Centre for Internet and Society

Open access to government data on the cards

praskrishna — 2012-03-26T07:31:48Z

The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). T Ramachandran's article was published in the Hindu on March 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.

Following its recent approval by the Union Cabinet, the policy has been notified and is in the process of being gazetted, said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of the Natural Resources Data Management System, Department of Science and Technology.

The use of open data as a tool for promoting governmental transparency and efficiency has been gaining ground in some parts of the world. An Open Government Partnership was launched last year by the United States and seven other governments. Forty-three other governments have joined the partnership, which has endorsed an Open Government Declaration, expressing a commitment to better “efforts to systematically collect and publish data on government spending and performance for essential public services and activities.” It acknowledges the ‘right' of citizens to seek information on governmental activities.

India has not joined the partnership, but is collaborating with the U.S. in developing an open source version of software for a data portal.

The NDSAP states that at least five ‘high value' data sets should be uploaded to a newly created portal, data.gov.in, in three months of the notification of the policy. Uploading of the remaining data sets should be completed within a year.

The Department of Science and Technology will co-ordinate the effort and create the portal through the National Informatics Centre. The Department of Information Technology will work out the implementation guidelines, including those related to technology and data standards.

Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, said the removal of “a few good aspects” in an earlier draft of the policy — such as linkage with Sections 8 and 9 of the Right to Information Act that specify the kinds of information exempt from disclosure by the authorities — had weakened it “even further.” “None of the criticisms the CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed,” he said.

The NDSAP seeks “to provide an enabling provision and platform for providing proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments/organisations of the government of India.”

However, the Ministries and Departments can draw up, within six months of the notification of the policy, a negative list of data-sets that will not be shared, subject to periodic review by an ‘oversight committee.'

The policy envisages three types of access to data: open, registered and restricted. Access to data in the open category will be “easy, timely, user-friendly and web-based without any process of registration/authorisation.” But data in the registered access category will be accessible “only through a prescribed process of registration/authorisation by respective departments/organisations” and available to “recognised institutions/organisations/public users, through defined procedures.” Data categorised as restricted will be made available only “through and under authorisation.”

The policy also provides for pricing, with the Ministries and Departments being asked to formulate their norms for data in the registered and restricted access categories within three months of the notification of the policy.

Read the original published in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data

Is your facebook page your mini resume?

praskrishna — 2012-03-26T07:27:43Z

As privacy debates heat up across the world, Bangaloreans reveal the trend of employers asking job aspirants for their Facebook IDs and passwords has caught on here too. When Adil Pasha, 24, revealed at an advertising job interview that his main strength was creativity, his interviewers asked for his FB password to check his latest updates.

This was published in IBNLive on March 26, 2012 . Sunil Abraham is quoted in this.

They rejected him, as he was going through a break-up and had put up song lyrics as his status message. On the other hand, Sukanya Srinivasan, 19, got an internship chance at a leading IT firm solely based on her FB photo albums.

“A company recently rejected my application after looking at the number of people I’d blocked on my chat list. They thought I didn’t have good interpersonal skills. I might be a friendly, harmless flirt, but the company might think I could sexually harass women employees. If they see my photos at a party, they might think I’m an alcoholic,” said Kiran Giridhar (name changed), who has attended over 12 interviews in the last two months, where his social life mattered more.

Recently, Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said they had seen a distressing increase in reports of employers seeking to gain access to people’s Facebook profiles or private information.

“The most alarming of these practices is the reported incidents of employers asking prospective or actual employees to reveal their passwords,” she wrote on the website’s privacy page. The controversy is now being fought on moral and ethical grounds.

"This is a privacy infringement but there is no provision in the law (IT Act-2008) that prohibits employers from asking for personal information. This is happening with the willingness of potential candidates. If a person finds it unacceptable, he/she shouldn’t share the password. Background checks are common as some companies deal with sensitive information. So it’s not illegal, but intrusive. I think some power relationships can be abused if they cross the social networking barrier — like a boss-employee and teacher-student relationship. Corporate policy should prevent such things," explained Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-page-mini-resume

Locating the Mobile

praskrishna — 2015-10-05T15:02:24Z

The project examines questions of inter personal relationships, intimacies, community formations and belonging to examine processes of internal migration and dislocation as a result of growing mobile and internet usage in urban India and China.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/locating-mobile

We, the Cyborgs

praskrishna — 2015-04-10T09:12:23Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/we-cyborgs

We Have the Answer for You. So, what's the Question?

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:30:51Z

The Everyday Digital Native Video Contest invited everyone to send in videos that answered the question: who's the everyday digital native? Participants from all parts of the globe now have the answers.

Click here to view the videos and vote for your favorite! Voting ends March 31, 2012.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/answer-for-you-what-is-the-question

Click, Play, Watch

praskrishna — 2012-03-20T12:52:44Z

Filmmakers are casting the net for viewers and opting for online releases to reach out to a wider audience, finds Rinky Kumar in this article published in MidDay on March 18, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted in this.

Till some time ago, the movie-going experience was a means for people to spend quality time with their loved ones. An evening planned in detail (right from booking the tickets to buying snacks), followed by dinner was de rigueur. Today, however, that has been replaced by an evening indoors where you can watch a commercial film or a critically-acclaimed documentary within the confines of your home, thanks to online releases.

A growing phenomenon

Take the case of Marathi movie Jana Gana Mana, which released online as well as in theatres on January 26. It wasn't the only one. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar released his documentary Inshallah, Kashmir: Living Terror free of charge on YouTube on the same day. The very next month, debutant director Adeeb Rais released his film Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha, starring Purab Kohli, online on February 29.

Jana Gana Mana was the first commercial Marathi film to see an online release

Director Amit Abhyankar's Jana Gana Mana, which revolved around a teacher's relationship with the kids of the Faasi Pardi tribe in rural Maharashtra, garnered as many as 2,000 views within four days of its online release. He says, "We tied up with geodesi.com, which owns filmorbit.com, and ensured that viewers could log on to the site, select Jana Gana Mana and watch the film. While Indian viewers were charged Rs 30, people abroad had to pay $2.99. Surprisingly, only 30 per cent of the audience comprised Indians, the remaining 70 per cent were expatriates from far-flung countries like Tanzania and Israel."

A still from Inshallah, Kashmir: Living Terror, which was released online by director Ashvin Kumar to bypass censorship that his previous two films faced

In fact, Abhyankar has been flooded with requests to screen his movie abroad. He claims that apart from the Maharashtra Mandal of Los Angeles, which approached him to screen the film, 28 shows of the movie have been lined up in various parts of the world till May 5.

Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha recently received the YouTube Bronze Award for Most Trending Video

Likewise, Kumar's documentary, which sees Kashmiris open up about the brutality they suffer at the hands of militants and the Indian state alike, was supposed to become pay-per-view after the first 24 hours. "But when I saw the overwhelming response (over 50,000 views in three days), we kept it free for over a week. These figures are quite impressive since it's an 80-minute film and it's a known fact that India doesn't boast speedy Internet connections. But the fact that people had the patience to watch the film is heartwarming. Also, we didn't promote the film at all, I only posted about it on Facebook," enthuses Kumar.

Rais's film got as many as 1 million hits within three days of its release. Recently it also received the YouTube Bronze Award for the Most Trending Video. This medal is given to videos that have gained huge attention over a certain span of time and are currently seeing exceptional growth in viewership.

A new medium

Why are filmmakers choosing the online medium to release their movies? Some say it gives them an opportunity to showcase their work to the audience without shelling out a lot of money, while for others it is a way of making a statement. After his two earlier films, Inshallah Football and Dazed in Doon were banned, Kumar chose the Internet to screen Inshallah Kashmir to bypass the censor authorities, take a stand against them as well as give viewers the real picture of what is happening in the strife-torn valley. "There were several reasons why I uploaded the film online. Firstly, I wanted to make a statement that pre-censorship of any art form is unnecessary in this age of the Internet when everything can be accessed easily online. Secondly, viewers didn't have to pay for watching it, and that way more people saw what was actually happening in Kashmir," he explains.

For Abhyankar, the primary motive was to reach out to a larger audience. "It's well-known that distribution of Marathi films isn't great. I was very clear that my movie should reach out to more people and shouldn't just be limited to a theatrical release." Twenty-something Rais realised that releasing Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha on the Internet was the only way for him to showcase his work as well as reach out to a large audience. "Since it is a 25-minute short film, I didn't have the option of releasing it commercially. Either I could release it online or screen it at film festivals. The movie is a quirky take on a young commitment-phobic man, so I didn't think it was a good fit for the festival circuit."

