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Right to Read Campaign, Chennai
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign-chennai
<b>A report on the first road show of the nationwide Right to Read Campaign which was launched at Loyola college, Chennai, on 26th September, 2009. </b>
<h2>Right to Read Campaign - An Overview</h2>
<h3>Fast Facts</h3>
<ul>
<li>At least three hundred million people around the world with sight problems and dyslexia cannot read standard print. India may be home to at least 70 million of these persons.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Globally, a massive 96 percent of books are never made available in formats that persons with print disability can enjoy and in India almost 99% books are unavailable in accessible formats.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Every day millions of adults and children are denied vital information for education, work, daily life as well as being denied the joy of reading a world of books. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The Indian Copyright Act 1957 does not permit conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats to persons with print disabilities.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Problem at hand</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. There are technologies available which can help them read print if the material is converted into an alternate format such as large print, audio, Braille or any electronic format. While the Indian constitution guarantees the “right to read” as a fundamental right, the <i>Copyright Act of 1957</i> does not permit the conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions that India is a party to specifically require it to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and to make available information and material to them on an equal basis as others. Publishers also do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5% of them are available. As a result, persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and it impacts their career choices. In addition to this, there are no national policies or action plan to ensure that publications in accessible formats in all Indian languages are available to persons with print disabilities all over the country.</p>
<h3>Current situation in India</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian Copyright Act, 1957 does not make any provision for the conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats for print impaired persons. Hence organizations serving them have to get permission from copyright holders for conversion. Because of this, other countries do not lend books in accessible formats to print impaired persons in our country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the case of books published in India, there are no accessible copies readily available in the market and while many publishers in principle are not averse to giving permission, the unwanted fear of piracy and lack of awareness prevents them from allowing organizations to undertake conversions. Consequently print impaired persons are denied the freedom to choose and read any book which is freely available to the public.</p>
<h3>Solution</h3>
<ul>
<li>The Government of India must immediately modify the Indian Copyright Act 1957 to permit conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats to persons with print disabilities.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>India should support the Treaty on Copyright and the Reading Disabled being tabled at WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights by the Governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay based on a text originally drafted by a global expert committee under the auspices of the World Blind Union, which is aimed at harmonization of copyright laws at an international level.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign</h3>
<ul>
<li>To accelerate change in copyright law</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>To raise public awareness on the issue</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>To gather Indian support for the Treaty on Copyright and the Reading Disabled being tabled at WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights by the Governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay based on a text originally drafted by a global expert committee under the auspices of the World Blind Union.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b><span>Campaign Managers</span></b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org): </b>The Centre for Internet and Society critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange. In association with the Daisy Forum of India and Bookbole, the CIS is engaged in conducting the Right to Read Campaign supporting the acceleration of amendments in Copyright Law, creating public awareness and by gathering Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="Heading1Char"><b>DAISY Forum of India (www.daisyindia.org)</b></span>: DFI is a forum of 75 Not for Profit organizations from India who are involved in production of books and reading materials in accessible formats for persons who cannot read normal print. The DAISY Consortium envisions a world where people with print disabilities have equal access to information and knowledge without delay or additional expense. The DAISY Forum of India endorses this vision and is working towards its realization in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Bookbole (<a href="http://www.bookbole.com/"><span>www.bookbole.com</span></a>):</b> Bookbole is a library of books in multiple formats which can be accessed by persons using screen readers. Bookbole allows users to find, share, and manage personal libraries in a very easy fashion. This website has been developed by Inclusive Planet, a social venture involved in creating web based products and services for the differently-abled.</p>
<p><b>Loyola College (Chennai)</b> <b><span>(</span><a href="http://www.loyolacollege.edu/index.html"><span>www.loyolacollege.edu/index.html</span></a><span>)</span>: </b><span class="innertext1">Loyola College has played an important role in the history of education in India. Founded in 1925 by </span><b>Rev. Fr. Bertram, S.J.,</b><span class="innertext1"> who himself was twice the acting Vice- Chancellor of the Madras University, Loyola College has emerged in the last seventy-five years as a premier educational Institution in the country and it is striving to break new paths in education. One of the major breakthroughs in its history is the autonomous status it received in the year 1978.</span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span><span> </span></span></span><span class="innertext1">Situated in the heart of Chennai, and having a large campus of about 98 acres, this institution provides an ideal environment for both teachers and students to enrich themselves intellectually, emotionally and physically by actively participating in the academic and co-curricular activities. Loyola has started several Centres of Excellence such as LIFE, (Loyola Institute of Frontier Energy) Entomology Research Institute, ACE, (Academy for Cumulative Excellence) Culture and Communication, LIVE (Loyola Institute of Vocational Education) and LISOR (Loyola Institute of Industrial and Social Science Research).</span></p>
<p><b><span><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/Loyola%20College%20-%20Right%20to%20Read%20Campaign%20-Chennai.jpg/image_preview" title="Loyola College - Chennai" height="124" width="320" alt="Loyola College - Chennai" class="image-inline" /></span></b></p>
<h3>Campaign activities</h3>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">The nationwide Right to Read Campaign seeks to achieve the objective through a series of events like,</p>
<ul>
<li> Nationwide road-shows</li>
<li>Public rallies</li>
<li>Televised debates</li>
<li>Online petitions</li>
<li>Signature campaigns</li>
<li>Audio-video clips</li>
<li>Stalls where accessibility tools are demonstrated</li>
<li>Submission of a legal paper to the government on international scenario and constitutional compulsions for the amendment of the copyright law.</li>
</ul>
<p><b><span>Social Networks</span></b></p>
<p>The Right to read campaign has been active on various social networks like blogs, Twitter and Facebook. The campaign has been well received by the users and is succeeding in raising awareness on the issue.</p>
<p><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even before its first event, the R2R campaign attracted significant press coverage in both Bangalore and Chennai. For details of the articles on the campaign in various newspapers both before and after the campaign please refer to Annexure A.</p>
<p><span class="Heading1Char"><b>Website</b></span>: <a href="http://www.righttoread.in/"><span><span>www.righttoread.in</span></span></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This website, dedicated for the Right to Read campaign has details about the issue faced with regard to the copyright law and the objective of the campaign. It has a provision for signing the online petition and declaration forms. It has regular updates on the events being conducted and provides an opportunity to exploit ones creativity by blogging, shooting videos, clicking photos and writing slogans about the campaign. Its major objective is to spread awareness about the campaign.</p>
<h2><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0001.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-8" class="image-inline" title="R2R-8" /></h2>
<h2>Launch of Right to Read Campaign</h2>
<p>The first roadshow of the R2R campaign was launched at Chennai.</p>
<p><b>Venue: </b>Loyola College</p>
<p><b>Date: </b>26<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</p>
<p><b>Time: </b>9:30 AM</p>
<p><b>Topic:</b> Amend copyright law to grant access to reading materials for the print impaired</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/uploads/RTR%20Campaign%20-%20Agenda.pdf/at_download/file" class="internal-link" title="R2R - Agenda"><b>Agenda</b></a></p>
