Centre for Internet and Society

Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:43:55Z

The Internet has revolutionized the way we socialise, date and even protest. Online activism is a faster, more effective way to get more people to react to a cause. But at the same time it is this speed that makes Internet-generated protests a far graver danger than offline protests. Egypt faced an Internet shutdown when the protest started gaining steam and China has been throttled with heavy cyber censorship for years. Unfortunately, silencing the voices of dissent online is as easy as raising them. This article by Annie Johnny appeared in the Sunday Guardian, New Delhi on 13 March 2011.

A workshop recently conducted at the Constitution Club in New Delhi brought together human rights activists, bloggers and techies and explored the challenges faced by online activists.

“When the Internet was in its nascent stage, there was the Utopian belief that the government would not have the same role to play as it does offline. However, the Internet is being increasingly regulated by the government,” says Dr. Anja Kovacs, fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

The Binayak Sen and Pink Chaddi campaigns provide a picture of how fast and efficient online activism is. “Initially, the campaign was restricted to a centralised network of people and was a way for me and my friends to vent out our thoughts. But it grew beyond our expectations. Between March 2008 and May 2009, we had about 1.5 million visitors. Our experience with the Internet as an effective tool in mobilising people has been very positive,” says Satya Sivaraman, one of the initiators of the Free Binayak Sen Campaign website.

Blocking websites that promote child pornography and hate speech is acceptable. Activists, however, are concerned about the mysterious disappearances of blogs and the vague explanations given to justify them.

“There is a provision for spam in the IT Act. While the rule is meant for only for spam, it is extended over a much wider area. According to it, anything that is deemed objectionable can be blocked. Instead of targeting offensive material, the act should target harmful content. Child pornography and hate speeches cause harm, whereas what is ‘offensive’ is subjective,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager, Centre for Internet and Society.

Bloggers in countries like Thailand and Singapore face serious consequences for posting anti-state views online. However, very few people all over the world are standing up against the curtailing of the right to freedom of expression online.

“There are ways to access blocked sites but most people do not bother to do that. If a site is blocked, they will simply accept it. The government in India is becoming increasingly restrictive. While their reason for concern is valid as the restrictions are in place to protect national security, the way they are dealing with this is inappropriate. Drafting vague rules related to objectionable content’ without specifying whom the content is objectionable to, is not going to help. There needs to be clearly defined categories for banning sites,” says Kovacs.

Rising against the growing restrictions and the wide gaps in Internet accessibility, The Internet Rights and Principles coalition, which works on Internet rights, is coming up with a Charter for Human Rights and Principles for the Internet.

The charter, which is still being drafted and has been put online for suggestions, emphasises that human rights apply the same way online as they do offline, and lays down rules and Internet policies necessary to protect human rights.

Another interesting observation is that most online protests don’t always spark parallel offline protests. The Meter Jam protest against the high auto fares in Mumbai is one such example.

“While it helped the middle class vent their frustration, on the day of the actual offline protest, hardly anyone boycotted autos. Business went on as usual,” says Kovacs.

See the article on the Sunday Guardian website
Download the original pdf here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/catch-all

Cause and effect Facebook-style

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:44:47Z

While the world is crediting Facebook for triggering the Arab revolution, do Facebook groups in India say anything about top of mind causes for young Indians? Crime touches a chord - the pages that have sprung up for Radhika Tanwar and Aarushi Talwar illustrate this - but it's the ideological issues that have made it to our top five list. Anja Kovas, a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based research organisation, analyses the success of these causes.

Save the Tiger: The biggest Indian group on Facebook 'Save the Tiger' has a following of over 8,43,663 people.

Content talk: The site tracks news items about the tiger and features comments and quotes about the animal. The group's motto 'Read between the stripes' encourages members to 'like' conservation.

Pages: As the most popular cause, this also links to over 30 pages such as the 'Save the Leopard', Save the Tiger Fund' and 'Only 1411 left in India'

Anja-speak: This campaign was successful because several celebrities were a part of the cause. TV campaigns and celebs always ensure a larger audience. Also world over, environmental issues triggers stronger reactions.
Terrorism: It's a subject that affects every single Indian, and 'Stop Terrorism in India' has already clocked 1, 39, 436 members.

Content talk: "If you want to sleep peacefully then wake up now…" It's comments like these that would best explain what the group is all about. Members of this group share videos of 26/11, violence in Kashmir, Salman Khan, anti-hunger campaign and other subjects like peace, liberty and justice.

Pages: Other related pages are 'Stop terror in India and specially Mumbai'. 'Stop Terror in India, Pakistan'

Anja-speak: The Mumbai attacks shook the nation and touched a chord with everyone across age groups, classes and beliefs.
Kashmir: Over four lakh Kashmiris have been displaced from their state since 1989-90. It's not surprising then that Kashmir comes third in our list of causes. 'Frontline Kashmir' supports the 'freedom movement' and has about 24,000 members.

Content talk: Peppered with calls for freedom, the comments on the walls also speak out against separatists. Pages: For various viewpoints on Kashmir, also check out Amnesty International, Revolt, I Cry, We Love Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Anja-speak:Facebook played an important role in letting young Kashmiris voice their opinions online. It's obviously a platform for young Kashmiris who want to air grievances.
Corruption: Despite the fact that corruption is one of the foremost issues in India today, the largest group against corruption 'India Against Corruption' has only 16,499 members.

Content talk: From information on marches to news articles, this page deals with anything related to corruption in India. A much talked about issue on this page is the CWG and the 2G scam. Pages: Do check out the 'Commonwealth Jhel' page as well and the 'I Paid A Bribe' and 'Choosna Bandh Campaign'!