According to Rais, he understood that it wasn't an easy task to make an impact in the online world, given the sea of videos that are uploaded every minute. So he decided to market his film well. He explains, "Because the movie was made on a limited budget, I had to seek sponsorship. I tied up with around 17 or 18 brands, including Tata Housing, Bharat Matrimony.com, Miss Malini.com and Upper Crust to market the film through online contests."

Sociological change

What has led to this phenomenon? Sunil Abraham, Executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, explains, "The times are changing. Earlier, creative artistes depended on intermediaries like studios, TV channels and theatres to screen their work and connect with viewers. Now, they are looking at the online medium to connect with the audience directly."

Kumar couldn't agree more. He opines that he had uploaded Inshallah Kashmir with an open mind and accepted the bouquets and brickbats with equal aplomb. "The Internet is a fairly democratic medium. Your audience shares views, opinions and abuses. While some loved the movie, others called me an Islamic fundamentalist. But I didn't mind as it was their honest opinion."

According to Abhyankar, the online medium is a boon for filmmakers as it is the only way for them to earn a considerable profit individually without sharing it with other entities. "When your movie is screened at theatres, apart from paying the satellite agencies for beaming the film, you have to incur expenses for screen prints and advertising. Later, you have to recover your money from exhibitors, which can be a long-winded process. In case of an online medium, the money is transferred directly to your account. Apart from converting the film into a format that can be viewed by everyone, you don't have to invest too much money."

Filmmakers also love that there is no pre-screening process involved online. "Only after the movie is uploaded and a user comments against objectionable or defamatory content, can it be removed from the website," informs Abraham.

Looking ahead

With the expanding reach of the Internet, filmmakers believe this trend will only grow. On their part, they are looking to explore it further. Enthused by the response to Jana Gana Mana, Abhyankar is now planning to make it available offline too. He shares, "Right now we are in talks with a company that has a unique technology whereby you don't have to visit the site and stream the movie. The technology enables viewers to get offline copies of the movie, which you can copy onto your pen drive. Once you connect your pen drive to the computer, the software will automatically connect you to the site and you have to just make the payment. In a few months time, we are also looking at releasing ad-supported versions of the film wherein viewers don't have to pay to watch the movie but will have to see it along with all the ads." As Rais, who is working on another project, Beyond Hatke, which will have an online release in October this year, says on a parting note, "Today people no longer have to go to theatres to watch a film, they can see movies on their laptops, mobile phones, while doing household chores and travelling to work. The Internet is definitely a boon for everyone."

The history of online releases

Rajshri Films released its Shahid Kapoor-Amrita Rao-starrer Vivah simultaneously in cinema halls and on the production company's official site -- Rajshri.com in 2006. The site served one million streams within seven days of its release. Each stream was priced at $9.99 approximately and the company managed to earn Rs.4.5 crore in the first week itself.
Siddharth-starrer Striker had a theatrical release in India and premiered exclusively for its foreign audiences through YouTube in 2010. While the movie was available for rent on YouTube in the US, in other foreign countries, people could view it for free on Studio18's YouTube channel.
After selling the film's soundtrack exclusively through the digital medium, the makers of F.A.L.T.U, released their movie simultaneously in Indian theatres and on the online medium for foreign audiences in 2011. Viewers had to pay a booking fee of $2.89 in order to watch the stream on www.zeetv.com/faltu.

Read the original published in MidDay

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/click-play-watch

Vote for the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest!

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:32:00Z

The Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos are super excited to present the final videos in the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest. We invite readers to vote for the TOP 5 Videos. The finalists will each win EUR500! Voting closes March 31, 2012

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? This global video contest has the answer

They effect social change through social media, place their communities on the global map, and share a spiritual connection with the digital world - Meet the Everyday Digital Native

The Everyday Digital Native video contest has got its pulse on what makes youths from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds connect with one another in the global community – it’s an affinity for digital technologies and Web 2.0-mediated platforms coupled with a drive to spearhead social change. The contest invited people from around the world to make a video that would answer the question, ‘Who is the Everyday Digital Native?’. Following a jury-based selection process, the final videos are now online and open for public voting.

Run by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) with the support of Dutch NGO HIVOS, the contest will see the top five videos with the most votes declared winners on April 1, 2012. The 12 finalists in the video, who come from different parts of the globe, are each vying for the top prize of USD 500 and a chance to have their shorts screened in a film screening and panel discussion hosted by CIS.

Referring to the theme of the contest, Dr Nishant Shah, Director of Research and Co-founder of the Centre, says that the contest aims at highlighting the alternative users of digital technologies. These are people who are often not accounted for either in mainstream discourses of changemakers or in academic biopics on digital natives. “The 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘hmmm today I will change the world’. And yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change”, says Shah.

Apart from the top five public selections, the jury members will be instrumental in picking their two favorites among the finalists. Talking about the range of ideas that participants sent in jury member Leon Tan, a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden, says, “The contest is an exciting project as it has the potential to portray the lives of digital natives from different corners of the world. The generosity of the contestants in creating video proposals is commendable as is the range of ideas suggested. The ideas address both the opportunities and risks of what we might call digital life.”

Adds Shashwati Talukdar, a filmmaker and jury member from India, “It was really interesting to see how different all the proposals were. Some of them were taking the notion of digital native as a personal one and some were very clearly political and sought an intervention in the real world. Dutch digital media artist and jury member Jeroen van Loon refers to a proposal from the USA where the participant wanted to explore the possibility of unplugging from his digital life. “It’s very interesting how digital natives question their own world. The proposals are good examples of how technology and culture constantly change each other. We can learn a lot from the global digital natives.”

Profiles of the finalists and their videos can be viewed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives

Expert Meeting on Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property Rights

praskrishna — 2012-03-16T07:41:39Z

This report provides an overview of the discussion from the Expert Meeting on Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property Rights, organized by ARTICLE 19 in London on November 18, 2011.

At the meeting, nineteen international scholars, experts and human rights activists met to explore the antagonistic relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) and the rights to freedom of expression and information (FoE). This conversation is timely if not overdue, as governments are increasingly using the pretext of IP protection to place unjustified restrictions on the exercise of FoE, particularly on the Internet. ARTICLE 19 believes that increasing the profile of the human rights perspective in debates on IP law and policy is essential to protecting FoE, particularly in the digital environment. The objective of the meeting was therefore to develop an appropriate rights framework for evaluating IP law and enforcement mechanisms, to advance a policy paper on the issue and eventually to establish a set of key principles on IP and FoE.

This report outlines:

A summary of the discussions that took place during the meeting; and
Outstanding issues and those requiring follow-up discussion in order to conceptualise and complete a position paper on the subject.

List of Participants

Andrew Puddephatt: Director, Global Partners & Associates
Brett Soloman: Executive Director, ACCESS.
Dinah PoKempner: General Counsel, Human Rights Watch.
Jérémie Zimmermann: Co-founder and spokesperson, LaQuadrature du Net: Internet & Libertés
Jeremy Malcolm: Project Coordinator for IP and Communications; Consumer International.
Jim Killock: Executive Director, Open Rights Group
Michael Camilleri: Human Rights Specialist, Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at OAS.
Michael Geist: Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law, Univesity of Ottowa.
Pranesh Prakash: Programme Manager, Center for Internet and Society
Raegan MacDonald: Policy Analyst, ACCESS (Brussels)
Saskia Walzel: Senior Policy Advocate, Consumer Focus
Yaman Akdeniz: Associate Professor in Law; Human Rights Law Research Center, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University.
Walter van Holst: IT legal consultant, Mitopics
Agnes Callamard: Executive Director, ARTICLE 19
Barbora Bukovska: Senior Direct for Law and Policy, ARTICLE 19
David Banisar: Senior Legal Counsel, ARTICLE 19
Gabrielle Guillemin: Legal Officer, ARTICLE 19
Andrew Smith: Lawyer, ARTICLE 19
Michael Polak: Intern, ARTICLE 19

Welcome, Introductions, Purpose

Agnès Callamard opened the meeting with a welcome and introduction, giving a brief overview of ARTICLE 19’s extensive experience over twenty years bringing together coalitions to increase the profile of various advocacy issues and develop key policy documents, including the Camden Principles on FoE and equality, and the Johannesburg Principles on FoE and national security.

In the last three years, the Internet has increasingly come to the forefront of ARTICLE 19’s work. During this time it has become clear that the agenda for protecting IP negatively impacts FoE, and that there is a notable absence of traditional human rights groups engaged with the IP agenda or campaigning on its implications for human rights. ARTICLE 19 believes that there is a clear need for this gap to be filled, for us to enter this dialogue and challenge current preconceptions with an alternative human rights narrative that counters that promoted by IP industries.