<p><b>Launch of the campaign</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was the first major event with respect to the Right to Read campaign. A wide range of dignitaries were invited for the launch. The audience included students, social activists and visually challenged people. About 4oo students from 100 colleges around Chennai and 150 NSS volunteers attended from outside and an almost equal number of students participated from within Loyola College to make this a very large gathering of almost 800-1000 persons. The event was organized by the students of Department of Sociology at Loyola College, Chennai in collaboration with the campaign managers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Chief Guest of the event was Mr. Shri Kumar Verma, a well known writer, social activist and a professor of creative English and English literature. He spoke about the issue faced by print impaired persons and how apprehensive people are about sharing books in accessible formats as it is a legal infringement. He appreciated the fact that people have recognized the need for attention to this issue. He observed that Loyola College was the most appropriate venue for this event since students are proactively engaged with social issues. He promised to take initiatives and spread awareness about the campaign and expected the same from others.</p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2R%20-3.jpg/image_preview" title="R2R - 3" height="265" width="400" alt="R2R - 3" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Other dignitaries who honored the event were Dr. N. Raja Hussain, Program coordinator, NSS, University of Madras; Mr. Dipendra Manocha, Member, Executive Council, World Blind Union and President, Daisy Forum of India; Mr. Chandrasekar, Treasurer, National Association for the Blind; Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS and Mr. Rahul Cherian, Policy Head, Inclusive Planet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0056.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-14" class="image-inline" title="R2R-14" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">They spoke about the need for the amendment and importance of spreading awareness about this burning issue. In her introduction to the campaign, Nirmita explained that it was not a question of just making the books available in particular formats. If people can read books, it will help literacy, education, employment and promote independent living. A majority of the visually impaired population don't pursue courses because they don't have study materials in accessible formats. This is substantiated by looking at the statistics of Delhi University - they have about 1,500 seats reserved for the handicapped. Despite that, in 2008, only 270 students applied and in 2009, only 350 applied. This just goes to show that in addition to making reservations, it is also necessary to provide an enabling reading framework to persons with disabilities by providing materials in accessible formats and a good support system. This statistics served as an eye opener to the audience.</p>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0010.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-10" class="image-inline" title="R2R-10" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0009.jpg/image_preview" title="R2R-9" height="246" width="384" alt="R2R-9" class="image-inline" /></h3>
<h3></h3>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0037.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-11" class="image-inline" title="R2R-11" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0042.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-13" class="image-inline" title="R2R-13" /></h3>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0012.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-12" class="image-inline" title="R2R-12" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0083.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-15" class="image-inline" title="R2R-15" /></p>
<p> </p>
<h3></h3>
<h3><span><b>Signature Campaign</b></span></h3>
<p>The launch was followed by a signature campaign where a huge banner supporting the campaign was signed by the dignitaries and other participants of the event. In addition to this, volunteers were committed to the task of carrying out a signature campaign on paper. Supporters of the campaign were invited to sign on the declaration and to put down their names to volunteer for the campaign or to help out the print impaired in a sustained fashion by specifying the manner in which they would like to contribute.</p>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2R%20-5.jpg/image_preview" title="R2R - 5" height="265" width="400" alt="R2R - 5" class="image-inline" /></h3>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0091.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-16" class="image-inline" title="R2R-16" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0100.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-17" class="image-inline" title="R2R-17" /></h3>
<h3></h3>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0101.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-18" class="image-inline" title="R2R-18" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0122.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-20" class="image-inline" title="R2R-20" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Rally</h3>
<p>The students had organized a rally supporting the need for amendment of the copyright law and to spread awareness about the campaign. 200 students walked around the 97 acre campus with 100 banners carrying slogans like- “Support the Right to Read”, “Change Copyright Law,- free a world of knowledge”, “One Alphabet- several words; one book- several formats “, “Different states, different languages, different cultures- why not different formats? And so on.</p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0107.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-19" class="image-inline" title="R2R-19" /></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2R%20-6.jpg/image_preview" title="R2R - 6" height="265" width="400" alt="R2R - 6" class="image-inline" /></p>
<h3><b><span>Declaration forms</span></b></h3>
<p>Interested people signed the declaration forms to endorse the campaign by voluntarily engaging themselves in any of the activities like creating awareness among public, gathering public support for The Treaty for the Blind at WIPO, online petitions and promoting the campaign online. <br /><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Declaration%20-%20Right%20to%20Read.doc/at_download/file" class="internal-link" title="Declaration - Right to Read Campaign">Declaration</a></p>
<h3><b><span>Panel Discussion - ‘We the people’</span></b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The panel discussion kicked off at 1130 hrs with the Master of the Ceremony introducing the panelists; Mr. Dipendra Manocha, President, The Daisy Forum of India (DFI); Prof. Sivaraman, Professor of English, Presidency College, Chennai and Mr. Vijaykumar, Advocate. Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Mr. Rahul Cherian, Co-founder and Policy Head, Inclusive Planet, were the moderators of the discussion. A salient point to be noted here was that all the panelists present were totally/partially visually challenged.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The discussion started off with Prof. Sivaraman citing his experiences with access to literature other than printed format since 2004. He shared information on the technology that he had been using to ‘read’ books that were prescribed for the students. These were text books or reference material that had been used over a period of time. However, he also threw light on the shortcomings – that newly published text books or literature were not readily available in accessible formats. It usually takes him a considerable amount of time and effort to get materials in Braille or audio formats and hence it is impossible for him to keep abreast of contemporary literature.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An equally important concern that was raised was that only new books with clear print and paper could be accurately scanned electronically owing to quality of the printed characters as well as deterioration of paper quality over time. Any pictorial representation including figures, charts or graphs and even italicized words present problems during scanning. Thus,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What is most urgently required to solve this problem is a digital library as in the case of USA, where the publishers deposit the electronic files of the books. These can be picked up and converted into any accessible format required for a print impaired person without wasting much time, effort and resources. Taking it a step further, he also put forth his views on the unauthorized access and ill-use that electronic books or e-books are put to. Persons who are not visually challenged can also access such books that are present online without any restrictions. Websites that are designed to be used by the visually challenged specifically state in their <i>Terms of Use</i> that accessing/reading of downloading of e-books are strictly meant for persons with partial/total sight impairment, persons with other forms of disabilities that would prevent them from reading printed material or for persons/aides assisting the above mentioned and that any download made by people other than those mentioned would be treated as infringement of the law. But not many people take these terms seriously and still would download such books that are meant for the visually challenged. Right now, there are no technological/legal measures in place to check this infringement owing to the inability to track the perpetrators identity/location. Since it is almost impossible to restrict the access to e-books to only the visually impaired, this acts as a serious set-back in persuading the government to amend the Copyright Act.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Vijaykumar continued the discussion, citing <i>Article 14</i> of the Constitution of India which mandates E<i>quality before law</i> and equal protection for everybody, saying that the fundamental right of Indian citizens – the right to read for everybody has not been upheld in India owing to the restrictions imposed by the <i>Copyright Act of 1957</i> and that the Copyright Act, by not including any exceptions or provisions, has failed to protect the interests of persons with visual impairment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Dipendra Manocha, President, Daisy Forum of India, gave the international and technological perspective to the panel discussion. He explained about the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System format) format which acts as a standard format to make 1 source document. This can then be used to convert into other accessible formats. He enlightened the crowd about the three factors that would help in solving the problems currently faced by persons with print impairment in India: First, technology such as Laptops or DAISY players and other handheld devices/readers that would assist in translating/reading out aloud e-books. Secondly, creation of e-books in accessible formats, the current high cost-of-conversion of which can be brought down by volunteering and thirdly by bringing in a change in the government policy on Copyright law. Mr. Manocha also informed the audience of how the US Government had amended their copyright law to include provisions for the visually challenged. This has brought down the cost of conversion of printed material into accessible formats to Rs. 2,000 from a whooping Rs. 20,000. He also highlighted the fact that in a developing country like India, it is not feasible to spend Rs. 20,000 for conversion of just one copy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Answering the question as to what steps the Daisy Forum of India is taking with respect to making accessible formats available to the print-impaired, Mr. Manocha responded by saying that the DFI has been negotiating a deal with Adobe Systems Inc. USA, provider of the .<i>pdf </i>format of e-books, to include an option to <i>Save As Daisy format. </i>Also, providing books in accessible formats at the same cost as that of its printed counterpart was one of the visions of DFI.<br />When asked by a member of audience if we can take the law in our hands and start uploading/using e-books from the internet, Mr. Manocha again pointed out that it is the duty and responsibility of the Indian govt. to provide equal opportunities to everybody. In case the government fails to do that, citizens can take measures that would help alleviate the pains caused. But such measures should be taken keeping in mind all the stakeholders involved. Large-scale usage of electronic forms of literature would affect the business of authors/publishers. Hurting publishers is never the intention of this campaign. Mr. Manocha, Mr. Vijaykumar and Prof. Sivaraman made it clear that a coordinated effort was required on the part of all the stake-holders viz. the government, the copyright owners (authors, publishers etc.), the persons with print impairment and the organizations representing them, as well as the general public. The amendments to the Copyright Act should take into consideration the interests of all stake holders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When the floor was opened to questions, the participation from audience was overwhelming. Many of the questions were from print impaired persons in the audience who were students in colleges or represented a disability organization like the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and so on. Due to paucity of time, the interactive question and answer session was restricted to half an hour post the panel discussion but the audience were invited to discuss further questions with the panelists after the session.</p>