Anja-speak: It's a topic that unites people across classes in India. With big scams unfolding every other day, people are definitely interested in such a group.
Free Binayak Sen: With 8,479 'likes', the Facebook page 'Release Dr Binayak Sen: Protest against mockery of justice against him', a cause by the same name that is supported by 7,745 people, stands as the most popular group.

Content talk: The campaign on Facebook is an offshoot of a section of society that believes Dr Sen has been denied justice by the state and speaks of all related matters including the sedition law. Pages: There are 15 groups and 22 pages related to Dr Binayak Sen, including 'Free Binayak Sen! Repeal Section 124A IPC' and 'Free Binayak Sen - Global Campaign'.

Anja-speak: This campaign owes its success, in terms of its outreach, to years of determination and relentless action by those that support Dr Sen.

This article by Malvika Nanda was published in the Hindustan Times on March 13, 2011. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/cause-and-effect

Draft IT guidelines may gag internet freedom

praskrishna — 2011-03-22T04:16:54Z

The draft rules proposed under the Information Technology Rules 2011 (due diligence observed by intermediaries guidelines) by the Indian government could lead to unprecedented levels of online censorship. This article by Shilpa Phadnis and Pranav Nambiar was published in the Times of India on March 11, 2011.

Intermediaries include telecommunications companies, internet service providers (ISPs) and blogging sites. Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their computer resource not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of `objectionable' content.

This includes infringement of proprietary information, blasphemy or abuse, information that could harm minors, content that impersonates another person or discloses sensitive personal information etc.

Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said that these moves would have a chilling effect on internet freedom. For example Sec 3 (2)(a) states that any website with social media integrated into it and allows public to add content comes under the blanket surveillance regime. Sec 3 (h), which talks about impersonating another person, will potentially discourage cases like the fake IPL player who revealed rich information while keeping his real identity under wraps.

The draft rules use a standard set of rules across a variety of intermediaries including telecom service providers, blogging sites, online payment sites, e-mail service providers, and Web hosting companies.

Abraham believes that the government is explicitly targeting bloggers as a community and the draft rules are far from being tech neutral. "The government has come out with standard terms of use for due diligence. But you can't treat a small blogger on par with others who have large-scale commercial interests," he said.

According to the draft rules, an intermediary has to inform users that in case of non-compliance of its terms of use of the services and privacy policy, it has the right to immediately terminate the access rights of the users to its site. In case of infringement, the intermediary has to work with the user or owner of the information to remove access to the information.

Apar Gupta, partner in Accendo Law Partners, said intermediaries like blogs and search engines would have censorship powers. "It will not directly impeach the freedom of speech and expression. But intermediaries have to comply with some certain standards such as notify users on compliance issues,"he said.

Click below to find the original article in the Times of India

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/it-guidelines-gag-internet-freedom

Lives suspended in the Web

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:45:39Z

When 14-year-old Manish sits behind his laptop, punching away at keys, his facial expressions reflecting his various online interactions, his parents stand in the doorway, watching curiously. Their son is physically at home, but to all purposes, lost in the limbo of the Internet. By all standards, Manish is a good, responsible young adult but his parents worry because they don’t seem to have any control over Manish’s online life. They find it difficult to understand the digital realms that he seamlessly integrates into his life.

As young people across the country are creating these new hybrid physical-digital spaces of work, leisure and lifestyle, the “analogue generations” remain outside, concerned about how they can ensure that their children are safe online, and not abusing the power of this largely unregulated space.

Their paranoia is amplified by the stories of uncontrolled access to pornography, of children falling prey to sexual predators, fears of intellectual property theft, and subversive and violent mobilisations that the young orchestrate through these online networks. The need to regulate, control and design this digital environment that so many of these young people inhabit is countered by their own ignorance and lack of control over these spaces. Technological solutions, like cyber-nannies and filtering software that prevent access to websites that can have questionable content, have eventually proven to be futile preventatives.

Attempts at technology-based censorship are useless because these young people, digital natives, find ways to circumvent the attempts at controlling their access. It is clear that the solutions are outside of technology, and not very different from ways in which parents have always dealt with these questions.

Here are the top five ways to do so, which do not require a parent to become a netizen overnight, but can get them involved and make sure young users of technology remain responsible, safe and canny in their interactions online.

Monitored access: Instead of figuring out censorship software, parents need to learn that as with the TV, monitored access for younger users of the Internet is completely valid. Web 2.0 rhetoric promotes a strong sense of individualism and privacy and parents often feel like they are intruding on a child’s “private” time online. However, it is completely valid for parents to be in the same room and keeping an eye on what their child is up to while surfing.

Limited time: Instead of trying to control the content, try and help the young person to efficiently manage time and digital resources. We live in a world where the impulse to stay constantly connected is very strong. However, there is no reason why the young user has to be online in all their free time. If they are given a specified number of hours a week to spend online, they learn to use their time more efficiently. Password-protect the computers, take limited expenditure accounts for their mobile phones and have strict rules (which everybody in the family has to follow) about interface access during family time.

Shared computers: As computing becomes more personal, young users access the Internet from many computing devices like cellphones, personal laptops, etc. Studies have shown that young users who use shared machines kept in common areas of the house are less prone to accessing undesirable material online. Do not keep the computing devices in bedrooms. Use shared studies or quiet corners of the living room.

Get digital and involved: One of the reasons why young people often do not communicate with parents about their technological forays is because the older generation professes a digital disconnect. Take this opportunity to initiate a two-way learning. Get your children to teach you on how to use certain platforms and websites, and in conversations, you might be able to educate them about responsible behaviour online. This peer-to-peer connection helps establish trust and a safe space to discuss problematic areas. Parents of teenagers who join social networks like Facebook and Tumblr, and get to be a part of the child’s life, often find new channels of communication opening up for them.

