Centre for Internet and Society

A Treat for the Blind

praskrishna — 2013-07-11T06:02:27Z

The WIPO treaty will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

The article by Chitra Narayanan was published in Business World on June 26, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

For millions of visually impaired people around the globe, it’s a landmark treaty that could open up the kingdom of books for them. After days of intense deliberations at Marrakesh in Morrocco, about 600 World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) negotiators, including delegates from India, reached a consensus on a treaty that will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

Wipo, a United Nations agency, is dedicated to the use of intellectual property as a means of stimulating innovation and creativity. The agency has 186 member states.

Sure, content is king. But for the visually impaired, the right platform for accessing content is what makes the difference. Thanks to audio books, a host of apps, and digital platforms such as Bookshare, which provides content in accessible formats, the technology is already there to bring the rich world of 'hardcovers' and 'paperbacks' alive for those who cannot see. What’s more, these books are compatible with all kinds of devices from mobile phones to tablets to PCs.

Now, at last, there is legal sanction as well to content that was not being made available in accessible formats by the copyrights holders. For the 15 million people who are blind in India, the treaty is expected to open education doors as well as provide entertainment needs. India has the world’s largest number of blind people.

Bangalore-based Centre for Internet Society, a policy research organisation, has been at the forefront of negotiations at WIPO to get the treaty through. Minutes after the session concluded, Pranesh Prakash, policy Director at CIS and his colleague Sunil Abraham were tweeting ecstatically about the “win”.

For five long years, this Wipo treaty has witnessed contentious discussions on issues such as including exports of copyrighted works, translations of copyrighted works and so on. According to Prakash, who responded over twitter, “On Exports we won, but re-exports which was earlier permitted has become much more difficult.”

There are also other grainy areas such as commercial availability of the books. According to a post on the Intellectual Property Watch website, soon after the agreement was reached, commercial availability still stands under Article 4 (National Law Limitations and Exceptions on Accessible Format Copies) but has disappeared from Article 5 (cross border exchange of accessible format copies).

Although blind music legend Stevie Wonder, one of the most ardent supporters of the treaty, must be crooning Signed, Sealed, Delivered... it’s early days yet. The draft of the treaty has to be ratified by governments before being adopted.

But for five long years, it has been a long hard battle between copyright owners and those fighting for human rights of the visually impaired. Finally, as one observer, put it: 'a rare victory is in sight for human rights'.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/business-world-june-26-2013-chitra-narayanan-a-treat-for-the-blind

A Three-Way Race Draws Delhi’s Young, and Everyone Else, Out to Vote

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T07:03:54Z

The polling stations were supposed to close at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, just after sunset. But with thousands still waiting in the dark to cast their vote in the state assembly elections, the Delhi Election Commission decided to extend the voting until 6:30 p.m. Then to 7:30 p.m.

The article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Finally, the Election Commission said it would wait until 9:30 p.m. to close the polls. At the polling station in the New Delhi district, those waiting in line agreed that a relatively warm winter evening was helping to draw people out to vote.

Though no official data on voter turnout had been released by 9 p.m., it was clear that voters were coming out in unprecedented numbers for this year’s Delhi state elections. Analysts were predicting that this election would break the previous voter turnout record of 61.75 percent in 1993.

Unlike in the past, this year’s contest featured a potential spoiler in the Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, Party. Its leader, the firebrand anticorruption activist Arvind Kejriwal, was battling to dethrone the state’s longtime chief minister, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress Party, and siphon votes from the other establishment choice, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. (Exit polls by the local media on Wednesday night were showing that the B.J.P. was likely to win the most seats in the state assembly.)

The prospect of upending the political status quo brought out young voters like 23-year-old Hina Kousar, although she had to put up a fight with her family to cast her vote for the Aam Aadmi Party. Her mother lectured her on how governments don’t care about people, but that didn’t deter Ms. Kousar.

“They have the wrong mentality, and young people should change it,” she said. “My granny is 70 years old and I told her to vote.”

Many of the youthful voters turned voting into a social activity, both in person and online. At one polling station, most people cast their votes quietly and left, but many of the young voters came with their friends. They talked animatedly about their choices while leaving the polling stations.

Others called their families to say they had voted. Some clicked photos of each other on their smartphones and posted the images on their Facebook pages.

In less than a year, Mr. Kejriwal, 45, and his party has pasted itself quite literally on city’s consciousness with aggressive campaigns and posters of brooms, symbolizing sweeping away the old order. And that’s why he got Ms. Kousar’s vote.

