Centre for Internet & Society

WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground

Posted by Rahul Cherian at Sep 28, 2012 04:41 AM |

After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year. However, due to pressure from the European Union and the United States, and their insistence on several untenable provisions, there is a real risk that the TVI could become unworkable on the ground.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 2 Live Blog: Radhika Gajjala Lectures on e-Philanthropy

Posted by Jadine Lannon at Sep 28, 2012 04:35 AM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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Breaking News on Electronic Accessibility

Posted by Rahul Cherian at Sep 28, 2012 03:57 AM |
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The Parliamentary Standing Committee constituted to study the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill has in its report explicitly recognized the concept of electronic accessibility and reasonable accommodation. This is the first time in the country that these two concepts have been reflected at the level of a Parliamentary Standing Committee in relation to a non-disability specific law.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 2 Live Blog: On Technology and Affective Indian Feminism(s)

Posted by Alok Vaid-Menon at Sep 27, 2012 12:40 PM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop aims to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 2 Live Blog: Deepak Menon on Water in India

Posted by Jadine Lannon at Sep 27, 2012 12:30 PM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop aims to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh

Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh

Posted by Subhashish Panigrahi at Sep 27, 2012 10:10 AM |

A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian.

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The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop

Posted by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi at Sep 27, 2012 09:55 AM |

For those who might not be aware, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the first Indic Wikipedias where community started editing way back in 2002. However, after the initial few edits all activities got stopped and it was inactive over the last decade. Recently we conducted a few workshops that led to the revival of Punjabi Wikipedia. This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 1 Live Blog: Globalising Lady GaGa

Posted by Alok Vaid-Menon at Sep 27, 2012 02:50 AM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop aims to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha

Posted by Jadine Lannon at Sep 26, 2012 04:25 PM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop aims to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 1 Live Blog: Introduction

Posted by Jadine Lannon at Sep 26, 2012 03:55 PM |

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop hopes to generate dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become the visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

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The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water

Posted by Sunil Abraham at Sep 26, 2012 11:55 AM |

The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.

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Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report

Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report

Posted by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal at Sep 26, 2012 08:16 AM |
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The Centre for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the publication of a report on the accessibility of government websites in India. The report is published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal are the authors.

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An Introduction to the Issues in Internet Governance

Posted by Smarika Kumar at Sep 26, 2012 05:45 AM |
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That the internet cannot be governed was a central conviction of the early architects of the internet. In many ways it proved true when a majority of nation-States were kept off interference with the functioning of the internet. However with growing popularity of the internet, countries of the world are increasingly vying for control over it. This has become especially significant with the involvement of developing nations into the power struggle.

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Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report: January – June 2012

Posted by Shiju Alex at Sep 25, 2012 09:45 AM |

The following is a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. The author provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.

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Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University

Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University

Posted by Shiju Alex at Sep 25, 2012 07:35 AM |
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Tumkur University, Karnataka hosted a Kannada Wiki Workshop on September 15, 2012. This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur.

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Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II

Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”).

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Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace — CIS’s Upcoming A2K Research Initiative

Posted by Jadine Lannon at Sep 25, 2012 06:45 AM |

Pervasive technologies have flooded the Indian market and are changing the ways in which the average Indian accesses knowledge but very little is understood about these technologies, particularly when it comes to their legality. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) plans to begin a research project that aims to understand how pervasive technologies interact with Intellectual Property laws and what can be done to protect these technologies from being labelled “illegal” and eradicated from the Asian market.

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One. Zero.

One. Zero.

Posted by Nishant Shah at Sep 17, 2012 06:35 AM |

The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak. So sophisticated is this network of digital infrastructure that we forget how our languages of connection are constantly being transcribed in binary code, allowing for the information to be transmitted across the web.

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Changing Our Game

Posted by Shyam Ponappa at Sep 06, 2012 11:14 AM |
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Adopting 'co-ordination models' like the Stag Hunt could reduce contention and improve outcomes.

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SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech

SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech

Posted by Chinmayi Arun at Sep 02, 2012 09:02 AM |
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If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.

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