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Sean McDonald - Ebola: A Big Data Disaster
We are proud to initiate the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. The paper highlights the absence of a dialogue around the significant legal risks posed by the collection, use, and international transfer of personally identifiable data and humanitarian information, and the grey areas around assumptions of public good. The paper calls for a critical discussion around the experimental nature of data modeling in emergency response due to mismanagement of information has been largely emphasized to protect the contours of human rights.
Can Wikipedia revive dying Indian languages?
Yes, by encouraging content and involvement, Wikipedia language communities keep languages relevant.
Looking ahead to the future of the Kannada Wikipedia: Vasanth S.N.
Vasanth S.N. has edited the Kannada-langauge Wikipedia since 2006. As part of the WikipediansSpeak series, I caught up with Vasanth to learn about his contributions to the Kannada Wikipedia, which just celebrated its 13th anniversary. In the discussion Vasanth shares his long time involvement in the Wikimedia movement, and what drives him every day to edit Wikipedia and helping other fellow Wikimedians.
Comments by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Report of the Committee on Medium Term Path on Financial Inclusion
Apart from item-specific suggestions, CIS would like to make one broad comment with regard to the suggestions dealing with linking of Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts. Aadhaar is increasingly being used by the government in various departments as a means to prevent fraud, however there is a serious dearth of evidence to suggest that Aadhaar linkage actually prevents leakages in government schemes. The same argument would be applicable when Aadhaar numbers are sought to be utilized to prevent leakages in the banking sector.
Community Digest—Estonians working on a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles
Community digest is a weekly publication on Wikimedia Blog. This week, I have authored a section on the Kannada Wikipedia's 13th anniversary that is being celebrated today. It includes a small section from a longer interview with Kannada Wikipedian Vasanth S.N. The two blogs on creating Odia-language character encoding converters I had written before in the Huffington Post and the DNA are also featured in the digest.
Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER
My submission titled "Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER" under the theme of "Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education" has been selected for the OER16 conference to be held in Edinburg, Scotland from 19 to 20 April 2016.
କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର ଯୁଗରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା
In 2013, the Centre for Internet and Society commissioned a project to create a typeface and input methods for for Ol chiki script that is used to write in the Santali language. Santali is one of the many victims that has large number of native language speakers but really low activism to preserve the language though it is not yet among the 196 endangered languages as identified by UNESCO.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଏକ ଅନୁଶୀଳନ
On the day of the International Mother Language Day, it is important to look outside and draw inspirations from several success stories of digital activism for languages. Hebrew, an ancient language that was almost dead for over 1500 years was revived from ashes like phoenix. Even after being honoured with the classical language status in the same category of Sanskrit and Tamil, Odia has not seen much progress in the digital sphere.
ମାତୃଭାଷା ଦିବସ: ଆଜିର ସମସ୍ୟା ଓ ଆହ୍ୱାନ
The article was published in the editorial section of Odia newspaper the Sambad on February 21, 2016. This piece explains about the challenges of expanding a knowledge base in Odia language and helping it grow beyond just the literature and to a language of knowledge.
Standard Essential Patents on Low-Cost Mobile Phones in India: A Case to Strengthen Competition Regulation?
The realization of the promise of the sub hundred dollar mobile device as a facilitator of access to knowledge is contingent inter alia on its availability in the market place. In turn, the market availability of the sub hundred dollar mobile device is influenced by the existence of an enabling environment for producers to produce, and consumers to consume. From a regulatory perspective, the enabling environment itself is a function of existing laws and policies, and the ‘developmental effects’ of certain laws and policies (Saraswati, 2012).
‘A Good Day for the Internet Everywhere': India Bans Differential Data Pricing
India distinguished itself as a global leader on network neutrality on February 8, when regulators officially banned “differential pricing”, a process through which telecommunications service providers could or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services offered based on content.
The new Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions are a big win for FOSS in India!
India is one of the few countries which permits patenting of software – a monopolization that has only benefited established corporations and largely throttled innovation in the software industry, worldwide. CIS has consistently advocated against patentablity of software and in a major victory last week, software patenting in India died a little more. This happened via the newly issued Guidelines for the Examination of Computer Related Inventions, which introduces a new test to restrict software patenting – in essence the same legal test that CIS had been proposing since 2010. This post highlights the new test and other noteworthy changes in the Guidelines.
Net Neutrality Advocates Rejoice As TRAI Bans Differential Pricing
India would not see any more Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they benefited from this Facebook project.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Bombay
This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in IIT Bombay.
Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part I)
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Delhi
This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in IIT Delhi.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Cochin University of Science and Technology
This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in Cochin University of Science and Technology.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from University of Madras
This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in University of Madras. The author has analysed all the data received under various heads such as income, grants from MHRD, planned and non planned expenditure, nature and frequency of programmes organised and the allocation of funds for the same. Throughout the course of observation and presentation of the analysed data, the author seeks to trace the presence of unjustified underutilisation of funds by the aforementioned university as provided by the MHRD during the period of 2001-2014.
World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had published a book in 2014 that examines free speech, expression and media development. The chapter contains a Foreword by Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO. Pranesh Prakash contributed to Independence: Introduction - Global Media Chapter. The book was edited by Courtney C. Radsch.
Free Speech and Public Order
In this post, Gautam Bhatia has explained the law on public order as a reasonable restriction to freedom of expression under Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India.