“The most important thing is that he has promised to remove corruption. The money that is going into Swiss banks is our money. The rising market prices are because of it,” she said.

Several voters between the ages of 20 to 25 who were interviewed by India Ink said they were backing Mr. Kejriwal, who represented a change from the three-term winner Ms. Dikshit. The B.J.P. had no star state candidate that appealed to them, even though its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, engaged with students at Delhi University earlier this year and is extremely active on social media.

Besides corruption, several young voters, both male and female, said that ensuring women’s safety had to be a priority for any Delhi government.

Another Kejriwal voter, Kavita, a 27-year-old teacher who goes by one name, said that Ms. Dikshit’s government hadn’t effectively improved women’s safety after the gang rape of a physiotherapy student one year ago. “I don’t feel the difference,” she said. “I still feel unsafe on the streets, so let’s see what some new leaders can do to change this.”

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.Betwa Sharma Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Another Kejriwal supporter, Abhilash Sasidharan, 27, said a safe environment for women is “absolutely” the most important thing to him, but the software engineer also was moved that Mr. Kejriwal had left his lucrative job as a revenue service officer to join politics.

Kavita, 27, after she cast her vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

“I don’t have the courage to step into dirty politics, but he does and I want to support that,” he said. “Look, Congress has had 15 years, so why not see if someone can do better, and all these parties should feel a threat to do better.”

But not all young people are buying Mr. Kejriwal’s promises of sweeping change. Shiv Raj Syal, 20, called them “flowery and too good to believe,” as he cast his vote for Ms. Dikshit. “He is just very new at this and I don’t think it’s wise to hand over the running of a national capital to a party with no experience,” he said.

The chief minister had focused on development, the college student said, making Delhi a hub for foreign brands and corporates, and transforming it into an international city.

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Despite the appearance of a robust youth presence at the polls on Wednesday, analysts are waiting on the Election Commission’s numbers before declaring this election cycle the year of the youth vote.

Sanjay Kumar, an election analyst from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, said that as of July, only 68 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 21 had registered to vote, far lower than the 86 percent average of other demographics.

V.S. Sampath, the chief election commissioner in India, said that youth participation in the electoral process had been a priority in recent years, and several efforts including visiting universities and colleges had been made to register them, which had resulted in a “significant increase.”

In 2011, Mr. Sampath said, 119,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 19 were on the electoral rolls in Delhi, which accounted for 0.93 percent of total Delhi voters, but now the numbers had gone up to 405,000, or 3.4 percent.

Election observers have also pointed out that the hype about social media, especially Twitter, becoming a tool for political expression and organization for the youth has not necessarily translated into a surge in voting in that demographic of users.

The political debates on social media could translate into votes by the next elections, according to Sunil Abraham from the Centere of Internet and Society in Bangalore, who describes the Internet penetration as “limited,” and social media use even smaller and dominated by the economic elite.

Mr. Abraham, however, said social media is influencing the political discourse, not by motivating voters, but by influencing the coverage in mainstream media.

Relative to the country’s population, he added, social media users had a “disproportionate influence on discourse.”

But the young voters who spoke to India Ink said that at least for them, social media did play a role in drawing them into politics this year. Mr. Syal, the Congress voter, for instance, said that he had posted a message on his Facebook wall criticizing some of Mr. Kejriwal’s claims, which drew 50 comments.

And Mr. Sasidharan, the Aam Aadmi Party supporter, posted on Facebook a photo of him holding up his finger stained with ink, showing that he voted, immediately after coming out of the polling station. “I hope that it inspires more people to come and vote,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nytimes-december-4-2013-betwa-sharma-a-three-way-race-draws-delhis-young-and-everyone-else-out-to-vote

A Telugu Wikipedia Meet-up @ CIS, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2013-07-12T04:58:39Z

Telugu Wikipedians are having their monthly meet-up at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore on Saturday, July 13, 2013, from 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Click to read the event page on Wikipedia

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/బెంగుళూరు/13 జూలై 2013

బెంగుళూరులో రెండవ (సాధారణ) తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్ల సమావేశం

కార్యక్రమ వివరాలు

తేదీ: 13-జూలై-2013 (రెండవ శనివారం)
సమయం: మధ్యాహ్నం గం: 2.00 నుండి సాయంత్రం గం: 5.00 వరకు
వేదిక: సెంటర్ ఫర్ ఇంటర్నెట్ అండ్ సొసైటీ, నెం. 194, రెండవ సి క్రాస్, దొమ్మలూరు, రెండవ స్టేజీ, బెంగుళూరు - 560071 (ఫోన్: +91 80 4092 6283),గూగుల్ మేప్ తో సహా వివరాలు

