Centre for Internet & Society

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.


Highlights
  • CIS filed a request under the Right to Information Act in March 2016 as part of research for the paper: Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (July 2017). Rohini Lakshané has captured the developments in a blog post.
  • Last​ ​month’s​ ​judgment​ ​by​ ​the​ ​nine​ ​judge​ ​referral​ ​bench​ ​was​ ​an​ ​emphatic endorsement​ ​of​ ​the​ ​the​ ​constitutional​ ​right​ ​to​ ​privacy. Amber Sinha has dissected the various aspects of the right to privacy as put forth by the nine judge constitutional bench in the Puttaswamy matter. The papers on fundamental right to privacy can be accessed here.
  • With offline as the theme of the third Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC18), CIS has invited teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017. The conference is expected to be held in Himachal Pradesh during February 22-24, 2018. The venue and dates will be confirmed soon.
  • Anonymity-based internet apps like Sarahah may not be as vicious for those surrounded by the comfort of social status. If your experience of Sarahah has been positive, it might be good to reflect on your own cultural and social capital, wrote Nishant Shah in an article in the Indian Express, dated September 10, 2017.

CIS in the news:

-----------------------------------
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.

►Pervasive Technologies

►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

-----------------------------------

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.

    ►Privacy

      Blog Entries

      ►Big Data

      Upcoming Event
      -----------------------------------

      Telecom
      -----------------------------------
      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

      -----------------------------------
      Researchers at Work
      -----------------------------------
      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:

      Article

      Announcement

      • Internet Researchers' Conference 2018 (IRC18): Offline - Call for Session (P.P. Sneha; September 20, 2017). Teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017.
      Blog Entry
      -----------------------------------

      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.

      ► Follow us elsewhere

      ► 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.