Centre for Internet and Society

An Introduction to the Chinese Wikipedia

pranesh — 2011-04-05T04:32:09Z

A talk at CIS by Ting Chen, a Trustee on the Wikimedia Board, about the Chinese edition of Wikipedia

Ting Chen was born in Shanghai, China in 1968. He grew up in Harbin, China, in the northeast corner of the country, where he attended elementary school and middle school. In 1989 he went to Braunschweig, Germany and began his study of Electrical engineering. He was especially interested in semiconductors and their physics. He graduated in 1993 with a diploma and now he works as an IT specialist in Mainz, Germany.

His first experience with a virtual community were during his university time in the German Fido-Net, where he moderated a forum about science and knowledge for many years. He learned of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects through a news article about the German Wikipedia achieving a milestone in 2003. From then on Wikipedia became a new hobby of his. He started on the German Wikipedia and changed soon to the young Chinese Wikipedia, which was at that time still starting. Ting Chen attended the first Wikimania (Wikimania 2005) in Frankfurt, where he took part on a panel discussion and introduced the Chinese community. He also helped organize the third Wikimania (Wikimania 2007) in Taipei.

Ting Chen was elected a Trustee by the Wikimedia Community in June 2008 and his term started officially in July 2008. He was re-elected in August 2009. His term on the board would end at July 2011.

Vidoes

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/chinese-wikipedia

ALF's Position Paper on Draft Patent Manual

admin — 2008-09-21T14:40:56Z

ALF's draft position paper on the draft patent manual.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/software-patents/ALF%20Position%20Paper%20Draft%20Patent%20Manual.pdf

ALF's Note before 2005 Amendment

pranesh — 2008-09-30T15:19:30Z

Briefing note on the impact of software patents on the software industry in India

Prepared by

Lawrence Liang

Anuranjan Sethi

Prashant Iyengar

Background

While there has been a lot of discussion on the impact that the latest amendment to the Indian Patent Act will have on public health and the pharmaceutical sector in India, there has been a disturbing silence about the impact that the amendment has on the software industry.

After the patents (second amendment) in 2002, the scope of non patentable subject matter in the Act was amended to include the following: “a mathematical method or a business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms”.

The important phrase that was added was ‘per se’, and with the amendment we effectively included Software patents into Indian Law. The latest amendment seeks to expand the scope of software patents, and states “a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms”.

This briefing note will not address the technical and legal implication of this amendment but instead pose the larger question of why we should be concerned about software patents, and the impact that it will have on the software industry in India.

I. Conceptual difference between Copyright and Patent

The first thing to note is that software is already protected under Copyright law, so what then is the motivation and the implication of a move from copyright protection to patent protection?

Software has traditionally been protected under copyright law since code fits quite easily into the description of a literary work. Software Patenting has recently emerged (if only in the US, Japan and Europe) as an alternative that software companies are increasingly employing to, in order to protect their products.

The issues involved in conferring patent rights to software are, however, a lot more complex than taking out copyrights on them. Specifically, there are two challenges that one encounters when dealing with software patents. The first is about the instrument of patent itself and whether the manner of protection it confers is suited to the software industry. The second is the nature of software, and whether it should be subject to patenting.

a) Different Subject Matters

Copyright protection extends to all original literary works (among them, computer programs), dramatic, musical and artistic works, including films. Under copyright, protection is given only to the particular expression of an idea that was adopted and not the idea itself. (For instance, a program to add numbers written in two different computer languages would count as two different expressions of one idea) Effectively, independent rendering of a copyrighted work by a third party would not infringe the copyright.

Generally patents are conferred on any ‘new’ and ‘useful’ art, process, method or manner of manufacture, machines, appliances or other articles or substances produced by manufacture. Worldwide, the attitude towards patentability of software has been skeptical. The Indian Patent Act, as modified in 2002 had made non-patentable the following:

“…a mathematical method or a business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms”.

However, the recent amendment ordnance states instead:

“…a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware;

a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms.”

b) Who may claim the right to a patent/copyright?

Generally, the author of a literary, artistic, musical or dramatic work automatically becomes the owner of its copyright.

Software developers are perfectly protected without patents. Everyone who writes a computer program automatically owns the copyright in it. It's copyright law that made Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and the entire software industry so very big. It's the same legal concept that also protects books, music, movies, paintings, even architecture.

Many of the world's richest people owe their wealth to copyright law. Some examples are: Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft); Larry Ellison (Oracle); Hasso Plattner and the other founders of SAP; Paul McCartney (Beatles); JK Rowling (Harry Potter).

The patent, on the other hand is granted to the first to apply for it, regardless of who the first to invent it was. Patents cost a lot of money. They cost even more paying the lawyers to write the application than they cost to actually apply. It takes typically some years for the application to get considered, even though patent offices do an extremely sloppy job of considering.

c) Rights conferred

Copyright law gives the owner the exclusive right to reproduce the material, issue copies, perform, adapt and translate the work. However, these rights are tempered by the rights of fair use which are available to the public. Under “fair use”, certain uses of copyright material would not be infringing, such as use for academic purposes, news reporting etc. Further, independent recreation of a copyrighted work would not constitute infringement. Thus if the same piece of code were independently developed by two different companies, neither would have a claim against the other.