Storytelling: Digital storytelling has huge potential for voicing concerns and problems. For these young people, the spaces provided online are safe spaces. They write freely, tell stories, create digital content, providing a gateway into what is happening in their lives. Recognise the creative potential of young users, appreciate their ability to tell these stories — through blogs, micro-blogs, audio and video podcasts, commentary on other content, etc. Getting them to tell stories and sharing your own with them makes for greater insight. Many cross-generational storytelling projects, where younger children tell the stories of the older people in the house, or write a combined blog have proven to be quite successful online.

At the end of the day, it is good to remember that the problems that new technologies throw up are not necessarily new. The solutions need to be found in our everyday interactions and practices, and dependence on technological application is often counter-productive. Technology can only be a way by which solutions are implemented.

The article by Nishant Shah was published in the Indian Express on March 11, 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/suspended-in-web

Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers sparks outcry

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:46:23Z

A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary. This article was published in the Times of India on March 10, 2011.

Under the Act, an 'intermediary' is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks, web-hosting and internet service providers, search engines, online payment and auction sites as well as cyber cafes are identified as intermediaries. The draft has strangely included bloggers in the category of intermediaries, setting off the online outcry.

Blogs are clubbed with network service providers as most of them facilitate comment and online discussion and preserve the traffic as an electronic record, but equating them with other intermediaries is like comparing apples with oranges, says Pavan Duggal, advocate in the Supreme Court and an eminent cyber law expert.

'This will curtail the freedom of expression of individual bloggers because as an intermediary they will become responsible for the readers' comments. It technically means that any comment or a reader-posted link on a blog which according to the government is threatening, abusive, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, racial, among other omnibus categories, will now be considered as the legal responsibility of the blogger," he explains.

Even Google, the host of Blogger, among India's most popular blogging sites, expressed displeasure at the proposal. "Blogs are platforms that empower people to communicate with one another, and we don't believe that an internet middlemen should be held unreasonably liable for content posted by users," a spokesperson told TOI.

Blogs, which are typically maintained and updated by individuals, have showcased their political importance in recent times and the internet community views these rules as a lopsided attempt to curtail an individual's right to expression.

"If individual blogs are an intermediary, then why can't Facebook and Twitter also be classified as such, as they too receive, store and transmit electronic records and facilitate online discussions," retorts the spokesperson of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based organization, which works on digital pluralism. "These rules will not only bring bloggers and the ISP provider on the same platform, but the due diligence clause will also result in higher power of censorship to the larger player. Imagine your ISP provider blocking your blog because it finds that certain user-comments fit these omnibus terms," the CIS spokesperson added.

Most experts, including Duggal, see these rules as the outcome of the government's one-size-fits-all approach — at least in regulating online activities — and ask for an amendment to the IT Act.

Read the original article in the Times of India here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/govt-proposal

Watson knows the Question

praskrishna — 2015-05-14T12:24:38Z

Now that an algorithm has given humans a run for their money on a quiz show, it’s time to rethink the idea of a machine. A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. This article was published on March 6, 2011.

Quantum theory suggests that multiple universes exist where every possible alternative can come true. If this were the case, somewhere there must be a world filled with machines that are looking at human evolution and figuring out new and advanced human machine relationships. Or for those who are not very quantum minded, imagine a world where machines are the evolved species and they depend upon human technology — emotional connections, semantic learning, etc. — for their daily transactions and survival. I am not suggesting a futuristic dystopia, like the kind that science fiction specialises in. However, it would be interesting to imagine a world where technology is not only at the periphery of human civilisation but at the centre of it.

I am proposing this world view to revisit the idea of a digital native. We have, so far, in scholarship and practice, education and policy, only looked at digital natives as young human beings who interact in new and innovative ways with evolving technologies, to form human-machine networks and assemblages. However, as Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Augmentation develop to produce thinking technologies, it is time to start looking at being sapient as not necessarily a human condition.

Early last month, an artificially created super computing system called Watson (elementary, surely?) took the world by a storm as it competed against two human contestants on a popular American quiz show called Jeopardy! The trivia-based show provides answers clustered around a particular theme, and contestants have to ask the correct question to the answer, to win prize money. It is not a straightforward question-answer show because it relies on more than human memory and recollection. It gives cryptic clues (like the ones we are used to in a crossword), offers semantic relationships which need more than just a database memory, and relies on the contestants’ abilities to make creative connections between the clues in order to guess the right questions.

Watson, a product of seven years of research by IBM Research, works on an algorithm which simulates human language and cognitive patterns to make intelligent connections and deductions to understand the context of the clues and then provide answers. Powered by 2,800 super powered computers on a high-speed network, Watson competed against Jeopardy!’s biggest champions and made history as it showed extraordinary human learning and predictive powers. It has been one of the biggest achievements in advanced computing to develop an algorithm that mimics human learning and has changed the way in which we look at the human-machine relationship.

While much commentary on Watson revolves around what it means to be human, and subsequently, what it is to be a digital native, I have a different proposition to make. Perhaps, Watson’s debut on American television is not only about thinking what is human, but also about what it means to be a machine.

First, the Watson that appeared on TV was a sleek display screen that stood behind a lectern in the studio along with the human contestants. The original Watson was next door, being cooled by refrigeration units, but it appeared to the human audience (in and outside the studio) in its avatar. This was a radically new idea because we have always thought of the avatar as a technology based representation of human users. We find avatars on Facebook and in online role-playing games. To think of a machine appearing in a human form was radically new.

Second, Watson was not able to just make predictions by mining information. It was also able to display levels of confidence. If Watson was not confident about an answer, it did not push the buzzer to answer. In fact, once the information was harvested, it displayed its top three guesses to show that, like human contestants, it calculated risks of wrong answers.

