Centre for Internet and Society

Access to Knowledge — September 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T06:18:01Z

This is the first newsletter from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. The issue introduces you to the CIS Access to Knowledge program, the team members in Delhi and reports from Workshops conducted by the Wikipedia community.

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India:

Access to Knowledge Programme

The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS.

CIS Office in Delhi

The A2K team consists of four members: Nitika Tandon, Shiju Alex, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Statistical Report

Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at http://stats.wikimedia.org.

Wikipedia Workshops

Note: Although most of these workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the reports for all of these were written during September, hence we are featuring these:

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012).
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012).
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012).
Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012).
Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012).
Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad! (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012). There was coverage in the Hindu on September 28, 2012.

Blog Entry

Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom.

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin

Access to Knowledge

praskrishna — 2010-08-09T06:13:36Z

Presentation by Nirmita

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/uploads/barriers-solutions

Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability- Conference at NLSIU

praskrishna — 2015-11-26T02:16:52Z

On November 26, 2015, National Law School of India University, Bangalore is holding a conference on Access to Copyright Works for Persons with Disability in Bangalore. Pranesh Prakash and Nirmita Narasimhan will be speaking at this event.

For concept note and other information see the brochure. Also see the information published on Sinapse blog.

The Marrakesh Treaty, which focuses on the rights of the blind, visually impaired or print disabled persons, with respect to access to copyrighted works was signed on June 27^th, 2013. The underlying objective of the Treaty has been to incorporate certain exceptions to the national laws of countries, in order to provide works in accessible format for persons with print disability. India became the first country to ratify the Treaty and displayed its allegiance to the cause. Bearing in mind the gravity of the Treaty and its possible implications, the MHRD Chair on Intellectual Property Rights & Centre for Intellectual Property Rights and Advocacy (CIPRA), National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is organising a conference “to examine the Marrakesh Treaty provisions, Copyright Act provisions and their implications on the stakeholders—Copyright owners, publishing industry, beneficiaries, and others—in India”.

The conference titled “Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability” will take place on the 26^th November 2015, at the Conference Hall, Training Centre, NLSIU, Bangalore. The Chief Guest for the occasion is Ms. Aparna Sharma, who is the Joint Secretary and Registrar of Copyrights. The conference will commence with the Chief Guest addressing the gathering. This will be followed by a key note address by Mr. G. R. Raghavender, Director IPR at Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and then the presidential address by Prof. (Dr.) Venkata Rao, Vice Chancellor, NLSIU.

Apart from the aforementioned luminaries the subsequent sessions will see participation from other imminent personalities from the field of copyrights, representatives from publishing industry, representatives from organizations for the blind, representatives from developers of compatible software, advocates, academicians and other stakeholders.

Session 1 titled “An Overview of Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled” includes talks by experts like Dr. Kalyan Kankanala (Managing Partner Banana IP Counsels, Visiting Faculty NLSIU, Guest Faculty IIMB), Mr. Pranesh Prakash (Policy Director CIS), Ms Nirmita Narasimhan (Policy Director, CIS) and Dr. S. Elumalai (Assistant Professor, Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Tamil Nadu). The focal point of this session will be fundamental aspects of the Marrakesh Treaty such as exceptions to Copyright law, cross border exchange and beneficiaries of the Treaty.

Session 2, titled ‘Copyright Law in India related to Persons With Disability’, will primarily focus on the Indian aspect and will delve into topics such as general exceptions in the Copyright law and reproduction under compulsory Licensing. The speakers for this session are Dr. Kalyan Kankanala (Managing Partner Banana IP Counsels, Visiting Faculty NLSIU, Guest Faculty IIMB), Mr. Pranesh Prakash (Policy Director CIS), Dr. S. Elumalai (Assistant Professor, Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Tamil Nadu) and Prof. Rajashekar (EFL University, Hyderabad). The Chairperson for the first two sessions will be Mr. G.R. Raghavender.