A patent confers on the owner an absoulte monopoly which is the the right to prevent others from marking, using, offering for sale without his/her consent. In general, patent protection is a far stronger method of protection than copyright because the protection extends to the level of the idea embodied by a software and injuncts ancillary uses of an invention as well. It would weaken copyright in software that is the base of all European software development, because independent creations protected by copyright would be attackable by patents

Many patent applications cover very small and specific algorithms or techniques that are used in a wide variety of programs. Frequently the "inventions" mentioned in a patent application have been independently formulated and are already in use by other programmers when the application is filed.

d) Duration of protection

The TRIPS agreement mandates a period of at least 20 years for a product patent and 15 years in the case of a process patent.

For Copyright, the agreement prescribes a minimum period of the lifetime of the author plus seventy years.

II. Nature of Software and Indian Software Industry

Software is complex: The complexity of computer programs makes it difficult to be understood by any one person. This capacity for complexity allows for the creation of highly sophisticated products but also means that they are dependent on a vast range of technologies.

Software is free from the constraints of the real world that ensure a product does not become too complex. Major software may comprise up to 10 million lines of code - potentially thousands of inventions, any of which might be patented

For example, Apple was sued because its HyperCard program allegedly violates patent number 4,736,308, which covers a specific technique that, in simplified terms, entails scrolling through a database displaying selected parts of each line of text. Separately, the scrolling and display functions are ubiquitous fixtures of computer programming, but combining them without a license from the holder of patent 4,736,308 is now apparently illegal.

In its complexity, software is different from other engineering and mechanical inventions for which patent protection was devised. The latter are often characterized by large "building block" inventions that can revolutionize a given mechanical process. Software, especially a complex program, seldom includes substantial leaps in technology, but rather consists of adept combinations of many ideas. Whether a software program is a good one does not generally depend as much on the newness of a specific technique, but instead depends on the unique combination of known algorithms and methods. Patents should not protect such methods of innovation.

Software Technology evolves rapidly: Software technology is evolving much faster than other industries, even with its own hardware industry. Against this light, a patent that lasts upto 17 years is extremely alarming. Microprocessors double in speed every 2 years.

Research in software is galloping ahead of developments. In most industries, researching new ideas often costs more money than bringing them to the market. The software industry is, on the other hand, loaded with ideas.

The idea behind most software patents can be coded in just 20 lines of code, but any program incorporating that idea - along with many others - will be a thousand times larger. It is the writing of a program that takes all the time, not coming up with ideas.

What this means is that on an average of every two years, a product will have to be replaced in the market. The idea underlying it will remain the same although the particular means and variants of its applications may have changed radically.

Coming out with a full-featured product, every two years is costly especially in relation to the inexpensive idea that backs it. There’s more novelty in the development and application of the same idea to new technology than with coming up with the original raw idea.

The objective of granting patent rights should be to foster the growth and evolution of the industry. Granting a patent at this stage would be akin to unreasonably prolonging the life of a product.

It is generally found that those who are investing time creating and lodging patents are vastly outpacing those who are investing effort bringing such ideas to market. By the time an immature technology develops to the point where it can be incorporated into products, it has a dozen or more patents on it that render it commercially intractable.

Software doesn't wear out: In other industries, research continues up to a point where further research costs too much to be feasible. At this stage, the industry's output merely consists of replacing parts that have worn out.

However, in the software sector, a computer program that is fully debugged will perform its function forever without requiring maintenance or modification. “What this means is that unlike socks that wear out, and breakfast cereal that is eaten, a particular software product can be sold to a particular customer at most once. If it is to be sold to that customer again, it must be enhanced with new features and functionality.” This inevitably means that even if the industry were to approach maturity, any software company that does not produce new and innovative products will simply run out of customers! Thus, the industry will remain innovative whether or not software patents exist.

Software has different economics: Most other major industries have medium to high research and development costs and very high production costs. Most often, the production costs dwarf the other two areas (because of the physicality that they involve) so that these costs can be added on to the cost of the final product without any relatively major difference in the price.

Software is unique in this aspect because

-The research costs very little because “ideas are as abundant as air”

-The development of an idea into a marketable product costs far more than the research.

-The production costs are minimal, often just a little more than the price of the medium, which is typically a floppy or a CDROM.

Patents affect the ‘development’ stage of the process of ‘manufacture’ of software. Thus the threat exists that the price of software could be singularly determined by the number of patented innovations that it incorporates.

III. Patent and Innovation in Software Industry

As argued before the process of software development by its very nature is ‘incremental’ i.e. developing of new software majorly consists of building upon existing ideas and rearranging the processes devised by others, and hence has an inbuilt need for using existing algorithms and mathematical formulae. Patent protection over software or over a set of algorithms within patented software would inevitably create a thicket of patents which the subsequent software developer might need to obtain clearance from before he can begin to work on it. The costs involved in obtaining these clearances and those involved in case one finds oneself having infringed a patent are usually very high, as in the case of biomedical patents. This would act as a disincentive for an aspiring software developer and would adversely affect the growth of the Indian software industry. Introduction of two bills- ‘Genomic Research and Diagnostic Accessibility Bill, 2002’ and ‘Genomic Science and Technology Innovation Act of 2002’ though still pending before the US Congress show the real concerns involved for a ‘patent and innovation policy’ within genomics. Similar concerns are exist in the software and innovation policy and need to be addressed adequately by the each national legislature.

Further there are substantial costs involved in verifying which patents one must obtain clearance for as skimming through the huge patent databases has become a very costly exercise. Unfortunately, conducting a patent search is a slow, deliberative process that, when harnessed to software development, could stop innovation in its tracks. And because patent applications are confidential, there is simply no way for computer programmers to ensure that what they write will not violate some patent that is yet to be issued making survival a very important issue for smaller player in the market.

