All Blogs
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment
Anubha Sinha, attending the 33rd Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 14 November, 2016 to 19 November, 2016, made this statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 18 November, 2016.
Conference on the Digitalization of the Indian Legal System
On Legal Services Day, November 9, 2016, LegalDesk.com collaborated with iSPIRT to host a conference on the “Digitalization of the Indian Legal System”. The event invited prominent speakers to present their organizations’ work and to participate in a panel discussion followed by a Q&A period for the audience.
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations
Anubha Sinha, attending the 33rd Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 14 November, 2016 to 19 November, 2016, made this statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations on behalf of CIS on Day 3, 16 November, 2016.
Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions
We have a wonderful range of session proposals for the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) to take place in Bengaluru on March 03-05, 2017. From the 23 submitted session proposals, we will now select 10 to be part of the final Conference agenda. The selection will be done through votes casted by the teams that have proposed the sessions. This will take place in December 2016. Before that, we invite the session teams and other contributors to share their comments and suggestions on the submitted sessions. Please share your comments by December 14, either on session pages directly, or via email (sent to raw at cis-india dot org).
33rd SCCR: Opening Statement by India on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group
Dr. Sumit Seth(Economic Affairs) of the Permanent Mission of India in Geneva delivered the Opening Statement on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group at 33rd Session of the of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights on 14th November 2016.
Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report
The Centre for Internet and Society held a one-day workshop on “Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms and Human Rights” at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 1st of October, 2016. This report is a compilation of the the issues discussed, ideas exchanged and challenges recognized during the workshop. The objective of the workshop was to discuss aspects of big data technologies in terms of harms, opportunities and human rights. The discussion was designed around an extensive study of current and potential future uses of big data for governance in India, that CIS has undertaken over the last year with support from the MacArthur Foundation.
Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research
Evolving data science, technologies, techniques, and practices, including big data, are enabling shifts in how the public and private sectors carry out their functions and responsibilities, deliver services, and facilitate innovative production and service models to emerge. In this compilation we have put together a series of articles that we have developed as we explore the impacts – positive and negative – of big data. This is a growing body of research that we are exploring and is relevant to multiple areas of our work including privacy and surveillance. Feedback and comments on the compilation are welcome and appreciated.
ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently announced that it will now set up a pilot project in order to introduce an Open Data initiative for all data that it generates. We would like to extend our congratulations to ICANN on the development of this commendable new initiative, and would be honoured to support the creation of this living document to be prepared before ICANN 58.
How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency
The Centre for Internet and Society has worked extensively on ICANN’s transparency policies. We are perhaps the single largest users of the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy. Our goal in doing so is not to be a thorn in ICANN’s side, but to try and ensure that ICANN, the organisation, as well as the ICANN community have access to the data required to carry out the task of regulating the global domain name system.
Digital Native: Mind Your Language
The lack of localisation on the Internet is a symptom of a larger problem. It has been a festive season. Greetings are in the air. Well, realistically speaking, smoke-filled smog is in the air and greetings are all on social media. In a flood of messages — gifs, animated icons, poetic snippets, messages written in a script that looks vaguely Devanagari, and quotations that bestow glee and gladness upon all — that made their way into my social media feed, there was one that stood out.
Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction
This statement was issued by 8 India civil society organizations, supported by 2 key global networks, involved with internet governance issues, to the meeting of ICANN in Hyderabad, India from 3 to 9 November 2016. The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the 8 organizations that drafted this statement.
Where Are There So Few Books For The Print-Impaired?
India publishes approximately 90,000 books each year in 24 different languages. We have over 16,000 publishers, and are one of the top nations for English book publishing in the world. Clearly we are a nation which values and fosters a culture of reading and passing on knowledge in different domains ranging from literature, to yoga, language, education, science, fiction and many others.
Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far
As you know we are working closely with Christ university in Bengaluru for the Education Programs in Kannada Wikipedia and Kannada Wikisource, we worked on redesigning the programme for this academic year 2016-17 based on the lessons learned from the earlier intervention.
Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November
The second iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM), a month-long edit-a-thon to create and improve Asia-related articles on Wikipedia, is going to start on 1 November 2016. In this blog post we'll revisit the stats of the 2015 iteration of the event. We'll also talk to Addis Wang, an organizer of WAM, to know more about their progress and preparation.
Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published
We raise the financial and ethical issue of paying for getting papers published in professional journals. Indian researchers have published more than 37,000 papers in over 880 open access journals from 61 countries in the five years 2010-14 as seen from Science Citation Index Expanded. This accounts for about 14.4% of India’s overall publication output, considerably higher than the 11.6% from the world. Indian authors have used 488 OA journals levying article processing charge (APC), ranging from INR 500 to US$5,000, in the five years to publish about 15,400 papers.
Adopting ORCID as a Unique Identifier will Benefit all Involved in Scholarly Communication
ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a nonprofit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Together with other persistent identifiers for scholarly works such as digital object identifiers (DOIs) and identifiers for organizations, ORCID makes research more discoverable.
Open source in everyday life: How we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru
The free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts just celebrated the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 all across the world. This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in the Indian city of Bengaluru. The group consisted of open source contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map, and users of FOSS solutions.
How Open Access Content helps Fuel Growth in Indian-language Wikipedias
Mobile Internet connectivity is growing rapidly in rural India, and because most Internet users are more comfortable in their native languages, websites producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this growth. In a country like India in which only a handful of journals are available in Indian languages, open access to research and educational resources is hugely important for populating content for the various Indian language Wikipedias.
How Long Have Banks Known About The Debit Card Fraud?
The recent security breach in an Indian payment switch provider, confirmed earlier this week by the National Payments Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), has forced domestic banks into damage control mode over the past few days.