Third, Watson was able to display or at least simulate human emotions. It took guesses even when in doubt. It showed a spirit of adventure and played big. It was disappointed when it lost or was happy when it got the answers. It was able to display its “emotions” through various displays in its form and could get the audience’s attention, applause and support.

What this experiment suggests to me is that Watson is perhaps a digital native. All our concentration has always been on human subjects, but synthetic life forms and technology-based intelligence, are blurring this distinction between humans and technologies. We should start thinking of a digital native as neither machine nor human being, but a combination of the two, residing simultaneously in both the realms of the physical and the digital. Watson is perhaps a new digital native, a technology that is growing and slowly learning from its interactions with the human world around it. One of these days, we might be living in the midst of computational devices, which, when we are flummoxed, might turn to us and say, “Elementary, my dear Sherlock!”

Contact: digitalnative@expressindia.com

Read the original in the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/watson-knows

Anti-Social Network

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:59:51Z

Social media is driving teens to a reality they can't handle. This article by Max Martin was published in Mail Today on February 27, 2011.

THIS is the generation of instant messaging and two-minute noodles. Impatient teenagers are always plugged in to their computers and cell phones. Their reality is virtual and most of their friends can be found online. "It's the coolest way to keep in touch," says Charlotte William, a college student in Bangalore whose Facebook was got flooded with birthday greetings on Saturday. Her FB page is an almost-instantly updated open book of her life.

Such minute-by-minute minute updates are an integral part of any teenager's life but the older generation is cautious. Not just old-fashioned people but even the tech-savvy are raising several issues with this uncontrolled explosion of social networking. India is the seventh largest social networking market in the world, with millions of users and many issues like privacy, etiquette, commercial, and political interests. Even though people have control over the information they post online, unauthorised access -- usage and republication -- is a major cause of concern, says Nikhil Pahwa, who publishes MediaNama, a mobile business news site based in Delhi. "You put up information about friends and family without realising the enormous consequences of it being in the public domain," says Pahwa.

"I see a lot of people exchanging personal messages and phone numbers on their walls. A lot of people are rather nonchalant about it," says Christian Wolff, a German development researcher, living in Hyderabad, who finds it amazing how Indians are not as concerned about their privacy as they should be. Bangalore-based lawyer Sarim Naved says the internet gives people a misplaced sense of anonymity, which makes them shed their inhibitions -- and etiquette. Should you allow a friend to post pictures of you from that crazy party last night? What if a family member sees them? We still live by traditional values and customs and footloose pictures may not be appreciated.

And while you may think that your privacy settings are in place to never allow such an unfortunate incident take place, privacy settings give a false sense of security. "Many people cannot figure out how to put filters on," says Yamini Atmavilas, a teacher of gender studies in Hyderabad. She also says that social networking is a mixed bag: "Studies show that women use social networks differently from men. They have helped build women's social capital, providing an outlet for connection and expression."

AARTI Mundkur, who was involved in the national 'Pink Chaddi' campaign against the pub-attacking Sri Ram Sene, agrees. "Social networks capture only the imagination of the upper middle class -- and fail to evoke any other kind of response," says this activist lawyer. While the social media is powerful -- and can be used for many purposes -- it is limited in scope.

Also, these sites are turning into what Wolff calls 'all-devouring marketing machines'. Facebook, for instance, is always in the midst of some controversy over its automatic personalisation or using technology to accommodate differences between individuals, so that disbursing personalised advertisements gets easier. Most of us do not realise that every little bit of information we post online is under the scrutiny of corporate entities that analyse and track browsing, spending, networking, and even music preferences.

"They make money with the data you post online for free," says Anivar Aravind, an IT consultant and commentator who started the online campaign for justice for Binayak Sen. "Even worse is when these service providers pass on this personal information to the government as Yahoo did in China leading to the imprisonment of a journalist," says Aravind.

Also getting increasingly active in the online circuit are crooks, says Shantanu Ghosh, who handles the India product operations of Symantec, a leading network and computer security firm. These crooks, he says, launch virus attacks, put up false events to attract people, and spoof networking sites to extract personal data.

"This attack was observed before the Cricket World Cup 2011. Attackers had created a page offering ticket deals for the World Cup final in Mumbai, requiring users to log into their social networking accounts. Those who fell for this trick would have ended up revealing their confidential login information to these attackers." Ghosh advises: "You should treat anything you see online with skepticism -- especially if it involves clicking a link or installing an application." Also make sure you check and understand privacy policies and settings.

This is even more important because existing laws on cyber crime are not strong enough. Also, the question whether new laws will be effective remains.

"It really depends on the law. If it goes into too much detail then it will be rendered irrelevant because of advancements in technology," says Sunil Abraham, who heads Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research group. "A good law usually focuses on principles. What we need in India is a privacy regulator that can dynamically interpret the principles in law to quickly react to developments on the internet."

Read the article in Mail Today here
Also see the article in the Free Library here
Download the news from Mail Today here (pdf, 2.92 MB)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/anti-social-network

Note on the Authorities under the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (9th February 2011)

praskrishna — 2011-08-24T05:42:13Z

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) released a revised draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act which is up for comments on the MSJE website. The Centre for Law and Policy Research, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society jointly submitted a note on the section on statutory authorities.

This Note is on the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (Hereinafter "The PWD Act, 2011") which was released on 9th February, 2011[1] to specifically review the authorities established under the PWD Act, 2011, the powers and functions assigned to the authorities and the effect of the establishment of these authorities.