The purpose of this meeting, therefore, is to develop a strategy for promoting the FoE perspective in debates on IP. To do this, it is important to first conceptualise the relationship between FoE and IP within a rights framework: to identify how or if these interests should be balanced and what the areas of conflict and conciliation are. This discussion should clarify the best way to proceed, with a view to arrive at a policy paper and eventually a set of principles on how to best protect FoE in the IP context.

Session 1: Brief comments by participants on issues of concern for freedom of expression campaigners in relation to IPR

The objective of the first session was for all participants to identify the most significant issues in current debates on freedom of expression and IP, and the extent to which some issues may have been overlooked, underestimated, or over-emphasised. These issues, ideas and perspectives would then guide discussions during the remainder of the meeting and at future meetings.

All participants agreed that applying a human rights framework to this debate is an important and worthwhile endeavour. The following issues were identified during the discussions:

Conceptual starting point

Participants agreed that the status quo should not be the “starting point” for discussions, and that we should avoid being trapped in the narrative that has been developed and imposed by IP rights holders. This requires questioning accepted language and norms, pushing the boundaries of the debate and thinking outside the box. The proliferation of terms such as “piracy”, “theft” and other criminal law language to describe non-commercial copyright infringement demonstrates the extent to which corporate interest groups have controlled the agenda. We should reject these terms and instead adopt positive language that emphasises the cultural and economic value of information sharing, and frame IP as a potential obstacle to these values. This dialogue should recognise that the relationship between people and information has changed in the digital age, and that a new generation of people express themselves through sharing media online and creating new works such as video mash-ups.

A human right to IP?
Several participants questioned whether we should accept interests in IP as “human rights”, particularly as the concept is one born from censorship. Rejecting IP as a human right would require challenging accepted language such as “intellectual property rights” and “rights holder”. If we speak of IP interests or claims, rather than human rights, then it is also inaccurate to speak of their interaction with other rights as a “conflict between rights” that requires “balancing”. Instead, certain IP claims, and the detection or enforcement mechanisms that support them, should be framed as restrictions on the right to freedom of expression.

Some participants expressed doubts over the value of advocating that IP is not a human right when the idea is already embedded and various regional courts have already recognised it as such. Such a campaign would be difficult and achieve little, particularly as it may require changing established agreements such as Berne and TRIPS that would take decades to reform. Staying within the existing legal framework may be the only pragmatic way to achieve change in the short and medium-term. There was agreement that understanding how different treaties and human rights instruments or bodies understand IP is important before proceeding.

In the alternative, it was suggested that IP could be viewed as a “human right” to the extent that it complements other human rights, such as FoE. Copyright is often justified on terms that it is essential for incentivising creativity and that it is an “engine” of free speech – this argument needs further exploration, as it shows that the two rights may sometimes be complementary. ARTICLE 19 is familiar with a strategy focussed on complementarity, as the Camden Principles promoted a similar approach to advocate that the right to equality and right to FoE were mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory. Similarly, participants spoke about a “social value” approach to viewing IP as a human right, i.e. the greater the social value behind the IP protection, the more weight it would have in a rights “balancing” exercise.

Other suggestions on reframing or reversing IP preconceptions included recommending a system where the “public domain” is the norm and any monopoly interest the exception. Exceptions would have to be argued on a case-by-case basis and would be granted only when it would be in the public interest to do so.

A consensus seemed to develop that rejecting the idea of IP as a right would not be a helpful strategy. However, between the various alternative suggestions the only agreement seemed to be that the issue requires more exploration so that the nature of IP as a right can be better understood. It is anticipated that reaching a definite conclusion on this issue will inevitably not satisfy everyone, but would be necessary to proceed with an advocacy campaign.

The Right to Culture
As well as the right to property and the right to freedom of expression, there is also the right to culture in Article 27 of the UDHR and Article 15 of the ICESCR. Both instruments reflect the tension between a right to access culture and the competing right of individuals to protect the material interests in their intellectual property. Participants recommended further exploration of the economic, social and cultural rights perspective on IP issues and integrating this into a campaign.

Pulling apart multiple IP issues
Participants identified a number of ways in which IP engages freedom of expression, and that it is therefore important that a FoE analysis dealt with these issues separately. One focus should be on the IP protections themselves – these give individuals monopolies over information and thereby restrict others’ FoE. Within this, the breadth of exceptions regimes is important, as these vary significantly between countries, in particular the duration of copyright protection and how ‘fair use’ or ‘fair dealing’ type exceptions are defined. The use of digital rights management systems (DRMS) as preventative measures also relate to this area. A second focus, and a current “hot topic” in IP circles, is the enforcement agenda. This includes the criminalisation of non-commercial IP infringement, the privatisation of policing IP infringement and its impact on net neutrality, and criminal and civil law protections for DRMS.

The difference between types of IP was also discussed. There are different rationales behind copyright, trademarks, and patents. Our approach should be as nuanced and specific as possible – when we are criticising copyright we should only refer to copyright and not IP generally. Unpacking the issues in relation to the different types of IP will be important for developing a coherent policy.

The way that international trade agreements have consistently augmented IP rights was also highlighted. In relation to electronic data, the copyright holder now has so much control over the use of the information, particularly through digital rights management systems protected by the criminal law, that purchasing such products is increasingly more like renting than owning. This augmentation should be tracked and highlighted in an advocacy campaign.

Advocacy Strategy
It was also noted that developing a human rights perspective on IP is not only an intellectual pursuit but needs to be viewed in terms of a citizen movement capable of achieving outcomes. Participants identified several further issues that should be considered when developing an advocacy strategy.

One consideration would be how we develop campaigning alliances. Some industries are potential allies, in particular Internet intermediaries that are increasingly under pressure to be the private police of copyright holders. Some artists themselves are also sympathetic to FoE arguments. More obviously, consumers and information users should be mobilised by a campaign. It is important to develop distinct strategies for targeting identified groups that reflects our understanding of their diverse interests; this would allow us to build commonalities between actors who may normally be regarded as having divergent objectives, and mobilise each to push for change in a direction that supports our ultimate goal.

Central to a campaign strategy is also the idea of having a clear message as to what the problem is and how it impacts people on a day to day basis. The utility of graphics illustrating the inequitable geographic distribution of IP interests was recommended as a useful tool to demonstrate the scale of this global problem. Ways of countering campaigns conducted by IP holders over the last two decades were also discussed, in particular how to push back against the idea of copyright infringement as “theft”, as has been promoted through slogans such as “you wouldn’t steal a handbag.” Illustrative analogies were discussed, including viewing IP infringement as mere trespass rather than theft and as “copying” rather than depriving a person of property. However, it was concluded that these analogies were helpful for developing our understanding of the issues, but would not be as effective as campaign tools. An effective campaign would have to distinguish between background issues and our actual advocacy points, which would be focussed on a clear set of key fundamental principles.

Participants also identified the importance of engaging governments and the media on the inconsistency of their policies and coverage of FoE and IP. The US, in particular, is loudly proclaiming its commitments to FoE on-line whilst simultaneously promoting aggressive enforcements mechanisms for IP that directly undermine FoE rights.

The campaign against ACTA in the European Parliament (EP) was also recommended as a platform from which to launch further dialogue on FoE and IP. Since the meeting, ARTICLE 19 has released a statement on ACTA that we have shared with all participants, and plans to circulate this statement to various EP committees and MEPs in the coming weeks.[1]

Opportunities for strategic litigation were also identified. In particular, there are a number of Article 10 ECHR cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights on the blocking of websites, many being from Turkey.

Session 2: The tension between freedom of expression and IPR

The second session began with a presentation by Gabrielle of the background paper on intellectual property and freedom of expression. Participants gave feedback on issues raised in the paper and suggested ways of developing it into a policy paper to compliment an advocacy campaign.

Gabrielle’s opening comments acknowledged that the background paper is very much focussed on FoE in the digital age, and is centred more on copyright rather than trademarks and patents. Gabrielle outlined the way in which conflicts between tangible property rights and freedom of expression have been dealt with by the ECHR. She also identified key challenges to reframing understandings of IP, in particular in relation to the notion that the public domain and information sharing should be the norm while information monopolies should be the exception. Gabrielle also highlighted the timeliness of this discussion as significant changes to the enforcement agenda are taking place; including the criminalisation of copyright infringement and DRMS circumvention.

