Centre for Internet & Society

Private Sector and the cultivation of cyber norms in India

Posted by Arindrajit Basu at Aug 07, 2019 03:18 PM |

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become a regular facet of modern existence. The growth of cyberspace has challenged traditional notions of global order and uprooted the notion of governance itself. All over the world, the private sector has become a critical player, both in framing cyber regulations and in implementing them.

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Comments on the National Digital Health Blueprint

Posted by Samyukta Prabhu, Ambika Tandon, Torsha Sarkar and Aayush Rathi at Aug 07, 2019 01:24 PM |

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had released the National Digital Health Blueprint on 15 July 2019 for comments. The Centre for Internet & Society submitted its comments.

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Call for Contributions and Reflections: Your experiences in Decolonizing the Internet’s Languages!

Whose Knowledge?, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the Centre for Internet and Society are creating a State of the Internet’s Languages report, as baseline research with both numbers and stories, to demonstrate how far we are from making the internet multilingual. We also hope to offer some possibilities for doing more to create the multilingual internet we want. This research needs the experiences and expertise of people who think about these issues of language online from different perspectives. Read the Call here and share your submission by September 2, 2019.

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The Knowledge Base is Liberated

Posted by Subodh Kulkarni and Madhav Gadgil at Aug 05, 2019 11:04 PM |

The article published in Sunday supplement of Loksatta newspaper of Express group, written jointly by Madhav Gadgil & Subodh Kulkarni summarises - the status of searchable open knowledge available on web, eagerness of youth generation across the social strata to access knowledge on new gadgets and the approaches to build resources in Marathi on web harnessing potential of Wikimedia projects. It also elaborates major three breakthroughs – Free & open source software movement, Unicode revolution and development of collaborative knowledge building and sharing free platforms like Wikimedia projects easily accessible to people in their own languages.

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Event Report: Community Discussion on Open Standards

Posted by Karan Saini, Prem Sylvester and Anishka Vaishnav at Aug 01, 2019 06:15 PM |

This community discussion organised by HasGeek was held at the office of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India on June 20, 2019.

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Re-licensing Sessions with Authors and Organisations

Posted by Subodh Kulkarni at Jul 31, 2019 09:05 PM |

In collaboration with Marathi community, CIS-A2K is getting connected with various authors and organisations willing to re-license their content under CC-By-SA. A2K is facilitating the OTRS process Commons for re-licensing as well as digitisation of the content. The team of trained Wikimedians at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, District Pune has taken the responsibility of digitising the books and further uploads in Wikimedia projects.

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Fix Problems Before Complete Failure

Posted by Shyam Ponappa at Jul 31, 2019 02:43 AM |
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We need some real solutions on the ground. Examples - Jet Airways post mortem findings applied as the way forward for difficult NPAs; and a radical change of course a

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Why I’m not going to tell you about the dangers of apps like FaceApp

Posted by Nishant Shah at Jul 31, 2019 02:37 AM |
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Concerns about privacy, aimed solely at users, are better directed at owners of digital infrastructure.

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The worrying survival of moon landing conspiracy theorists

Posted by Nishant Shah at Jul 31, 2019 02:33 AM |
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The moon landing deniers were the original fake news propagandists. Only, they didn’t have the internet.

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In India, Privacy Policies of Fintech Companies Pay Lip Service to User Rights

Posted by Shweta Mohandas at Jul 31, 2019 02:21 AM |

A study of the privacy policies of 48 fintech companies that operate in India shows that none comply with even the basic requirements of the IT Rules, 2011.

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Wikimedia Workshop on Rivers under Project Jalbodh

Wikimedia Workshop on Rivers under Project Jalbodh

Posted by Subodh Kulkarni at Jul 30, 2019 09:00 PM |

The Indian National Trust for Art & Heritage Pune Chapter is working with various organisations to preserve the natural heritage places like rivers in Pune district of Maharashtra, India. After the presentation of 'Project Jalbodh' by CIS-A2K in River Dialogue organised by INTACH in April 2018, several organisations shown keen interest in collaboration.

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The Digital Identification Parade

Posted by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon at Jul 30, 2019 12:19 AM |

NCRB’s proposed Automated Facial Recognition System impinges on right to privacy, is likely to target certain groups.

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India is falling down the facial recognition rabbit hole

Posted by Prem Sylvester and Karan Saini at Jul 25, 2019 01:40 PM |

Its use as an effective law enforcement tool is overstated, while the underlying technology is deeply flawed.

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What is the problem with ‘Ethical AI’? An Indian Perspective

Posted by Arindrajit Basu and Pranav M.B. at Jul 21, 2019 02:57 PM |

On 22 May 2019, the OECD member countries adopted the OECD Council Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence. The Principles, meant to provide an “ethical framework” for governing Artificial Intelligence (AI), were the first set of guidelines signed by multiple governments, including non-OECD members: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, and Romania.

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Old Isn't Always Gold: FaceApp and Its Privacy Policies

Posted by Mira Swaminathan and Shweta Reddy at Jul 21, 2019 01:40 PM |

Leaving aside the Red Scare for a moment, FaceApp's own rebuttal of privacy worries are highly problematic in nature.

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Orientation programme, Wikipedia workshop & Action Plan meeting in PAH Solapur University

Posted by Subodh Kulkarni at Jul 19, 2019 09:00 PM |

CIS-A2K representatives visited PAH Solapur University, Solapur (PAHSUS) to finalise the action plan and MoU for the year 2019-20.

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Call for Essays — #List

The researchers@work programme at CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the ‘list’. We have selected 4 abstracts among those received before August 31, 2019, and are now accepting and evaluating further submissions on a rolling basis.

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You auto-complete me: romancing the bot

This is an excerpt from an essay by Maya Indira Ganesh, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and the Centre for Internet and Society, undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

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Comments on the Draft Copyright (Amendment) Rules, 2019 concerning Statutory Licensing

Posted by Anubha Sinha at Jul 11, 2019 06:55 AM |

The Centre for Internet & Society gave its comments on the proposed rules 29,30,31 of the Draft Copyright (Amendment) Rules, 2019. The comments were made in response to Notification G.S.R 393(E) published in the Gazette of India on May 30, 2019.

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DIDP #34 On granular detail on ICANN's budget for policy development process

Posted by Akriti Bopanna at Jul 06, 2019 01:23 AM |
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ICANN has Advisory Committees which help guide the policy recommendations that the ICANN community develops while its Supporting Organizations are charged with developing policy recommendations for a particular aspect of ICANN's operations. Supporting Organizations are composed of volunteers from the community. ICANN publishes a combined budget for all these bodies under the head of policy development and CIS inquired about the financial resources allocated to each of them specifically.

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