May 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2016-06-10T19:34:10Z

Welcome to the May 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS along with 20 other organisations petitioned the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information Technology to bring in accessibility considerations within the draft Procurement Bill. Pavishka Mittal wrote a blog post on the legality and implications of the Reserve Bank of India's proposed classification of Peer-to-Peer lending companies as non-banking financial institutions. The sixth section of our extended survey of digital initiatives in the practice of arts and humanities in India is now online. The final report will be published serially, and will comprise seven sections in total. CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore how we study the Internet in India today. Please send the abstracts (no more than 200 words) to raw@cis-india.org by Sunday, June 12, 2016. CIS will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on Monday, June 20, 2016. CIS filed RTI applications seeking information from institutes such as IIM Bangalore; NLU Jodhpur; NLSIU; IIT Kanpur; IIT Kharagpur; NALSAR; NUJS; Delhi University; and IIM Ahmedabad. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg wrote an article for the Wire in which they analyzed the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. They argue that the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and hindering other opportunities offered by maps. CIS sent its comments on the Draft New ICANN By-Laws in which it observed that the draft by-laws are overwrought and that rather than producing a broad constitutional document for ICANN the by-laws read like the worst of governmental regulations and create more problems than they solve.

CIS in the News

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

Exercise to correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (The Hindu; April 28, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website on May 1, 2016.

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5 (Mathrubhumi; May 1, 2016).
Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil (The Times of India; May 5, 2016).
Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam' (New Indian Express; May 6, 2016).

Why India’s attempt to police digital maps and satellite images is a ‘dumb’ idea (News Minute; May 6, 2016).
Google, Apple and Microsoft may need licence for satellite mapping in India (Aman Sharma and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; May 9, 2016).
Geospatial Info Regulation Bill will hurt start-ups, small firms (Varun Aggarwal; Hindu BusinessLine; May 10, 2016).
Why The New Government Policy Mandating Panic Buttons On Phones Isn’t Going To Protect Women (The Ladies Finger; May 14, 2016).
India's Proposed Map Law Prompts Outcry (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 17, 2016).
Suckfly Attacks National Stock Exchange Tech Vendor, Among Others (Rohit Pathak; The Quint; May 21, 2016).
India Seeks to Limit Use of Maps and Satellite Images (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 27, 2016).
How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities (The Times of India; May 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; February 2016). The post was mirrored in Global Voices. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian.
A Large Byte of Your Life (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 3, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.

A four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia (Sailesh Patnaik; Opensource.com; April 15, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website recently.
Online Censorship on the Rise: Why I Prefer to Save Things Offline (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.
Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 8, 2016).

Wikipedia’s 15th birthday inspires Bangla translators; Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (Nahid Sultan and Shailesh Patnaik; Wikimedia Blog; May 9, 2016).

Identity of the Aadhaar Act: Supreme Court and the Money Bill Question (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; May 9, 2016).
Criminal Defamation and the Supreme Court’s Loss of Reputation (Bhairav Acharya; The Wire; May 14, 2016).
Before Geospatial Bill: A Long History of Killing the Map in Order to Protect the Territory (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg; The Wire; May 16, 2016).
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; The Wire; May 17, 2016).
Women's Safety? There is an App for That (Rohini Lakshané; Gender IT.org; May 19, 2016).

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଏନସାଇକ୍ଲୋପିଡ଼ିଆ "ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ" ବିକାଶ ପାଇଁ ଏକାଠି ହେଲେ ପୁରୀର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀ (Subhashish Panigrahi; YourStory Odia, May 20, 2016).

Celebrating 13 Years of the Kannada-language Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; DNA; May 22, 2016).
Modi’s New Intellectual Property Rights Policy Will Only Benefit Players with Deep Pockets (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2016).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

May 2016 Report

►Other

Accessible ICT Procurement (Pranesh Prakash; May 9, 2016).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

CIS gathered information from various educational institutions in response to several RTI applications. All of these have been published as different blog posts:

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from JNU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kharagpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NALSAR (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NUJS (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Delhi University (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Ahmedabad (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 17, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Bangalore (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 21, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLU, Jodhpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 26, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLSIU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 27, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kanpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 31, 2016).

Nisha S. Kumar assisted in the preparation of all these documents.

Participation in Event

National Confererence on Competition & IPR in ICT, Telecom and Mobile Sets (Organized by CMAI; May 18, 2016; Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi). Rohini Lakshané and Anubha Sinha attended this conference.

Other Blog Entry

Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; May 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Images and Links Matter Quality (Rahmanuddin Shaik; May 4, 2016).
Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles (Tito Dutta; May 9, 2016).
Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; May 19, 2016). Ananth Subray contributed to this blog.

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Freedom of Expression

Submission and Comment

Comments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards (Amber Sinha; May 28, 2016).
Submission by the Centre for Internet and Society on Draft New ICANN By-laws (Pranesh Prakash, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Swati Muthukumar with inputs from Sunil Abraham; May 30, 2016).

Blog Entry

Criminal Defamation Remains and so does the Debate (Japreet Grewal; May 19, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Privacy Issues with DRM (Jalaj Pandey; May 3, 2016).

Event Organized

Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges (Organized by Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU and CIS; May 26 - 27, 2016; New Delhi). The event was supported by the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Free Software Movement of India, Knowledge Commons, PEACE, and Center for Advancement of Public Understanding of Science & Technology.

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Announcement

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 20, 2016).

Blog Entries

New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice (P.P. Sneha; May 19, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Summary (Pavishka Mittal; May 18, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Legality and Implications (Pavishka Mittal; May 23, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Data Security and Privacy Concerns (Vipul Kharbanda; May 31, 2016).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2016-newsletter