Centre for Internet and Society

Dot Bharat domain to roll out on August 21

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T07:08:32Z

Web addresses are set to get multilingual in India. Soon you will be able to type in addresses in a web browser in the Devnagri script – with “dot bharat” standing in for the currently common “dot in” domain to begin with. The roll-out of the same begins on August 21.

This was originally published by IANS and mirrored in Firstpost on August 19, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

In the 90-day “sunrise period” of the roll-out those with registered trademarks will be able to register domain names in languages that use the Devnagri script, such as Hindi, Marathi, Boro, Dogri etc. After the sunrise period, it will be thrown open to regular users of the internet.

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), an autonomous non-profit organisation, is responsible for peering of ISPs and routing the domestic traffic within the country. The NIXI and the government’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) have worked on enabling this country code top level domain (ccTLD) of dot bharat. They say more such domains in different scripts and languages will eventually follow.

Currently, one can find content in various languages online. However, the URLs or web addresses are in English. With this rollout, even URLs would be in Hindi or Marathi. “Once the sunrise period runs smoothly, we will introduce other languages in other scripts such as Bengali, Punjabi, Kannada, Telugu etc. There is no timeline set for it yet, but we hope there will be enough pressure with the adoption of the Devnagri domains to implement it soon,” says Mahesh Kulkarni, program coordinator at the C-DAC, heading the language technology group.

A few government websites too will be a part of the launch next week by the union minister of communications and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad. “For example, the pmindia dot gov dot in will be pradhanmantri dot sarkar dot bharat,” says Dr Govind, CEO of NIXI.

While some quarters have welcomed the introduction of the new domain, others are doubtful of its success given the low internet penetration and low literacy rate in the country. A June 2014 report from research firm eMarketer, India had the third largest online user-base globally after China and the US but had the lowest internet penetration growth in Asia Pacific at 17.4%. Osama Manzar, who heads the Digital Empowerment Foundation, suggests getting more people and public institutions online rolling out local language domain names.

“This is not a bad move, but I doubt and wonder if it will encourage people to buy domain names in Indian languages. Is it in sync with the national digital infrastructure? It is important that the government encourage every department and village panchayat to get online with a website along with this,” says Manzar.

Sahitya Akademi-winning Hindi writer Uday Prakash finds the Devnagri domain a welcome move, but stresses on the importance of making quality content in regional languages available online. “It’s a good step and will help those who are not comfortable with English. However, the problem remains that most of the content online is in English. If I search for Robin Williams in English, I will find hundreds of webpages. But if I google the same name in Devnagri, I’ll hardly find anything,” says Prakash.

On the other hand, there is also the view that the move towards a multilingual web need not follow a set path. “If a poor person buys a mobile phone before he build a toilet, who are we to judge? It is a market phenomenon. Like a jigsaw, some pieces of the puzzle may be worked out in advance. There are things like Indic input keyboards, text to speech and speech to text that need to be in place before an Indic language speaker can have the same experience as an English language user of the internet,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization Center for Internet and Society.

In October 2013, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) delegated generic top level domains in Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic scripts. This was under the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) fast track process of the ICANN, which began in 2009, inviting requests from countries for territory names in scripts other than Latin. Meanwhile domestically, the union government has made a push for the use of local languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tech-first-post-dot-bharat-domain-to-roll-out-on-august-21

Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy

sneha — 2015-11-13T05:29:48Z

The emergence of Digital Humanities (DH) has been contemporaneous to the ‘crisis’ in the humanities, spurred by changing social and economic conditions which have urged us to rethink traditional methods, locations and concepts of research and pedagogy. This blog post examines the emergence of the phenomenon of the alt-academy in the West, and examines the nuances and possibilities of such a space in the Indian context.

From a brief exploration of the problem of new objects and methods of research in the digital context, we have come to or rather returned to the problem of location or contextualising DH, and whether it may be called a field or discipline in itself.

As some of the previous blog posts have illustrated, most of the prominent debates around DH have largely been within the university context, or have least focussed around the university as the centre, and therefore emphasise the move away from more traditional ways of doing humanities, or at a larger level the more established and disciplinary modes of knowledge formation.

In the context of pedagogy, DH seems to be developing in a very specific role, which is that of training in a certain set of skills and areas which the existing disciplines have so far not been able to provide. The university or more specifically the traditional classroom offers a specific kind of teachinglearning experience which may not always have within its ambit the necessary resources or strategies to foster new methods of knowledge production, and a lot of DH work has been posited as trying to plug knowledge gaps in precisely this area.

The notion of a ‘digital classroom’ has been made possible by the proliferation of new digital tools and the internet; with increased access to open access archives and dynamic knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia, there is a move towards a more open, participatory and customised model of learning based on collaboration.

DH has been characterised by many as a space, or method that intervenes in the traditional ‘hierarchies of expertise’ [1] —– not only in terms of people but also spaces, methods and objects of learning — to present a significant ‘alternative’ that is now slowly becoming more mainstream. A rather direct example of this is the growth of a number of ‘alt- academics’ [2] who now inhabit what previously seemed to be a rather nebulous space between academics and an array of practices in computing, art and community development among many others. However, it is the in-between, or the liminal space that holds the potential for new kinds of knowledge to be generated. The connotations of this notion however are many and problematic, as seen particularly in the emphasis on new kinds of skills or competences that is now required to inhabit such a space, as also the narrative of loss of certain critical skills that are part of the disciplinary method and the resistance from certain quarters to the university to acknowledge such a trend. Conversely, it is also reflective of how certain kinds of skills in writing, reading, visualisation and curation have now become essential and therefore visible. It may be useful to explore this change further to arrive at some idea of whether such a space exists in the Indian context, and how it informs the way we conceptualise DH; as practitioners, researchers, teachers or the lay person.