Various large companies in US have obtained exemptions from going through patent searches for standard work due to huge costs. In such a scenario in a small player software industry like India, it would be unwise to allow ‘software patents’ as they may have negative impact upon the innovation within the industry.

By its nature software industry is ‘innovation driven’ i.e. the only way a software company can compete and improve its sales or grip over market is by making better and more useful features available. This innovation which is the driving force behind the Indian software industry is bound to get affected if a patent protection is provided to software patents. If a company can easily sustain itself on its ‘invention’ (by obtaining patents upon its software) and need not remain innovation driven, which would mean that a patent monopoly would inversely impact innovation and competition in software industry. It would further give rise to monopolistic tendencies and a practice of quoting arbitrary price for the grant of ‘voluntary license’. This lesson can be learnt by looking west where the idea of Public Key Encryption was patented in the US. The patent expired in 1997 and until then, it largely blocked the use of Public Key Encryption in the US. Similar instances can be found w.r.t. ‘data compression software’ and ‘single click software’ patented by Amazon.com. A number of programs that people started to develop got crushed. They were never really available because the patent holders threatened them. This led to a lot of unrest in the software community which culminated into the public outrage against software patents. Similar pressures have prevailed in European community where software patents found public opposition too immense to mount for a long time.

A look at India's own development of its software industry would be of immense help as India started its software industry only after IBM was driven out of country. Before that, there was no software industry worth the name, with software and hardware being imported from IBM. Once IBM left, Indian computer companies developed computers using the UNIX operating system, which was in the public domain. This led to the presence of a large number of skilled software professionals with experience of UNIX were also writing high-level applications for making the entire computer system work.

IV. Political economy of software patents

While understanding the issue of software patents, it’s important to look at its political economy and the implications involved for India. If one were to study the trends of software patenting in US and Europe one would witness that the IBM owns a majority of patents along with other giant software companies and has been topping the list of maximum patents granted in US in the private sector. This fact must be seen in the light of the opposition faced from small business organisations, leading scientists and economists in Europe and the unprecedented delay in passing the Software Patent Directive of 2002 by the European parliament. It should be noted that the directive does not aim to make it possible to patent pure computer programs: it would only apply to computer software integrated into an appliance. This makes it much more restrictive than the amended Indian Patent Act, which opens out any technical application of a programme to industry or its realisation in hardware for patenting. Even with this restriction, the critics of the EU directive have pointed out that a patent on software is in effect a patent on an idea, while traditionally patents have been restricted to concrete physical inventions only. By making this amendment, it is possible to implement algorithms in hardware and then claim patent protection for this. Once an idea can be patented if it is burnt in to hardware, the argument for extending it to a software implementation gains ground. In fact, the first breach in the US for making software patentable came through this route. If one were to study the trends in the scope of patentable subject matter granted in software patents by US courts, one would observe that from Diamond v. Diehr onwards court has been granting patents on much more abstract components, which has slowly transformed into patenting the central idea underlying the software. This trend indicates the easy malleability of legal terminology which has brought US courts’ stand on software patents to a full circle from Gottschalk v. Benson where the court found a patent upon software as a patent upon the underlying algorithms which is nothing more than a mathematical formula, unpatentable by its very definition.

The concerns regarding the weaker relative position of these small players is much more relevant in India. Among the primary reasons for large corporations like IBM lobbying for software patents is due to their stronger hold over the software market and ownership of the largest number of patents in this market. Large corporations use their patents, apart from making royalty upon them, to getting access benefit to the patents of other companies. This would close the option of cross-licensing for a majority of Indian companies which have no patents upon software. License though may be obtained are usually available at exorbitantly high prices which would most likely be unaffordable for Indian companies which operate on a small scale and have restricted budget options. The multinational corporations would use software patents as a defensive strategy for preventing smaller Indian companies from gaining any grounds in the market, which would eventually drive them out of business hence destroying the existing Indian software industry.

Software industry has a very characteristic nature which makes it extremely vulnerable to being easily monopolized. Among these characteristics are Network effects (the fact that a program becomes more useful if more people use it), interoperability and compatibility problems, the low cost of massive reproduction of software, the difficulty of inspecting software distributed without the source code, the learning curve and the rapid evolution of the market. Taking the instance of Microsoft Windows (the most popular operating system in use in India today) which enjoys a perpetual monopoly over the operating system market in India, many a larger institutions find Windows extremely costly and desperately needed an alternative to it in order to do business profitably. The recent success of Linux operating systems is demonstrative of this, but this must be understood in the light that India follows a copyright regime for software which allows many of the above mentioned characteristics of compatibility and interoperability to be resolved which would be totally impossible in a software patent regime. This then means that software patents have a potential to hamper the growth of open software movement in India which has begun to play central role in Indian Government’s ‘e-governance’ initiative. Hence it’s extremely urgent to ensure that patents in software do not cause any harm to the fine balance that copyright has achieved.

While understanding a political economy argument of software patents the adverse impact of monopolization upon public interest which has been held to be of utmost importance by the apex court in India, even above one’s legitimate commercial interests.

V. Procedural Issues

There are a certain procedural issues involved which are of determinative nature as to the allowance of a software patent regime in India. India doesn’t have a well laid out or even a well practiced software patent practice to guide Indian patent office. In the absence of any such policy, examining software patent application becomes a very daunting task, coupled with which the complicated and highly technical nature of software, Indian patent office is quite incapable to evaluate complicated and technically trivial claims which software patent often present. Imposing a software patent regime in such a scenario would impact the quality of such patents which might then prove counter-productive in the development of Indian software industry.