చర్చాంశాలు

సా2:00:
- స్వాగతం .. శశి
- పరిచయాలు.. అందరు
- తెవికీ పరిచయం..శశి
సా 3:00
- అరవిందుల రచన సావిత్రి గురించి పరిచయం.. డా. టి రామకృష్ణ (ప్రత్యేక అతిథి)
సా4:00
- తెవికీ ప్రాజెక్టు తెలుగు ప్రముఖులు పురోగతి,సమస్యలు .. ప్రాజెక్టు సభ్యులు
- బెంగుళూరు లో తెవికీ కార్యక్రమాలు, సభ్యుల వృద్ధి.. అందరు
- తెవికీలో సమస్యలు పరిష్కారాలు.. అందరు
- తెలుగువారి కుటుంబాలలో సంబంధబాంధవ్యాలు.. అందరు
- <విషయం చేర్చండి>

వక్తల పరిచయం:

డా.టి.రామకృష్ణ జీవసాంకేతిక రంగంలో ఆచార్యుడిగా, శాస్త్రవేత్తగా అపార అనుభవం గడించారు. ప్రస్తుతం శ్రీఅరవిందో మానవీయ విలువల విద్యా కేంద్రం (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Education in Human Values) లో పరిశోధన మరియు అభివృద్ధి సంచాలకునిగా పనిచేస్తున్నారు. అరవిందులు రచించిన సావిత్రి నవల చదివి ప్రభావితమై ఆ నవలను తెలుగులోకి అనువదించారు.

సూచనలు: బెంగుళూరులో వున్న వారు తప్పక నోట్ బుక్ లేక టాబ్లెట్ కంప్యూటర్లు తెచ్చుకుంటే ప్రత్యక్షంగా సమస్యల పరిష్కారానికి వీలవుతుంది.
ప్రత్యక్షంగా పాల్గొనలేనివారికోసం గూగుల్ హేంగౌటు ప్రయత్నించబడుతుంది. వివరాలకు సమావేశసమయానికి వెబ్ ఛాట్ లో #wikimedia-in చానల్ లేక ఇదే పేజీలో చూడండి.

సమావేశ నిర్వహణ నేపధ్యం భారతదేశంలో వికీమీడియా చాప్టర్ జనవరి 3, 2011 న బెంగుళూరులో నమోదైంది. ముంబయి సముదాయంతో కలసి వికీ కాన్ఫరెన్స్ ఇండియా అనబడే జాతీయ స్థాయి సమావేశాన్ని నవంబరు 18-20 , 2011 లలో నిర్వహించింది. గత రెండేళ్లలో అనేకచోట్ల వికీ ప్రచార కార్యక్రమాలు దిగ్విజయంగా నిర్వహిస్తున్నది. కార్యక్రమాలను మరింత చురుకుగా చేయటానికి మరియు విస్తరించటానికి, మరియు కార్యనిర్వహక జట్టులోని సభ్యుల నేతృత్వంలో నగర మరియు భాషా ప్రత్యేక ఆసక్తి జట్టులు పనిచేస్తున్నాయి. బెంగుళూరులోని తెలుగు ప్రత్యేక ఆసక్తి జట్టు సభ్యులు మరియు సెంటర్ ఫర్ ఇంటర్నెట్ అండ్ సొసైటీ, బెంగుళూరు వారి జ్ఞానాన్ని చేరువచేర్చు జట్టు (Access to Knowledge)తో కలసి నెలవారీ సమావేశాలు ప్రతి నెల రెండవ శనివారం నాడు నిర్వహిస్తున్నది. దీనిలో ప్రముఖ తెలుగు వక్తల ఉపన్యాసాలతో బాటు తెలుగువికీ పరిచయం మరియువికీ పనిని సులభంచేసే ప్రాజెక్టులుమరియు సాంకేతికాంశాలపై ప్రసంగాలు మరియు వికీసమస్యలకు పరిష్కారాలుంటాయి. మరిన్ని వివరాలకు శశిధర్ లేక రవిచంద్రను సంప్రందించండి.