This state of being within and to a certain extent outside of a certain predominant discourse is a peculiar one with several possibilities, and DH, owing to its interdisciplinary content and methods, seems to be a suitable space to foster these new and alternate knowledge-making practices.While the early DH debates in the Anglo-American context seemed to be dominated by certain disciplines like English, media studies and computational and information sciences, practitioners and researchers alike have branched out significantly, with research focussing more on questions of data-mining, mapping and visualisation with an increasing focus on processes and design, and using a diverse range of texts or objects.

In India, which significantly borrows the discourse from the same context, and also is still a multi-layered technological space very much in a moment of transition to the digital, the debates remain largely confined to the English and History departments and to some extent library and archival spaces. Outside of the academic circle however, there are a number of initiatives, such as online archival efforts, media, art and design practices and research (some discussed in the earlier blog posts as well), which would be likely spaces where one may see DH–related work being done. An important part of the discourse in the context of education is the access to and a more substantial and critical engagement with technology in the classroom. Educational or instructional technology has grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade or so in India, as evidenced by the number of initiatives taken to introduce ICTs in the classroom, and this has been supported by several large-scale digitisation projects as well but the digital divide still persists, as a result of which these initiatives come with a peculiar set of problems of their own (as discussed in the earlier blog post on archival practice) the most important being the lack of connection among such practices, research and pedagogy.

While education technology is a separate field which works on better interactions between teaching-learning practices and technology, it does form part of the context within which DH is to develop either as a discipline, practice or a pedagogic approach, and the two areas are very often conflated in some parts of the discourse in India. While moving beyond the ICTs debate — which is premised primarily around access to knowledge, DH has been posited as making an intervention into prevailing systems of knowledge — so that the mode of understanding both technology and the humanities, and the interaction between the two domains (assuming that they are separate) undergoes a significant change.

What then goes into promoting more institutional stability for DH, in other words, in teaching and learning it — will be a question to contend with in the years to come, as more universities take to incubating research around digital technologies and related components and incorporating this into the existing curricula.

Dr. Abhijit Roy, Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University speaks about the changes he sees in pedagogy and research with the advent of digital technologies, particularly in traditional humanities disciplines like History and languages.

While some of these changes are elementary, such as the use of digital technologies in classroom teaching and learning exercises, it is in the practice of research, which he sees even with his students now, through the use of blogs and social media and the possibilities to publish and engage in discussions with other researchers through platforms like Academia.edu or Scalar, that he finds a vast change. It not only makes the process more transparent but also encourages an ethos of constant sharing, dissemination and a network of usage and storage online. This has transformed the way research and pedagogy can be imagined now, and opened up several possibilities.

It is in realising this potential for new research and pedagogical models that universities have slowly begun to adopt digital technologies but the institutional efforts at building curricula specifically around DH-related concerns have been few with the prominent ones in India being the courses at Jadavpur University and Presidency University in Kolkata.

Curriculum development in DH comes with its own issues too, and they stem largely from the fact that one is still unable to understand fully the nature of the digital and its facets — we also inhabit a time when there is a transition from analogue to digital — but the rate of change is faster than with other domains of knowledge, so much so that the curricula developed may often seem provisional or arcane, which makes it doubly challenging to demonstrate its various facets in practice, particularly in the classroom. A useful distinction would be between DH being brought in as a problem-solving approach to address the extant issues of the humanities (thus also seen as a threat to the disciplines themselves), and having its own epistemological concerns which may be related to but also distinct from the humanities - in short to help us ask new questions, or provide new ways of asking old ones.

What this essentially refers to is the alternate modes of knowledge production that an increased interaction with digital and internet technologies now engenders. Wikipedia is an existing example of this, and illustrates some of the core concerns of and about DH as it calls into question notions about authorship, expertise and established models of pedagogy and learning. Lawrence Liang describes this as a larger conflict over the authority of knowledge, [3] the origins of which he locates in the history of the book, and specifically in the print revolution and pre-print cultures of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. He likens the debate over Wikipedia’s credibility, or more broadly over technologies of collaborative knowledge production ushered in by the internet to similar phenomena seen before in early print culture and how it contributed to the construction and articulation of the idea of authority itself. He says: “The authority of knowledge is often spoken of in a value-neutral and a historical manner. It would therefore be useful to situate authority in history, where it is not seen to be an inherent quality but a transitive one 6[4] located in specific technological changes. For instance, there is often an unstated assumption about the stability of the book as an object of knowledge but the technology of print originally raised a host of questions about authority. In the same way, the domain of digital collaborative knowledge production raises a set of questions and concerns today, such as the difference between the expert and the amateur, as well as between forms of production: digital versus paper and collaborative versus singular author modes of knowledge production. Can we impose the same questions that emerged over the centuries in the case of print to a technology that is barely ten years old?”

He further goes on to elaborate that the question of the authority of knowledge should ideally be located within a larger ‘knowledge apparatus’, comprising of certain technologies and practices, (in this case that of reading, writing, editing, compilation, classification and creative appropriations) which help inflate the definitions of authority and knowledge even more.

The above argument throws into sharp relief the notion of the ‘alternate’— often posited as the outlier or a vantage point, or even as being in resistance to a certain dominant discourse or body of knowledge.

While resistance itself is discursive; the ‘alternate’ has also always existed in various forms, such as the pre-print cultures illustrated in the argument above, and particularly in India where several kinds of practices and occupations are but alternatives — from alternative medicine to education — to the already established system in place. As mentioned earlier, these practices may just be increasingly visible and acknowledged now.

The attempts to subsume these alternate practices, which began as and may perhaps have been relegated to the status of a sub-culture for long within academia then seem to be one way of trying to circumvent the authority of knowledge question. Another aspect of this is the invisible ‘technologised’ history of the humanities, which therefore prompts us to rethink the separation between the humanities and technology as mutually exclusive domains. By extension then, the term DH itself therefore may be a misnomer or yet another creative re-appropriation of various knowledge practices already in existence. This is perhaps the underlying challenge to the ontological and epistemological stake in the field.

