All Blogs
The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination
This post by Divij Joshi is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Divij is a final year student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and is a keen observer and researcher on issues of law, policy and technology. In this essay, he traces the history of the Internet in India through the lens of judicial trends, and looks at how the judiciary has defined its own role in relation to the Internet.
International Open Data Charter: Comments by CIS
The second meeting of Stewards of the International Open Data Charter is in progress in Santiago, Chile, where the revisions made to the Charter based on the comments received during the public consultation period that ended on July 31, 2015, are being re-discussed and finalised by the Stewards. Here we are sharing the comments submitted by us on the first public draft of the Charter published during the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in May 2015. The comments include those submitted by Sumandro and Sharath Chandra Ram.
Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 v/s 2015 Bill
This entry analyses the Human DNA Profiling Bill introduced in 2012 with the provisions of the 2015 Bill
Pervasive Technologies: Working Document Series - Research Questions and a Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory
This document is divided into two parts - the first part lays out a series of research questions, potentially seeking to apply actor-network theory as a research methodology. The second part seeks to map literature around the Actor-Network Theory ("ANT") as a research methodology.
More On Those Dropped Calls
A basic problem is that the cost of spectrum and licences relative to earnings is too high, structurally.
Data Flow in the Unique Identification Scheme of India
This note analyses the data flow within the UID scheme and aims at highlighting vulnerabilities at each stage. The data flow within the UID Scheme can be best understood by first delineating the organizations involved in enrolling residents for Aadhaar. The UIDAI partners with various Registrars usually a department of the central or state Government, and some private sector agencies like LIC etc– through a Memorandum of Understanding for assisting with the enrollment process of the UID project.
CIS brings Nadustunna Charithra magazine under by CC BY SA licence
As a part of its content donation initiative, the Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) has brought all issues of Nadustunna Charithra magazine under Creative Common Licence.
Response by the Centre for Internet and Society to the Draft Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration
This proposal was made to the Global Multistakeholder Community on August 9, 2015. The proposal was drafted by Pranesh Prakash and Jyoti Panday. The research assistance was provided by Padmini Baruah, Vidushi Marda, and inputs from Sunil Abraham.
Supreme Court Order is a Good Start, but is Seeding Necessary?
This blog post seeks to unpack the ‘seeding’ process in the UIDAI scheme, understand the implications of the Supreme Court order on this process, and identify questions regarding the UID scheme that still need to be clarified by the court in the context of the seeding process.
Are we Throwing our Data Protection Regimes under the Bus?
In this blog post Rohan examines why the principle of consent is providing us increasingly less of an aegis in protecting our data.
Training in eSpeak Hindi
NVDA team conducted a workshop at Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind, Varanasi from August 26 to 28, 2015. Eighty five students and 13 teachers took part in the training programme.
Governing Speech on the Internet: From the Free Marketplace Policy to a Controlled 'Public Sphere'
This post by Smarika Kumar is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Smarika is a consultant with Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. She is interested in issues concerning law and technology. In this essay, Smarika explores how through the use of policy and regulation, the private marketplace of the internet is sought to be reined in and reconciled to the public sphere, which is mostly represented through legislations governing the internet.
"Sau Dhuni Teen" project: Wikipedia workshop in TISS, Mumbai
A two-day multilingual Wikipedia workshop was organised at the Women's Studies Department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai during the 22nd through the 24th August. This was one of the outreach events under the scope of the "Sau Dhuni Teen" project that aims at bringing digital content on 100 notable persons, 100 key books, and 100 key concepts relating to women's studies, gender studies, and more broadly, interdisciplinary social sciences, between January 2015 and March 2016.
CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submitted a clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill that was circulated by the Department of Biotechnology on June 9, 2015.
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report
CIS facilitated a workshop on open data policy and tools for government officials from Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and those from Bhutan and Maldives, in June 2015. The workshop was co-facilitated with Akvo, DataMeet, and Mapbox, and was supported by International Centre for Human Development of UNDP India. Here we share the workshop report and other related documents. The report is written by Sumandro, along with Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo.
The seedy underbelly of revenge porn
Intimate photos posted by angry exes are becoming part of an expanding online body of dirty work.
'We Need to Proactively Ensure that People Can't File Patents Representative of the Creativity of a FOSS Community'
Rohini Lakshané attended “Open Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Our Digital Culture” in Bangalore on August 13, 2015. Major takeaways from the event are documented in this post.
Wikipedia workshop in the theme of “Sau Dhuni Teen” in Pune University
A two-day Wikipedia workshop was organised in the Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University on the 20th August 2015. The workshop was focused on enriching Wikipedia with 100 articles related to notable Indian women under the scope of the “Sau Dhuni Teen” project.
Survey of Estimates of Economic Value of Open Government Data
This is a survey of estimates of economic value of open government data, and public sector information in general, across regions, countries, and sectors offered by several reports published during the last decade. The survey is undertaken by Ömer Faruk Sarı, a student of Business Administration at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, and research intern with CIS.