ఇవీ చూడండి

జూన్ నెల సమావేశం పేజి

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

(నమోదు తప్పనిసరికాదు కాని నిర్వాహకులకు సహాయంగా మరియు ఇతరులకు ప్రోత్సాహంగా వుంటుంది. పైన మార్చు నొక్కి మీ పేరు చేర్చవచ్చు)

తప్పక

-- శశి (చర్చ) 06:01, 29 జూన్ 2013 (UTC)
--అర్జున (చర్చ) 06:27, 29 జూన్ 2013 (UTC)
--రవిచంద్ర (చర్చ) 11:57, 29 జూన్ 2013 (UTC)
--రహ్మానుద్దీన్ (చర్చ) 04:59, 4 జూలై 2013 (UTC)
<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

బహుశా

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

పాల్గొనటానికి కుదరని

ఇదే రోజు CIS-A2K, IISc మరియు ఇతర ఉన్నత విద్యాసంస్థలు భాగస్వామ్యం వహిస్తున్న ఇంకొక కార్యక్రమంలో పాల్గొనడంవలన మన ఈ సమావేశానికి రాలేకపోతున్నాను. సమావేశం విజయవంతం కావాడానికి CIS-A2K నుండి అన్ని విధాలా సహాయసహకారాలు అందింపచేయడానికి నా వంతు కృషి చేస్తాను. -- విష్ణు (చర్చ)06:13, 11 జూలై 2013 (UTC)
<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

స్పందనలు

<పై వరసలో స్పందించండి>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/telegu-wikipedia-meet-up-july-13-2013

A Talk by Charlotte Lapsansky

praskrishna — 2011-04-22T07:41:20Z

Charlotte Lapsansky will give a lecture on the "Mobile Voices project" at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on Thursday, 16 September 2010.

Mobile Voices is an academic-community partnership to research and design a platform for low-wage immigrants in LA to publish stories about their lives and their communities directly from their mobile phones. This low-cost, open source, customizable, and easy to deploy multimedia mobile storytelling platform will be designed in collaboration with its users, and will help recent immigrants who lack computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere.

In this talk, Charlotte will describe the Mobile Voices project and discuss key themes that have arisen for the Mobile Voices project team, including participatory technology design, community digital storytelling, and digital inclusion through mobile-phone based platforms. She will then describe the key technological and social issues that have arisen in the process of adapting Mobile Voices for India and the opportunities and challenges this presents.

About Charlotte Lapsansky

Charlotte Lapsansky is a PhD Candidate and American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Charlotte has a background in development communication and mass media campaigns addressing gender and health in India. At Annenberg, her research interests include communication for social change, participatory development communications, community mobilization and strategic campaign planning. For the past two years, she has been a team member for Mobile Voices, a participatory project which has created a Drupal-based digital storytelling platform for first-generation, low-wage migrant workers in Los Angeles, allowing them to create and publish stories about their communities directly from their mobile phones. Currently, Charlotte is collaborating with organizations in India to customize and adapt the mobile voices platform social endeavours in India.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/charlotte-lapsansky-talk

A tale of two Internet campaigns

praskrishna — 2014-03-07T00:19:26Z

Techies supported anti-surveillance campaign, companies backed internet safety.

Deepa Kurup's article was published in the Hindu on February 11, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Internet was the subject of two distinctly different global campaigns, both coinciding on Tuesday. While one is backed by rights groups, civil society organisations and advocates of software and Internet freedom in general, another is run and supported by major tech corporations with a view to creating awareness on being safe online.

Supported by over 5,000 websites globally, including biggies Reddit, Mozilla (makers of Firefox) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ‘Day We Fight Back’ campaign aimed at raising a voice against mass dragnet surveillance by the U.S. government. Despite being a largely U.S.-centric mass campaign attacking the National Security Agency’s spying activities worldwide, groups such as the Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK) and Bangalore-based NGO Centre for Internet and Society have supported it.

On Tuesday, GNU/Linux user groups (known as glugs) in several colleges — coordinated by the FSMK — did classroom-to-classroom campaigns talking to students and creating awareness about surveillance. In some engineering colleges, such as the SJBIT, these glugs are even screening documentaries related to online privacy and mass surveillance over the week. Explaining why the FSMK decided to hold a campaign here, Sarath M.S. of the FSMK said: “While the call for action is directed towards lawmakers in U.S., this affects all of us. It has undermined the sovereignty of nations and privacy of individuals. Given this, it is important to build public opinion among the youth against these surveillance systems, and make them understand the political issues underlying products and services that they use regularly.”

Sunil Abraham of the CIS, an organisation that is listed on the campaign website (www.thedaywefightback.org) as a supporter, says that the global support comes from the fact that people have realised that the idea that the Internet is a democratic medium is not true anymore. “The aftermath of Snowden’s revelations have signalled the end of the Internet as we knew it. This is an attempt by civil society organisations to make a case for the web we want.