In keeping with mission and objective of the conference the panel discussion, which is the second last session, will be on the “Implication of Treaty and Copyright Law on the Stakeholders and Beneficiaries”. The panellists for the session are Mr. G. Marippan (Asst. Director, Dept. for the Empowerment of Differently Abled and Senior Citizens, Bangalore), Mr. Gautam Agarwal (National Federation of the Blind), Ms. Madhu Singhal (Managing Trustee, Mitra Jyothi, Bangalore) Mr. Mohan Kumar (Govt. Brail Printing Press, Mysore), Dr. S. Elumalai (Assistant Professor, Dr. Ambedkar Law University), Prof. Rajashekar (Assistant Professor, EFL University, Hyderabad). The Chairperson/Moderator for the panel discussion will be Prof. (Dr) T. Ramakrishna, MHRD Chair Professor on IPR, NLSIU.

The conference will be an enriching experience for all attendees as it aims not only to examine the provisions of the Treaty but the effects it will have on difference sections of the society. Further, the conference will shed light on the extent to which the Treaty will be able accomplish its intended purpose of reducing the roadblocks with respect to accessibility for the blind, visually impaired and print disabled persons.

For more information on the conference please write to cipra@nls.ac.in.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/access-to-copyrighted-works-for-persons-with-disability-conference-at-nlsiu

Access at the cost of Net neutrality?

praskrishna — 2015-10-09T01:18:31Z

In the Net neutrality debate, there is a conflict between two core values: ease of access and neutrality. The ease of access promised by applications like Free Basics compromises neutrality and may later morph into a method of predatory pricingIf programs that bring access to a part of the Internet in the immediate future were to entrench themselves, it could eventually lead to telecom companies abusing their dominant positionsIn the absence of a specific law mandating a neutral Internet, telecom companies enjoy a virtual carte blanche to discriminate between different applications. Though they have not yet exploited this autonomy fully, they are certainly moving towards that.

The article by Suhrith Parthasarathy was published in the Hindu on October 8, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Earlier this year, the social media giant, Facebook, formalised a partnership with Reliance Communications that enabled the Indian company to provide access to over 30 different websites, without any charge on mobile data accruing to the ultimate user. The platform, originally known as “Internet.org,” has now been rebranded as “Free Basics,” Facebook announced last month. Its fundamental ethos, though, remains unchanged. It allows Reliance’s subscribers to surf completely free of cost a bouquet of websites covered within the scheme, which includes, quite naturally, facebook.com. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, views this supposed initiative as a philanthropic gesture, as part of a purported, larger aim to bring access to the Internet to those people who find the costs of using generally available mobile data prohibitive.

Neutrality, an interpretive concept
On the face of it, this supposed act of altruism appears to be commendable. But, there are many critics — some of whom have come together to launch a website “savetheinternet.in” with a view to defending Internet freedom — who argue that Free Basics violates what has come to be known as the principle of network (or Net) neutrality.

While it is clear to all of us that a notion of Net neutrality involves some regulation of the Internet, it is less clear what the term actually means. Like any phrase that involves either a moral or a legal obligation, Net neutrality is also an interpretive concept. People who employ the term to denote some sort of binding commitment, or at the least an aspirational norm, often tend to disagree over precisely how the idea ought to be accomplished. Tim Wu — an American lawyer and presently a professor at the Columbia University — who coined the term, views the notion of Net neutrality as signifying an Internet that does not favour any one application over another. In other words, the idea is to ensure that Internet service providers do not discriminate content by either charging a fee for acting as its carrier or by incorporating any technical qualifications.

In India, there is no law that expressly mandates the maintenance of a neutral Internet. This March, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a draft consultation paper seeking the public’s views on whether the Internet needed regulation. Unfortunately, much of its attention was focussed on the supposedly pernicious impact of applications such as WhatsApp and Viber. “In a multi-ethnic society there is a vital need,” wrote TRAI, “to ensure that the social equilibrium is not impacted adversely by communications that inflame passions, disturb law and order and lead to sectarian disputes.” The questions, therefore, in its view were these: should at least some Internet applications be amenable to a greater regulation, and should they compensate the telecom service providers in addition to the data charges that the consumers pay directly for the use of mobile Internet?

If the government eventually answers these questions in the affirmative, the consequences could be drastic. It could lead to a classification of Internet applications based on arbitrary grounds, by bringing some of them, whom the government views as harmful to society in some manner or another, within its regulatory net. Through such a move, the state, contrary to helping establish principles of Net neutrality as a rule of law, would be actively promoting an unequal Internet.

