Digital Natives Blog
Social media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore
I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.
What lurks beneath the Network
There is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown Anna Hazare spectacles), there is this increasing belief in the innate possibilities of social media as providing ways by which the world as we know it shall change for the better. Young people are getting on to the streets and demanding their rights to the future.
Censoring the Internet: A brief manual
Blocking websites on the Internet should be proportionate to harm they intend. However, the government of India's approach is against the principles of natural justice.
Analysing Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism & Rioting Edition)
Pranesh Prakash does preliminary analysis on a leaked list of the websites blocked from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government.
The Perils of 'Hactivism'
Civil disobedience includes accepting the penalty for breaking the law. Untraceable hackers are far removed from this ethic.
Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful Hackers
If there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated government machinery has been trying to control and contain the burgeoning online spaces, only to be put in their place by the new-age tech-ninjas that have risen as the new heroes in our digital times.
Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012.
Chilling Effects and Frozen Words
What if the real danger is not that we lose our freedom of speech and expression but our sense of humour as a nation? Lawrence Liang's op-ed was published in the Hindu on April 30, 2012.
Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet
The Centre for Internet & Society in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a Fellow and researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.
India's Broken Internet Laws Need a Shot of Multi-stakeholderism
Cyber-laws in India are severely flawed, with neither lawyers nor technologists being able to understand them, and the Cyber-Law Group in DEIT being incapable of framing fair, just, and informed laws and policies. Pranesh Prakash suggests they learn from the DEIT's Internet Governance Division, and Brazil, and adopt multi-stakeholderism as a core principle of Internet policy-making.
Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet 2011
Intermediaries are widely recognised as essential cogs in the wheel of exercising the right to freedom of expression on the Internet. Most major jurisdictions around the world have introduced legislations for limiting intermediary liability in order to ensure that this wheel does not stop spinning. With the 2008 amendment of the Information Technology Act 2000, India joined the bandwagon and established a ‘notice and takedown’ regime for limiting intermediary liability.
Statutory Motion Against Intermediary Guidelines Rules
Rajya Sabha MP, Shri P. Rajeev has moved a motion that the much-criticised Intermediary Guidelines Rules be annulled.
World Narrow Web
Censorship and how govt reacts to it may push us to country-specific networks, writes Pranesh Prakash in an article published in the Indian Express on 4 February 2012.
Sense and Censorship
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, at the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, appear to enforce property rights, but are, in fact, trade bills. This article by Sunil Abraham was published in the Indian Express on 20 January 2012.
How India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books (And How We Can Change That)
Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, Pranesh Prakash chooses to take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed.
Invisible Censorship: How the Government Censors Without Being Seen
The Indian government wants to censor the Internet without being seen to be censoring the Internet. This article by Pranesh Prakash shows how the government has been able to achieve this through the Information Technology Act and the Intermediary Guidelines Rules it passed in April 2011. It now wants methods of censorship that leave even fewer traces, which is why Mr. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology talks of Internet 'self-regulation', and has brought about an amendment of the Copyright Act that requires instant removal of content.
Press Coverage of Online Censorship Row
We are maintaining a rolling blog with press references to the row created by the proposal by the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology to pre-screen user-generated Internet content.
Online Pre-Censorship is Harmful and Impractical
The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal wants Internet intermediaries to pre-censor content uploaded by their users. Pranesh Prakash takes issue with this and explains why this is a problem, even if the government's heart is in the right place. Further, he points out that now is the time to take action on the draconian IT Rules which are before the Parliament.
Comment by CIS at ACE on Presentation on French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting
The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement is being held in Geneva on November 30 and December 1, 2011. Pranesh Prakash responded to a presentation by Prof. Pierre Sirinelli of the École de droit de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 on 'The French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting of December 16, 2009' with this comment.
Analysis of DIT's Response to Second RTI on Website Blocking
In this blog post, Pranesh Prakash briefly analyses the DIT's response to an RTI request on website blocking alongside the most recent edition of Google's Transparency Report, and what it tells us about the online censorship regime in India.