Safe Internet Day

Meanwhile, two big companies announced activities as part of the Safe Internet Day, an annual global campaign that promotes safer use of online tech. To mark the occasion, Microsoft Corp released results of the third annual Microsoft Safe Computing Index that found that 20 per cent Indians have been victims of online phishing attacks and 12 per cent have suffered identity theft.

Google India too launched the ‘Good to Know’ campaign on online safety. It announced a partnership with Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and the Voluntary Organisation in the Interest of Consumer Education (VOICE) on this campaign.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-february-11-2014-deepa-kurup-a-tale-of-two-internet-campaigns

A Seminar on E-publishing of Odia Books

praskrishna — 2014-12-07T02:41:26Z

A seminar was organized by Molybtech Technology Solutions on November 30, 2014 for the betterment of Odia language and writers at Bhanja Kala Mandap.

Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the seminar as a speaker and shared his knowledge with the audience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/seminar-e-publishing-odia-books

A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns

praskrishna — 2016-03-17T03:08:33Z

India’s legislators are on Wednesday debating a law that would allow the government to collect biometric and demographic information from people in return for distributing to them government benefits and subsidies.

The article by John Ribeiro published by IDG News Service on March 16, 2016 was also mirrored on CSO.

A number of legislators and civil rights activists are concerned about the absence of strong privacy safeguards in the legislation and a provision in the law that allows the government to access the data collected for national security reasons. There is also concern that such a large centralized database of personal information could be hacked and critical information leaked.

Biometric information, once leaked cannot be 'revoked,' and identity fraud may in fact become harder to detect if Aadhaar is used for authentication of transactions, said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, in an email.

Activists are also wary that the program could be extended by the government to make it a mandatory digital ID card for people in the country. Already some telecommunications services and financial services companies use the biometric identity as an optional way for verifying customers. Currently, people can keep their personal information in silos, as for example their insurance company can't combine their database with that of a hospital, Prakash said. "However, with Aadhaar as a unique linking factor, they could, even without the person's consent," he added.

The biometric ID, which assigns a person a 12-digit number called the Aadhaar number, requires the collection of photos, fingerprints, iris scans and other information such as the name, date of birth and address of the individual. Every time a person has to be verified, he has to present the Aadhaar number, and his biometric information has to match the data stored in a centralized repository.

The digital identity is expected to provide proof of identification to the large number of poor Indians who do not have house addresses, school certificates, birth certificates or other documents that are usually used to prove identity in India.

The traditional paper ration books used in the country are notoriously stuffed with people who are nonexistent or who do not typically qualify for benefits, so the government hopes to save some money by linking the benefits to a digital identity. But the new scheme addresses only end-user fraud and not the large-scale theft prevalent in the entire supply chain, according to analysts.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a member of India’s Parliament, has proposed amendments to the bill that would ensure that Aadhaar numbers should not be used as proof of identity for purposes other than subsidies and benefits. Chandrasekhar also wants the Unique Identification Authority of India that manages the project to be responsible for ensuring the security and privacy of the biometric and demographic information of the account holder, with liability for damages in a civil court in the case of a breach.

The Aadhaar program has been allotting IDs for a number of years, even under a previous government, but the program was the offshoot of an executive order and had no legal sanction. The country’s Supreme Court ruled in 2013 in an interim order that people cannot be required to have Aadhaar identification to collect state subsidies. Aware of the legal minefield it was treading on, the government had said the scheme was voluntary.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 passed recently in the Lok Sabha, one of the houses of India’s parliament, now aims to make the scheme mandatory. The bill sailed through the Lok Sabha where the government has a majority, but will likely meet with strong opposition from the other house, the Rajya Sabha. But the government has classified the bill as a money bill and the Rajya Sabha does not have the final say on such bills. So the legislation is likely to be passed in any case despite its limitations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/a-scheme-in-india-to-help-the-poor-raises-privacy-concerns

A Scam Masquerading as Santa

praskrishna — 2015-12-26T01:23:56Z

Christmas is here and social media is abuzz with celebrations of its spirit.

The article by Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath was published in Bangalore Mirror on December 25, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

Lurking in the dark though, is an online scam that has been turning expectations of those participating in it into heartache. Secret Santa, a gift exchange programme, has lured many people into its fold. The exchange programme invites people to join a chain of gift givers (and hopeful receivers) through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The promised deal is that every person in the chain stands to get 36 gifts against one that they make.