<h1 align="center" style="text-align: center; "></h1>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2R%20-7.jpg/image_preview" title="R2R - 7" height="265" width="400" alt="R2R - 7" class="image-inline" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0166.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-24" class="image-inline" title="R2R-24" /></p>
<h3><span><b>Musical Extravaganza</b></span></h3>
<p><span>After some serious food-for-thought, the silence of the convention hall was broken by a musical performance rendered by a Music Band from NFB Chennai. The performance began by two singers rendering a song in praise of the Gods and then went on to lighter numbers like <i>Jai Ho</i>, from the movie <i>Slumdog Millionaire and songs from some Tamil movies, which left the audience speechless</i>. <br /></span></p>
<p><span><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0130.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-21" class="image-inline" title="R2R-21" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0132.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-22" class="image-inline" title="R2R-22" /></span></p>
<p><span><br /></span></p>
<p><span><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/DSC_0133.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R-23" class="image-inline" title="R2R-23" /><br /></span></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; "><b><span>Vote of Thanks</span></b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The volunteers from Loyola College presented the Vote of thanks to all the dignitaries and panelists on stage and also to the audience present in the function after which the National Anthem was played. Later, the guests and the audience proceeded for lunch.</p>
<h3><b>Acknowledgements</b></h3>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">We would to like to take this opportunity to specially thank <br />Rev. Fr. K. Amal SJ (Rector, Loyola College); <br />Rev. Fr. Albert Muthumalai SJ (Principal, Loyola College); <br />Dr. S. Alphonse Raj (<i>Vice- Principal & Faculty of Sociology Department</i>, Loyola College);</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Prof S. Iyyappan (<i>Co-coordinator, Extension service Department (NSS)</i>, Loyola College)<br />Prof J. Jerald Inico, Faculty Incharge, Resource Center for Differently abled (RCDA);<i> </i></p>
<p>Prof. Robert Bellarmine (Head, Department of Sociology); <br />Department of Sociology; students from RCDA; NSS; Students Union; <br />the teaching and non-teaching staff of Loyola College, who helped in organizing the campaign and without whom the first road show of the nationwide campaign would not have been a grand success that it has been.<br />We look forward to their continued support in the campaign.</p>
<p>We would also like to thank all the students and guests who came from different parts of the city and participated in the campaign.</p>
<h3>Videos</h3>
<p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Annexure A</b></p>
<p><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Details of the articles on the campaign in various newspapers both before and after the campaign are given below:</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>DNA – Bangalore, 24<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</b></li>
</ul>
<p>CIS campaign to alter copyright law to favour visually impaired - An article by N T Balanarayan, DNA Bangalore - 24th September, 2009 <br /><a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_cis-campaign-to-alter-copyright-law-to-favour-visually-imapired_1292662"><span><span>http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_cis-campaign-to-alter-copyright-law-to-favour-visually-imapired_1292662</span></span></a><b><span> </span></b></p>
<p>As Indians we enjoy our right to education and to read, but should learning be restricted to books provided in school? What if, some wish to broaden their horizon and learn more, only to realize there are no books available? <br />That's the situation the visually impaired in India face now. But Bangalore-based Centre for Information and Society (CIS) is out to change it. They're starting a new campaign-- Right to Read--demanding changes in the copyright law so that books can be converted into a medium with which the visually impaired will feel more comfortable.<br />According to the group, only 0.5% of the books available in India can be accessed in Braille or audio format. Further, the World Blind Union estimates that only five per cent of the total books that get published in developed countries are converted into accessible formats.<br />According to Nirmita Narasimhan who works with CIS, it's not a question of just making the books available in particular formats. "If people can read books, it will help literacy, education, employment and promote independent living. A majority of the visually impaired population don't pursue courses because they don't have study materials in accessible formats. This is substantiated by looking at the statistics of Delhi University -- they have about 1,500 seats reserved for the handicapped. Despite that, in 2008, only 270 students applied and in 2009, only 350 came forward. This just goes to show that in addition to making reservations, it is also necessary to provide an enabling reading framework to persons with disabilities by providing materials in accessible formats and a good support system," she says.<br />"Further, it is not necessarily any particular format--with technologies and the prolific use of computers; accessible electronic formats (not being jpeg images which screen readers can't make sense of) are most appreciated. One will find that blind persons are always reaching out to each other for study materials in accessible formats--this varies from materials for board exams to text for competitive exams," she adds. <br />Through the campaign, a road show scheduled to start on September 26 at Loyola College, Chennai, the group wants changes to be made in the copyright law. The roadshow will be organized in three other metros as well.<br />The event will comprise presentations, debates and demonstrations along with book reading sessions and stalls where various accessibility tools will be demonstrated.</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Times of India, 26<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</b><b> </b></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Tara Textreader, a boon for the visually-challenged – by M Ramya</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/5058157.cms"><span><span>http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/5058157.cms</span></span></a><br />CHENNAI: Mahendran loses track of time as he listens to portions from Romeo and Juliet through Tara. The final year B A (Tamil) student of Loyola College is pleased with the Rs 1.35-lakh Tara Textreader that allows him to access printed material without help and convey information without a scribe. "The Sangeetha software has an Indian accent. So I have no problem accessing material in English," says Mahendran, who has visual disabilities. <br />Earlier, students like him could not access printed material that hadn't been digitized. Their computer systems could not read material that wasn't pre-recorded. Professor Jerald Inico, a lecturer in the computer science department and faculty in charge of the college's Resource Centre for Differently Abled, says the Textreader need not even be connected to a computer. <br />He says: "We were trying to come up with a formula to evaluate students with visual disabilities because we felt that when scribes write down the answers for the students some of the content would be lost in translation. The equipment can scan the question paper and read it out and will also allow the student to answer verbally and store it as an audio clip. For students who become blind later in life and have not learnt Braille this is a big help." <br />Tara, purchased from funds provided by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, can only speak English; now through Sangeetha the college is trying to install a Tamil optical character recognition software. While the students use Tara to read books now the equipment will be tested for exam evaluation during the April 2010 semester exams. But Mahendran is a bit wary. "If we can use Tara and still get extra time for the exams it will prove beneficial, but if we are given the same time as the others because we are using the textreader it will take time to comprehend what is being read to us and give the appropriate answers." <br />The college is also supporting a nationwide Right to Read' campaign for persons with print impairments to be launched in Chennai on Saturday. Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) which is one of the organisers of the campaign, says: "Two years ago when we proposed a change in the Copyright Act a clause was incoporated that said that books can be reproduced in formats exclusively for the use of the blind. This limits the reproduction to one or two options and newer technologies cannot be used. It also leaves out people with other disabilities like the dyslexic who also have print impairments. Technology is enabling, but law is disabling. We want to create awareness of the issue through the campaign." <br />Registration for the campaign begins at 8 am at the college. The CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Bookbole will take the campaign to other cities in the country.</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li><span class="Heading1Char"><b>The Hindu – 29<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</b></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span>‘Right to read’ campaign launched <br /><span>http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/29/stories/2009092957440200.htm</span></span><br /><span>CHENNAI: About 100 National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers from various colleges in the State kick-started a ‘right to read’ campaign at Loyola College recently. The aim of the campaign is to make books accessible to persons with disabilities. <br /></span>The speakers, who included the visually challenged, persons with low vision and dyslexia, said the Copyright Act did not allow persons with print impairments to convert reading matter using assistive technologies to accessible formats. Dipendra Manocha, executive committee member of World Blind Union, said: “We need organisations, individuals and volunteers to contribute and create accessible books.”<br />Nirmitha Narasimhan, programme manager of the Centre for Internet and Society felt access to information would ensure a better contribution by the visually challenged to society. “It is not that weare insensitive. The suggestion for amendments to the Copyright Act has not yet been incorporated,” she said. <br />Writer Sreekumar Varma, who inaugurated the campaign, recalled his experience as a scribe during his days as a lecturer. C.P. Chandrasekar, treasurer, National Association for the Blind, and Loyola College Principal Albert Muthumalai spoke.</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li><span class="Heading1Char"><b>Deccan Herald – 29<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</b></span></li>