At best then DH may be seen as the result of a set of changes in the last couple of decades, the advancements in technology being at the forefront of them, whereby certain new and alternative modes of knowledge production have been brought to the foreground, which have also challenged the manner in which we asked questions before to a certain extent. As the field gains institutional stability, it remains to be seen what the new areas of enquiry that emerge shall then be in the years to come.

References:

# Alt-Academy: 01 - Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars, July 2011 Accessed July 27, 2014 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/
Davidson, Cathy N. & David Theo Goldberg, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning) ( Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010) Accessed March 15, 2014 http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-thinking
See Liang, Lawrence “A Brief History of the Internet from the 15^th to the 18^thcentury” in INC Reader#7 Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader, Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011, p.50-62

[1] . See Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo. Goldberg, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010

[2] . For more on this see # Alt-Academy: 01 - Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars, July 2011 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/

[3] . See Lawrence Liang, “A Brief History of the Internet from the 15^th to the 18^th Century” in INC Reader#7Critical Point ofView: A Wikipedia Reader, Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011

[4] Adrian John’s as quoted in Liang. See Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

rahim — 2015-01-20T18:47:13Z

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.

Highlights

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia.
Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu Wikipedia

This is a big leap for the college in opening up itself to the internet world. The college is planning to train its faculty and students to create free econtent in Telugu. These resources will in turn be dedicated to the society.

The signing of the MoU took place in the college premises on August 14, 2014 at 2.00 p.m.

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ was released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0) on the same stage.

The event was organized by ALC and CIS.

CIS-A2K has been closely working with ALC. They have organised 4 workshops for students and faculty. CIS-A2K also helped in QR coding of the institute.

Now, this MoU would further enable CISA2K and ALC to collaboratively work on creating free and open knowledge in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia. This collaboration is set to benefit millions of Telugus to freely access knowledge in Telugu on the internet.

Media Coverage

ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/alc-cis-sign-mou-better-net-access

Interviews with App Developers: [dis]regard towards IPR vs. Patent Hype – Part II

samantha — 2014-08-19T03:51:39Z

The following is a second post within a series reporting on interviews conducted with 10 of Bangalore's mobile app developers and other industry stakeholders. Within this research, CIS attempts to understand how they engage with the law within their practice, particularly with respect to IP. Here we examine how these developers responded to a question on legal protection for their works.

Before one can identify the solution, one must first identify the problem. Yet, in order to understand the problem, we must first understand the individuals involved and the how the problem affects these individuals. We hope that the findings of this preliminary research initiative will provide sufficient groundwork to understand the problems that exist and the different ways of approaching them before determining the most suitable prospective option in changes at the policy level. In this case, the individuals under study are the key contributors to the mobile app space within India; and the problem, being those faced by them as they attempt to navigate an emerging and ambiguous ecosystem.

Previously, we looked at responses that were given across these mobile app developers interviewed which revealed how they orient notions of intellectual property within their practice and own products, specifically. Findings that were made included deductions that the majority of those interviewed developed mobile app products for clients, and in turn assigned ownership of their products to their clients. Just as well, they commonly shared an interest in leaving the services sector to create products of their own, with some of them already having made the transition within their business model.

Question 2: “How is your IP protected?”

Next, we asked how they go about protecting their intellectual property to get a feel of who is protecting their apps and who is not. In asking this question, we hoped to learn how they go about protecting their work via legal means. Across their various responses, we observed many patterns and contradictions which are conveyed here with reference to comments made across interviews. It is important to note, however, that no causal relations intend for be argued for, only suggested correlations.

How they responded

When asked, those interviewed responded with a variance in answers. Some simply stated that their work is not protected, while a few mentioned that they acquired trademark or intend to apply for trademark protection. One interviewee had a patent pending in India and the US, as well. In many of our conversations, developers mentioned that their code for their apps is under open source licenses, and a couple others entailed sharing that the content is under creative commons licenses, “individual licenses,” or joint copyright. Additionally, within one interview, one mentioned the use of encryption tools as a technical means of protection for their work.

“The concept of securing IP is relatively new within the Indian context... it becomes a question of priority between innovation and protection" — Aravind Krishnaswamy, Levitum

Of the developers interviewed, many exhibited some sort of confusion or misunderstanding related to the protection of their works by means of intellectual property rights (IPR). Those interviewed seemed to either express an interest to acquire IPR in the future for their products in the forms of patent or trademark protection, or expressed their appreciation for openness source licensing—or both! Beneath these immediate responses, however, many repeated patterns, as well as contradictions, are revealed. Conversations that followed within these interviewed entailed the opportunity to hear from personal experiences and opinions on different areas within their practice intersecting IPR.

Reasons for IPR protection

If a startup or SME is bootstrapped with very little cash flow to begin with, what would provoke or inspire one to pursue the process of acquiring patent protection then? Aravind Krishnaswamy of startup, Levitum, considers “the concept of securing IP is relatively new within the Indian context.” So if this is the case, why did so many developers interviewed express an interest in IPR?

For those who did express interest in acquiring IPR as protection for their mobile app products, most seemed to express an interest in proving ownership over their work, or preventing problems in the future. One developer's commented on how the mobile app market is a “new and potentially volatile area for software development.” For this reason, it was imperative that he and his team attempted to avoid trouble in the future, and ensure that they going about mobile app development the right and moral way.

Within another interview, developer, John Paul of mobile app SME, Plackal, explains his motives for seeking to acquire patent protection, the application for which is currently pending in India and the US: "For us, applying for a patent is primarily defensive. And if it does get infringed upon, it would give us a good opportunity to generate revenue from it." For the company's trademark, they sought to be able to enforce their ownership over their product's brand: “As a precautionary, we've trademarked the app so that should there be a situation where the app is pirated, we can claim ownership for that app.”