A person interested in being part of the chain, has to post their agreement on their wall, and invite six more participants. The scheme encourages the person to send a gift valued below Rs 600 to a person whose name and address is at the top of a long list of participants that is sent as a private message. Once they have made the gift, they remove the name of the person in first place, and replace it with the person in the second place. The new recruit then puts their name in the second place of the list.

Social media experts call it as nothing but a pyramid scheme scam. While this has gone viral in the city only recently, the UK and USA governments have already warned their citizens against falling prey to such scams and termed them illegal. While most victims of the scam are sending books as gifts to strangers, there are others who have been gifting cosmetics, chocolates or Christmas gift packs. Of course, most are doing it in the hope of getting back similar gifts.

Chaitanya KM, Kannada film director, who sent a book as a gift under the scheme, told Bangalore Mirror, "I sent one book and seven people have asked me for my address but I have not received anything in return. I haven't heard about this scam but I do not mind gifting a book anyways without getting anything in return." Some hope that Secret Santa will work as an eye opener for city social media users.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, said, "This seems to be a rumour to which many are falling prey. This will work like net-user education, and people will get wiser after they are cheated. Some form of awareness needs to be done because at least two per cent of people will respond to this."

Facebook bars it
According to Facebook rules, multi-level marketing on the platform is prohibited. The Facebook agreement terms state that engaging in things like pyramid schemes is not allowed. Also posting personal details on Facebook makes one vulnerable to many more identity fraud that can follow.

IT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

Not only are pyramid schemes like this one mathematically impossible, they're also against Facebook's terms of use. The list of theoretical participants multiplies into millions of people in just a few steps of Secret Santa. The idea sounds feasible but it is not. Going from step one it starts with six people, who each invite six more, who all send gifts to the person in the number one spot before they're moved off the list. However, as it spreads, the number of people involved increases far more than would ever take part — if the 36 each invite six people then the total number of participants is 216 going on to 1,296 and so on. Only those who start the schemes or enter in the second round stand a chance of receiving something in return and even in that case it is just one gift not 36 as the post claims. Those who join later never ever reach the top of the list.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/a-scam-masquerading-as-santa

A Report on National Conference on ICTs for Differently Abled / Under privileged

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:19:48Z

A report on National Conference on ICTs for Differently Abled / Under privileged Communities in Education, Employment and Entreprenuership held at Loyola College in 2009.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/report-on-national-conference-on-ICTs

A Report on National Conference on ICTs for Differently Abled / Under privileged Communities in Education, Employment & Entreprenuership 2009

praskrishna — 2011-08-26T07:41:27Z

This is a report about the National Conference on ICTs for the differently abled / under privileged communities in education, employment and entreprenuership which was held at Loyola College in Chennai from 1 to 3 December 2009.

Click here for the full report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-national-conference-ICTs

A Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2012-12-07T22:37:59Z

(By Debapriya Priyadashi Chakra) Sambad, Odisha's most widely read and largest circulated daily, on November 19, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Read a detailed report about this workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T05:20:38Z

The Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, on December 3, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia Workshop organized in IIT, Kharagpur, West Bengal.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur

A Refreshing Start!

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T16:49:44Z

Parmesh Shahani enters the New Year inspired by the various ideas he’s been exposed to in The Hague and Lavasa.

The time between December and January is the time to hit the ‘re’ button. Re-fresh. Re-start. Re-think. Re-imagine. One’s own self as well as the world around us. It is the time for new ideas. The year is just beginning and everything is possible. I decide to spend this time by taking a short learning break away from the Radia tapes, 2G scams, WikiLeaks and what have you.

My first stop is Amsterdam where I go to museum hop for exactly one day. My friends are surprised when I tell them that I’m not doing any weed, and that, yes, I’ve seen it but no, the red light district isn’t really my thing. “Well, you can’t really say you’re in Amsterdam,” declares a particularly wise one to me over Facebook.

I politely disagree. My visit is intensely enjoyable and I manage to pack in the Anne Frank House (very moving, especially if you’ve read the diary, and who hasn’t?), Rijksmuseum’s famed Rembrandt masterpieces as well as the Van Gogh Museum (indescribably moving, despite the line of tourists) all in one day. It helps that I am staying at the super luxurious Sofitel The Grand. The renovated 16th century royal guest house is full of heritage listed heirlooms showcasing Amsterdam’s history dating back to 1578, so my art tour continues even after I return from my outside excursions.

