Centre for Internet & Society

DIDP Request #15: What is going on between Verisign and ICANN?

During a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on “Internet Governance Progress After ICANN 53,” President and CEO of ICANN - Mr Fadi Chehade indicated that ICANN follows up with registries and registrars on receipt of any complaint against them about violations of their contract with ICANN.

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DIDP Request #14: Keeping track of ICANN’s contracted parties: Registrars

In September 2016, we filed two separate DIDP requests regarding ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Goals.

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DIDP Request #13: Keeping track of ICANN’s contracted parties: Registries

On multiple occasions, Fadi Chehade, then President and CEO of ICANN has emphasized the importance of conducting audits (internal and external) to ensure compliance of ICANN’s contracted parties. At a US congressional hearing, he spoke about the contract monitoring function of ICANN.

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DIDP Request #9 - Exactly how involved is ICANN in the NETmundial Initiative?

The importance and relevance of knowing ICANN’s involvement in the NETmundial Initiative cannot be overstated.

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DIDP Request #10 - ICANN does not know how much each RIR contributes to its Budget

In an effort to understand the relationship between the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and ICANN, we requested current and historical information on the contract fees paid by the five RIRs (AfriNIC, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC and RIPE NCC) to ICANN annually.

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Submitted Comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India'

The public consultation process of the draft open data license to be used by Government of India has ended yesterday. Here we share the text of the submission by CIS. It was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

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One Pokémon to Rule Them All

America’s head start on the augmented reality game Pokémon Go shows that the interweb is not an egalitarian space.

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The Gay Pride Charade

For most of the milllenials, news is formed by trends, what goes viral, and often open to speculation, projection, manipulation and deceit.

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Digital Transition in Newspapers in India: A Pilot Study

This pilot study situates itself at the intersection of global trends in news and journalism, and emergent practises of legacy print media in India. Our aim is to explore how legacy print newspapers are transitioning to the online space. The study will address questions in two thematic clusters: 1) the work of journalism, and 2) how the emergence of the digital, both as a source of news, and the medium of distribution, is shaping the work of newspaper journalists.

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Edit-a-thon at DSERT Bengaluru to improve Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia

We have been working with the Department of State Educational Research and Training of Karnataka (DSERT), a Government of Karnataka-run research and training institution headquartered in Bengaluru. With the hope of expanding the reach of Science-related content in Kannada Wikipedia, we organised an edit-a-thon spanning over three days from the 11th January through the 13th.

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New Approaches to Information Privacy – Revisiting the Purpose Limitation Principle

Article on Aadhaar throwing light on privacy and data protection.

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No, India did NOT oppose the United Nations move to “make internet access a human right”

No, India did NOT oppose the United Nations move to “make internet access a human right”

Last Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution titled “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.”

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Trans Pacific Partnership and Digital 2 Dozen: Implications for Data Protection and Digital Privacy

In this essay, Shubhangi Heda explores the concerns related to data protection and digital privacy under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement signed recently between United States of America and eleven countries located around the pacific ocean region, across South America, Australia, and Asia. TPP is a free trade agreement (FTA) that emphasises, among other things, the need for liberalising global digital economy. The essay also analyses the critical document titled ‘Digital 2 Dozen’ (D2D), which compiles the key action items within TPP addressing liberalisation of digital economy, and sets up the relevant goals for the member nations.

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Online edit-a-thon on incidents in Telugu

A week-long online edit-a-thon was organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community to cover popular social, political and other events on the Telugu Wikipedia.

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RBI and Regulation of Digital Financial Services in India, 2012-2016

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published its first guideline on mobile banking in 2008, and the conversation on integrating Aadhaar numbers with bank account numbers on one hand and mobile numbers on the other started as soon as UIDAI was established. However, it is the post-2010 period, with rapid growth of the e-commerce sector in India, that saw rise of digital financial services and intermediaries, and hence the demand for regulatory intervention in the sector. This essay by Shivalik Chandan tracks RBI policies and guidelines responding to and shaping the regulatory framework of the digital financial sector in India, including both mobile banking and online transactions.

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Cross Border Cooperation on Criminal Matters - A Perspective from India

In today’s increasingly interconnected world where information and data can be moved to and from different parts of the world in a matter of seconds, more and more transactions are taking place online.

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Sub$-100 Phones: Browser Compatibility Tests

This post documents the results of browser compatibility tests conducted on six out of eight specimen mobile phones being studied under the Pervasive Technologies project. These phones are Internet-enabled and cost the equivalent of USD 100 or less in India. Rohini Lakshané and CIS volunteer Dhananjay Balan carried out the tests. Intern Shreshth Wadhwa provided assistance.

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Community celebrates birthday of Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wiktionary

Community celebrates birthday of Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wiktionary

This June, Odia Wikipedia turned 14 and Odia Wiktionary turned 11. Odia Wikimedia community member Chinmayee Mishra, CIS-A2K Programme Associate Sailesh Patnaik and I co-authored this blog in the Wikimedia Blog. The blog chronicles several major activities of the community and features quotes from many old and new community members.

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Open source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface

Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.

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