To be able to tackle this situation more personnel and experts would have to be employed in the patent office that can then ensure maintenance of a certain quality standards while granting software patents. But this in turn may not produce increased innovation in the software industry for the human capital which would be invested into processing the claims and preventing and tackling with the patent infringements rather than being invested in developing new software and hence benefit the software industry and economy of the country in general.

The difficulty in reaching a policy to grant software patents and the impacts of granting these patents in the absence of policy are indeed far reaching. In the absence of a policy which classifies patents on algorithms, techniques etc. it would take an awfully long time for the patent office to process a claim, searching the ‘prior art’ which makes the system inefficient and unworkable. Long delays in processing patent applications and subsequent challenge procedure often makes filing for a patent an unwise option for small companies and individual software developer, which form the backbone of Indian software industry. For instance, IBM was granted a patent on the same data-compression algorithm that Unisys supposedly owned. Such an error which could prove lethal for a developing company which has planned its budget meticulously and in consequence of this error would be greatly disincentivized to develop new software. The Patent Office was probably not aware of granting two patents for the same algorithm because the descriptions in the patents themselves are quite different even though the formulas are mathematically equivalent. Even when patents are known in advance, software publishers have generally not licensed the algorithms or techniques; instead, they try to rewrite their programs to avoid using the particular procedure that the patent describes. Sometimes this isn't possible, in which case companies have often chosen to avoid implementing new features altogether. It seems clear from the evidence of the last few years that software patents are actually preventing the adoption of new technology, rather than encouraging it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/software-patents/alfs-note-before-2005-amendment

Agreement on Procurement

pranesh — 2008-12-08T06:08:19Z

On December 6, 2008, at the closing of the third Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) released an agreement entitled the "Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards".

Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards

Third Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Hyderabad, India

6 December 2008

Preamble

The Contracting Parties,

Recalling the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles which states that "[i]nternational standards aim to create an environment where consumers can access services worldwide regardless of underlying technology,"

Recognizing that standards are increasingly global concerns, involving goods and services that move in international trade across borders,

Aware that current competition and legal remedies may not be enough to solve the inherent tensions that routinely arise in the realm of patents and standards,

Desirous of encouraging procurement policies that require evaluation of multiple, competing products based on open ICT standards in order to ensure a level playing field for vendors, governments and consumers,

Cognizant of the need for procurement policies for software programs that are predicated upon an open standard,

Open Standards

Given the multiplicity of interpretations of the term open standards, for the purpose of this document we endorse as an acceptable definition the position contained in the European Union's draft European Interoperability Framework:

1) The open standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
2) The open standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
3) The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the open standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis.
4) There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

(IDABC EIF v2 draft (http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7728))

As noted in the European Interoperability Framework cited above, open standards or technical specifications must allow all interested parties to implement the standards and to compete on quality and price. The goal is to have a competitive and innovative industry, not to protect market shares by raising obstacles to newcomers. Thus, open standards or technical specifications must be possible to implement in software distributed under the most commonly used open source licences, with no limitations arising from IPR associated with the standard in question.

In addition to the above requirements, it is recommended that there should be multiple independent implementations of the standard.

Governments, publicly funded and non-profit institutions agree to implement the following policies.

Governments, publicly funded and non-profit institutions

Hereby agree to the following measures in order to promote interoperability and accessibility through the use of open standards.

1. To create a policy statement on interoperability and open standards, to be available to employees and the public.

2. By 2010, procurement of all software should be vendor neutral and implement open standards

3. By 2010, tender specifications for hardware (including peripherals and mobile devices) should require that manufacturers provide the driver and interface information necessary to work with a reasonable range of proprietary and free operating system platforms.

4. By 2010, all public facing web pages should conform to W3C standards for structure, presentation and accessibility.

5. By 2010, tenders for the supply of web based services (for example, online reservations) must specify the requirements of point 4.

6. By 2010, agencies should implement policies regarding the storage and archiving of government data and records to ensure that data is stored in open data and document formats.

Signed by:

Aslam Raffee, Government IT Officers' Council, OSS Working Group, Republic of South Africa

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

Bob Jolliffe, Freedom To Innovate, South Africa

Centre for Internet and Society, India

Hamid Rabiee, Sharif University of Technology, Iran

Knowledge Ecology International

Moving Republic, India

Shuttleworth Foundation, South Africa

Swathanthra Malayalam Computing, India

Endorsed by:

Bangladesh Friendship Education Society, Bangladesh

Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), India

Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines

OpenForum Europe

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/dynamic-coalition-on-open-standards-dcos-agreement-on-procurement

Accessible ICT Procurement

pranesh — 2016-05-09T14:48:49Z

Today in India there is an excellent opportunity to address the needs of persons with disabilities through accessible ICT procurement. There is a growing body of evidence globally to demonstrate that governments are successfully using accessible procurement as a means of ensuring the human rights of persons with disabilities,. They are amongst the largest purchasers of IT in any country and by requiring accessible products and services, ensure that all citizens with disabilities and government employees who are disabled are able to access and use public infrastructure and communication. CIS along with 20 other organisations petition 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.

To
The Secretary,
Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD)
Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment,
Room No: 525, 5^th Floor,
Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road,
New Delhi - 110003

The Secretary
Ministry of Finance
North Block, New Delhi- 110001

The Secretary
Ministry of Information Technology
Electronics Niketan, 6,
CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Subject: Urgent opportunity to address the needs of persons with disabilities through accessible ICT procurement in the draft procurement bill.