Not for too long, because I quickly have to rush to The Hague, where Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham (who together run the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, and are in my mind, two of the smartest people living in India right now) have collaborated with the Dutch organisation Hivos to put together a thinkathon on ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ This is the third event in a series on technology, youth and engagement, that began in Taipei, moved on to Johannesburg, and will finally end in Santiago, Chile this coming February.

Nishant and Hivos’ fabulous Fieke Jansen set the tone by talking about why the question mark at the end of the title ‘Digital Natives for a Cause?’ is important. Can one think of digital natives as simply youth who have grown up with technology or can we include other older people within this term? What does it mean talking about digital natives and questions of transformation and change? What does it mean to even have a cause? Does a cause have to be framed in certain language? I discuss and debate all of this and much more with an incredible group of change-making activists, policy makers and artists from all over the world.

These include folks like Prabhas Pokherel from UNICEF Kosovo, Eddie Avila from Rising Voices Bolivia, Dorothy Okello from the Women of Uganda Network, and Simeon Oriko from the Kuyu Project in Kenya. I’m fascinated by all that they are doing. Kuyu, for instance, aims to teach young African students how to use various forms of social media to make a positive impact in their communities, through online Wikis, mobile phone networks and digital training camps. Nonkululekho Godana’s uniquely South African fashion sense catches my eye and we discuss shopping during the fun dinners, each of which is at a spectacular location in The Hague. Our thinkathon venue is the Museum of Communication, which itself is very special, with its talking installations and special multimedia galleries.

Being here gives me a chance to meet Sam Gregory from Witness, Peter Gabriel’s organisation and website that trains and equips individuals across the world to use video to document human right violations and effect change. I’ve been a big fan of what they’re doing ever since they started. It’s also great to hang out with Ushahidi’s Juliana Rotich, even if it’s only for a little while. Ushahidi develops free open source software for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping that anyone can use to further their cause. For example, Vote Report India – that catalogued the 2009 general elections – was built on this platform.

I am extremely happy with the quality time I share with co-TED fellow Jasmeen Patheja. I’m sure that you’ve heard of her Blank Noise Project; it is a physical and virtual artistic intervention that aims at creating public awareness about eve teasing. See http://blog.blanknoise.org/ or the image of one of their Bengaluru park interventions that accompanies this column. Jasmeen has just returned from Tokyo where she’s been cataloguing Japanese women’s stories about harassment. Together, we roll our eyes at how similar men all over the world are!

At the thinkathon, a hot topic of discussion is slactivism or slacker activism that a lot of social media seems to be promoting. Is signing an online petition the same as protesting on the ground, in real life? How might we conceptualise a button clicker as an agent for social transformation? Beyond this, how might we engage digital natives in terms of policy-making processes?

I mull over all these questions on my crazy 30-hour journey from snow-bound The Hague to the artificially created city of Lavasa on the outskirts of Pune. Jetlagged as hell, I make it just in time for the first talk of the INK India conference. Compared to last year’s TED, I find everything to be smaller at INK, including the audience. The Bollywood night with Kunal Ganjawala, for instance, has about 20 people dancing in front of the stage as opposed to the 100 or so from last year. And, there are problems galore, with the poorly organised transportation, constantly crashing sound system, and general organisational chaos.

I’ve been a Lavasa sceptic ever since I heard about the project and now that I’m finally visiting, I see my worst fears have been realised. It feels like being on the set of the Truman show, with the fake looking lake, pastel coloured houses, and ever-smiling and possibly ever-afraid staff members. It seems like, at least to me, that they have been trained to not draw attention to themselves, to forcibly ‘invisibilise’ themselves, lest they prick the bubble of the middle-class fantasy of an idyllic foreign-like ‘home’. I continue to be surprised as to why the conference organisers would chose a location like this to host a conference that aims to showcase the best of innovation and knowledge. The court cases against Lavasa that are being flashed on the national news even while INK is taking place, don’t really help very much in making me change my views.

But despite the logistical hiccups and weird choice of location, INK still manages to score for me on the sheer power of its excellent speakers, and I’m glad to have been there. Where do I begin, even with the highlights? Should I tell you about James Cameron’s effortless charm, as he offers his 3D cameras to Indian filmmakers who might want to play with them? Deepak Chopra’s incredible mind on display making connections between the sub-atomic and the Vedic? Phillipe Starck’s sense of humour and his overall design genius that he wears so lightly on his oh-so French sleeves?

How about Jennifer Aaker’s incredible talk that begins with an emotional story about a bone marrow transplant, loops into a campaign to improve the number of registered South Asian bone marrow donors, and ends with her understanding of what happiness is? Or Matt Groening’s video of his father doing basketball throws, backward, while he tells us just why he named Homer Simpson’s character after him?