Participants agreed that the policy paper was an excellent starting point for discussions on FoE and IP, and recommended a number of areas for further elaboration in future drafts:

The objective tone of the paper, placing ARTICLE 19 as an impartial arbiter, is a productive starting point.
The legal framework for IP/FoE should be elaborated to acknowledge the right to culture as contained in Article 27 of the UDHR and Article 15 of the IESCR. The ways that states periodically report their IESCR compliance could be explored.
Intermediaries should be referred to in broader terms than just as ISPs. “Information society service providers” is an umbrella phrase that includes search engines, advertisers, payment services.
The Scarlett decision by the ECJ should be incorporated once it is released.[2]
The concept of “filtering” is essentially a type of “blocking”, both may be referred to as censorship to clarify their immediate impact on FoE.
Some participants felt that explaining why the FoE implications are different for civil and criminal law would be helpful.
Participants felt that the section on the implications of the ACTA regime could be built upon.[3]
In developing the section on FoE rights, the Latin American view of FoE as a collective right may also be worth emphasising. It may also be worth comparing the potential balance between IP and FoE to other balancing exercises related to privacy or reputational rights.
The differences between copyright, trademarks and patents should be explained.
A section outlining the philosophical foundations of these protections, in particular the difference between the US (incentivise creation) and European (natural rights) approach to IP might also be helpful.
It should be stressed that the failure of IP law to adapt to new technologies is the problem, not new technologies themselves. This failure undermines the justifications for protecting IP rights.
Greater emphasis should be placed on the way in which the current legal framework is based on an ideal of an 18th century author, and does not acknowledge the impact of IP on scientific research and collaboration, indigenous knowledge, peer-to-peer sharing, the creative power of new technology etc.
Positive examples of IP infringement would be useful for illustrating why IP protection shouldn’t be safeguarded at all costs. In particular, efforts to make works more accessible to minority language speakers (crowd-sourcing methods in particular) and the impact that IP law has on blind people’s access to information.
Similarly, examples of censorship that make the impact of IP protections of FoE clearer to policy makers would be helpful in debunking the myth that the interests of the IP industry giants are synonymous with those of the individual creators.
It would also be helpful to illustrate that IP protection is also a geographic concentration of wealth issues as much as a moral issue.[4]
The role of de minimis exception regimes in protecting FoE should also be explored in greater depth.
Several sources were also recommended, including the Association littéraire et artistique internationale (ALAI)[5], the International Federation of Libraries Association (Stuart Hamilton identified as a contact)[6] and the OSCE study on Internet Freedom.[7]

Session 3: Key questions, issues and challenges

Dave chaired a third session to elaborate upon the key issues discussed prior to lunch, with a view to reaching some level of consensus on the appropriate scope of restrictions on freedom of expression in defence of IPR.

Gabrielle offered comments on the balance that could be applied between the right to property (Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR) and the right to freedom of expression (Article 10 of the ECHR). However, as the European Court of Human Rights has not ruled on the balance that ought to be struck between these two rights in the context of intellectual property, it is difficult to speculate on how it would be litigated.

Participants agreed that the ‘public interest’ is central to assessing when property rights can be restricted to promote other rights, including FoE. The need to stress the importance of the Internet as a public forum was also identified.

The participants also discussed what limitations are appropriate to place on IP rights. Various ideas were suggested, but it was concluded that any recommended framework on the substance of IP rights would have to be compliant with the Berne Convention. This means that in terms of copyright duration, the minimum that could be recommended is 50 years. It was also stated that any system that recommends a default public domain with a system of registration for copyright “exceptions” would not be compliant with Berne. The augmentation of IP rights through these international agreements was again referenced, as there appears to have been a pattern of the US and EU exporting the worst aspects of their IP regimes abroad through trade arrangements without elaborating on how exceptions to IP rights should be developed. It was also noted that copyright holders will continue to support this process, as their business model depends upon having as much control over the use of information as possible.

Again participants identified the need to distinguish between the limitations that are imposed on FoE by the IP rights themselves, those limitations imposed by preventative technological measures and those imposed by enforcement mechanisms.

The importance of distinguishing the different actors involved was also emphasised, i.e. whether we are discussing competing rights between private creators (e.g. original creator vs. derivative creator) or the direct relationship between the state and individuals (e.g. enforcement of criminal provisions against an individual infringing IP). It is important that our analysis does not conflate private actors with state actors, and that it is clear what positive and negative obligations are on these parties and the rationale for their application.

It was suggested that an approach that balances competing human rights is appropriate where the interests of two creators are in conflict, but perhaps not when the state intervenes to prevent or punish IP infringements. Where the state acts to restrict an individual’s access to the Internet, it is not a balance issue but an unnecessary and disproportionate interference with the right to freedom of expression.

Participants stressed the economic and social significance of blanket (and even many specific) restrictions on Internet access. Blanket prohibitions on access to the Internet was compared to solitary confinement, and participants agreed that sanctions such as these are never necessary or proportionate responses to IP infringement. An analogy was made to a statement recently issued by ARTICLE 19 on services to counterfeit mobile telephones being shut down in Kenya.[8] Participants also indicated that these blanket measures are increasingly rare, but that states still violate the principles of necessity and proportionality through limitations that they impose.

Further FoE concerns were raised in relation to the enforcement of IP rights in the digital environment. In order to monitor the Internet for IP infringement, it is necessary to monitor the content of all Internet communications. This has implications for FoE rights and privacy rights, and has a potential chilling effect on all on-line expression.

There was also some discussion on defining what our working definition of FoE should be in this context, particularly in relation to use of new technologies and DRMS. Does FoE necessarily include the right to scan a document, to use translation technology on it, to copy and paste, to save in various formats etc?

Participants also discussed that the ordinary de minimis exceptions cannot simply be transplanted and applied as ‘exceptions’ or defences to DRMS circumvention offences. DRMS limit the use of works severely, and unless you have the technical knowledge to circumvent these devices, it is not possible to take advantage of exceptions or defences.

There were also discussions on access to justice issues, due to the prohibitively expensive cost of contesting litigation against large corporations.

Several participants mentioned that discussions on these issues have a tendency to become too narrow in their focus. Examples given were that the focus drifts to copyright rather than trademarks and patents, that peer2peer sharing gets more attention than other technology uses, and that artistic expression is talked about but not technical or scientific forms of expression. At the same time, some participants expressed an aversion to a “kitchen sink” approach in any campaign, as it may result in an incoherent message.

Various sources were recommended for further reading. These included a report by Consumers International on best state practices (Brazil, Canada and South Africa mentioned for enacting progressive legislation recently),[9] and the UN guidelines on consumer protection.[10]

Session 4: Measures for protecting and enforcing IP rights on the Internet: finding a better balance with FOE

At the fourth session, Barbora chaired a discussion on procedural issues that pose a threat to freedom of expression and Internet freedom. Key issues identified at the outset were whether sticking to a human rights view that judicial oversight is the best option or is there a human rights compliant alternative model? As it was decided in the previous session that disconnection is disproportionate, are all forms of criminal liability for Internet use disproportionate? And what limits should be placed on civil remedies, such as damages-award ceilings.

Discussions began on whether an administrative model for notice and takedown would be appropriate. Advantages that were identified of non-judicial models include:

An administrative system is more effective in terms of time and cost. The number of notice and takedown requests that happen on-line would overwhelm a traditional judicial organ.
Protections for intermediaries from liability can be built into the system.
Guidelines can ensure compliance with legal certainty, transparency, due process, specificity of remedies, protections for the identities of users.
Could also be subject to judicial oversight.
That limitations on cost would also “disarm” corporations who would not be able to threaten expensive court procedures that intimidate individuals into prematurely settling civil actions.
The need for fast remedies in digital infringements was also stressed. For example, a website may be created only for the 90 minutes of a football game and then disappear – traditional judicial methods cannot be used to provide redress in these circumstances. Although this may appear to be a “shoot first, aim later” approach, one needs to consider these pragmatic concerns. An administrative model is better suited to this than a judicial system.
Alternatives to an administrative model included the use of non-legal ombudsmen or arbitration proceedings. These measures could also keep costs low.

A number of participants disagreed that an administrative model was appropriate. Their concerns focussed on the following issues:

That the independence of an administrative body could not be guaranteed.
That an administrative procedure should never be used to impose criminal liability.
The procedural guarantees in an administrative system are less robust, particularly in countries that do not have a strong separation of powers.
That the time and cost of a judicial system is necessary to comply with international human rights standards.

Concerns were also raised about recommending any boilerplate solution that should be ‘copy and pasted’ into all national contexts without adequate consideration being paid to that country’s legal system or traditions. In terms of accuracy of language, it was also commented that notice and takedown affects hosts of content, and not ISPs, who are mere conduits.