</ul>
<p>‘Right to Read’ campaign launched - Fighting against copyright regulations – an article by L Subramani.<span class="Heading1Char"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a href="http://www.deccanherald.com/content/27678/right-read-campaign-launched.html"><span><span>http://www.deccanherald.com/content/27678/right-read-campaign-launched.html</span></span></a></p>
<p>To highlight the issues faced by persons with print disability – those deprived of Indian books due to unfriendly copyright regulations – a group of organisations launched the Right To Read (R2R) campaign on September 26.<span class="Heading1Char"><br /></span>The campaign, jointly launched by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Daisy Forum of India (DFI), bookbole.com and Inclusive Planet, kickstarted at Loyola College in Chennai on Saturday.<br />“This campaign was part of the World Blind Union’s (WBU) global campaign,” said Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS. “We are asking all the organisations to lend their support to our initiative.”<br />The campaign comes at a time when the Indian government is preparing to consider changes to the copyright law, which it failed to implement two years ago after disability rights campaigners objected to the proposal to make books and other print materials be made in an “exclusive” format.<br />Nirmita said that this would also be an occasion for activists to urge Government of India to throw its weight behind a WBU treaty tabled at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) asking for a global copyright regulation that takes into account the needs of persons with print disabilities.<br />“The treaty is coming up for discussion at Geneva (WIPO's head quarters) in December,” Nirmita said and added: “Right now only three Latin American nations are supporting it. Since India has the largest number of persons with print disability, which includes the visually challenged, persons with autism and children with learning difficulties, our support would likely tilt the balance in favour of the treaty.” Now, the campaign will be gradually taken to other parts of the country, said Rahul Cherian from Inclusive Planet. A signature campaign and distribution of a declaration supporting accommodation of persons with print disability in copyright laws will also be held as part of the campaign.<br /><span class="Heading1Char"> </span></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li><span class="Heading1Char"><b>NDTV – Hindu</b></span></li>
</ul>
<p>The first event was covered by NDTV Hindu and an interview with Rahul Cherian and Nirmita Narasimhan was also telecast on 26<sup>th</sup> September. A brief excerpt from the interview can be viewed at:<br /><br />Part 1: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/16/o4sQ-ycaoBw"><span><span>http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/16/o4sQ-ycaoBw</span></span></a></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Part 2: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/15/Q5HCm2evUYE"><span><span>http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/15/Q5HCm2evUYE</span></span></a></p>
<ul>
<li> <span class="Heading1Char"><b>Deccan Chronicle – 27<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</b></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span class="Heading1Char">Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS, speaks at the launch of ‘Right to Read’ campaign. Loyola College in the city on Saturday launched the campaignto amend the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and give visually challenged and dyslexic people better access to printed books in the form of Braille copy and big prints. </span><span class="Heading1Char"><br /></span></p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2RDC.jpg/image_preview" title="DC" height="400" width="398" alt="DC" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li><b>Tamil Murasu</b><b> </b></li>
</ul>
<h2></h2>
<h2><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-chennai/R2R%20-%20tamilmurasu.jpg/image_preview" alt="R2R - Tamil Murasu" class="image-inline" title="R2R - Tamil Murasu" /></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.cbrforum.in/news_archive/2009/news_oct09.htm">Coverage in the October Issue of: CBR Forum - E- News Bulletin</a></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/uploads/R2R%20Chennai%20-%20Report.pdf/at_download/file" class="internal-link" title="R2R-Chennai (Report)">Report</a> Prepared by</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Centre for Internet and Society</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/"><span><span>www.cis-india.org</span></span></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">29<sup>th</sup> September, 2009</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign-chennai'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign-chennai</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaFeaturedAccessibility2013-02-04T06:19:31ZBlog EntryNegative of porn
https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others
<b>The post deals with what has been written about Savita Bhabhi in an attempt to make sense of her peccadiloes and with the seeming futility of Porn studies located in America to our different reality. I take the liberty of exploring my own experiential account of pornography since I feel that in that account (mine and others) when done seriously, certain aspects of pornography emerge that address questions that are about cinema, images, sex, philosophy and how desire works. The title is mischeviously inspired from Dr. Pek Van Andel's recent video of MRI images of people having sex.</b>
<p>Jonathan James McCreadie Lillie in his article “Cyberporn,
Sexuality and the Net Apparatus” while talking about academic engagement with
pornography (by Kipnis, Hunt, Waugh, Kendrick) points to how they share “a
common concern with analysing pornography within the various cultural
constructs and social spaces in which it appears, and in which people encounter
it”. He says that a new agenda for cyberporn research has to acknowledge that
“people have produced pornography in many different forms for many different
purposes, and the reasons why people use it or do not use it, and what meanings
they make of it, are equally diverse”. (1)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lillie points towards cyberporn reception studies – the
home/office terminal as a site of cyberporn reception – as a possible starting
point of further work on cyberporn. My interest is located in how does one
understand your own consumption of internet porn, located as it is in the
context that is not the global North and more specifically not male and not heterosexual.
Attempting to do that through the readings in porn studies (Porn studies,
edited by Linda Williams) (2), or specifically net porn studies (C’lick me –
Net Porn Reader) (3), has not been entirely fruitful though what is talked
about is highly interesting. One of the problems perhaps lies in what Lillie
says about the need for analyzing pornography within the various cultural
constructs and social spaces in which it appears, rather than separate or
floating above them. The Internet does not entirely make protean beings
(cyborgs?) of us after all, and the relevance of porn studies elsewhere can
only be partially relevant to a study here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[Curiously though the debates within feminism and the
women’s movement around pornography in the global North – the familiar rhetoric
of the causal links between pornography and violence, do have a resonance in
similar debates in the women’s movement here. At a roundtable discussion on the
role of media at the recent Courts of Women organized by Vimochana (4), many of
the sentiments expressed by activists and organizations see a causal link
between explicit sexual material, violence and its direct negative impact on
morals, attitudes and behaviour of people.]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Linda Williams begins the volume on Porn Studies by stating that
there has been a movement from the deadlock of pro-censorship and sex positive
feminist discourse on pornography, to a stage where there is a veritable
explosion of sexual material that is crying out for analysis, and that sexually
explicit imagery is a fixture in popular culture today (obviously referring to
America but to some extent true for other contexts as well). In some ways there
is an attempt amongst academics, intellectuals, journalists and other writers
here to make sense of the pornographic material that has crept into our media
saturated cities. Many recent articles spawned by the ban on Savita Bhabhi
attempt to understand the unleashing of desire around Savita Bhabhi (from a
rock song to unashamed fandom) and to analyse the reasons for the ban or rather
what makes Savita Bhabhi threatening.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Savita Bhabhi, the [porn] [toon] [star] </strong></p>
<p>Itty Abraham undertakes a fairly detailed analysis of what
is happening in twelve episodes of Savita Bhabhi and perhaps unconvincingly
places the crux of the story of Savita Bhabhi on her cuckolded husband, Ashok
(5). He says “Their family life is relentless modern, nuclear, bourgeois, if
also gendered in familiar ways. The couple eats together (and at the same
time), they watch TV together in the evenings, and sleep in the same bed.” For
Abraham, the comic is about “these new sexual possibilities.. that begin from a
new kind of freedom to which the modern urban woman has access”. The article
suggests that we seem to be faced with a choice between the free untrammeled
Savita and her easy occupation of urban spaces protected by an aura of class
and her husband Ashok who is the hard worker earning enough to keep alive
her/our illusion of abundant urban neoliberal existence. Interestingly the
article is not attempting to make a point about pornography in relation to
ideas of culture, tradition, vulgarity or other familiar motifs in the debate
on obscenity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shohini Ghosh’s article takes on the task to find out what
precisely is so transgressive about Savita Bhabhi (6). Savita Bhabhi is poised
between the family and husband and illegitimate desires (similar to themes in
Charulata, Hum aapke hain kaun). She points that the pleasure of the comic is
not just that there are hard core sexual scenes as much as that the husband or
a similar character cannot look at what you look at. The Indian erotica (or
pornographic text) scene too is replete with tales of incest and transgressions
with domestic workers or servants|maids as they are called in the stories.