Just like with TED last year, the Indian speaker contingent is very inspiring. Toy inventor Arvind Gupta is a livewire on stage as he rapidly shows us one toy after the other, made from material like newspapers, old CDs, straws, matchsticks, and pencils. Clay innovator Mansukhbhai Prajapati shows us the clay filters and fridges that he makes for poor consumers in India that need such products but cannot afford their conventional avatars. Commonwealth 4x400 relay gold medallist Ashwini Akkunji recounts how her athletic career started out by running after cattle in her village in Karnataka. Conductor George Mathew talks about how a New York mugging in which he was almost beaten to death became a music lesson after his muggers found his metronome in his pocket.

Anand Kumar, founder of the ‘Super 30’ classes in Bihar that train impoverished rural youth to get into the IITs, gets a standing ovation. It is good to catch up with TED stars from last year like India’s youngest headmaster Babar Ali, who is continuing to scale up his school, or Sunita Krishnan, who has used her Google grant money to build an impressive centre for women survivors of violence.

However, my best talk is by Simon Lewis, who has produced films like Look Who’s Talking in Hollywood. Simon shares his personal story of a car crash that almost ended his life but set him off on a quest to rebuild both his mind and body, piece by piece, using technology and willpower every step of the way.

He has meticulously captured this journey in his book Rise and Shine, which you should read this year, if you can. I want to leave you with http://www.thevisualmd.com/, which is a website you should visit. INK speaker Alexander Tsiaras has shared his nine visual rules of wellness here. Check it out and see if you want to follow them in 2011. I certainly do.

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/refreshing-start

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi

praskrishna — 2013-04-12T09:33:46Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry cordially invite you to a "Privacy Round Table" at the FICCI Federation House in Tansen Marg, New Delhi on April 13, 2013, from 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

To discuss, in furtherance of Internet Governance Initiatives and Dialogue in 2013, the “Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy” by the Justice AP Shah Committee, and the text of the Citizens’ Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013, drafted by the Centre for Internet and Society.

The discussions and recommendations from the meeting will be published into a compilation, and presented at the Internet Governance meeting planned for October 2013.

Time	Detail
10.30 11.30	Overview of Justice AP Shah report: Purpose, principles, and framework
11.30 12.00	Tea
12.00 13.00	Overview, explanation, and discussion on the Citizens’ Privacy Protection Bill 2013
13.00 14.00	Lunch
14.00 16.00	In depth explanation and discussions regarding the Citizens’ Privacy Protection Bill 2013 (time for review and comments)
16.00 16.30	Tea

Confirmations and RSVP

Please send your email confirmations for attending the first New Delhi Roundtable on April 13, 2013, to Snehashish Ghosh at snehashish@cis-india.org, mobile no. +91- 9902763325,latest by end-of-business 5:30 p.m. on Friday April 5, 2013. As the conference is a roundtable dialogue, we request that attendees submit a brief introduction about themselves and their interest in the topic.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-round-table

A Privacy Round Table in Chennai

praskrishna — 2013-05-06T10:01:45Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, Data Security Council of India and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry cordially invite you to a "Privacy Round Table" at the Residency Towers in Chennai on Saturday, May 18, 2013, 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

To discuss the "Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy" by the Justice AP Shah Committee, the text of the "Citizens' Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013", drafted by the Centre for Internet and Society, and "Strengthening Privacy Protection through Co-regulation" by DSCI.

The discussions and recommendations from the meeting will be published into a compilation, and presented at the Internet Governance meeting planned for October 2013.

Draft Agenda for the Roundtable Discussion

Time	Detail
10.30 a.m.	Overview, explanation, and discussion: The Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy
11.30 a.m.	Overview, explanation, and discussion: Strengthening Privacy Protection through Co-regulation
12.15 p.m.	Tea
12.30 p.m.	Overview, explanation, and discussion: The Citizens Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013
1.15 p.m.	Lunch
2.15 p.m.	In depth discussions: The Citizens Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013
4.15 p.m.	Tea

Confirmations and RSVP

Please send your email confirmations for attending the Chennai Privacy Roundtable on May 18th, 2013, to Snehashish Ghosh at snehashish@cis-india.org, mobile no. +91- 9902763325,latest by end-of-business 5:30 p.m. on Monday May 13, 2013. As the conference is a roundtable dialogue, we request that attendees submit a brief introduction about themselves and their interest in the topic.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-round-table-chennai