Systems in place in Canada and Japan for “notice and notice” were also discussed. In these systems, the IP holder notifies the intermediary, who notifies the user, who has a time to reply before action is taken. The role of the intermediary in this system is to facilitate communications and they are not subject to liability. The accommodation of “emergency requests” could also be considered within this system.

With any notice and takedown system it would also be important to make it clear to those controlling the content how you object to a takedown notice. Access to justice principles are important here, particularly considering the amount of misinformation that has circulated in recent years on the nature of IP infringement.

Various examples were given of forum shopping by IP owners in provincial courthouses where judges are less experienced in IP law and therefore more responsive to the arguments of IP holders.

There was also a discussion on why copyright holders would favour criminal sanctions as opposed to civil remedies. On the one hand, it seems intuitive that the rights holder would rather receive damages than have a person fined or imprisoned by the government. It was suggested that the criminal law has the advantage of having a more significant chilling effect. Also, in criminal cases, the costs of detection and enforcement can be placed on the state.

A number of initial principles were identified through this discussion:

Intermediaries should be immunised from civil liability.
There should not be liability for hyperlinking. It must be distinguished from “re-publication”.
Non-commercial infringement should not be criminalized. It was noted that TRIPS requires commercial scale infringement to be criminalized. Narrowly defining what is meant by “commercial” is important:

Peer-to-peer sharing should not be considered commercial.
IP infringement committed by individuals should not be considered commercial.

The need for clarity in the law and for information on IP law to be available to end-users facing litigation threats from copyright holders. In particular, states should educate individuals in the exceptions to copyright protections that serve the public interest.
Possible limitations on damages could be developed.

Session 5: Political developments and strategies of response

The purpose of the fifth session was to provide participants with the opportunity to discuss developing strategies for working together to better combat governments’ attempts at restricting FoE on the basis of protecting IP.

The first priority that was identified was to finalise a policy paper on the issue. This would perhaps take some time to formulate, and may require further meetings to discuss key issues.

A second priority for advocacy was identified in relation to ACTA, which will be voted upon by the European Parliament in the coming months. ARTICLE 19 has issued a statement on ACTA that will also be circulated among participants.

A third discussion concerned the possibility of uncovering a wikileaks-type “scandal” in which the hypocrisy of copyrights holders, and their true motivations, could be exposed. Receiving internal emails from whistleblowers interested in exposing such a story would provide a good media storm in which to launch an advocacy campaign. Examples of IP industries illegally lobbying governments or interfering with the administration of justice would be helpful. The involvement of the British Phonographic Industry in lobbying for the Digital Economy Act was referenced in this discussion.

The utility of engaging with the copyright industries was also discussed. These industries have a reputation for not negotiating– they want as much control over information as possible, as control is essential to their business model. There may be some utility in identifying who our enemies’ enemies are. It was mentioned that the occupy movements may be interested in pursuing a human rights narrative against corporate property interests. These groups are very much engaged in promoting FoE rights. The traditional media was also identified as a group that may be interested in supporting a movement for greater FoE protections against IP.

In terms of developing strategy, it was also recommended that we look at successful human rights campaigns from the past, particularly any in the field of cultural rights. Potential partners for coalition building need to be looked at, and many of these partners may be within emerging economies such as BRIC or South Africa.

As we develop a strategy, we need to remain focussed on framing this battle as a human rights fight. We need to identify victims, perpetrators, and a call to action. A different plan may be needed for each audience that we identify. From the experience of activists at the meeting, theoretical arguments will not succeed in rousing a people-driven campaign. The use of new media, such as campaign videos on youtube, that clearly outline the human rights case would be helpful. It is also necessary to bridge the gap between popular campaigns and videos, and getting those campaigns into the mainstream media and creating a political issue out of it. As technology users that would be interested in this campaign tend not to vote, making this a political issue means making people who do vote understand the issue as one that is a mass-scale human rights violation.

Concluding comments and closing

Agnès closed the session by identifying several key steps:

The need to revise the policy paper in light of discussions throughout the day’s sessions.
The need to meet again to discuss the revised policy paper and to continue these discussions.
The objective of developing our role as advocates, identifying what we can initiate, what existing efforts we can support, and what our overall strategy should be.

[1].ARTICLE 19 statement “European Parliament must reject ACTA”, see: http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2901/en/european-parliament:-reject-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-%28acta%29

[2].This judgment has since been released. See ARTICLE 19 press release: http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2872/en/landmark-digital-free-speech-ruling-at-european-court-of-justice

[3].ARTICLE 19 has since released a statement on ACTA. See: http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2901/en/european-parliament:-reject-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-(acta)

[4].http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/167.png was recommended for its map of patent distribution in 2002.

[5].ALAI homepage: http://alaiorg.vincelette.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=24

[6].See a list of publications at: http://www.ifla.org/en/publications

[7].OSCE study “Freedom of Expression on the Internet” (2010): http://www.osce.org/fom/80723

[8].ARTICLE 19 statement on FoE and counterfeit mobile telephones: http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2762/en/kenya:-free-expression-standards-should-guide-fight-against-%E2%80%9Ccounterfeit%E2%80%9D-mobile-phones

[9].http://a2knetwork.org/watchlist

[10].http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/publications/consumption_en.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/freedom-of-expression-and-ipr-meeting

Save Your Voice — A movement against Web censorship

praskrishna — 2012-03-13T11:44:27Z

‘Save Your Voice (SYV)’ is a movement against Web censorship and its main demand is the repealing of the Information Technology Act, said SYV founders, Aseem Trividi, a cartoonist, and Alok Dixit, a journalist, on Monday.

DNA Correspondent covered a press conference held on March 12, 2012 in Bangalore. Sunil Abraham was quoted in the story.

Trivedi’s website — www.cartoonistagainstcorruption.com — was banned during Anna Hazare’s movement. Trivedi said: “Mumbai police banned the website without any prior notice and cases of ‘treason’ were also filed. The website was banned without a judicial order and I haven’t received an explanation about the crime committed.”

Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, said the private sector does not protect the freedom of expression.

Read the original published by Daily News & Analysis on March 13, 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/save-your-voice-2014-a-movement-against-web-censorship

Short-Term Consultant Required: Wordpress Webmaster

praskrishna — 2012-03-13T11:27:34Z

CIS wishes to commission the improvement of the Privacy India website. The Privacy India website should have a well-organized interface and easily navigable

Requirements:

WordPress developer with sufficient relevant experience
Experience in content management
Proven webmaster track record
Savvy and creative

To apply for this position, please send your CV to Natasha Vaz (natasha@cis-india.org)

Click here for the Privacy India website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wordprss-webmaster

Short-Term Consultant Required: Events Coordinator

praskrishna — 2012-03-13T11:22:08Z

CIS wishes to commission the planning of 3 privacy meetings in total, scheduled during May and June. Meetings should be well-organized, planned and promoted effectively.

The Events Coordinator should:

Choose a central and convenient Venue
Create the program
Involve relevant multi-stakeholder partners, participants and media
Work with the Privacy India team to organize panels of expert speakers on the topic of discussion

To apply for this position, please send your CV to Natasha Vaz (natasha@cis-india.org)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/events-coordinator

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action

praskrishna — 2012-04-03T07:15:23Z

At UC Santa Cruz, on Monday, March 5, 2012, Nishant Shah gave a lecture on "Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action". The lecture focused more on the India Against Corruption case-study rather than the theoretical framework to understanding revolutions.

This talk is a thought-in-progress inquiry into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action which has emerged in the last few years in several parts of the world. It seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates Resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State-Citizen-Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status-quo rather than radically undermining it. Looking at one particular instance of a campaign against corruption in India, Nishant is seeking to build a framework that can be deployed to understand the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present that gets produced in such instances of citizen action.

Follow the original on the UC Santa Cruz website
Also see this

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/questioning-the-radical-potential-of-citizen-action

Consumers International Global Meeting 2012

praskrishna — 2012-04-03T07:54:56Z

Pranesh Prakash participated in the Consumers International Global Meeting held in Kuala Lumpur on March 8 and 9, 2012. He spoke on UN Consumer Guidelines. Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter and Guilherme Varella were the other speakers in the session.