Security not so easily attainable

“To some extent, IPR law is only accessible after moving away from the startup phase."—John Paul, Plackal

However, for the startup especially, such protection does not come without a cost. For this reason, IPR is generally perceived as a gamble or tradeoff. It becomes a “question of priority between innovation and protection,” says Krishnaswamy. He continues in saying that, "I feel like even if it’s a great idea if someone else copies it, that’s some level of validation, but as a small company I’d rather be nimble in terms of how we build it up and get it to a certain point. We're trying to move fast and get something going, and then figure it out.” For Krishnaswamy and his team, securing a patent on an area where they feel they feel they have unique work is on their list of things to do, “It's something for us to revisit in the future.”

Paul explains that he and his team didn't always have IPR within reach: “To some extent, IPR law is only accessible after moving away from the startup phase.” So what discourages startups from acquiring IPR, or simply seeking it out?

Patent attorney and IP consultant, Arjun Bala explains that “there is a lot to figure out. One aspect is filling it out, the other is how you write it so that it is easily granted and gives you the right sort of patent protection you are looking for. It is a very complex process that requires a lot of technical and legal expertise.” But even if one successfully manoeuvres the IPR system, is protection guaranteed?

Business Financial Strategist of Out Sourced CFO & Business Advisory Services, Jayant Tewari, illustrates the lack of security for the SME in the patent system, specifically, in saying, “Since a patent becomes public domain on filing, it can be effectively infringed based on the filing, even before it is granted.” Tewari continues in stressing the irrelevance of patents for SMEs due to the difficulty of enforcement: “the infringement will be adjudicated after 2 years at an immense cost to the SME patent-holder, who will go commercially belly-up due to the infringement. The regime does not protect the SME at all.”

“It is easy to say 'this is the method and no once can copy', but unless the look and feel is the same, it is very hard to demonstrate that you have been infringed on.”
—Samuel Mani, Mani Chengappa & Mathur

Nevermind enforcement...

Not only did our interviews shed light on the difficulty for a startup developer to apply for and be granted protection for their intellectual property, but also for the enforcement of such. Partnering Lawyer, Samuel Mani, of technology-focused law firm, Mani Chengappa & Mathur, speaks to us about the extensive procedure required to prove one's ownership over their IP: “To demonstrate copyright infringement, it requires going into millions of lines of code—unless it is the interface that is copied, which is easily visible.” Mani continues on the enforcement of patent protection by saying, “For a patent, the scope is even wider. It is easy to say 'this is the method and no once can copy', but unless the look and feel is the same, it is very hard to demonstrate that you have been infringed on.”

Planting the initial seed

If there is arguably so much risk associated with applying for IPR protection, as well with enforcement, what specifically gets startups thinking about IPR initially within their practice? What experiences help them formulate their opinions on the matter, and which forms of IPR do they seek out?

Across interviews conducted, one particular observation entailed the tendency for developers to have worked in the past for corporate employers that have dealt with cases of infringement or have acquired IP protection. Almost half of those interviewed shared the fact that they worked for a corporate employer and became better familiar with different notions of intellectual property through that experience. It may not be too farfetched to suggest, then, that for the developer the idea of acquiring IPR protection is one that may be reinforced from previous employers or other successful development companies with IPR of their own.

Cofounder and developer for a medium-sized software development enterprise, Anoop[1] explained that it wasn't until after the success of his enterprise's first application with $1 million in sales, that they started thinking about intellectual property and began to understand the value of it. This newly attained understanding, however, had not been enough to sufficiently equip his team with the knowledge to properly secure protection. For them, going after patent protection turned out to be a pursuit in vain.

Loss of faith in patents for SMEs

Anoop shares his disappointing experience after attempting to secure a patent for one of their mobile apps:

“We burned our fingers with patents. We spent a lot of money for a game we invented about 3 years ago. We had a law firm in the US to help us. We applied for it, and it went through 3-4 revisions, costing us $25-30,000. We finally closed the file when we could not get it due to an existing patent. We were really surprised."

After much disappointment from not being successful in their attempts to acquire patent protection, however, Anoop came out of the experience with a new outlook on patents and their role for SMEs:

“They're meant for large companies as means to bully your competitor. Only big players with the capacity to file for a patent as soon as it takes off benefit. The existing system doesn’t really work for startup companies. In India and anywhere. It’s an expensive process. If you’re a startup who’s just bootstrapping, there’s no guarantee that you will get it. It’s going to take you years.”

Patent hype
Anoop is a prime example of developers in the startup space that fall victim to the promises of the patent system—only to be spat back out having exhausted their time and earnings. Already being aware of the probability for failure, Mani strongly discourages going after patent protection as a means of staying in the race. “With people spending millions on litigation, it is a recipe for disaster, especially considering the inherent delay of the Indian system.” For this reason, Mani stresses the importance of applying for the right protection.

Mani also suggests that the patent debate is driven by self-interest—people who simply make money off of application filing, regardless of whether or not the case succeeds. As a lawyer in the IT space, Mani claims to have turned away several prospective clients looking to patent their products when he insisted that such means of protection was not suitable for their product and interests...which brings us to an additional area of heated debate: the patentability of mobile apps.

Can mobile apps be patented?[2]

One concept that seemed to receive contested responses across interviews is that of the patentability of mobile apps in the first place. When asked if mobile apps could be patented, former lawyer and startup founder, Vivek Durai, of HumblePaper, put it blatantly in responding, “absolutely not.” Others offered explanations of the Indian Patent Law nuances regarding when a mobile app is patentable and when one is not.