We are a group of organisations working to protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities in India. You may be aware that persons with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, comprising over a billion persons of the world population as of 2011. We give below some important points which outline the need to consider accessible procurement for your consideration:

Demographic need: As per the census of India in 2011, there are 2.21 per cent or 26 million persons with disabilities living in India. However, there is an inconsistency between the estimates of the Census and the NSS surveys due to various reasons such as different definitions, different methodologies, traditional diagnostic techniques, varied reporting responses and even the 11^th five year plan opines that these numbers may be under representative and the actual number may be closer to approximately 5-6%. A World Bank report pegs the number at about 5-8% or approximately 55-90 million in India. Hence, there is a large constituency of persons with disabilities and possibly an equally large number of persons having special needs and requiring accommodations who are not necessarily identified within this group. The needs of these persons must be taken into account in order to achieve complete national development.
Need for accessible IT infrastructure: With the increasing emphasis and reliance on IT for administration, governance, communication and information through the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Initiatives’, there is a need for the IT infrastructure to be accessible to enable use by all, i.e. a product or service should be usable to its maximum potential by all persons with ease and comfort irrespective of ability. For instance: Persons with disabilities cannot be given productive work in a bank if banking is not usable with the help of assistive technology; and Persons with special needs will not be able to pay bills or do banking or avail services rendered by e-governance platforms if ICT infrastructure is not usable with assistive technology. This need has already been recognized by the Government of India (GoI) through its ‘Accessible India Campaign’. Accessible ICT Procurement will be a vehicle to achieving this.
Legal imperative: India is strongly committed towards creating a barrier free world with equal opportunities and without discrimination, and facilitating enjoyment of all fundamental and human rights for persons with disabilities and complete digital inclusion. India has signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which identifies access to information and information and communication technologies as a human right and requires governments to facilitate enjoyment of these rights on an equal basis and without discrimination through various measures, such as encouraging private organisations to provide accessible services and information and provide other forms of assistance to facilitate access to information and adopting minimum standards of accessibility and design for accessibility at early stage of production to reduce cost.

Article 4(a)-(d) requires states parties to act in conformance with the convention. Accessibility is an underlying principle of the CRPD and integral for persons with disabilities to enjoy all the other human rights such as access to education, employment, assistive technologies, political participation, health, independent living and cultural materials.

India has also signed other national and international instruments in this regard, such as the Inchen strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities, the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise reading disabled, the Biwako Millineum framework and the Biwako plus 5, enacting various legislations related to disability, including the upcoming Bill on the Rights of persons with disabilities, the National Universal Electronic Accessibility Policy and Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which prescribes accessibility requirements. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which were finalised in September 2015 and by which India is bound, also call for inclusiveness in all its goals such as education, inequality reduction, infrastructure building, economy, habitation, institutions, poverty reduction and sustainability. Hence there is a very strong legal case for implementing accessible ICT procurement, as the driver for achieving complete inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities.

Proven effective mechanism: Public procurement has been identified as a very effective tool in the hands of policy makers to implement accessibility and significant strides have been made by different countries such as USA, Australia and countries in the European Union. Statistics reveal that governments are amongst the largest purchasers of IT products and services and hence well positioned to leverage this power to ensure that all products and services developed, delivered and maintained out of public money and for the use of the public or government employees are accessible. The Government of India (GoI) is also one of the largest employers of persons with disabilities, hence the absence of accessible public infrastructure hinders efficient functioning of the government itself.
Standards for accessible ICT procurement: Today accessible procurement has proven a successful tool in the hands of policy makers and there are evolved standards in this domain. The two major standards are that of section 508 in USA and the En 301-549 (EN) in Europe. The latter is the most comprehensive and updated standard and there is a global move to develop a harmonized standard based on the EN. Hence, there is a readily available framework and standard in the form of the En for India to adopt and base its framework.

Key Global Initiatives

We’d like to draw your attention to the accessible public procurement initiative and charter launched by G3ict and to the arguments in the G3ict white paper for adoption of this policy. We strongly support the arguments made therein and recommend that GoI embrace accessible public procurement in the draft Procurement Bill of 2014. Some key points from the charter and initiative which argue strongly for the case of having an accessible ICT procurement policy in India are extracted and given below:

“Accessible procurement is relevant for the enjoyment of human rights as set out in the UNCRPD, which has been signed by 160 countries.
Public procurement accounts for 10-15% of a country’s GDP and up to 16 per cent in countries in the EU, In USA, the federal government alone purchases 25 per cent of ICTs and the purchase of the federal and state governments together account for 40 per cent of the total ICT purchases of the country.
Public procurement policy is a strong instrument to achieve digital inclusion and serves to incentivize accessible design from the start of the development process.
It strengthens the local technology industry of a country and creates positive ripple effects into the broader consumer ICT marketplace.
It develops the national accessibility ecosystem, capacity, and expertise to develop and deliver accessible products and services and lowers costs through harmonized standards & competition. It also drives the creation of new development tools for accessible technology and better accessibility training for technology professionals.”