In any event, as things stand, in the absence of a specific law mandating a neutral Internet, telecom companies enjoy a virtual carte blanche to discriminate between different applications. Though these companies have not yet completely exploited this autonomy, they are certainly proceeding towards such an exercise. In April this year, Airtel announced Airtel Zero, an initiative that would allow applications to purchase data from Airtel in exchange for the telecom company offering them to consumers free of cost.

On the face of it, this programme appears opposed to Net neutrality. But what is even more alarming is that mobile Internet service providers could, in the future, plausibly also control the speeds at which different applications are delivered to consumers. For example, if WhatsApp were to subscribe to Airtel Zero by paying the fee demanded by the company, Airtel might accede to offering WhatsApp to consumers at a pace superior to that at which other applications are run. This kind of discrimination, as Nikhil Pahwa, one of the pioneers of the Save The Internet campaign, has argued, is prototypically opposed to Net neutrality. It tends to breed an unequal playing field, and, if allowed to subsist, it could create a deep division in the online world. Ultimately, we must view Net neutrality as a concept that stands for the values that we want to build as a society; it pertains to concerns about ensuring freedom of expression and about creating an open space for ideas where democracy can thrive. There is a tendency, though, to view those who support Net neutrality as representing a supercilious position. Such criticism is unquestionably blinkered, but it also highlights certain telling concerns.

Telecom companies that wish to discriminate between applications argue that in the absence of an Internet that has completely permeated all strata of society, an obligation to maintain neutrality is not only unreasonable on the companies, but also unfair on the consumer. After all, if nothing else, Airtel Zero and Free Basics bring, at the least, some portions of the Internet to people who otherwise have no means to access the web. What we have, therefore, at some level, is a clash of values: between access to the Internet (in a limited form) and the maintenance of neutrality in an atmosphere that is inherently unequal. This makes tailoring a solution to the problem a particularly arduous process.

The Internet, in its purest form, is a veritable fountain of information. At its core lies a commitment to both openness and a level playing field, where an ability to innovate is perennially maintained. It is difficult to argue against Facebook when it says that some access is better than no access at all. But one of the problems with Free Basics, and indeed with Airtel Zero too, is that the consumer has no choice in which websites he or she might want to access free of cost. If this decision is made only by Facebook, which might argue that it gives every developer an equal chance to be a part of its project as long as it meets a certain criteria, what we have is almost a paternalistic web. In such a situation, information, far from being free, is shackled by constraints imposed by the service provider.

Laudable end, unethical means
This is precisely one of the concerns raised by those arguing in favour of Net neutrality, who, it is worth bearing in mind, aren’t resistant to the idea of a greater penetration of the Internet. Their apprehensions lie in companies resorting to what they believe is an unethical means to achieving, at least in theory, a laudable end. According to them, negating Net neutrality, in a bid to purportedly achieve greater access to the Internet in the immediate future, could prove profoundly injurious in the long run. Yes, Airtel Zero and Free Basics would bring to the less-privileged amongst us some access to the Internet, but the question is this: at what cost?

The worry is that if the programs that bring access to a part of the Internet in the immediate future were to entrench themselves, it could eventually lead to these telecom companies abusing their dominant positions. No doubt, as Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, has argued, it might require a deeper analysis to argue convincingly that packages such as Free Basics and Airtel Zero require immediate invalidation in their present forms; significantly, the former does not demand payments from the applications while the latter is premised on such consideration. But, viewed holistically, the companies’ actions could potentially be characterised as a form of predatory pricing, where consumers might benefit in the short run, only for serious damage to ensue to competition in the long run.

It is, therefore, necessary that any debate on the issue must address the tension between the two apparently conflicting goals — the importance of maintaining a neutral Internet and the need to ensure a greater access to the web across the country. Mr. Zuckerberg argues that these two values are not fundamentally opposed to each other, but can — and must — coexist. He is possibly correct at a theoretical level.

But the history of markets tells us that we have to be very careful in allowing predatory practices, devised to achieve short-term goals, to go unbridled. As citizens, each of us has a fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. If we were to get the balance between these two values wrong, if we were to allow the domination, by a few parties, of appliances that facilitate a free exchange of ideas, in a manner that impinges on the Internet’s neutrality, our most cherished civil liberties could well be put to grave danger.

(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate in the Madras High Court.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-october-8-2015-suhrith-parthasarathy-access-at-the-cost-of-net-neutrality