The Disability Rights Authority
Vague provisions

The main functions of the DRA are to formulate rules, regulations, guidelines, schemes and other activities. Under section 29 (I), the DRA also has the power to monitor enforcment of the Act and to protect the rights of persons with disabilities and to suo moto address violations of rights of perosns with disabilities. In this regard, the provisions of the Act are vague. There are no provisions to indicate what penalties the DRA may impose in the event of any violation of the provisions of the PWD Act 2011. Wide powers are given to the DRA with regard to promotion, protection, monitoring and even enforcement of rights under the Act. However it is not clear as to how exactly these functions, especially the monitoring and enforcement of rights should be performed.

Powers of review and advice

Under Section 29J, the DRA has the power to review and advise the government to take measures with regard to laws that discriminate against persons with disability. This power will affect the functioning of the authorities under the other disability legislations such as the Mental Health Act,1987 and the National Trusts Act, 1999 as these legislations will be considered to be discriminatory on the issue of legal capacity. Therefore these other disability legislations need to be amended before the DRA can act on its review and advice powers.

Further, in many of the provisions of the Act, there is a mention of a 'designated authority' to perform certain functions without specifying what the designated authority is or who designates the authority. It is unclear as to whether the 'designated authority' refers to a new authority to be established under the Act or it refers to the DRA.
The Disability Courts

Multiplicity of Fora for grievance redressal

There is no clarity on the intended structure of the courts at different levels. The word “Court” is not defined anywhere under the Act, which is a great lacuna. There are several different for a provided for grievance redressal under the Act – the DRA, the Court of the National Disability Commissioner, the State Disability Courts and the Grievance Redressal Officer in each establishment. It is not clear as to whether these authorities under the Act have concurrent power or whether a person has to approach one authority and seek remedy before going to another. Over and above these courts and fora, the regular civil courts, family courts, High Courts would also have jurisdiction. It is not clear as to whether the jurisdiction of all other courts is ousted by the Act in setting up the special State Disability Courts and the Court of the National Disability Commissioner.

Section 6(7) and (8) empower “a court or the disability court” to make suitable orders on finding the occurrence of discrimination. These Sections merely mention a ‘court’ without specifying which court is referred to as there is no definition of ‘court’ under the Act. There is also no provision under the Act which allows a person to approach any other ordinary court for reliefs under the Act. Therefore it is not clear as to what this Section refers to when it uses the word ‘court’.
The Court of the National Disability Commissioner

Under Section 29S (2), the Act allows a person to directly approach the National Disability Commissioner only if the person is aggrieved of “discrimination” under the Act and not for other cases of violation. On the other hand, under section 29S (1) (c ) the Court of the National Disability Commissioner has the power to suo moto address all infringment of rights. There is a great contradiction therefore in the jurisdiction of the Court of the National Disability Commissioner.

Further, although there is an entire part of the Act which is dedicated to the imposition of penalties and sanctions, there are no provisions for the National Disability Commissioner to impose any penalties and sanctions.

The National Disability Commissioner acts as the appellate authority on the orders of the DRA. But there is no provision to appeal from the orders of the State Disability Court.
The State Disability Courts

The State Disability Courts have a wider jurisdiction that the National Disability Commissioner in that a person can approach the State Disability Courts complaining of violation of any rights under the Act.
Even in case of the State Disability Court there is no specific provision that allows the court to impose penalties and sanctions detailed under the Act.

Conclusion

The PWD Act, 2011 has made some changes from its earlier draft in December 2010. With regard to the authorities established under the Act, there are many inconsistencies which need to be resolved before the Act can come into force. The powers and the functions of all the authorities need to be clearly demarcated. Further, the empowering provisions should be linked to the provisions which prescribe the procedure through which the powers can be exercised. Provisions imposing penalties and sanctions should be linked to the authorities which have the power to impose the same. There are several authorities which all have power to look into violations of the Act, which can confuse a person seeking remedies under the Act. Unless these issues are addressed, the PWD, Act 2011 would cause major practical problems at the stage of implementing the rights recognised under the Act.

[1]See Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011, available at http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/workdraftdd.pdf (Last visited on 21-02-2011)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities

Accessible Mobile Handsets in India: An Overview

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T10:29:30Z

Over a thousand mobile handsets are sold in India today and new models are launched almost every few weeks. However, the number of accessible handsets continues to be disproportionately low. The Centre for Internet and Society conducted a research on the mobile market to gauge how many handsets in India are accessible for persons with disabilities. Handsets were judged on the basis of a few common accessibility features and pricing.

The findings reveal that 108 handset models came with screen readers and 100 were magnifier compatible. Thirty one of them were touch phones and only 15 models had QWERTY keypads.

The study found that the price of 60 of the available options was either high or very high (Rs. 10,000 and above) and only 48 handsets are available at a reasonable or low price.

For available handset options for persons with disabilities, click below:

PDF [612 kb]
Open Office [24 kb]
Word [42kb]

Some of the major cross platform and proprietary mobile operating systems were also examined for their accessibility features. These included Windows Mobile, iPhone for Apple, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7. All the operating systems offer features such as font customization, menu style, menu icons and voice recognition. However, only two offer built-in screen readers and only one OS offers a built in screen magnifier. Three operating systems support third party screen readers and two also support third party screen magnifiers.

The table [click on the links below] (also compiled by Mukesh Sharma) provides more details on the features offered by various operating systems:

Word [14 kb]
PDF [16 kb]
Open Office [15 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-mobile-handsets

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2011-10-21T08:24:19Z

Facebook designing your online identity is like designing your rooms with furniture from the bazaar. The only individuality lies in your family pictures standing on the shelves. On Saturday, April 2, 2011, CIS is organising a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

In the Web 2.0 world, most users of technology are reduced to being mere ‘users’. We are offered almost an endless number of choices but do not have the freedom to go against the ‘laws’ and ‘rules’ of the system we operate in. Take Facebook for example. Have you ever wondered if you can change the way Facebook works? Sure, we can start campaigns and mobilize people to impact some of the policies but we never think about the very design of Facebook and the laws that govern it.