Conclusion and Recommendations:

Access to public services and information are critical for citizens to participate in the nation building process. The development of India hinges on the progress and inclusion of all its citizens. India has already recognized the criticality of building smart cities and the need to create an accessible India. Hence, the adoption of accessible procurement falls directly within the mandate of the GoI as it is a fundamental step to achieving India’s goals. Accessible procurement is not an option, but a necessity. We hence request the GoI to take immediate steps to rectify the lapse and include accessibility as a key consideration within the procurement Bill. Accordingly, we propose the following approach for GoI’s consideration:

Preparation and circulation of a note explaining the need to include accessibility as a key component of the procurement process within the government, describing rationale, business case and best practices.
Inclusion of suitable provisions in the present draft Procurement Bill covering the following:

Identifying accessibility as a key requirement of procurement
Including definitions of accessibility and accessibility standard within the definition section. (We recommend that a national standard be adopted which is similar to or in line with the European standard EN 301-549 since it is extremely evolved and being widely adopted by countries within and outside Europe.
Requiring accessibility experts and persons with disabilities to be part of all committees set up towards implementation of the Act and procurement related processes at the central and state levels.
Including a distinct and comprehensive section in the procurement rules notified after enactment of the Act dealing with accessible procurement processes and communication which may include the following: identification of accessibility as a selection/ award criteria, inclusion of accessibility at different stages of the procurement process, such as preparatory study, pre-qualification documents, contracts for design, development, delivery and maintenance of products and services, purchase of off the shelf products, requirement of attestation and verification procedures, self-declaration by vendors, training requirements, exemption cases, transparent bidding processes to ensure inclusion of accessibility, accessible communication, and implementation and audit mechanisms.
Requiring procuring entities to include accessibility implementation within their reporting requirements.

GoI may undertake capacity building activities to raise awareness amongst procuring entities on accessibility.
GoI may draw up a plan with time lines for implementation which may be in two phases. Phase 1 may relate to setting in the process for all present and future procurement and phase 2 may relate to a plan for legacy systems which will not necessarily be replaced anew.

We would be happy to provide further inputs in this regard.

Thanking you

Yours sincerely

Mr. Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director
Centre for Internet and Society

List of Signatories

Sl. No	Name of the Person	Designation	Organisation	Email id
1	Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan	Policy Director	Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore	nirmita@cis-india.org
2	Mr. Dipendra Manocha	President	Daisy Forum of India and President, National Association for the Blind(Delhi)	dipendra.manocha@gmail.com
3	Mr. Muralidharan	Convener	National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD)	nprd.in@gmail.com
4	Mr. Praful Vyas	Secretary	Andhjan Kalyan Trust	aktrust.drj@gmail.com prafulnvyas@gmail.com
5	Mr. Nilesh Singit	Advocacy & Research Officer	Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR
6	Ms. Charudatta Jadhav		Techenvision	charudatta.chess@gmail.com
7	Dr. Beula Christy	HOD-Vision	Rehabilitation Centres, L V Prasad Eye Institute	beula@lvpei.org
8	Dr. Ramesh C Gaur	University Librarian	Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU)	1. rcgaur@mail.jnu.ac.in 2. rcgaur66@gmail.com
9	Dr. Homiyar Mobedji		Bookshare	dr.homiyar@gmail.com
10	Dr. Sam Taraporewala	Director	Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged	sam@xrcvc.org
11	Mr. Srinivasu Chakravarthula,	Hon. Joint Secretary	The National Association for the Blind, Karnataka	srinivasu@srinivasu.org
12	Mr. K Raghuraman		Karna Vidya Foundation	raghuram.mcc@gmail.com
13	Mr. Dhanajay Bhole	Coordinator	Acc Savitribai Phule Pune university
14	Mr. Prashant Ranjan Verma	Joint Secretary	National Association for the Blind – Delhi	Pr_verma@hotmail.com
15	Mr. N S Sastry		Samrita Trust	samritatrust2006@gmail.com, norisastry@gmail.com
16	Ms. Madhu Singhal		Mitrajyothi	admin.office@mitrajyothi.org
17	Mr. Bhushan Punani		Blind People’s Association (BPA)	blinabad1@bsnl.in
18	Mr. Anil Mudgal	Secretary	Arushi	arushiorg@gmail.com
19	Ms. Poonam Tyagi	General Secretary	National Association for the Blind, Meerut
20	Dr. Vimal Dengla		National Association for the Blind
21	Mr. V S Sunder	Member	DRA India	sunder@imsc.res.in
22	Mr. Mohith B P			Bpmohith.ckm@gmail.com

[1]. Available at http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/disabled_population.aspx
[2]. Please see
http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/disablity_india_statistical_data_11mar2011/Chapter%204-Dimension_Disability.pdf
[3]. Available at http://www.section508.gov/
[4]. Available at
https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/301500_301599/301549/01.00.00_20/en_301549v010000c.pdf
[5]. Global Charter: Promoting Global Digital Inclusion through ICT Procurement Policies & Accessibility Standards, G3ict; URL:
http://g3ict.org/resource_center/g3ict_global_charter
[6]. CRPD Implementation: Promoting Global Digital Inclusion through ICT Procurement Policies & Accessibility Standards, G3ict available at: http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports/p/productCategory_whitepapers/subCat_7/id_339/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-ict-procurement

About Us

pranesh — 2016-06-27T13:59:12Z

What we do

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organisation that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and intellectual property rights, and openness (including open data, free/open source software, open standards, open access to scholarly literature, open educational resources, and open video), and engages in academic research on reconfigurations of social processes and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.

Vision and Mission

The Centre for Internet and Society will critically engage 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.

Through multidisciplinary research, intervention, and collaboration, we seek to explore, understand, and affect the shape and form of the internet, and its relationship with the political, cultural, and social milieu of our times.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/about-us

Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems

pranesh — 2016-04-06T15:31:32Z

While one wishes to welcome govt’s attempt to bring Aadhaar within a legislative framework, the fact is there are too many problems that still remain unaddressed for one to be optimistic.

