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୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବହାର
This article was published in online Odia magazine "The Amalekha". It covers a brief history of the book digitization initiates in Odia language, problems with access available content in ISCII standard, scope of Unicode content and Open Access, Odia Wikipedia's further use for public and contribution.
Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and National Security
The second half of last year has been quite momentous for Internet governance thanks to Edward Snowden. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became aware that they were targets of US surveillance for economic not security reasons. They protested loudly.
Between the Local and the Global: Notes Towards Thinking the Nature of Internet Policy
This post by Nishant Shah is part of a series related to the 2014 Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy: The Third Man Theme Revisited: Foreign Policies of the Internet in a Time Of Surveillance and Disclosure, which takes place in Vienna, Austria from March 30 – April 1, 2014.
Marco Civil da Internet: Brazil’s ‘Internet Constitution’
On March 25, 2014, Brazil's lower house of parliament passed bill no. 2126/2011, popularly known as Marco Civil da Internet. The Marco Civil is a charter of Internet user-rights and service provider responsibilities, committed to freedom of speech and expression, privacy, and accessibility and openness of the Internet. In this post, the author looks at the pros and cons of the bill.
Leaked Privacy Bill: 2014 vs. 2011
The Centre for Internet and Society has recently received a leaked version of the draft Privacy Bill 2014 that the Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India has drafted.
Cultural Interests vs. Modernization: Robert Shapiro on IPR & Innovation in India
Last Friday March 28, 2014, prominent economist and chairman of Sonecon, llc, Dr. Robert Shapiro, lead a discussion on the roles of IPR and FDI in innovation. Within his research findings, Shapiro argues for India to adopt a stricter IP regime in order to attract higher rates of FDI in pharmaceuticals and other industries, and in turn, to spur a more successful economy.
The Digital Humanities Discourse: The Knowledge Question on the Wikipedia
The emergence of alternative modes and spaces of knowledge production has been a core concern of the Digital Humanities, particularly with respect to the collaborative or public archive. Wikipedia, as a collaborative knowledge repository indicates a shift in the ways of imagining knowledge as dynamic and ever-changing, thus bringing to the fore questions of authorship and authenticity, which are also questions for the Digital Humanities. In this guest blog post, Sohnee Harshey presents a reflection on her research study on the gender-gap on Wikipedia, and the politics of collaborative knowledge production.
India Access To Knowledge/Draft Work plan July 2014 - June 2015
One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in South-Asia and in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008 when Jimmy Wales visited Bangalore. From September 2012 it has been actively involved in growing the movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Based on the 18-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed its Work Plan for July 2014 to June 2015.
WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 3 of 3)
From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th session. This blog post (Part 3 of 3) summarizes Day 4 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.
Intermediary Liability Resources
We bring you a list of intermediary resources as part of research on internet governance. This blog post will be updated on an ongoing basis.
11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource
This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.
A Queer Digital Humanities Experience
Questions of identity and citizenship have been an important aspect of understanding the digital realm, and what it means to be ‘human’ in this space. While one may still mull over the separation of the real and the virtual, the digital as a condition of existence has engendered new notions of the public sphere, and sought to redefine the methods of traditional humanistic enquiry. In this guest post, Ditilekha Sharma shares some reflections on her research on the queer community and the politics of identity on the Internet, within the perspective of the Digital Humanities.
The Age of Shame
The ability to capture private images is breeding a dangerous form of digital shaming. Within the online space, where wonderments often run rife, and conspiracy theories travel at the speed of light, there are many dark recesses where netizens half-jokingly, self-referentially, in a spirit of part-truth, part-exaggeration, often wonder on what the real reason is for the internet to exist.
Fishing is the New Black: Contemporary Art Imitates the Digital
Marshall Mcluhan once said, “Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” Philosophers, on the other hand, think about things in retrospect and hence, as much as Derrida’s writings about the collapse of the semiotic structures of capture and meaning say about the Digital age, Mark Rothko’s art, a generation ahead of Derrida in depicting this collapse, can say about the future that it saw in visceral and energetic forms. To understand Rothko’s paintings we must sit through a short history of the different epochs of Being and their epistemological shifts before we get to the Digital Age about which Rothko had violent and destructive premonitions.
Structure, Sign and Play in the Digital
I have come to realize, in my research, that I have been looking for and staring at the various entry points of the Digital Humanities by looking at the primordial lighting arrangements and formative forces that are in play in it. So far, there have been some clear emergent patterns like the fact that the Digital Humanities is the story of the University itself and a condition of the socio-political and economic forces shaping our education system.
Digitize any Book in the Public Domain
The article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.
CIS Statement at ICANN 49's Public Forum
This was a statement made by Pranesh Prakash at the ICANN 49 meeting (on March 27, 2014), arguing that ICANN's bias towards the North America and Western Europe result in a lack of legitimacy, and hoping that the IANA transition process provides an opportunity to address this.
Enabling Elections
For making the 2014 General Elections in India participatory and accessible for voters with disabilities the Centre for Law and Policy Research and the Centre for Internet and Society have come up with a report. The report addresses the barriers that people with disabilities face during elections and recommends solutions for the same.
Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India
Given the impending elections in India across April and May 2014, a test was conducted to determine the accessibility of websites of the Election Commission of India, the Parliament and some key political parties in India. This report summarises the results of the test.
Digital Gender: Theory, Methodology and Practice
Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist at a workshop jointly organized by HUMlab and UCGS (Umeå Centre for Gender Studies) at Umeå University from March 12 to 14, 2014. He blogged about the conference.