While consulting a SME with their own patent application, Bala explains their approach to ensure the mobile app's eligibility for patent protection, while providing some insight into the Indian patent system:

“One approach that we've taken to getting a patent in India is it's not just a pure software, but a software plus a hardware—as in it requires a specific hardware to function. If [the software] makes the hardware perform better, then it has a technical effect... In which case, we have a better chance of getting a patent in India. If your software is agnostic to hardware, however, it is much more difficult to receive a patent in India.”

To patent or not to patent? (or any IPR for that matter)
To Tewari, on the other hand, the question of whether a mobile app can be patented is one entirely irrelevant. The question Tewari introduces into the developer's market strategy is not 'can I patent my app?' but instead, 'should I do so?' In response to which; he would predominantly reply: No.

“How [startup] mobile app developers regard IP laws—or better yet, disregard—is fine for their sake,” argues Tewari. Alternatively, he suggests developers learn how to maneuver the laws, to prevent themselves from arriving at any sticky situations after unknowingly using another's code. To his clients who have mobile apps of their own, he advises to use an open source equivalent of a piece of code if they do not have the rights to it. Doing so will help keep infringement upon others at a minimal and prevent litigation against oneself.

“How [startup] mobile app developers regard IP laws—or better yet, disregard—is fine for their sake."—Jayant Tewari, Out Sourced CFO & Business Advisory Services

Not all developers interviewed, however, aspired to acquiring patent protection. In fact, some strongly opposed software patents, while expressing their appreciation for openness across the developer community. The other side to the IPR-Open Source dichotomy will be examined in the blog post to follow, after which, we will then look at accounts of infringement and threats of litigation across mobile app developers interviewed.

To recap

By looking closely at the individual experiences across mobile app developers interviewed, we hope to begin to map out the mobile app ecosystem and the ways in which industry players engage with each other regarding their IPR. We also hope to begin to shed light on the different attitudes towards the law within one's practice, and how they shape their decisions related to their work. Only after doing so, may we be able to sufficiently assess how India's current IP laws govern this landscape.

Stay tuned for the next in this blog series! We hope that you may benefit from our findings in your own practice as a mobile app industry player or enthusiast, as well.

Notes:
[1] Name changed to protect the interviewee's identity

[2] In conducting interviews, our goal was not to test the legitimacy of responses, but instead, to map them out across various industry stakeholders. For this reason, this blog series will not be able to sufficiently respond to legal question, such as whether or not mobile apps are patentable to begin with. We intend to, however, undergo legal analysis of the Indian IPR system at its intersection with the mobile app space in India at a later stage in this project.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/interviews-with-app-developers-dis-regard-towards-ipr-vs-patent-hype-2013-part-ii

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

geetha — 2014-09-10T05:36:37Z

On August 5, 2014, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India organised a seminar on a regulatory framework for Over-The-Top services. This is a lay discussion of the Seminar and its focus on matters crucial to telecom, the Internet and the existing regulatory framework.

On Tuesday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) held a seminar to initiate discussion on potential regulation of “over the top” services (OTTs) in India. TRAI organized the seminar to “understand perspectives of all stakeholders involved”, following grievances of telcos that OTTs are eating into their revenues and free-riding on their networks. In fact, a letter from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to TRAI outlines these concerns excellently. The letter, which I had the opportunity to see in print, objects that telcos take the trouble of laying and maintaining networks, while rapidly mushrooming OTTs eat into their revenue. Whatsapp, Skype and alternatives to paid text-and-call find particular mention in the COAI’s letter, and the COAI President Vikram Tiwathia was vociferous in his iteration of operators’ concerns. With VOIP and other OTTs replacing telco services, telcos are rapidly losing large parts of their revenue, he said.

I don’t mean to brush their concerns aside, of course. However, there is a need to consider in depth certain questions with statistical, regulatory and principled exploration. As Dr. Rajat Kathuria of ICRIER said at the Seminar’s first session, we need to evaluate whether there’s a need for regulation in the first place. This includes exploring whether the answer lies in deregulation, as Suhaan Mukerji of PLR Chambers and Subho Ray of IAMAI emphasized separately. Our solution, as Mr. Ray said, should not be to chain the free OTTs just because we are in chains ourselves. Unchaining telcos from their stringent licensing and other regulations may be more appropriate.

The Seminar was attended by telcos, OTTs, civil society and other stakeholders, and the frank exchange of views at the PHD Chamber of Commerce was heartening. While telcos in the room were broadly open to OTT innovation upon their networks (Mr. T.V. Ramachandran of Vodafone was particularly vocal on this), there exists a broadly reactionary loss-of-footing and apprehension over their current and projected revenue loss. Mr. C.S. Rao of Reliance was spot on when he said that telcos are afraid that what’s worked for them so far may not work in the future.

We’ve seen examples of such fear of incumbent operators before. In the early 1990s, the invention and spread of the Internet displaced appliancized, bundled models of telco services, and telcos were similarly unwelcoming. Indeed, AT&T went to court to fight the introduction of the Carterfone. In India, the falling demand for VAS today, and OTT-response to consumer demand, fosters such fear.

But accounting for OTTs’ lack of consumer servicing or responsibility for monetization models, what was of chief concern at the TRAI Seminar was the predominant focus on revenue. Telco profitability and their incentives for investment are important. Increasing supply side costs, with the government seeking to maximize revenue from spectrum allocation and demands of lower consumer prices, might be throttling current telco business models. We’d need to analyse data usage charges and projected mobile broadband penetration, in comparison with voice penetration, to be clear about the extent of such strangulation. But if the answer to failing telco business lies in further regulation and potential strangling of innovation, that’s a concern.

That’s in two ways. First, it isn’t merely the NetFlix or Google or Apple that populate the app economy. Raman Chima (ironically of Google) offered the example of Slideshare in Okhla, Delhi as one of the many successful Indian micro-multinationals. There are many others across India. Second, India’s current telecom regulatory model is unfit for a data/Internet content model. There’s a need, Suhaan Mukerji and Mahesh Uppal of ComFirst pointed out, to rethink our strict telecom licensing regime. We should begin to think, at least, of a vertically integrated layered model of telecom regulation that regulates on the basis of function.