What if you could change Facebook’s laws? In this workshop we begin modifying Facebook.com for ourselves, using the unique concept of “browser-hacks”. The aim is to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook’s software to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts. We further want to explore, how this creative intervention can also be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Facebook Resistance is a research initiative accepting the status quo of Facebook being the dominant social identity management system, researching on the ways to change its rules and functionality from inside the system. Facebook sets the rules of how-to behave, so we’re asking: Are we happy with their interface, features and rules or do we want to change them? A change can be as trivial as adding a background-image. As initiator Tobias Leingruber (@tbx), puts it: “Facebook designing your online identity is like IKEA designing your apartment. The only individuality lies in the family pictures standing in your BILLY shelves.”

While early online networks like Geocities.com encouraged its users to entirely modify their online presence, Myspace.com and Web 2.0 have steered this “User Generated Content” into a commercially valuable structure. Facebook has finalized this “evolution” by disabling the user to do anything but feeding the system that gives Facebook it’s estimated value of 50 Billion US$. Facebook is taking over the social web, and its design follows Mark Zuckerberg’s ideals. To quote Lawrence Lessig: “The code is law. The architectures of cyberspace are as important as the law in defining and defeating the liberties of the Net.”

Trainer

Marc Stumpel (@Zuurstof) is a privacy/user-control advocate, holding a MA degree in New Media and Digital culture. He has recently discussed browser hacks in his thesis:

‘The Politics of Social Media. Facebook: Control and Resistance’, and continues to elaborate on this type of resistance while travelling in India. Several Facebook Resistance workshops already took place in Europe, organized by initiator Tobias Leingruber (@tbx) a famous artist and free communication designer working in viral media, popular culture, amateur aesthetics and browser apps.

Example Ideas

Dislike Button
Graffiti Wall (based on GML/webmarker.me)
Auto-comment generator (e.g. LOL or Kanye West speak)
Custom background images and visual css styling for your visitors
Themes, e.g. change your Facebook’s colour: pink, yellow…

Skill-set participants

It would be great to have a few people with some web development experience (html/css/javascript), or Photoshop skills, but also people who can write good (philosophical) texts are very welcome. In the end everyone who really uses web 2.0 will fit in, so just come and join us!

Information and registration

We have place for 20 people. You can register by sending an email to digitalnatives [at] cis-india.org. The workshop takes place at the the Centre for Internet and Society on Saturday, April 2nd from 11.00 to 17.00 hr. There is no charge for taking part in the workshop, but make sure to bring your laptop or mobile computing devices with you.

If you have questions please contact Marc Stumpel: m.stumpel[at]gmail.com.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/facebook-resistance

New Indian Rules May Make Online Censorship Easier

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:57:20Z

Draft rules proposed by the Indian government for intermediaries such as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and blogging sites could in effect aid censorship, according to experts. The article by John Ribeiro was published in Yahoo News on March 7, 2011.

Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their services not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of content, for which the definition is very vague, and liable to misuse.

Content that is prohibited under these guidelines ranges from information that may "harm minors in any way" to content that is "harmful, threatening, abusive."

Some of the terms are so vague that to stay on the right side of the law, intermediaries may in effect remove third-party content that is even mildly controversial, said Pavan Duggal, a cyberlaw consultant and advocate in India's Supreme Court.

While the definition of some of the terms like obscenity have been ruled on by India's Supreme Court, some of the other terms do not have a precise legal definition, said Pranesh Prakash, program manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group focused on consumer and citizen rights on the Internet.

"Would creating a Facebook profile for a minor, for example be considered as harming a minor ?" Duggal said.

The draft rules are secondary legislation framed by the government under the country's Information Technology (Amendment) Act of 2008. Under the IT Act, an intermediary is not liable for any third-party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by him, if among other things, he has observed due diligence under the draft rules.

The new rules will give rise to subjective interpretations, thus giving a lot of discretion to non-judicial authorities in the country to decide whether the intermediary has observed due diligence or not, Duggal said.

According to the draft rules, an intermediary has to inform users that in case of non-compliance of its terms of use of the services and privacy policy, it has the right to immediately terminate the access rights of the users to its site. After finding out about infringing content, either on its own or through the authorities, the intermediary has to work with the user or owner of the information to remove access to the information.

Rather than recognizing the diversity of the businesses of intermediaries, the draft rules use a "one-size, fits all" set of rules across a variety of intermediaries including telecom service providers, online payment sites, e-mail service providers, and Web hosting companies, Duggal said.

An intermediary such as a site with user-generated content, like Wikipedia, would need different terms of use from an intermediary such as an e-mail provider, because the kind of liability they accrue are different, Prakash wrote in his blog.

The draft rules also add new provisions that appear designed to give the government easier access to content from intermediaries. Intermediaries will be required to provide information to authorized government agencies for investigative, protective, cybersecurity or intelligence activity, according to the rules.

Information will have to be provided for the purpose of verification of identity, or for prevention, detection, prosecution and punishment of offenses, on a written request stating clearly the purpose of seeking such information, the rules add.

The IT Act already has specific procedures in this connection for very specific information requirements, but the draft rules have broadened this to a general requirement for intermediaries to provide information, Prakash said. The new rule could in fact be a way of circumventing the earlier laws, he added.

The draft rules assume significance in the context of recent moves by the Indian government to get Research In Motion to provide access to information on BlackBerry services in India. While providing lawful access to its consumer services like BlackBerry Messenger, RIM has declined to provide access to its corporate service, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, claiming that it does not have access to customers' encryption keys.