The article was published by Livemint on March 7, 2016.

The Aadhaar Bill has been introduced as a money bill, even though it doesn’t qualify as such under Article 110 of the Constitution. If the Speaker agrees to this, it will render the Rajya Sabha toothless in this matter, and will weaken our democracy. The government should reintroduce it as an ordinary legislative bill, which is what it is.

While the government has in the past argued before the Supreme Court that Aadhaar is voluntary, Section 7 of the bill allows the government to mandate an Aadhaar number (or application for an Aadhaar number) as a prerequisite for obtaining some subsidies, benefits, services, etc. This undermines its arguments before the Supreme Court, which led the court to pass orders holding that Aadhaar should not be made mandatory. This move to make it mandatory will now need the government to argue that rather than contravene the apex court order, it has instead removed the rationale for it.

Interestingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government seems to have done a U-turn on the issue of the unique identification number not being proof of citizenship or domicile. The previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government never meant the Aadhaar number to be proof of citizenship or domicile. This was attacked by the Yashwant Sinha-chaired standing committee on finance, which feared that illegal immigrants would get Aadhaar numbers. Now, the BJP and the NDA seem to be in agreement with the original UPA vision of Aadhaar.

Importantly, there is very strong language when it comes to the issue of privacy and confidentiality of the information that is held by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Section 29 (1), for instance, says that no biometric information will be shared for any reason whatsoever, or used for any purpose other than Aadhaar number generation and authentication. However, that provision is undermined wholly by Section 33, which says that “in the interest of national security”, the biometric info may be accessed if authorized by a joint secretary. This will only fan the fears of those who have argued that the real rationale for Aadhaar was not, in fact, delivery of services, but to create a national database of biometric data available to government snoops.

Also Read

Pros and cons of Aadhaar bill

Further, there are no remedies available for governmental abuse of this provision.

Lastly, in terms of privacy, the concern of those people who have been opposing Aadhaar is not just that the biometric and other identity information may be leaked to private parties, but also that having a unique Aadhaar number helps private parties to combine and use other databases that are linked with Aadhaar numbers in a manner that is not within the subject’s control. This is not at all addressed in this bill, and we need a robust data protection law in order to do that.

There are some other crucial details that the law doesn’t address: Is user consent, to be taken by third parties that use the UID database for authentication, needed for each instance of authentication, or would a general consent hold forever? How can consent be revoked?

There were many other objections that were raised against the Aadhaar scheme that have not been addressed by the government. For instance, in a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly, Hans Varghese Mathews points out that going by the test data UIDAI made available in 2012, for a population of 1.3 billion people, the incidence of false positives—the probability of the identities of two people matching—is 1/112.

This is far too high a ratio to be acceptable.

Actual data from the field in Andhra Pradesh—of people who were unable to claim rations under the public distribution system (PDS)—paints a worse picture. A survey commissioned by the Andhra Pradesh government said 48% of respondents pointed to Aadhaar-related failures as the cause of their inability to claim rations.

So, even if the Aadhaar numbers were no longer issued to Lord Hanuman (Rajasthan), to dogs (e.g., Tommy Singh, a mutt in Madhya Pradesh), and with photos of a tree (New Delhi), it might not prove to be usable in a country of India’s size, given the capabilities of the fingerprint machines. As my colleague Sunil Abraham notes, the law cannot fix technological flaws.

So, while one wishes one could welcome the government’s attempt to bring Aadhaar within a legislative framework, the fact is there are too many problems that still remain unaddressed for one to be optimistic.

Pranesh Prakash is policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a think tank.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/livemint-march-7-2016-pranesh-prakash-aadhaar-still-too-many-problems

Aadhaar marks a fundamental shift in citizen-state relations: From ‘We the People’ to ‘We the Government’

pranesh — 2017-04-04T16:10:06Z

Your fingerprints, iris scans, details of where you shop. Compulsory Aadhaar means all this data is out there. And it’s still not clear who can view or use it.

The article was published in the Hindustan Times on April 3, 2017.

Until recently, people were allowed to opt out of Aadhaar and withdraw consent to have their data stored. This is no longer going to be an option.
(Siddhant Jumde / HT Illustration)

Imagine you’re walking down the street and you point the camera on your phone at a crowd of people in front of you. An app superimposes on each person’s face a partially-redacted name, date of birth, address, whether she’s undergone police verification, and, of course, an obscured Aadhaar number.

OnGrid, a company that bills itself as a “trust platform” and offers “to deliver verifications and background checks”, used that very imagery in an advertisement last month. Its website notes that “As per Government regulations, it is mandatory to take consent of the individual while using OnGrid”, but that is a legal requirement, not a technical one.

Since every instance of use of Aadhaar for authentication or for financial transactions leaves behind logs in the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) databases, the government can potentially have very detailed information about everything from the your medical purchases to your use of video-chatting software. The space for digital identities as divorced from legal identities gets removed. Clearly, Aadhaar has immense potential for profiling and surveillance. Our only defence: law that is weak at best and non-existent at worst.

The Aadhaar Act and Rules don’t limit the information that can be gathered from you by the enrolling agency; it doesn’t limit how Aadhaar can be used by third parties (a process called ‘seeding’) if they haven’t gathered their data from UIDAI; it doesn’t require your consent before third parties use your Aadhaar number to collate records about you (eg, a drug manufacturer buying data from various pharmacies, and creating profiles using Aadhaar).