Ghosh while acknowledging the harm-violence debate within feminism on
pornography, states that she is anti-censorship – that although it is obvious
that media, images have an impact (otherwise why would they be cause of study)
there is no neat causal link between porn and sexual violence. She ends by
saying that “pornography then is a phantasmatic arena. It does not reflect
people’s ‘real’ sex lives so much as it articulates the desires and aspirations
for imagined ones.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Both articles make important linkages to other and pre-existing
debates on neo-liberal agendas, occupation of urban spaces, feminism and
obscenity. Ghosh seems to also be referring to a broader category of Indian porn and the problems posed by it. She also gestures towards the problems that might be posed if Savita Bhabhi were a real person and not a comic, but by and large most journalistic writing/analysis of Savita Bhabhi flattens out the field – asking questions as if comic characters were real persons, and not taking into account aesthetics, technology (mode of delivery) or where and how it is viewed (reception) by people. There is a difference in the way I respond to a comic about sex than to an MMS or hidden camera porn where I am aware of
the ‘realness’ of atleast some aspects of the image I’m looking at.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The ‘realness’ raises certain dilemmas – the anxiety is not
as severe and troubled as in the case of Mysore Mallige which is haunted by
urban legends of the couples or only the woman committing suicide, forced
marriage at a police station etc. Nonetheless to encounter the MMS video, when
the woman is looking directly at the camera often so it does not seem like a
hidden camera or non-consensual video, is to acknowledge the taking of pleasure
at the expense of someone else which may or may not bother you, but does render
the activity far more illicit and scary. My feeling of
fear|anxiety|secrecy|aloneness when surfing pornography, whether in the office,
home or anywhere where I can be discovered, is an added layer to the experience
even if the various aspects of violation of privacy, vulnerability of the woman
in the video or the existence of a pornography industry are not uppermost in
the mind when actually viewing the clips. One of the few works done that do
address this complicated set of affects that circulate and attach themselves to
pornography is Bharath Murthy’s film on Mysore Mallige ( the next post will be
on this film and interview with Bharath Murthy). (7)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is why I would insist that the comic is a different
space for a viewer – some things such as anxieties about who this person I’m
looking at is and what happened to her do disappear, while others such as a
comic is bright, colourful and highly visible on my computer screen (for
instance) become more important. It is harder to hide surfing Savita Bhabhi in
an office than reading erotica or even downloading and discreetly watching a
small video. The aspect of how
Savita Bhabhi being a comic/drawn character changes how a viewer relates to the
material is an area of study that needs to be looked at more closely, perhaps
with the help of existing work that looks at the manga, anime, hentaii
phenomenon in Japan and parts of South East Asia.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The makers of Savita Bhabhi were anonymous till the ban and
after what seemed like a rather brief struggle with authority (SaveSavita
campaign on twitter and a blog) they vacated the public scene. As a consequence
of no real contest, the ban persists. But perhaps what is admirable is that
many people have learnt to use tools that allow them to still view Savita (and
to expose them here would be just foolhardy). In an interview online the makers
of Savita Bhabhi state .. “For one, it (comic) is a unique medium in the
context of Indian porn. We’ve had MMS’s, videos, stories, etc, but no porn
comics. Also a comic allows us to explore the fantasy in a much more vivid way
than any other medium.” This fantasy life however cannot be dismissed, as it is
indeed very real, or as they say – “based on real life fantasies of our authors
and fans. They are all something that a normal full blooded Indian male or
female would be fantasizing about on their commute to work or a lazy evening at
home.” In a short interview with the makers of the comic more recently and
subsequent to the ban they said that probably it was Savita Bhabhi’s popularity
that led to her downfall and that they set out to explore Indian sexuality,
which “obviously is a big No”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To return to Lillie’s call for a cyberporn reception studies
perhaps it is time in relation to looking at such material that we step away,
even if briefly, from these debates on feminism, vulgarity and obscenity in
Indian culture and others. In an interview dated 5th September, 2009, Ratheesh
Radhakrishnan says that what needs to be looked at when studying pornography,
is not the questions of Indian culture, religion, roles of women and gender (as
for questions related to obscenity) but the aesthetics of pornography. In his
own work Radhakrishnan deals precisely with this question in relation to the
category of ‘soft porn’ and how Shakeela becomes a star through soft porn
cinema – a star not entirely governed by the narrative of the film but
seemingly existing beyond the limit of the film itself. (8) By doing this, his
work deals with the question of how desire works in such films, which perhaps
is one of the more important question to ask about pornography. In the same
interview, he states that there is “something that takes place between the text
and the person watching” and that is what he is interested in.</p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Anti-porn</h1>
<p>Radhakrishnan’s position is interesting in relation to this
project as it opens up questions that are beyond the feminist deadlock on
pornography and also goes beyond rhetoric of the liberating potential of the
explosion of the polymorphous perverse online. The latter is where a lot of
porn studies undertaken in the global North seems to get lost. The breathless
recounting of the pornographic in the everyday, does not help since it becomes
very obvious that any analysis would not be relevant to a vastly different
context in India. (9)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Walter Metz in his article on Open Water (10) challenges the
ethics of porn studies – though he acknowledges that pornography is more a
symptom rather than a cause of anti-social behaviours that it is often linked
to (violent rape, aggressive behaviour, sexism etc.), but still raises the
question as to whether there are significant reasons to put the brakes on a
rabid, radical celebration of the liberating potential of pornography. Metz
talks about the need, within porn studies, to look at the positive and negative
impact of pornography (possibly he would extend that to looking at violent
martial arts film and other strands of cinema/new media).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Metz’s paper as such deals with Open Water as an
anti-pornographic film (here referring to the generic practice of pornography
rather than political positions) and this might be an interesting productive
mode to understand the affect produced by pornography. Though Metz qualifies
that he’s not using pornography as a genre, but rather “as a reading frame. If
one keeps thinking about pornography while watching a non-pornographic film,
what is the resulting interpretation?” Since I haven’t seen the film Open Water
perhaps my interest in such an analysis is misfounded. Metz describes the
frustration depicted in the film Open Water between the audience expectations
for a reasonably good looking, tanned, blonde couple to get-it-on and what
happens to their bodies instead in the open water of the sea and prey to
sharks, is similar to the disjuncture that takes place in one of the films part
of the Destricted project. (11)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Destricted is an interesting artistic|intellectual|new
media|film experiments in the global North around pornography. It is a series
of short films that resulted from an invitation to seven well known artists and
filmmakers to try to respond to sex and especially the phenomenon of
pornography in the contemporary. One of the films Death Valley by Sam
Taylor-Wood borrows from the Biblical tale of Onan and places a man
masturbating in the heaving, throbbing landscape of the Death Valley (the
hottest place in the Western hemisphere where the earth’s crust is constantly
changing and shifting). For precisely 7 minutes and 58 seconds, the protagonist
of the film masturbates uncomfortably without reaching ejaculation and/or
release. The painful un-release of this film, perhaps is meant to be juxtaposed
with the assumed ease of pornography’s answer to desire. However peculiarly it actually
is probably an accurate description of the experiential account of pornography
– of looking, searching, finding, downloading on painfully low speeds, watching
short clips that are blurred, shot only from one angle, badly drawn comics or
looking at largely uninspiring material which is not acquired or found easily.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In some ways the experience of watching either of these
films sounds similar to watching certain kinds of MMS video porn. For instance,
one video was of a couple doing oral sex in a toilet cubicle. The angle of the
camera was from the top and perhaps the intention behind this was to obscure
the faces of the two persons, since only the top of their heads are visible. It
did not seem like the couple were unaware of the video camera, as much as
performing for it almost unwillingly and only if the anonymity was preserved.
The video was low quality and highly blurred, to the point of any features
being indistinct beyond blackness of hair (maybe) and generic skin tone which
could be Indian, Iranian or generic South Asian. The resemblance to the
Destricted video is because again of the time it takes to reach ejaculation –
there is a painfully long uninspiring blowjob sequence. The video remains scary
and leaves one with a feeling of claustrophobia, discomfort and peculiarly
boredom or distance from what is happening. Yet perhaps it is here that the
question of realness and the affect it produces enters again. The question that
intrigues me is whether the affect produced by the video is because
there are certain gestures of the woman that seem recognizable, because she
seems like you (ethnically, racially ofcourse but also in sexual spaces she
occupies and behaviour). After having accomplished the task of coaxing semen
out of the uninspiring penis she is faced with, she folds her legs and speaks
indistinctly. In that moment she seems uncomfortably familiar, like watching a
friend having sex or maybe an aspect of yourself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> It is perhaps
interesting that it is amateur pornography these days that seems to inspire the
most complicated set of affects (unlike the schooled|disciplined and
predictable response to cinema) – shocked recognition of yourself and desire to
see it again, titillation, boredom but yet unwilling to look away, love for
celebrities, pleasure of viewing a body like yours and even sometimes a
recognition that this is what you look like during sex, fear about your own
privacy, disgust for what seems unacceptable and provokes the
moral|visual|auditory sensibilities and contempt for the material and the
people who possibly are genuinely engaged with it. The article on Pam and
Tommy’s video in Porn Studies infact displays these varied affects and
underlines William’s assertion that this bracket of material, behaviour and
practices that get termed pornography/pornographic does indeed deserve
analysis, otherwise a potentially unique and interesting way of understanding
the contemporary would be lost for squeamishness. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are many aspects of the Minette Hillyer’s
analysis (12) that are specifically relevant only to the American contexts –
the notoriety of both the stars, the pre-existence and glorification of home
videos in most families and the acknowledgement of amateur couple porn as even
a healthy practice, perhaps suggested for couples with dull sex lives. In
India, it was infact unknown people who were catapulted into the public eye with the circulation of their video, online and offline that was later titled Mysore Mallige ; not just
the private spaces, holidays and fucking habits of already-celebrities like Pam
and Tommy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What might be relevant here from Hillyer’s analysis is the
pre occupation with the realness of amateur pornography. The article follows the travels of the Pam and Tommy home video
between different categories/genres, depending on different aspects of its
realness. The video as such, contains scenes from the normal domestic lives of
the stars and a eight minute sequence of sex in an almost fifty minute length
video. So the questions of realness are answered not by the sex in the video,
but the mundane recording of their lives, holidays, house and other details.