Wednesday 7 March

6:45pm	Anwar Fazal speech on 50th anniversary of JFK Consumer Rights
7:00pm	Dinner hosted by FOMCA

Thursday 8 March

8:30am	Registration
9:00am	Welcome (Helen McCallum)
9:30am	Introduction and overview (Jeremy Malcolm)
10:00am	Introduction to Digital Personal Property (Paul Sweazey)
11:00am	Break
11:30am	UN Consumer Guidelines (Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter, Pranesh Prakash, Guilherme Varella)
1:00pm	Lunch
2:00pm	Consumer Protection and IP Abuse Prevention under the WTO Framework (George Tian)
3:00pm	Internet governance and consumers (Peng Hwa Ang)
4:00pm	Break
4:30pm	Public Interest Representation in the Information Society (Norbert Bollow)
5:30pm	Consumers in the information society (Jeremy Malcolm)
6:30pm	Break
7:30pm	Cultural and culinary outing to pasar malam

Friday 9 March

8:30am	Registration
9:00am	M-Lab (Lih Shiun Goh from Google Singapore)
10:00am	Internet and human rights (Alan Finlay from Association for Progressive Communications)
11:00am	Break
11:30am	Global consumer survey on broadband (Jeremy Malcolm, Veridiana Alimonti, Elise Davidson, Marzena Kisielowska-Lipman)
1:00pm	Lunch
2:00pm	Cyber-security concerns for consumers and businesses (Raj Kumar, IMPACT)
3:00pm	Broadband nutrition label (Benjamin Lennett, New America Foundation)
4:00pm	Break
4:30pm	Reporting back – open time for member presentations
6.00 pm	Close

Abstracts and biographies

United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection

This paper provides background to the proposed amendments to update the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection for the digital age. A soft-law instrument, the Guidelines provide an influential standard for the dissemination of good practices in consumer protection, as a mechanism to foster and promote social and economic development. They outline eight areas for developing policies for consumer protection, which are reflected by the eight consumer rights declared by the global consumer movement: rights to satisfaction of basic needs, safety, choice, information, consumer education, redress, representation and a health environment.

The paper outlines the current global regime of public policy developmment and regualtion relating to access to knowledge. Indicating that many of the issues of concern in terms of access to knowledge are essentially consumer issues it argues that amendments to the Guidelines would form the basis for progress. The paper then details the proposed amendments explaining the basis for each one.

Joining Robin Brown on the panel will be representatives from our research partners in India, Brazil and South Africa who will be contributing to our research on the Guidelines.

Robin Brown has 25 years of experience in consumer and business regulatory affairs. He spent 10 years as the chair and chief executive of Australia’s national consumer body, the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations. Robin has been involved in projects to advance consumer protection and competition policy and regulation in a number of developing countries. In recent years Robin has served as a Councilor of the Australian Consumers’ Association. He holds a BA and a Master of Public Policy from the Australian National University.

Pranesh Prakash is Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He is a graduate with a degree in Arts and Law from National Law School, Bangalore, with a keen interest in the law, economics, and culture of intellectual property rights. He helped found the Indian Journal of Law and Technology, and was part of its editorial board for two years. He is most interested in interdisciplinary research on IP and property law, freedom of speech, and privacy. He has worked with practising lawyers, civil society organizations, and law firms.

Tobias Schönwetter is a Senior Manager within PricewaterhouseCoopers' South African practice performing legal advisory services specifically relating to innovation, technology and intellectual property (copyright and trademarks). Tobias has studied and practised law in Germany, the US and South Africa and he has led the copyright division at UCT's Intellectual Property Law and Policy Research Unit for several years. His international experience, together with his leadership roles in a number of intellectual property-related projects and research collaborations such as the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project and the Open AIR (African Innovation Research and Training) project, has secured his place as an industry expert within the intellectual property and technology sector.

Guilherme Varella is a lawyer at Idec (Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense) in telecomunications, Internet and access to knowledge and Master's student in public policies of culture in the Law School of Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo - USP).

The event was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute and IDRC/CRDI. For more information, see here on the Access to Knowledge website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/consumers-international-meeting-2012

India’s Big Bet on Identity

praskrishna — 2012-03-07T05:44:12Z

The world’s largest biometric authentication system reaches its first major milestone, but lots of challenges remain, writes Joshua J. Romero in ieeespectrum. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this story which was featured in March 2012 edition.

Driving around Bangalore, it’s immediately clear that the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with the IT boom in this once-sleepy South Indian city. Auto rickshaws, scooters, and motorcycles squeeze into a tight phalanx at each red light and choke the air with exhaust. Construction, such as the concrete supports of the new metro rail line that looms overhead, causes detours everywhere, and in spots the entire road abruptly disintegrates into gravel.

But something miraculous happens as you make your way south, past the outer ring road. A ramp lifts a select few vehicles out of the weaving traffic and onto an elevated tollway, where you suddenly have a bird’s-eye view of the urban landscape. This is the road to Electronic City, an oasis of glass and steel high-rises overlooking pristine black asphalt paths that snake through the perfectly manicured lawns of tech companies like Wipro, IBM, and Infosys Technologies.

“If you can have such good roads in the Infosys campus, why are the roads outside so terrible?” That’s the common question foreign visitors would ask Nandan Nilekani, one of the company’s cofounders. “Politics” was his usual reply, according to Nilekani’s 2008 book, Imagining India. Now the man who has been called the Bill Gates of India has jumped into politics to try to use what he learned at the IT giant to transform the dysfunctional country that lies beyond the borders of Electronic City.

Since July 2009, Nilekani has been a cabinet minister, leading hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). By the most conservative estimates, at least a third of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens live below the poverty line and outside the formal economy. The UIDAI is expected to connect those hundreds of millions of people to government programs, save public money, reduce fraud and corruption, and foster new business opportunities—all by creating an unprecedented biometric system and outside the formal economy. The UIDAI is expected to connect those hundreds of millions of people to government programs, save public money, reduce fraud and corruption, and foster new business opportunities—all by creating an unprecedented biometric system.

“On the one hand, within India and across the world, people of Indian descent have done some remarkable work,” says Nilekani. “And on the other hand, here is a country that needs to solve some very basic problems. This project marries these two worlds.” UIDAI plans to use fingerprints and iris scans to assign every person in the country a unique 12-digit ID number that can be verified online. It’s one of the biggest IT projects in the world, and getting bigger: By early February, the UIDAI had issued 130 million ID numbers, and it can issue up to a million more IDs every day. The agency has set up 36 000 enrollment stations staffed by 87 000 certified enrollment operators. In India the project is called Aadhaar, which means “foundation” or “support,” because it’s meant to be a fundamental technology platform that will enable dozens of new public and private services to be created.

That’s if it all works. It’s easy to list major challenges: How exactly do you collect biometrics from every single person in the world’s second most populous country, especially those living at the margins? How do you keep bad data from getting into the database in a country rife with corruption? And how can you build the entire system around online authentication in a country where fewer than one in 20 people have access to the Internet?

The answers to these questions are getting more than the usual amount of scrutiny, because a lot of political fortunes are riding on the UIDAI.

The program has been heavily supported by the ruling Indian National Congress party; Nilekani was appointed by the prime minister himself, Manmohan Singh. But Singh and his Congress party have had a difficult time enacting many of their biggest policy goals, and the UIDAI has increasingly become the target of criticism.

Earlier this year, the whole scheme seemed in imminent danger of collapse, when a parliamentary committee killed the bill that would have given the program statutory authority, and a political turf war erupted between the UIDAI and the National Population Register, another government project collecting biometrics for the national census. But by late January the two sides had reached an agreement to share biometric data collection, and Aadhaar is once again moving full steam ahead with a new mandate and an estimated budget this year of 15 billion rupees [PDF] (about US $300 million).

Photo: Joshua J. Romero

EXISTING DOCUMENTS: A poster lists the variety of IDs a  person can use to register for an Aadhaar number.

To understand why the government has invested so heavily, it helps to know the current state of affairs in India. Aadhaar is meant to provide a form of identification that’s free, national, impossible to counterfeit—and available to everyone. “There’s an ID divide,” Nilekani explains, between people who have multiple official IDs and the hundreds of millions who have none. Only about 60 million people in India have passports, he says, and only about 100 million have photo ID bank cards. The most prevalent document is a voter ID card, which has been issued to about 700 million people, covering just over half of the country. But these and the rest of the official IDs created by the country’s vast bureaucracy all have shortcomings.

The primary reason for creating a biometric ID system is to give India’s poorest citizens better access to an array of welfare programs. India spends about 2 percent of its gross domestic product on social programs like the Public Distribution System, which provides subsidized rice, wheat, and other staples, and a rural employment scheme that guarantees 100 days of work. But all such programs suffer from severe “leakage”: According to the World Bank, corrupt officials and middlemen siphon away 59 percent of the money before it reaches the intended recipients. Eventually, the government hopes to provide funds directly to each person who needs them.

Most states issue ration cards, but they usually aren’t valid in other states. An official ID that can be used throughout the country is increasingly important as more and more people move away from their hometowns to follow employment, Nilekani says.

