Digital Natives Blog
A Technological Solution to the Challenges of Online Defamation
When people are insulted or humiliated on the Internet and decide to take legal action, their cases often follow a similar trajectory.
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 July 1, 2013.
CIS Welcomes Standing Committee Report on IT Rules
The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes the report by the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation, in which it has lambasted the government and has recommended that the government amend the Rules it passed in April 2011 under section 79 of the Information Technology Act.
Don’t SLAPP free speech
IIPM is proving adept at the tactical use of lawsuits to stifle criticism, despite safeguards. THE DEPARTMENT of Telecommunications, on 14 February, issued orders to block certain web pages critical of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM).
Freedom of Expression Gagged
The use of law to bully people into silence, called ‘heckler’s veto’, is not unique to India, writes Chinmayi Arun in this op-ed published in Business Line on February 15, 2013.
Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition)
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its order dated February 14, 2013 has issued directions to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block seventy eight URLs. The block order has been issued as a result of a court order. Snehashish Ghosh does a preliminary analysis of the list of websites blocked as per the DoT order.
TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs
For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a toilet, and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.
Statement of Solidarity on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Internet Users in Bangladesh
This is a statement on the violent attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin by the participants to the Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression that took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on January 14–15, 2013.
Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech
Why is there a constant brouhaha in India about online censorship? What must be done to address this?
So Much to Lose
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have been a witness to the maelstrom of events that accompanied the death of the political leader Bal Thackeray.
Fixing India’s anarchic IT Act
Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online, among other things. A conviction for such an offence can attract a prison sentence of as many as three years.
Breaking Down Section 66A of the IT Act
Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which prescribes 'punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc.' is widely held by lawyers and legal academics to be unconstitutional. In this post Pranesh Prakash explores why that section is unconstitutional, how it came to be, the state of the law elsewhere, and how we can move forward.
Draft nonsense
Seriously flawed and dodgily drafted provisions in the IT Act provide the state a stick to beat its citizens with.
Arbitrary Arrests for Comment on Bal Thackeray's Death
Two girls have been arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested for making comments about the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's death. Pranesh Prakash explores the legal angles to the arrests.
The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water
The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.
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”).
India's Internet Jam
As authorities continue to clamp down on digital freedom, politicians and corporations are getting a taste for censorship too. Pranesh Prakash reports.
To regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question
Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.
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.