This question of what exactly it is – home video or pornography (domestic/private
or pornographic/public) is relevant to questions of legality (for damages upto
90 million dollars), how it circulates (a pornographic video of Pam and Tommy
without the domestic padding perhaps would not be considered real and saleable)
and genre which relates to some aspects of how people respond to the work. Ever since the advent of (cheap) video technology, pornography is rendered less
cinematic and more concerned with the presentational act (of sex) than its
representation (ibid). With MMS videos and hidden camera porn, though questions may no longer be about representation, they are still complicated questions about the aesthetics, reception of pornography and our relation to the technology that delivers it and for me viewing pornography today as only presentational does not help to understand the affects that surround and attach to it. Perhaps many strands of what is
explored in this article can be explored in relation to Mysore Mallige in the
next blog post.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just as I finish this piece, after an interview with Nishant Shah at Center for Internet and Society, another question enters the frame in relation to pleasure, moving it beyond those raised above. Is pleasure now a question that
is less about finding the corporeal thrill through pornography online, as much as
pleasure that comes from simulation and the added rush of simulating cities,
lives, personalities online. And is that pleasure, pornographic?</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>End notes:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>1. Jonathan James McCreadie
Lillie, “Cyberporn, Sexuality, and the Net Apparatus”, <em>Convergence</em> 2004; 10; 43</p>
<p> </p>
<p>2. Williams Linda (ed), <strong>Porn Studies,</strong> Duke University Press, London and Durham, 2004.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3. Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli (eds),
<strong>C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader</strong>,
Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>4. Courts of Women, Vimochana Bangalore, 27-29 July, 2009.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>5. Itty Abraham, Sex in the Neo-liberal City: On Savita
Bhabhi, Available at The Fish Pond at <a href="http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/#comments">http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/#comments</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>6. Shohini Ghosh, The politics of porn, Himal South Asian
Magazine, September 2009, Vol 22, No. 9.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>7. Bharath Murthy (director), Mysore Mallige, 2007.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>8. Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, “‘The
Mis-en-scene of desire’: Stardom and the case of soft porn cinema in Kerala!”
Unpublished work. Contact author for copy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>9. Bloomingdale's now sells Tom of Finland shirts and
trousers, housewives celebrate their birthdays by piercing their geni- tals,
college students dance naked instead of waiting tables to pay their tuition,
and middle-level managers schedule a session with a dominatrix in their
favorite dungeon after a game of racquetball at their regular health club. From
Joseph W. Slade, Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide,
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>10. Walter Metz, “Shark
Porn: Film Genre, Reception Studies, and Chris Kentis' Open Water” Film
Criticism, March 22, 2007</p>
<p> </p>
<p>11 Destricted: explicit films, Marina Abramovic, Matthew
Barney, Marco Brambilla, Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, Richard Prince, Sam Taylor
Wood (directors), 2006.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>12 Minnette Hillyer, “Sex in the suburban: Porn, Home movies
and the Live Action Perofmance of Love in Pam and Tommy: Hardcore and
uncensored”, <strong>Porn Studies</strong>, Duke
University Press, London and Durham, 2004, p.50.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others'>https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others</a>
</p>
No publishernamitaFeaturedArtCensorship2011-08-02T08:35:34ZBlog EntryFallacies, Lies, and Video Pirates
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates
<b>At a recent conference on counterfeiting and piracy, industry representatives variously pushed for stiffer laws for IP violation, more stringent enforcement of existing IP laws, and championed IP as the most important thing for businesses today. This blog post tries to show how their arguments are flawed.</b>
<p>The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cii.in">Confederation of Indian Industry</a> (CII) organized its third annual conference on counterfeiting and piracy, with support from the United States Embassy and the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.apcoworldwide.com/Content/client_success/client_success.aspx?pid=0&csid=67a9334f-184b-4866-8ddc-975ca6ff485d">a body comprising more than 80 multinational companies</a>). Last week we <a href="https://cis-india.org/../news/letter-from-civil-society-organizations-to-cii" class="internal-link" title="Letter from Civil Society Organizations to CII">criticised the conference in an open letter</a>. This week, we examine a few of the recurring themes that came up at the conference.</p>
<h3>Something being substandard is not the same as something being counterfeit.</h3>
<p>This was a mistake made by many whenever they invoked 'counterfeit' in the sense of something that is violative of one's patent and trademark rights. The Indian Drugs and Cosmetics Act itself distinguishes between 'misbranded', 'adulterated', and 'spurious' drugs, thus recognizing that something that is made without proper authorization from rights owners isn't necessarily of a bad quality. Indeed, this was substantiated by an audience member, a lawyer from Dr. Reddy's Lab. She spoke of a <em>mandi</em> in Agra where they seized medicines being sold under the Dr. Reddy's name, but produced by local manufacturers. Upon lab testing, it turned out, much to their surprise, that the medicines were of the highest quality and were not substandard. Similarly, many large companies including trusted FMCG companies like Hindustan Unilever and ITC are upbraided by authorities for violations of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (for the cosmetics they produce) as well as the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. Thus, even legitimate businesses can produce substandard products. Thus, a product can be unauthorized but not substandard, just as a product can be substandard but not counterfeit.</p>
<p>This distinction becomes very important when we talk about patents, and especially drug patents. A generic drug is <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_drug">by definition</a> identical or within an acceptable bio-equivalent range to the brand name counterpart with respect to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Thus, this entire category of high-quality drugs is often sought to be made illegal or counterfeit by large pharma companies. Some countries like Kenya have capitulated. But so far the World Health Assembly has been forced by developing countries to keep the issue of substandard medicines separate from patent-bypassing medicines.</p>
<p>The industry, for all their talk about "out of the box" thinking on the issue, still only consider metrics such the number of piracy raids conducted as measures of success. A question was put forth by Manisha Shridhar of the Intellectual Property & Trade Unit of the World Health Organization upon learning of the quality of the drugs seized at the Agra <em>mandi</em>: Why not cut a licensing deal with those manufacturers, who obviously have excellent production facilities? That kind of thinking, which helped HMV in India in the 1980s, and copying innovative features from video pirates and pricing their products competitively has helped an Indian company, Moserbaer, do extremely well.</p>
<h3>Counterfeiters and pirates are not always seeking to fool consumers.<br /></h3>
<p>Only lawyers hired by the industry would think that a consumer aspiring towards a Rolex watch would actually think that the one he purchased off the streets for one-hundredth the original's price was in fact original. Street-side DVD hawkers are not thought by the general public to be selling original wares. Still, despite knowing the difference between the original and the fake, consumers many times opt for the latter.</p>
<p>Having said that, counterfeiting, by using someone else's trademark and trying to pass off fake goods as real ones, is quite obviously wrong. It harms customers, and it harms the manufacturers. Thus, a distinction deserves to be made here between the counterfeiters who try to deceive consumers (for instance by copying authenticity marks, like holograms, etc.) and those who are just providing them with highly cheaper alternatives (pirated DVDs, etc.). In this light, it is also important here to distinguish between counterfeiting, traditionally taken to be trademark violation, and piracy, traditionally taken to be a violation of international law, but now generally meaning a large-scale violation of copyright law. While the former can lead to consumer confusion, the latter scarcely ever does. This is ignored by industry people who evoke the image of the consumer quite often, but only when it helps them, and not in any meaningful manner. They negate consumer choice when it comes to consciously purchasing pirated goods, and <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org">consumer freedoms when it comes to usage of copyrighted materials</a>.</p>
<h3>While commercial film piracy funds terrorists, so does pretty much every business activity.<br /></h3>
<p>A favourite of the MPAA (and by association, the MPA) is the RAND report on <a href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG742.pdf" target="_blank">Film Piracy and its Connection to Organized Crime and Terrorism</a>. This report, which was funded by the MPAA, predictably concludes that film piracy funds organized crime and terrorism. Even if we are to believe its findings wholesale, it leaves us wondering whether all business activities from which terrorists derive funds should be banned.</p>
<p>In India, there is a substantiated link between organized crime and film and music production, and terrorists have been said to make money off the stock market. If the MPA's arguments are taken to their logical conclusions, then film production and equity trading should also be prosecuted. Furthermore, while the mafia and terrorists are the ostensible targets, the laws that are brought about to tackle it affect poor roadside vendors and non-commercial online file sharers. To tackle the funding of terrorists, roadside piracy shouldn't become the target just as film production <em>per se</em> shouldn't. The invocation of the RAND report is thus only meant for rhetorical effect, as it is hard to find logic in there.</p>
<h3>"To copy without authorization is to steal", the death penalty, and drug peddling.<br /></h3>
<p>At the conference, Dominic Keating of the US Embassy pointed out that "to copy without authorization is to steal" and David Brener of US Customs and Border Protection kept emphasising, on at least two occasions, that "drug peddling merits an automatic death sentence in many countries". There are numerous arguments one can make to show the lack of thought in the former. One could point out that 'stealing' and 'theft' are things that happen to tangible property, and that not only is copyright not tangible, but it is barely property. Copying without authorization creates one more of what existed, without depriving the authorizer (usually a corporation) of its original. This goes against our notion of 'stealing'. If the argument is to be shifted to the terrain of control over one's property/copyright, Mark Lemley in an <a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602">illuminative article</a> shows how the economic theories behind externalities in property and copyright are vastly different, and that complete control over either has never been, nor should it ever be, an aim of the law. Simply put, someone free riding on your property leaves you worse off than earlier, while someone free riding on your copyright <em>usually</em> doesn't.</p>