The Indian government has previously also said it would demand lawful access from Google's Gmail and Skype, but has not taken any action so far in this direction.

The draft rules will require compliance from a number of entities who until now had thought they were outside the ambit of compliance, Duggal said.

Google did not immediately respond to e-mailed requests for its comments on the new rules. Microsoft said that the government should set the policy objectives and provide directional framework, and still allow flexibility to intermediaries to set the data protection measures as they deem fit for different situations and services.

"We believe that the intermediary should be obliged to take down non-compliant content on being notified of the same as well as terminate access rights for those who use these platforms for dissemination of non-compliant content," Microsoft said in an e-mailed statement. Non-compliance include, but is not limited to, copyrights, it added.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.

Read the original in Yahoo News here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/online-censorship

Tactical Tech's ONO Party!

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T07:19:47Z

Tactical Tech has made friends with ONO Robot , a friendly Robot Guide and the star of four animated shorts of a series called Survival in the Digital Age, and we'd like to invite you to watch the series with us at our ONO Party.

Activists and independent journalists don't often realise that the information and communications technologies they use can compromise their security and have implications for privacy, freedom of expression and access to information. As an organisation working at the meeting point of advocacy and technology, Tactical Tech finds these issues essential to anyone using technologies to facilitate and strengthen their advocacy work. To raise awareness about the digital traces we leave behind Survival in the Digital Age aims to engage activists to better understand the information and communications technologies they use, so that they can make more informed decisions about the risks they may face.

We're going to be showing the four shorts over party games, snacks and drinks at our ONO Party so do join us on Thursday, March 3rd

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/CIS-tacticaltechONO

February 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:16:29Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects have been published online for public review:

Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities

Digital Natives

CIS has interest in developing Digital Identities as a core research area and looks at practices, policies and scholarships in the field to explore relationships between Internet, technology and identity. The Digital Natives project is funded by Hivos, Netherlands. CIS involvement has resulted into these:

Columns on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following articles were published in the Indian Express recently:

Pull the Plug [published in the Indian Express on February 20, 2011]
A FLASH of Change [published in the Indian Express on February 6, 2011]
Wiki changes the world [published in the Indian Express on January 23, 2011]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project took place in Santiago, Chile, from 8 to 10 February 2011. Samuel Tettner wrote a report about the workshop:

Digital Natives with a Cause? —Workshop in Santiago — an Afterthought

Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is doing Masters on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause? framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:

Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Coordinator in the Digital Natives project. He has written one blog entry:

Computer Science & Society – The Roles Defined

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

The Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010: Does it exceed its Mandate in Including Provisions Relating to Other Disability Legislations?

Intellectual Property

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Entries

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software, its latest involvement have yielded these results:

New Blog Entries

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralised authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has taken the following shape:

Announcement

Google Policy Fellowship Program: Asia Chapter

New Blog Entries

Privacy

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24^th March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Blog Entries by Elonnai Hickok

Elonnai Hickok is a Programme Associate in the Privacy in Asia project. She has published a series of Open Letters to the Finance Committee regarding the UID:

Other New Blog Entries

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum auctions - 'Jhatka' or 'Halal'? [published in the Business Standard on February 3, 2011]

Forthcoming Events

CIS is holding some conferences/workshops in the month of March in Delhi and Bangalore:

Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Electronication: Ragas and the Future (March 6, 2011 Jaaga, Bangalore)
Design!publiC (March 18, 2011, Taj Vivanta, New Delhi)

Staff Update

Deepti Bharthur

Deepti Bhartur is a Research Intern at CIS. She did her BA (Hons) in Journalism from Lady Sriram College, University of Delhi and completed her Masters in Communication from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. Deepti joined the Accessibility team of CIS and is working on accessibility in telecom policy in India.

News & Media Coverage

Growing cyberspace controls, Internet filtering (Hindu, February 20, 2011)
2(m) or not 2(m) (Business Standard, February 19, 2011)
Can the twitterati change the world? (The Times of India, February 12, 2011)
Can the mouse be a tool of revolution in India? (DNA, February 12, 2011)
Social Network Suicide (Bangalore Mirror, February 6, 2011)
New Kids on the Blog (Indian Express, February 6, 2011)
Procuring books in Indian libraries (Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, February 4, 2011)
What Are You Accused of? Find Out Online (Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2011)
One among the clan of Wikipedians (Hindu, January 27, 2011)
Digital Wrongs (Forbes India, January 24, 2011)

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

Looking forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.
CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin

Growing cyberspace controls, Internet filtering

praskrishna — 2011-08-20T14:36:26Z

OpenNet Initiative investigates, analyses filtering and surveillance practices, writes T Ramachandran in this article published in the Hindu on Sunday, February 20, 2011.

Governments in many parts of the world have been aggressively adopting a new generation of controls aimed at filtering and controlling information flow on the Internet, citing concerns such as cyber security, crime and terrorism, according to the OpenNet Initiative.

The OpenNet Initiative, which says it “investigates and analyses Internet filtering and surveillance practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion,” in its updated study released last year titled, “Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace,” said that it was fast becoming the global norm to control information flow on the Internet.

The OpenNet is a collaborative partnership between the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the Ottawa-based SecDev Group.

Asked whether the trend was likely to become more pronounced, given the recent developments in the Middle East, one of the contributors to the study, Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Centre, said, “In general, we see governments becoming more aggressive and more overt about their Internet filtering.”

The OpenNet has described the recent Internet blackout in Egypt as ‘just-in-time-blocking' - when information flow is brought to a halt during critical times such as political crises, elections, or social unrest. Discussions have resurfaced about the deployment of 'Internet kill switches,' a way in which nations could snuff out the Internet when such a crisis occurs.