Complicating the problem further, existing ID cards are easy to duplicate. Some states have more names on their food ration lists than there are people living in the state. To fight counterfeiting, the Aadhaar team decided to use biometrics instead of issuing just another ID card. From the beginning, they consulted biometric experts, used existing standards when they could, and studied similar systems like the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

One thing the team realized early on is that a single biometric measurement wasn’t enough to guarantee uniqueness. In proof-of-concept studies, researchers determined that only by using all 10 fingerprints and a scan of both irises could error rates be kept manageable. Adding iris scans also makes the program more inclusive for people whose fingerprints have been worn down by manual labor.

Photos, clockwise from left: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times/Redux; Joshua J. Romero (2)
NECESSARY GEAR: Each enrollment station has the same basic set of equipment, including an iris scanner [top], a fingerprint scanner [bottom right], a webcam and light [bottom left], a laptop, a second monitor for the resident to view, and a scanner and printer to handle documents.

Getting an Aadhaar number is not a quick process. One Friday after midnight, I watch dozens of families wait patiently in a municipal building where only half the lights are on and there’s always a baby crying. While Anurodh Kanchan waits, he explains that he came at this hour because he’d heard the lines were even longer during the day. He’d already been once before to schedule this appointment. Now his 7-year-old daughter dozes on his wife’s shoulder as the whole family waits another half an hour for the enrollment agent to return from a break.

Hiring and training people to work as agents has been one of the project’s biggest logistical challenges. The UIDAI outsources enrollment to “registrars”—often state governments or banks—which in turn hire accredited agencies to actually set up and staff the centers. The agencies get paid a flat rate for each successful enrollment, as do the agents they hire. A coordinator for one of the largest agencies told me that his organization had significantly overestimated how many enrollments an agent could complete in a day. UIDAI says that an average station (see photos, “Necessary Gear”) can process each enrollment in under 10 minutes, but in the days I spent observing, it wasn’t uncommon for the process to take twice as long. And if you’re an agent looking at a line of people stretching out the door, it’s easy to see how you might begin to rush through your tasks.

That’s why enforcing quality is left to a piece of software known as the enrollment client, installed on each agent’s laptop. The program manages every step of the process and was developed jointly by engineers at UIDAI and MindTree, an Indian IT company. Because enrollment often takes place in remote locations with no Internet access, the client must be fully independent and be able to run off a single laptop. The developers also had to make sure that the enrollment client could work seamlessly with any of the 11 biometric devices from various manufacturers that had been certified for use. And the initial version had to be built fast: MindTree won the contract at the end of April 2010, and the UIDAI wanted to enroll the first resident by that August.

MindTree met the deadline, and the client it designed now manages to prevent and correct most errors an enrollment agent might make. In addition to a simple quality check, the software looks for self-consistency—for instance, verifying that each fingerprint isn’t coming from the operator or another recently enrolled resident and that all 10 fingerprints and two irises are distinct from each other. If something goes wrong in a biometric capture, the software tells the operator how to correct it—for instance, it can distinguish between a facial photo that’s too dark and one in which the person was photographed at the wrong angle.

Still, over the last 21 months, the software engineers have had to continually improve the program to address new challenges encountered in the field. For example, when the UIDAI began enrolling people in the Punjab region of North India, where many men wear long beards and large turbans, enrollment agents had a hard time taking a photo that the software considered acceptable: The turban would be interpreted as an unacceptable background, or the automatic cropping feature would crop around the turban instead of the face. The software team was able to quickly tweak the parameters and release a new version of the client so that enrollment could continue.

It isn’t just the biometric collection that’s tricky. A resident must also supply basic demographic data—name, age, gender, and address. Residents can fill out paper forms in any of the 16 official Indian languages, which agents must first transfer to the computer and then translate into an English version of the form. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the process, and MindTree has tried to speed it up by building transliteration into the client software. But Indic languages have many variations—some are written right to left, and many use unique character sets. Still, the agent is expected to check the results and clean up minor mistakes.

There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you’re collecting personal data from more than a billion people. “You can’t change your biometrics,” points out Sunil Abraham, the executive director at the Center for Internet and Society, in Bangalore, so if they become compromised, it’s a difficult problem to fix.

Among the precautions the UIDAI takes is to encrypt all data as soon as they’re collected. The data can be decrypted only by UIDAI servers, so the records aren’t even accessible to the operator or enrollment agency that collected them. At the end of each day, all the encrypted enrollment data are stored on USB flash drives, and the drives are transported to a place with Internet access so the data can be uploaded to UIDAI’s servers. It’s in the best interests of the enrollment agencies to safeguard the data, because otherwise they won’t get paid.

From the enrollment centers the action moves to the racks of servers at the UIDAI Central Information Data Repository, which is also in Bangalore. Here is where deduplication—checking each new enrollment against every other record in the database—will arguably make this identity scheme rise above the rest. Ensuring that no person can get two numbers is key to making biometrics a worthwhile investment. A few years ago, one Indian state collected biometrics for everyone below the poverty line, but it didn’t have the technology or a plan to prevent duplicates. It ended up capturing 1.2 times the population, which resulted in a significant leakage of benefits.

Many critics, including members of Parliament, have doubted that it’s even possible to deduplicate records from the entire Indian populace. It’s certainly a big task. In order to issue 1 million Aadhaar numbers in a single day, the current maximum rate, the data center must conduct 100 trillion person matches. To improve this process, the UIDAI came up with an unusual arrangement. Rather than hiring a single firm for the job, it awarded the project to three contractors, each responsible for processing a portion of the enrollments, with the overlapping records used to compare performance between the systems. This arrangement lets the UIDAI know if a system isn’t working correctly and also gives the companies a financial incentive to improve their software—they’ll get to process more records, and get paid more, if their products perform better. The vendors were even required to use the same kind of hardware to build their systems, so the agency isn’t tied to any one company.

In late January, the UIDAI released a report [PDF] that for the first time detailed the results of this deduplication effort. There are two primary factors that determine the accuracy of a biometric system: the false-positive rate, which in this case is how often a newly registered person is incorrectly judged to be already enrolled, and the false-negative rate, which is how often true duplicates are not recognized as such. To measure the false-positive rate, the UIDAI tested 4 million unique records against a subset of the enrollment database containing 84 million records: Of the unique records, 2309 were falsely rejected, for a false-positive rate of 0.057 percent. The agency also tested 31 399 known duplicates. The system caught all but 11, for a false-negative rate of 0.035 percent.

The false-positive rate applies to the total number of records in the database. As that number grows, the rate should increase in a linear fashion, because there are more opportunities for false matches. The false-negative rate, on the other hand, applies only to the small minority of enrollments that really are true duplicates (the UIDAI estimates that these make up only 0.5 percent of all incoming enrollments). Because the false-negative rate doesn’t depend on the total number of records, it should remain steady unless more people try to enroll multiple times.

R.S. Sharma, the director general of UIDAI, says that preventing all duplicates with technology alone is impossible. There are some people who just can’t be uniquely identified through biometrics, because the data for them aren’t good enough—children under age 5, for instance, and people with multiple disabilities. That’s why the responsibility for accuracy and uniqueness isn’t all left up to the software. Several full-time employees manually review the roughly 0.2 percent of cases that the software can’t handle, resolving errors and looking for evidence of fraud.

Even if the system isn’t perfect, it’s likely to be much better than any existing alternative, simply because it will eliminate “ghost identities,” says M.R. Madhavan, who works at the Centre for Policy Research, in New Delhi. “At least people who died in 1995 or 2005 will not get into the system,” he says.

Photo: Joshua J. Romero

AUTHENTICATION TERMINAL: Widespread use of Aadhaar will  rely on biometric terminals, like this prototype at MindTree.

Now that the UIDAI has shown it can collect biometric and demographic data and eliminate duplicate enrollments, much of the attention will shift to the authentication system, where people can prove their identity with just the swipe of a finger. Such systems are still under development, so most residents I met weren’t clear about the benefits of the program. When I asked people why they were enrolling, they often had vague reasons: “It might make it easier to get my benefits,” said one middle-aged woman in Bangalore. “I heard you’ll need it to buy heating gas,” said another woman. “I think it’s mandatory,” an elderly man told me. Nilekani thinks that getting authentication services up and running will be the best way to demonstrate the power of the entire project.

Here’s how such a futuristic system might work: Walking up to a wirelessly connected terminal at a local shop, a person will type in his name and Aadhaar number, and then he’ll scan his fingerprints. The data will be sent to a central database, where the Aadhaar number will be used to locate his record. The submitted name and biometric data will be compared to those on file, and the software will determine whether they match.