<p>One could also point out that 'stealing' is endemic in activities involving human creativity. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html">T.S. Eliot notes</a> that "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different". He does not even consider the possibility that artistic borrowing, whether by imitation or by 'stealing' does not happen. Even Y.S. Rajan, Principal Adviser to CII recognized this when during the conference he noted that "imitation and innovation have an interesting and intertwining philosophical history". If we are to take Mr. Keating's admonishment seriously, we would indeed have a very illustrious list of thieves on our hands, including the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm">Walt Disney Corporation</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200204/posner">William Shakespeare</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/02/books.booksnews">Vladamir Nabokov</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.alternet.org/story/18830/">Public Enemy</a>, and pretty much every creative person who has ever lived. Books can be written about this (and indeed, numerous books have been), so we shall not dwell on this issue.</p>
<p>Mr. Brener's repeatedly spoke of how drug peddling attracts death penalty in many countries (though in neither the US nor in India has anyone ever received capital punishment for drug peddling), but he also clarified that he is not advocating for the death penalty for copyright violations. That made one wonder why he was bringing up the death penalty at all. He also made the dubious, non-substantiated claim (noting it as "true fact") that pirating movies is more profitable than selling heroin. This claim <a class="external-link" href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24236266-5014108,00.html">appears in an article about a report</a> produced by the Australian Federation Against Counterfeit Theft (AFACT), but the original report is <a class="external-link" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=heroin+site%3Aafact.com.au">nowhere to be found</a>. The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24236266-5014108,00.html">article about the AFACT report</a> also claims that the pirates are using their illicit profits promote drug smuggling. The seeming contradiction of film pirates investing in something that is riskier and less profitable doesn't seem to have caught the eye of the writers. One version of the 'drugs are less profitable than pirated DVDs' claim (with marijuana taking heroin's place) was <a class="external-link" href="http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/2009-August/003100.html">debunked on the Commons Law mailing list</a>. Pirated DVDs are sold for a fraction of the cost of the original. It would be obvious to anyone that DVDs that are typically sold for Rs.30-50, where the cost of manufacture alone may be estimable to be around Rs. 10, cannot be more profitable than heroin peddling. That apart, most online file sharing (deemed to be "piracy") is non-commercial. Thus the question of profit does not really arise. Still, for the industry, absence of a profit is equal to a loss.</p>
<p>Thus, the rhetoric of crime, and that too heinous crime, is continually used, despite its being completely inapposite. Why does used to try to make IP enforcement a matter of state concern, rather than a matter of private, and civil, interest. This way, illegitimate statistics and factoids are used to make <a class="external-link" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/drinkordie_sentencing/">individual file-sharers who earn no money get lengthy prison sentences</a>. This and other ways in which IP enforcement has expanded are carefully documented in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/intellectual_property/development.research/SusanSellfinalversion.pdf">this paper by Susan Sell</a>.</p>
<h3>Repeating false 'statistics' does not make them true.</h3>
<p>Again, we were subjected to a number of dubious claims during the conference: If only counterfeiting and piracy were eliminated, India's fiscal deficit would disappear; the Indian entertainment industry loses 16000 crore (USD 4 billion) yearly to piracy; 820,000 direct jobs are lost due to film piracy; software piracy costs the industry USD 2.7 billion annually, etc. These reports' methodologies have been thorougly discredited. Even The Economist, a very conservative and pro-industry newspaper, believes that the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3993427">BSA-IDC annual reports on software piracy are utterly distorted</a>. Similarly, in the U.S., the figure of 750,000 jobs (around 8% of the U.S. unemployed in 2008) being lost due to piracy were touted by everyone from the Department of Commerce, the Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Border and Customs Protection, and the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA. The amount of money lost each year in the U.S. due to IP infringement has been estimated to be between USD 200-250 billion (that's more
than the <em>combined</em> 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries). In <a class="external-link" href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars">a lengthy piece in Ars Technica</a>, Julian Sanchez traces back the history of both these figures, and shows how they are just large numbers used for lobbying, and are not based on actual studies. The industry-commissioned <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ey.com/IN/en/Industries/Media---Entertainment">Ernst & Young report</a> ("The Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy on India's Entertainment Industry") was never made available to the public at large, thereby making it impossible to judge the methodological soundness of the survey and the veracity of the figures.</p>
<h3>IP expansion and more stringent enforcement is counter-productive.</h3>
<p>Chander Mohan Lall, copyright lawyer to various film studios (including Warner Bros.) in India, used a number of short film clips in presentation during the conference. Upon being questioned about it, he admitted that he did not have permissions of the copyright holders, but claimed that his use fell under "the education exception" in Indian copyright law. While I wish he were correct (because what he was doing was indeed educational use), as per the law he is wrong. Section 52(1)(i) of the Copyright Act only exempts educational usage of cinematograph film recordings when "audience is limited to such staff and students [of an educational institution], the parents and guardians of the students and persons directly connected with the activities of the institution". While there are other arguments he could seek to use to make his usage of the film clilps non-infringing, being excepted by the educational fair dealings clauses isn't one of them. Thus, more stringent enforcement of IP rights actually engenders such unauthorized, but perfectly legitimate copying and communication to the public such as that done by Mr. Lall.</p>
<p>Another way in which IP enforcement is being sought to be increased is by way of the so-called Goonda Acts. These are generally statutes aimed at criminals and lumpen elements in society. The Maharastra version, the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/homedept/pdf/act_1981.pdf">Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders and Dangerous Persons Act, 1981</a>, just became the <a class="external-link" href="http://maharashtra.gov.in/data/gr/marathi/2009/07/15/20090717184706001.pdf">Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders, Dangerous Persons and Video Pirates Act</a>. The term "video pirate" is very widely defined, to include any copyright infringement-chargesheeter who is "engaged or is making preparations for engaging in any of his activities as a video pirates, which affect adversely or likely to affect adversely, the maintenance of public order". Public order is deemed to be disturbed by "producing and distributing pirated copies of music or film products, thereby resulting in a loss of confidence in administration". Thus video pirates can possibly be interpreted to include individual sitting at home and using P2P networks to share films. The only requirement is that they should have had a chargesheet lodged against them previously -- they needn't even have been convicted; being chargesheeted suffices. Thus, non-commercial activities of file-sharing are equated to bootleggers and drug smugglers, and preventive detention (an anti-civil rights relic of India's colonial past) is applicable to them.</p>
<p>IP expansion is happening without the ostensible justifications for IP being kept in mind. That Tirupathi ladoos are going to get GI (geographical indicator) protection was announced at the conference with great pride. Geographical indicators are used to protect consumer interests, to ensure that no one outside a particular region (Champagne) can lay claim to be producing that product (Champagne) if the production of that product is intrinsically linked to special features found in that region (climate, etc.). However, no devout person would want to purchase anything advertised as "Tirupathi ladoo" if it were produced outside the Venkateswara temple at Tirupathi, thus the question of consumer confusion does not arise. What if someone malignantly advertises something as Tirupathi ladoo and claims it was made in Tirupathi (and not just that it tastes like the ladoo made there)? Such a person can be taken to task for deceptive advertising, and there is no need for something to have IP protection to do so. This represents a senseless expansionism of IP. It is now IP for IP's sake.</p>
<p>One of the speakers, Mr. V.N. Deshmukh, who though pro-stringent IP enforcement, astutely noted that, "When local demand is not met, they [consumers] turn to counterfeiters and pirates." Local demand can be unsatisfied because of lack of supply, or because the supply is overpriced, or because the supply is not easy to access, or because what is supplied is inferior to what is demanded. At the end of the day, as William Patry, Google's lead counsel, has noted, what companies sell to the public are products and services, and not IP. It would thus be wise for businesses to be innovative and compete rather than trying to extend their monopolies and engaging in rent-seeking behaviour that is economical harmful to consumers. They would also do well to remember that IP is not only a product but an input as well, so they are ultimately consumers themselves. All the harsher laws and enforcement mechanisms that they push for right now will have unintended consequences, and come to affect them adversely.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshFeaturedIntellectual Property Rights2011-08-04T04:43:08ZBlog EntryRound Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report
https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi. </b>
<p></p>
<p>
In
recent times, there has been an upsurge in the use of ICTs to provide
information to people and to elicit participation. Individuals, corporate
organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations, collectives, municipalities,
political parties and politicians have been using the internet and other
mediums to communicate with people. The round table was organised primarily to
discuss two issues:</p>
<ol><li>What is the
effectiveness of the initiatives introduced in recent times?</li><li>How do we
move forward in terms of partnerships/collaborations in the areas of data
gathering, sharing, dissemination and architecture of information? </li></ol>
<p>Given
the constraints of time, however, we were only able to discuss a few issues with
respect to efficacy of initiatives, rather than come up with a concrete action
plan on how to measure effectiveness of many of the existing initiatives. This
remains an agenda for subsequent meetings.</p>
<p>This round table was the first meeting of its kind. It
brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues
involved in leveraging ICTs towards various ends, and to collaborate with each
other on ongoing initiatives. Participants included researchers,
persons who have developed information platforms and databases, individuals
working in the area of leveraging technology for streamlining processes in
society and people who have been studying usage patterns of social media tools.
