Centre for Internet & Society

Online Censorship: Perspectives From Content Creators and Comparative Law on Section 69A of the Information Technology Act

by Divyansha Sehgal, Gurshabad Grover

This study presents a comparative analysis of Indian censorship law and experiences of people who have had their online content censored.

Read more →

Draft Circular on Digital Lending – Transparency in Aggregation of Loan Products from Multiple Lenders

by Garima Agrawal

CIS is grateful for the opportunity to submit comments on the “Draft Circular on Digital Lending: Transparency in Aggregation of Loan Products from Multiple Lenders” to the Reserve Bank of India. We welcome the opportunity provided to comment on the guidelines, and we hope that the final guidelines will consider the interests of all the stakeholders to ensure that it protects the privacy and digital rights of all consumers, including marginalised and vulnerable users, while encouraging innovation and improved service delivery in the fintech ecosystem. Our comments look at two concerns addressed by the draft guidelines, i.e. reducing information asymmetry and market fairness. In addition to this we share comments around a third concern that requires additional scrutiny, i.e. data privacy and security.

Read more →

Legal Advocacy Manual

by Radhika, Shruti Trikanad and Torsha Sarkar

The Legal Advocacy Manual summarizes the key legal and constitutional questions and jurisprudence related to laws that affect the right to freedom of expression and privacy online, including internet shutdowns, content takedown, online surveillance and device seizure.

Read more →

Comments to the Draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024

by Abhineet Nayyar, Isha Suri, and Pallavi Bedi (in alphabetical order)

This submission is a response by researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society India (CIS) to the draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024, published by the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL), Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), (hereafter “draft DCB” or “draft Bill”).

Read more →

Consultation on Gendered Information Disorder in India

by Amrita Sengupta and Yesha Tshering Paul

On 14th and 15th March 2024, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) collaborated with Point of View (POV) to organise a consultation in Mumbai to explore the phenomenon of gendered information disorder in India, spanning various aspects from healthcare and sexuality to financial literacy, and the role of digital mediums, social media platforms and AI in exacerbating these issues.

Read more →

India’s parental control directive and the need to improve stalkerware detection

by Divyank Katira

We analyse a child-monitoring app being developed by the Indian government and question whether it is an effective way to enact parental controls. We highlight how such monitoring apps are often repurposed for digital stalking and play a role in intimate partner violence. We also evaluate the protection provided by antivirus tools in detecting such stalkerware apps and describe how we collected technical evidence to help improve the detection of these apps.

Read more →

Reconfiguring Data Governance: Insights from India and the EU

by Swati Punia, Srishti Joshi, Siddharth Peter De Souza, Linnet Taylor, Jhalak M. Kakkar, Isha Suri, Arindrajit Basu, and Anushka Mittal

This policy paper is the result of a workshop organised jointly by the Tilburg Institute of Law, Technology and Society, Netherlands, the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University Delhi, India and the Centre for Internet & Society, India in January, 2023. The workshop brought together a number of academics, researchers, and industry representatives in Delhi to discuss a range of issues at the core of data governance theory and practice.

Read more →

Information Disorders and their Regulation

by Torsha Sarkar, Shruti Trikanad, and Anoushka Soni

The Indian media and digital sphere, perhaps a crude reflection of the socio-economic realities of the Indian political landscape, presents a unique and challenging setting for studying information disorders.

Read more →