The UIDAI imagines that such biometric terminals will eventually be ubiquitous. The first devices deployed will likely be micro-ATMs in rural shops. These machines process transactions electronically, just like a full-size ATM, except they don’t store and dispense cash—that gets handled from the shopkeeper’s till. The hope is that such systems will deliver financial services to the 40 percent of the Indian population who have never had bank accounts. When people enroll for Aadhaar, they simply need to check a box and an Aadhaar-enabled bank account will be created for them.

In January, the UIDAI began a pilot project in the state of Jharkhand, where workers in the rural employment program could collect cash payments by scanning their fingerprints at a micro-ATM. Another pilot program in Maharashtra transferred small amounts of money to individual Aadhaar numbers, showing that bank servers could be easily linked with the UIDAI system.

The authentication system is already available as an application programming interface (API), which means it won’t be limited to just government programs and banks. Private service providers could use it to verify new customers as well. Take India’s vaunted mobile-phone culture: Phone companies are currently required to collect and retain significant documentation for every person they sell a SIM card to, as I found out in the two days I spent collecting the photos and local references I needed to get one myself. “If you look at any service provider, they’re not going to offer the mobile-phone service unless they verify who you are,” says Bala Parthasarathy, an entrepreneur who worked in Silicon Valley but came back to India to volunteer on the project for a year. Parthasarathy says that using Aadhaar for identity verification could provide the telephone companies with major savings.

Still, setting up a nationwide network of biometric terminals has plenty of its own challenges. First, India will need better connectivity. Wireless voice networks now cover most of the country, but wireless data networks have trailed behind. Current penetration of 3G is mostly just in the cities, says Debabrata Das, an IEEE member and a professor of electrical engineering at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, who has been studying the network challenges of authentication as a technical advisor for the state of Karnataka.

The API will also need to be flexible enough to handle variations in the demographic data that are submitted. The system can’t enforce strict matches: Many Indians use initials in their names, and there is no guarantee that they will always spell their names the same way in English. Further, sometimes a married woman will use her father’s family name instead of her husband’s. Because of the ambiguity in names and addresses, the database must be able to perform partial and fuzzy matches. Eventually, Sharma says, the UIDAI hopes to be able to do database matching for all the Indian languages as well, so the API will continue to undergo revisions.

Now the UIDAI must wait for its partners to begin taking advantage of the system, and Nilekani admits that starting up such services is largely beyond his control. Cooperation with other agencies and industries is all part of Nilekani’s approach to how government initiatives should work. “The big thing to my mind has been, How do you create a model of change, and how do you carry a lot of people with it? How do you think this through in a way that everyone comes on board?” he says. In building the project to this point, he’s managed to bring, if not everyone, then certainly a pretty diverse crowd: technical experts; national, state, and local officials; banks and businesses; and all those millions who willingly wait in line for hours.

“Everyone puts their own aspirations on it…like Obama,” he jokes. But the downside of being so inclusive is that as the project matures, it may be difficult to keep all the interested parties happy, and there’s bound to be disappointment if the project fails to achieve all its lofty ambitions.

The project has made it this far by adapting quickly as problems arise. “Think of it as multigeneration, continuous improvement,” Nilekani says. “You launch and get feedback and you get criticism. You need to build a rapid feedback loop, which is what we’ve built.”

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/big-bet-on-identity

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar

praskrishna — 2012-03-06T06:03:19Z

Pramod K. Nayar reviews Nilofar Shamim Ansher’s essay ‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ (Digital Alternatives with a Cause? Book One: To Be).

‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ is an attempt to inventory the ontological features of an avatar. Beginning with the assumption that representation of the self – which implies, at once, recognition of one’s self but also the publicly available narrative of the self – is controlled and controllable, Ansher moves on to representation online. What are the cues that enable viewers of avatars to recognize Ansher’s avatar? What are the parameters of evaluating avatar behaviour, as opposed to, say offline behaviour? Ansher here intervenes with a significant question: why do we always have to ‘read’ the avatar as divided from or compared with the self? Is it an ‘either/or’ equation between self and online avatar?

Examining her cybertwin on MyCybertwin.com, Ansher describes how she designed her avatar. The process included filling out a detailed questionnaire from which the avatar takes its shape, attitudes, values and determines its responses. Essentially, as Ansher discovers, the ‘cyber twin runs on scripts running in my head [sic]’. The personality type to which the twin belongs to must be chosen from a set of six types – which, as Ansher correctly points out, leaves little room for fluidity beyond what the programmer has designed. This also implies that Ansher’s self and the cyber twin function within severe constraints of personality and responses to the personality of the other. When Ansher communicates with the cyber twin the twin picks up keywords from Ansher’s script and conveys them back as its (her?) ‘response’, all suggesting a packaged response. This ensures that there are not too many permutations and combinations or ‘layers’ (Ansher’s term) to the cyber twin’s personality.

Ansher wonders what it would take for the twin to discover motivation, or human ‘sentiments’ such as love or care. Does the avatar really constitute a separate entity, or is it a severely limited extension of what Ansher has chosen from the questionnaire. Ansher has deeper metaphysical questions that connect archives (of information, including the questionnaire) with larger issues of an ethical nature. For example, Ansher notes that she can’t teach her twin ‘good’ and bad’ behaviour from just a questionnaire. Ansher concludes that the twin has not ‘earned the right’ to represent her as her online version.

This is a pithy essay that explores the exhilarations, excitements and tensions of online lives (such avatar lives quietly avoid the domain of messy body functions and fluids). Ansher is spot on in her evaluation of the cyber twin as a limited ‘identity’ where the code – the DNA, or the questionnaire – is itself based on a very short list of normative values and personality ‘types’. She is also correct to argue that the self in real life is not a set of stock responses even if these responses are what have been socialized into us. The self evolves, alters, shifts and these are not always programmable or predictable. Ansher rightly does not go so far as to explore sentience in computers and programming (the stuff of sci-fi), but is concerned with the dynamics of interaction between a sentient creature (her real self) and the avatar.

The ‘engineering’ in Ansher’s title must take on an ironic tone: the avatar is an experiment in social engineering as well where the norms of self-making and meaning-making are cultural and engineering an avatar with stock responses (to which then Ansher responds in the chat) with predilections, preferences and prejudices constitutes a kind of cultural work. When for instance Ansher writes: ‘she [the avatar] doesn’t add layers to her identity so much as reinforce the various traits that go into defining it’ she has isolated the key issue here: the cultural work that produces avatars and online iconography with specific traits are trapped within and limited by the contexts in which real selves grow. Both partake of each other: the cultural work produces the Ansher-self and this Ansher-self produces her avatar. The difference of course is that the Ansher-self is not fixed, is complicated and defiantly unpredictable.

This is an important essay that sidesteps the risks of both hagiography (of digital worlds) and the panic Luddite reactions (not responses, but reactions) to the ‘other’ world. I would have liked a bit more – to be fair, this might be entirely due to the space constraints in the volume – on the eversion of the digital world that we now see: where the digital, the cyber- or the ‘other’ world is not just out there but around us, in us, since we occupy, almost simultaneously, the offline and online today. So, to answer the question raised in the first paragraph, one does not see the cybertwin in terms of an ‘either/or’ with the self. It is simultaneously the radically different other and the extension of the self. The self itself is a series of posturings, role-playings and performances. The online avatar is also one more of these. The presentation of the self in everyday life, to adapt the title of Goffman’s pioneering work, now includes status messages, scraps, posts, tweets and avatars. The narrative of the self is now inclusive of the sometimes fictional narratives put online by the self. Profile and impression management is also about how one dresses online.

It would also be interesting to examine the various clusters of avatars in such services as MyCybertwin.com or Second Life, to develop a taxonomy of avatars. If, as suggested above, it is cultural work that carries over into designing avatars then such a taxonomy might say something about the societies and structures from which such avatars emerge.

Ansher’s essay draws attention to the complicated ontology of the avatar but also reflects, with considerable intensity, on the dynamic relation of online and offline selves. Thus she eschews a simplistic binary of offline/online, preferring to focus on the domain of interaction between the two ‘personae’ of the same self.

Pramod K. Nayar

Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. His recent publications include Writing Wrongs: The Cultural Construction of Human Rights in India (Routledge 2012), States of Sentiment: Exploring the Cultures of Emotion (Orient BlackSwan 2011), An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures (Wiley-Blackwell 2010), Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum 2010), Packaging Life: Cultures of the Everyday (Sage 2009), Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity Culture (Sage 2009) among others. His forthcoming books include Digital Cool: Life in the Age of New Media (Orient BlackSwan) and Colonial Voices: The Discourses of Empire (Wiley-Blackwell).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage/an-experiment-in-social-engineering