Most of the participants were using ICTs to improve information access
related to health issues, education, budgets, development of rural areas and
recently, elections and governance. In the subsequent sections, I will briefly
elaborate on some of the key themes around which discussions took place
during the round table.</p>
<p><strong>Building on Ideas:</strong> In the morning
and pre-lunch sessions, one issue that featured prominently was the importance of developing ideas rather than trying to work out a perfect model that
we believe will solve what we perceive to be people’s problems. Two of the
participants explained that they started implementing ideas as they came to
them, rather than trying to come up with a framework that they thought would
work for the masses. They worked towards evolving their ideas, exploring what
works and what does not. One of them further pointed out that such evolution
cannot be observed as it happens; it only becomes apparent in hindsight. Hence,
discussions such as the current round table are useful.</p>
<p>It is
also important to note that we are still in a nascent stage of understanding
how ICTs can impact people’s lives and deploying them accordingly. As a result, many efforts are likely to be in the stage of trial and error.</p>
<p><strong>Key areas of interest and concern:</strong> Based
on the input from participants in the morning session, we
arrived at a list of areas that require more understanding and discussion.</p>
<ol><li><u>Information gathering, dissemination, access –
including information architecture, technology design</u>:
Here, three issues were discussed:</li>
<ul><li>Who are we talking about when we refer to information
access? It was pointed out that information is crucial particularly for people
who do not have computers and for whom internet is not a priority. The intensity
with which they seek information is remarkable. One of the participants argued
that we undervalue the potential of information to make a difference to
people’s lives.</li><li>How do we deliver information? Providing information
is not enough.</li><li>Representativeness of the information for those who it
is provided for.
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p>Another issue that was referred to
was whether language is a problem, i.e., most information is available only in
English. One of the participants suggested that this is not the case because Google has found that a very small percentage of the population actually refers
to material on the web in languages other than English.</p>
<ol type="1" start="2"><li><u>Community mobilization</u>:
During the deliberations, we referred to the problem of replication of initiatives. Two observers of social media pointed
out that replication happens because people are trying to create their own
unique communities around their initiatives. This is an important insight
for future efforts and also indicates the need to share databases and
information that individuals and organisations have compiled. They also
suggested that it is important to discover existing communities and spaces
where conversations around issues of governance, education, health and
development are taking place. This helps to plug into existing resource
pools and to extend outreach. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="3"><li><u>Citizens’ participation</u>:
Initiatives that work and why they
succeed - We briefly discussed the Jaagore campaign and India Vote Report,
which were launched before the 2009 national elections in India to enable
people to register on the electoral rolls and to report irregularities during
elections respectively. Some people found it difficult to register
themselves on the Jaagore website and some had difficulties in finding the
local offices where they needed to follow-up with the process. It was also
pointed out that Vote Report did not connect with the end user because it
would have been easier to report irregularities and anomalies via SMS
rather than trying to report them by logging on to the site. If one looks
at the case of the Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) developed by
Praja, the availability of the telephone hotline service through which
citizens could register their complaints helped in widening usage. Thus,
it appears that two issues are pertinent:</li>
<ul><li>Whether the initiative connects with the people who
are likely to use it;</li><li>Simplicity of design/system that enables more users. <br />
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p><strong>Target
Audience:</strong> One of
the participants pointed out that some initiatives do not work because they are
targeted towards the wrong audiences. For example, when it comes to voting and
elections, poor groups are the ones who go out and vote in large numbers.
Hence, information systems need to be tailored to provide them with the data
that they need most. Access also has to be configured accordingly. In some
instances, the target is too broad to reach out effectively.</p>
<p>It appears that there is a need to
develop strategies on how platforms and databases that have been created to
enhance access to information can be made known among the masses and how people
can be made aware to use them. It is equally important to understand what
constitutes ‘information’ and for whom. Here,
the other issue to explore is how information links back to the people for who
it is provided.</p>
<ol type="1" start="4"><li><u>Technology</u>: In this
area, a key concern was the high costs involved in developing technologies
and whether we could learn from each other’s experience of developing
technologies instead of reinventing the wheel. We also discussed whether
open source software helps to reduce costs of development. The other issue
with respect to open source is whether there is enough assistance and
support available to resolve problems that may crop up during use of
technology from time to time. </li></ol>
<p><strong>Sharing
of Data:</strong> Discussions also veered around the issue of whether
appropriate technology and applications could be created to help with sharing
existing databases and information pools. We did not discuss this issue
in depth, but it remains relevant for subsequent meetings.</p>
<ol type="1" start="5"><li><u>Back end integration</u>: According
to some of the participants, one of major problems is the interface
between government and citizens, which remains weak. Technology
can be used to enhance the interactions. Participants also pointed out
the difficulty in obtaining data from government bodies that is important
to create the interface between government and citizens. A participant
involved with the Jaagore campaign referred to the problem of back-end
integration during their efforts to help citizens register themselves with
the election commission (EC) offices. A participant from Google similarly
reported that they faced problems in obtaining election results from the EC’s
offices as a result of which, they had to rely on their partners for this
information. Here too, we could not deliberate on how to resolve this
problem, but this could be a major theme for a subsequent meeting. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="6"><li><u>Performance (monitoring, evaluation)</u>:
One of the themes that participants zeroed in on was the evaluation of
the performance of elected representatives and making this evaluation available for
people to see. Here, the debate was around the problem of evaluation being carried out according to the criteria we set which may not seem relevant
to other sections of society. One of the suggestions that came up was to
develop a matrix for evaluation and put out information accordingly.
People can then use it to make their own judgments. <img src="https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/uploads/00016.jpg/image_preview" alt="rt2" class="image-right" title="rt2" /><br /></li></ol>
<p>In
the post-lunch session, some of the participants shared their experiences with
implementation and also the work they and their organisations are currently
engaged with. Towards the end of the round table, each one of the participants
explained their respective projects and how they may wish to collaborate with
other participants (who were present) in their initiatives. An e-group called “CIS-Info-Access” has
been created to take these conversations and collaborations further. </p>
<h3><strong>Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:</strong> <br /></h3>
<p>When
invitations were sent out to people to participate in the round table, many of
the invitees expressed a genuine and enthusiastic interest in being part of
this effort. As mentioned above, one of the reasons for this enthusiasm was
because this was the first meeting of its kind, bringing together
individuals from the fields of technology, research and implementation. We
invited a total of 35 people out of which 27 finally attended the meeting.
The diversity of the participants was an asset in that a variety of issues were
brought to the table. The drawback was that there was not enough time to
discuss some of the pertinent issues in depth. Future meetings can be tailored
to discuss one or two specific themes such as back-end integration and sharing
of information, technology issues, ideas for mobilising citizens and
communities, etc.</p>
<p>The
possibilities of collaboration between participants in this meeting are immense
and we hope that some of the synergies will materialise into concrete outcomes.
Further, a few participants have expressed an interest in organising similar
meetings in their cities/towns, perhaps focusing on a few issues instead of
bringing people together under a broad theme. Of some of the issues discussed,
participants have indicated that back-end integration with government and
ideating on different ways of disseminating data can be further deliberated on
in future. One of the participants also suggested that there is a need to make
‘data’ more relevant to people’s lives.</p>
<p>While
the meeting was fruitful in many respects, one issue needs to be underlined.
This concerns the imagination of internet and ICTs as mediums that can resolve all existing problems with respect to citizen-government
interface, streamlining of processes and provision of information. Such an
overarching imagination of technology overlooks the cultural, economic, social and
political specificities of communities and contexts. Technology
can also have negative implications in some circumstances. It also needs to be
reinforced that technology is embedded in society and culture. Therefore we
need to view technology as one of the avenues among others available which will
facilitate interactions between people and their governments and the state.
Democratisation is more likely to be realised through such a perspective.</p>
<p></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy'>https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityDiscussionFeaturedTransparency, Politics2011-08-20T22:28:55ZBlog Entry