These layers are integral to Internet architecture: network, transport, application. OTTs lie at the application layer, while telcos operate at the network and transport layers. It may be inefficient to utilize failures at one layer to regulate or share revenue of companies at other layers – that would stunt competition and innovation. A reconfigured licensing regime, permitting telcos to innovate more (someone at the Seminar said security clearances take years, while OTTs need no such clearance) might be more efficient and beneficial for all stakeholders involved – not least the disempowered individual consumers.

That’s my sense of the Seminar. Profitability and incentives are crucial. But they are crucial insofar as they benefit consumers – with access, choice, freedom of speech, security and privacy. Revenue sharing or partnership models, which were mentioned far too many times by multiple speakers without sufficient justification or elaboration, may not be ideal for any of us in the long term. But these are issues we – and TRAI – should consider while debating a regulatory framework.

Underlying infrastructure has an impact on our fundamental freedoms such as speech – the Supreme Court’s decisions in Sakal Papers and Express Newspapers makes that clear. Fast-paced innovation and the boundary-less benefits of a single, interoperable Internet have pushed us to favour security against freedoms. But every model we consider today – ad-based monetization, big data analytics – have implications that the NSA’s mass, cross-border surveillance has highlighted. Since TRAI is rethinking our regulatory framework for telecom and the Internet – and I envisage this going into a constructive consultation in the near future – these issues must inform its analysis and conclusions.

For more, read Nikhil Pahwa’s report over at MediaNama.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/otts-eating-into-our-revenue-telcos-in-india

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-08-06T05:33:41Z

The department of languages at Christ University has set a precedent by including contribution to Wikipedia as a part of the undergraduate course work.

The article by H.M.Shruthi was published in the Deccan Herald on August 5, 2014.

Introduced last year on a pilot basis, the programme is all set to get a new outlook this year.

As a part of the initiative, students are required to submit an article to Wikipedia in an Indian language (the second language subject chosen). The languages offered are Kannada, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Tamil.

Earlier, much to the chagrin of lecturers, students were most often found rehashing material online for their assignments. On the contrary, the students will now be contributors for online content. But this is just one of the outcomes. Through this, the department has not only set out to enrich the regional language resources online, but has also turned students into knowledge producers.

Speaking about the initiative, Kannada Department HoD, Y S Shivaprasad, finds that students have become passionate about digital resources. “There are at least 500 students. In the first two years of the undergraduate degree, students study second language. Even if 10 per cent of them take it forward later, we can enrich our online Kannada resources.”

Since it was the first time last year, the faculty made a list of topics for inclusion in Kannada Wiki. “We were able to bring out 25 good quality articles. Interestingly, this turned out to benefit rural students, as they took a lot of interest in it,” Shivaprasad said, adding that RBI, Yakshagana, poet Raghavanka and Kuppalli were some of the topics covered.

Redesign this year
As per the redesigned format this time, in their first semester, students will digitise one page of an existing piece of literature in the Indian language concerned. This has been included to help them gain typing skills, apart from strengthening vocabulary.

In the second semester, students will be digitising four or five pages of literature. In the III semester, they will have to write one assignment in the second language of their choice and the fourth semester will be dedicated to an article (in Indian language) on the theme of their choice from any core subject.

T Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at Centre for Internet and Society (the university is implementing the programme in coordination with this organisation), sees this as an initiative for production of knowledge in Indian languages. “From the past several years, there have been talks about how there is no production of knowledge in Kannada (or other regional languages). This is a step towards it.”

“Adding fun to the otherwise hectic course work, the Wiki assignments helped us acquire editing skills and strengthen vocabulary in Kannada,” said Tejas N K, a final year science student at Christ University.

Having found his love for it, he has decided to contribute articles even in his final year, though it is not part of his course work this time. “It presents a challenge of learning something new and thinking creatively. More over, it is satisfying to know that the information we compile is of use for people seeking online resources in regional language.”

Transformation
Sharing similar enthusiasm is Komal K J, a final year BCom student, who hopes to contribute articles even after completing her degree. She sees a significant transformation: “Earlier, we were collecting information from Wikipedia. Now, we are contributing for it,” the student said.

She has submitted an article to Sanskrit Wikipedia. From formatting the article to inserting images and learning to attribute sources to the information uploaded on Wiki, she takes pride in the responsibility. “It is open for people across the globe to read. Hence, it is a huge responsibility. We have to make sure the information is authentic.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-shruthi-august-5-2014-now-christ-students-will-contribute-to-wikipedia

Connecting the Next Two Billion: The Role of FOSS

praskrishna — 2014-09-10T05:04:58Z

Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this event organized by ICFOSS at the APrIGF in Noida on August 4, 2014.

Specific Issues of Discussions & Description

Connecting the next two billion users on the Internet poses unique challenges that must be addressed. The next two billion users will have very different profiles as compared to the first billion in terms of factors such as geography, demography, gender, disability, technology access, language access, and connectivity devices. In addition, with the coming of the Internet of Things, the users of the Internet may also include devices, sensors and sensor networks. Further, the context of the Internet itself may be changing, particularly in relation to efforts by various State and non-State actors to restrict freedom of access to the Internet and freedom of expression on it.Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) has now assumed greater significance in the light of revelations related to arbitrary surveillance conducted by states. This issue highlights the need to use audited technology and infrastructure to prevent the wanton violation of privacy of citizens. FOSS can be used to build shared community infrastructure that will protect users from privacy abuses. As most of the online applications run on top of free software, there is also a need for greater collaboration between the industry and free software community to ensure security and robustness of software to prevent incidents like the heartbleed bug vulnerabilities. As the next two billion comes online, FOSS assumes great significance for building a safe and secure Internet and robust communication platforms.The panel will discuss the following issues:• Relevance of FOSS as an access enabler and source of robust, cost-effective andfreedom-preserving software• The importance of FOSS in preventing arbitrary surveillance• Co-operation among businesses and free software community to develop secure.

