; November 20, 2016).
- Free Net advocates flay Trai's public Wi-Fi paper (Anita Babu; Business Standard; November 20, 2016).
- Popular apps are inaccessible to millions of disabled: Study (Arpita Raj; The Times of India and ET Brand Equity; November 21, 2016).
- Caught in a filter bubble (Chethana Divya Vasudev; November 22, 2016).
- A world apart (Meera Siva; Hindu Businessline; November 27, 2016).
- Disabled kid? sorry, no admission! (New Indian Express; November 28, 2016).
- Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers (AIGA.org; November 29, 2016).
CIS members wrote the following articles
- Where Are There So Few Books For The Print-Impaired? (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; November 3, 2016).
- 4 tips for DIY makers (Subhashish Panigrahi; November 18, 2016).
- Digital native: The Voices in Our Heads (Nishant Shah; November 20, 2016).
- The Quest for Education – Persons with Disabilities, Severely Challenged (Nirmita Narasimhan; Your Story; November 24, 2016).
- Demonetisation Survey Limits the Range of Feedback that can be Provided by the User (Udbhav Tiwari; November 24, 2016).
Jobs
CIS is presently seeking applications for the following positions
- Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
- Intern (Pervasive Technologies Project) - Application accepted throughout the year
- Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
- Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood
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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 & Patent
Blog Entries
- 33rd SCCR: Opening Statement by India on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group (Anubha Sinha; November 14, 2016).
- 33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; November 16, 2016).
- 33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; November 18, 2016).
►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).
Event Organized
- Sambalpur University Workshop (Sambalpur; November 27, 2016).
Participation in Event
- CIIPC-NLUD Workshop on Wikipedia Editing and Open Source Knowledge Sources (Organized by Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition (CIIPC), National Law university, Delhi; November 11 - 12, 2016). Rohini Lakshané and Tanveer Hasan conducted and facilitated this workshop.
Blog Entries
- Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November (Tito Dutta; November 1, 2016)
- 100 Wikidays: The Journey so Far (Tito Dutta; November 23, 2016)
- Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work (Tito Dutta; November 26, 2016).
- Improving Telugu Village Articles (Pavan Santhosh; November 26, 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 Entry
- Conference on the Digitalization of the Indian Legal System (Leilah Elmokadem; November 16, 2016)
Participation in Event
- Industry Consultation Panel on Data Retention - DSCI (Organized by the Data Security Council of India; New Delhi; November 23, 2016). Udbhav Tiwari was a panelist.
►Big Data
Blog Entry
- Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research (Saumyaa Naidu; November 12, 2016).
- Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report (Vidushi Marda, Akash Deep Singh and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; November 14, 2016).
►Cyber Security
Blog Entry
- CERT-In's Proactive Mandate - A Report on the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s Proactive Mandate in the Indian Cyber Security Ecosystem (Udbhav Tiwari; November 19, 2016).
►Free Speech and Expression
Blog Entries
- If the DIDP Did Its Job (Asvatha Babu; November 3, 2016)
- Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction (Vidushi Marda; November 9, 2016)
- How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency (Asvatha Babu; November 10, 2016).
- ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data (Padmini Baruah and Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 11, 2016).
- Navigating the 'Reconsideration' Quagmire (A Personal Journey of Acute Confusion).
- ICANN 57 (Organized by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India; Hyderabad International Convention Centre; November 3 - 9, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a speaker.
- 10th NLSIR Symposium - Regulating E-Commerce in India (Organized by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru; November 27, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.
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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:
Blog Entry
- Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 16, 2016).
Event Organized
- CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (CIS; New Delhi; November 3, 2016).
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.