“For all the talk of Internet kill switches, turning off the Internet is a relatively easy and unsophisticated thing to do. What is hardest to do is filtering on finer, more granular levels,” Mr. Zuckerman told The Hindu.

The first-generation controls were deployed primarily at Internet “choke points,” places in the network where Internet addresses that had been blacklisted by the authorities could be filtered and blocked. These were mainly the gateways run by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The number-based IP addresses connected to particular websites or domain names could be used for the blocking. Keywords could also be used in weeding out proscribed sites or pages.

Reports of watchdogs such as the OpenNet and Freedom House indicate that though not pronounced, selective filtering has been a part of the Indian Internet scene. Google's Transparency Report for the first half of 2010 also shows that India is among the nations from where a number of government inquiries for information about users and requests to remove or censor content emanate.

“As far as censorship of Internet goes in India it is still first generation in terms of blocking and filtering at the Internet choke points. However, the Indian government has made and is making several moves that continue to undermine privacy and anonymity on the Internet. This has a chilling effect on freedom of expression and information accessing behaviour on the Internet,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Second and third generation techniques of Internet filtering, as described in Access Controlled, are “more subtle, flexible, and even offensive in character,” often using legal regulations to supplement or legitimise technical filtering measures, extralegal or covert practices. These include the use of viruses to infiltrate computer systems, the launching of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and surveillance at strategic points in the Internet and telecommunications infrastructure. The DDoS attacks involve directing traffic of such large volume at targeted sites during a particular period, in order to crash them, or keep them largely inaccessible. Counter-information campaigns could also be mounted, supplemented by policy measures and other strategies, including legal ones.

Governments have also been assiduously building up capabilities for monitoring and intercepting the large volume of information that flows on the Internet, including email, which mostly flows through the infrastructure of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Internet exchange points. In the Indian context, the I.T. Act “along with the ISP licences allows for blanket surveillance and also data retention,” says Mr. Abraham.

It is difficult to say if this sort of monitoring and interception is really effective in countering terrorism and other national security threats, says Mr. Zuckerman. “I don't believe trading privacy for security is a fair trade.”

Read the original news in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/growing-cyberspace-controls

Social Network Suicide

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:54:43Z

Those disillusioned with their virtual friends circle are saying goodbye through web applications that wipe out your net identity. What’s more, you can even have your own memorial page, says Sahana Charan in this article published in the Bangalore Mirror on Sunday, February 6, 2011.

It is funny that even though some young people claim to have a thousand friends on social networking sites, they may actually never socialise with any of their virtual buddies. So when the “net” benefits don’t translate to reality, there is disillusionment. And then they may stop being active on networking sites. That’s the beauty and tragedy of virtual friendships.

And this is just one of the many reasons why your friend — who was otherwise tweeting her every mundane activity or would update her status message on Facebook every nano-second — might have suddenly become incommunicado.

As pressures to keep up virtual appearances become taxing and unpleasant experiences make social networking sites “not-so-safe” to share intimate details, many young people are opting out of these networks, deactivating their accounts and taking web sanyaas.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore says that in India this is a relatively new phenomenon and only a small group of people have actually committed web suicide using applications that wipe out your virtual identity. But a bigger number of netizens may be killing their networking accounts, because of a variety of resons — ranging from internet stalking to “no guaranteed benefits.”

“Many people may get onto a social networking site to use it for meeting rituals, to look for partners and to get information on jobs. When these are fulfilled they may decide to move out. Some people realise that a lot of their time and energy goes into updating accounts on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace, but it has not helped them get ‘real world’ benefits, so they just stop being active,” says Abraham.

Virtual disappearance

With the deactivation came some applications which help you go peacefully into a social network death — Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Sepukkoo.com promise to remove your virtual identity completely so that you can make real friends. While Suicide Machine irreversibly removes all your friends, groups, photos and vidoes one by one and joins you to its “Social Network Suiciders,” Sepukkoo goes one step ahead and creates a memorial page for you.

What’s ironical is that you are actually going to another network and this one’s called ‘suicide networking’, where you encourage friends to leave their social circles. Both applications have been banned by Facebook but work on other sites.

So why would a popular guy deactivate his account ? Joe V J, a 28-year-old IT professional, who was regularly uploading pictures of his new bike or parties with friends on Facebook, took himself off the site recently. He realised that people who were not meant to see his profile and candid shots, had access and were posting comments.

“I got into the site because it was a great place to bond with friends. But then I realised that relatives and acquaintances who I had no clue about, were on the social network, had started pinging. They would look at pictures and express shock and then tell other people. It became a little too much, so I just decided to click the deactivate option,” he says.

Privacy concerns

It can get really ugly and those being harassed online may just disappear to save their privacy. Tinu Cherian, a techie and Wikipedia administrator speaks of an incident where another administrator was harassed by a cyber troll because he had blocked this guy from making wrong updates on Wiki’s pages.

“He had no option but to wipe out his Twitter account, which was hacked into and damning information was uploaded.”

Privacy concerns rise as Facebook decides to share account information with marketeers. “When Facebook first started, only 10 per cent of your information on the site could be seen by an outsider, but in 2011, 90 per cent of your information can be accessed by people other than your friends,” says Abraham.

There is another reason why people go off online networks. “When it first came, Facebook was considered the Ivy league and everyone wanted to be there. Youngsters suddenly thought Orkut was infradig and ceased to be on that site. So sometimes, people may just move out because they want to be somewhere else.” And that’s why the networking tamasha continues.

Read the article in the Bangalore Mirror

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/social-network-suicide