Building community communication infrastructure using FOSS to restrict the dependence on centralised services.

Moderator and Speakers

Moderator: Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC.IN, New Delhi
Dr. Rahul De, IIM Bangalore (Remote)
Dr. G. Nagarjuna, Free Software Foundation of India (Remote)
Mr. Prasanth Sugathan, Counsel, SFLC.in
Mr. Satish Babu, Director, ICFOSS
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Mr. S. Ramakrishnan, Media Lab Asia/Govt. of India

Workshop Organizer

This workshop will be jointly organised by International Centre For Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous institution under the Government of Keralamandated with the objectives of co-ordinating FOSS initiatives within Kerala, as well as linking up with FOSS initiatives in other parts of the world and SFLC.IN, a donor supported legal services organisation that works to protect freedom in the digital world.The details of the contact person for the workshop is given below:Name: Mr.Satish BabuDesignation: DirectorOrganisation: International Center for Free and Open Source Software (IC-FOSS).

For more details see the APrIGF website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/apr-igf-delhi-2014-connecting-the-next-two-billion-the-role-of-foss

Surat’s Massive Surveillance Network Should Cause Concern, Not Celebration

joe — 2014-09-06T03:05:13Z

The blog post examines the surveillance network of Surat, a city in Gujarat state in India.

The Surveillance System

Surat, a city in the state of Gujarat, has recently unveiled a comprehensive closed-circuit camera surveillance system that spans almost the entire city. This makes Surat the first Indian city to have a modern, real-time CCTV system, with eye-tracking software and night vision cameras, along with intense data analysis capabilities that older systems lack.

Similar systems are planned for cities across India, from Delhi to Punjab, even those that already have older CCTV programs in place. Phase I of the system, which is currently completed, consists of 104 CCTV cameras installed at 23 locations and a 280 square foot video wall at the police control room. The video wall is one of the largest in the country, according to the Times of India.

Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, launched the project in January 2013, though the project was original conceptualized by police commissioner Rakesh Asthana, who has cited the CCTV system in Scotland Yard as his inspiration.

Phase II of the surveillance project will involve the installation of 550 cameras at 282 locations, and in the future, police plan to install over 5000 cameras across the city. Though other security systems, like those in Delhi, rely on lines from the state owned service provider MTNL, with limited bandwidth for their CCTV network, the Surat system has its own dedicated cables.

The security system was financed by a unique Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model, where a coalition of businesses, including many manufacturing units and representatives of Surat’s textile industry want to prevent crime. The many jewelers in the city also hoped it would limit thefts. In the model, businesses interested in joining the coalition contribute Rs 25 lakh as a one-time fee and the combined fees along with some public financing go to construct the city-wide system. The chairman of the coalition is always the Commissioner of Surat Police. Members of the coalition not only get a tax break, but also believe they are helping to create a safer city for their industries to thrive.

Arguments for the System

Bomb blasts in Ahmedabad in 2008 led the Gujarat police to consider setting up surveillance systems not just in Ahmedabad, according to Scroll.in, but in many cities including Surat. Terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and at the Delhi High Court in 2011 lent momentum to surveillance efforts, as did international responses to terror, such as the United Kingdom’s intensive surveillance efforts in response to 2005 bombing in London. The UK’s security system has become so comprehensive that Londoners are caught on camera over 300 times a day on average. The UK’s CCTV systems cost over £500 million between 2008 and 2012, and one single crime has been solved in London for every 1,000 cameras each year, according to 2008 Metropolitan Police figures.

However, citizens in London may feel safer in their surveillance state knowing that the Home Office of the United Kingdom regulates how CCTV systems are used to ensure that cameras are being used to protect and not to spy. The UK’s Surveillance Camera Code of Practice outlines a thorough system of safeguards that make CCTV implementation less open to abuse. India currently has no comparable regulation.

The combined government worries of terrorism and business owners desire to prevent crime led to Surat’s unique PPP, ournalist Suarav Datta’s article in Scroll.in continues. Though the Surat Municipal Corporation invested Rs 2 crore, business leaders demonstrated their support for the surveillance system by donating the remaining Rs 10 crore required to build the first phase system. Phase II will cost Rs 21 crore, with the state government investing Rs 3 crore and business groups donating the other Rs 18 crore. This finance model demonstrates both public and private support for the CCTV system.

Why CCTV systems may do more harm than good

Despite hopes that surveillance through CCTV systems may prevent terrorism and crime, evidence suggests that it is not as much of a golden bullet as its proponents believe. In the UK, for example, where surveillance is practice extensively, the number of crimes captured on camera dropped significantly in 2010, because there were so many cameras that combing through all the hours footage was proving to be an exercise in futility for many officers. According to Suaray Datta’s article on Scroll.in, potential offenders in London either dodge cameras or carry out their acts in full view of them, which detracts from the argument that cameras deter crime. Additionally, prosecutors allege that the CCTV systems are of little value in court, because the quality of the footage is so low that it cannot provide conclusive proof of identities.

A 2008 study in San Francisco showed that surveillance cameras produce only a placebo effect–they do not deter crime, they just move it down the block, away from the cameras. In Los Angeles, more dramatically, there was little evidence that CCTV cameras helped detect crime, because in high traffic areas the number of cameras and operators required is so high, and because the city’s system was privately funded, the California Research Bureau’s report noted that it was open to exploitation by private interests pursuing their own goals. Surat’s surveillance efforts are largely privately funded too, a vulnerability that could lead to miscarriages of justice if private security contractors were to gain to security footage.