It even allows your biometrics to be shared if it is “in the interest of national security”. The law offers provisions for UIDAI to file cases (eg, for multiple enrollments), but it doesn’t allow citizens to file a case against private parties or the government for misuse of Aadhaar or identity fraud, or data breach.

It is also clear that the government opposes any privacy-related improvements to the law. After debating the Aadhaar Bill in March 2016, the Rajya Sabha passed an amendment by MP Jairam Ramesh that allowed people to opt out of Aadhaar, and withdraw their consent to UIDAI storing their data, if they had other means of proving their identity (thus allowing Aadhaar to remain an enabler).

But that amendment, as with all amendments passed in the Rajya Sabha, was rejected by the Lok Sabha, allowing the government to make Aadhaar mandatory, and depriving citizens of consent. While the Aadhaar Act requires a person’s consent before collecting or using Aadhaar-provided details, it doesn’t allow for the revocation of that consent.

In other countries, data security laws require that a person be notified if her data has been breached. In response to an RTI application asking whether UIDAI systems had ever been breached, the Authority responded that the information could not be disclosed for reasons of “national security”.

The citizen must be transparent to the state, while the state will become more opaque to the citizen.

How Did Aadhaar Change?

How did Aadhaar become the behemoth it is today, with it being mandatory for hundreds of government programmes, and even software like Skype enabling support for it?

The first detailed look one had at the UID project was through an internal UIDAI document marked ‘Confidential’ that was leaked through WikiLeaks in November 2009. That 41-page dossier is markedly different from the 170-page ‘Technology and Architecture’ document that UIDAI has on its website now, but also similar in some ways.

In neither of those is the need for Aadhaar properly established. Only in November 2012 — after scholars like Reetika Khera pointed out UIDAI’s fundamental misunderstanding of leakages in the welfare delivery system — was the first cost-benefit analysis commissioned, by when UIDAI had already spent ₹28 billion. That same month, Justice KS Puttaswamy, a retired High Court judge, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging Aadhaar’s constitutionality, wherein the government has argued privacy isn’t a fundamental right.

Every time you use Aadhaar, you leave behind logs in the UIDAI databases. This means that the government can potentially have very detailed information about everything from the your medical purchases to your use of video-chatting software.

Even today, whether the ‘deduplication’ process — using biometrics to ensure the same person can’t register twice — works properly is a mystery, since UIDAI hasn’t published data on this since 2012. Instead of welcoming researchers to try to find flaws in the system, UIDAI recently filed an FIR against a journalist doing so.

At least in 2009, UIDAI stated it sought to prevent anyone from “[e]ngaging in or facilitating profiling of any nature for anyone or providing information for profiling of any nature for anyone”, whereas the 2014 document doesn’t. As OnGrid’s services show, the very profiling that the UIDAI said it would prohibit is now seen as a feature that all, including private companies, may exploit.

UID has changed in other ways too. In 2009, it was as a system that never sent out any information other than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, which it did in response to queries like ‘Is Pranesh Prakash the name attached to this UID number’ or ‘Is April 1, 1990 his date of birth’, or ‘Does this fingerprint match this UID number’.

With the addition of e-KYC (wherein UIDAI provides your demographic details to the requester) and Aadhaar-enabled payments to the plan in 2012, the fundamentals of Aadhaar changed. This has made Aadhaar less secure.

Security Concerns

With Aadhaar Pay, due to be launched on April 14, a merchant will ask you to enter your Aadhaar number into her device, and then for your biometrics — typically a fingerprint, which will serve as your ‘password’, resulting in money transfer from your Aadhaar-linked bank account.

Basic information security theory requires that even if the identifier (username, Aadhaar number etc) is publicly known — millions of people names and Aadhaar numbers have been published on dozens of government portals — the password must be secret. That’s how most logins works, that’s how debit and credit cards work. How are you or UIDAI going to keep your biometrics secret?

In 2015, researchers in Carnegie Mellon captured the iris scans of a driver using car’s side-view mirror from distances of up to 40 feet. In 2013, German hackers fooled Apple iOS’s fingerprint sensors by replicating a fingerprint from a photo taken off a glass held by an individual. They even replicated the German Defence Minister’s fingerprints from photographs she herself had put online. Your biometrics can’t be kept secret.

Typically, even if your username (in this case, Aadhaar number) is publicly known, your password must be secret. That’s how most logins works, that’s how debit and credit cards work. How are you or UIDAI going to keep your biometrics secret?

In the US, in a security breach of 21.5 million government employees’ personnel records in 2015, 5.2 million employees’ fingerprints were copied. If that breach had happened in India, those fingerprints could be used in conjunction with Aadhaar numbers not only for large-scale identity fraud, but also to steal money from people’s bank accounts.

All ‘passwords’ should be replaceable. If your credit card gets stolen, you can block it and get a new card. If your Aadhaar number and fingerprint are leaked, you can’t change it, you can’t block it.

The answer for Aadhaar too is to choose not to use biometrics alone for authentication and authorisation, and to remove the centralised biometrics database. And this requires a fundamental overhaul of the UID project.

Aadhaar marks a fundamental shift in citizen-state relations: from ‘We the People’ to ‘We the Government’. If the rampant misuse of electronic surveillance powers and wilful ignorance of the law by the state is any precedent, the future looks bleak. The only way to protect against us devolving into a total surveillance state is to improve rule of law, to strengthen our democratic institutions, and to fundamentally alter Aadhaar. Sadly, the political currents are not only not favourable, but dragging us in the opposite direction.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-pranesh-prakash-april-3-2017-aadhaar-marks-a-fundamental-shift-in-citizen-state-relations