More evidence of the ineffectiveness of CCTV surveillance comes in the Boston marathon bombing of 2013 and the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. In the case of the Boston bombing, release of CCTV footage to the general public led to rampant and unproductive speculation about the identity of the bomber, which resulted in innocent spectators being unfairly painted with suspicion.

India’s lack of regulation over CCTV’s also makes Surat’s new system susceptible to misuse. There is currently no strong legislation that protects citizens filmed on CCTV from having their images exploited or used inappropriately. Only police will have access to the recordings, Surat officials say, but the police themselves cannot always be trusted to adequately respect the rights of the citizens they are trying to protect.

The Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy acknowledges the lack of regulations on CCTV surveillance, and recommends that CCTV footage be legally protected from abuse. However, the Report notes that regulating CCTV surveillance to the standards of the National Privacy Principals they establish earlier in the report may not be possible for a number of reasons. First, it will be difficult to limit the quantity of information collected because the cameras are simply recording video of public spaces, and is unlikely that individuals will be able to access security footage of themselves. However, issues of consent and choice can be addressed by indicating that CCTV surveillance is taking place on entryways to monitored spaces.

Surat is not the first place in India to experiment with mass CCTV surveillance. Goa has mandated surveillance cameras in beach huts to monitor the huts and deter and detect crime. The rollout is slow and ongoing, and some of the penalties the cameras are intended to enforce seem too severe, such as potentially three months in prison for having too many beach chairs. More worryingly, there are still no laws ensuring that the footage will only be used for its proper law-enforcement objectives. Clear oversight is needed in Goa just as it is in Surat. The Privacy Commissioner outlined by the Report of the Group of Experts could be well suited to overseeing the proper administration of CCTV installations, just as the Commissioner would oversee digital surveillance.

Concerns of privacy and civil liberties appear to have flown out the window in Surat, with little public debate. It is unclear that Surat’s surveillance efforts will achieve any of their desired effects, but without needed safeguards they will present an opportunity for abuse. Perhaps CCTV initiatives need to be subjected to a little bit more scrutiny.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/surat-massive-surveillance-network-cause-of-concern-not-celebration

July 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-08-11T05:46:53Z

Seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014) below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

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Highlights
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Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) gave its statements on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty and the Accessible Books Consortium was launched. Nehaa Chaudhari who participated in the 28^th session of the WIPO-SCCR reports on this in a blog entry.
Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva produced a research paper on patent valuation and license fee determination as part of the Pervasive Technologies project.
Our grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation was approved. CIS has been awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year for the Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) project.
CIS and the University of Mysore organized the Open Knowledge day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. Six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha was re-released under the Creative Commons (CC license).
We helped the Ministry of Science and Technology draft the Open Access Policy for the DST/DBT.
The first of the seven proposed roundtable meetings on “Privacy and Surveillance” conducted by CIS in collaboration with the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Council for Fair Business Practices was held in Mumbai on June 28, 2014. Anandini K. Rathore has blogged on this.
Bedavyasa Mohanty has produced a blog entry that analyses the nuances of interception of communications under the Indian Telegraph Act and the Indian Post Office Act.
Vinayak Mithal has written a blog entry on the Constitutionality of Indian surveillance law that analyses ICANN's reactive transparency mechanism, comparing it with freedom of information best practices. He describes the DIDP and its relevance for the Internet community.
Nishant Shah speaks on the right to freedom of speech and expression in the latest interview conducted as part of the Cybersecurity series being done with a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa.
Nishant Shah’s peer reviewed article “Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore” was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. Nishant gives a narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.
CIS recruited two new staff members in its Bangalore office. Rohini Lakshane joined as a Program Officer in the Pervasive Technologies project and K.N. Medini joined as a Senior Accounts Officer. Their profiles can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). We will be publishing this soon. The draft chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for July (by Suman Dogra, July 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 1, 2014): India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.

Media Coverage

SpicyIP Tidbit: India ratifies the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Thomas J. Vallianeth, Spicy IP, July 1, 2014).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►WIPO

Participation in Event and Statements
Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The following have been the outputs from the event:

Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 2, 2014).
Opening Comments by India on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (posted by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 7, 2014). This was the statement made by the Indian delegation at WIPO-SCCR 28^th session on July 2, 2014.
Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 3, 2014).
28th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Report on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 29, 2014).

► Pervasive Technologies

Research Papers

Patent Valuation and License Fee Determination in Context of Patent Pools (by Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva, July 9, 2014). Vikrant has produced research that examines patent valuation and license fee determination in detail.
Grounds for Compulsory Patent Licensing in United States, Canada, China, and India (by Maggie Huang, July 29, 2014). In her research paper Maggie tries to answer questions about the grounds of compulsory licensing in international treaties with specific examples from America and Asia.

►Wikipedia
As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Announcement
Our grant application to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of the Wikimedia Foundation was approved by its board which met in Frankfurt from May 21 to 24, 2014. CIS had requested a grant of Rs. 18,406,454 and were awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year.

The following were done this month:

Articles / Blog Entries

Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, Prajavani, July 3, 2014). As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia.
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja, July 4, 2014).
State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Sovereign, July 7, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Sambad, July 23, 2014).
University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, July 24, 2014). Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.
Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia (by Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia Blog, July 25, 2014).
Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, July 27, 2014). This was re-published on the Wikimedia Blog, July 30, 2014.
Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odisha Review, posted on July 28, 2014). The essay was published in the magazine’s June edition.

Event Organized

Open Knowledge Day (co-organized by Mysore University and CIS-A2K, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, July 15, 2014). The event coincided with the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin from July 15 to 17. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the event. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Participation in Events

National Level Seminar on Computer Application and Odia Language (organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, July 6, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist.
Open Knowledge Festival 2014 (organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., Berlin, July 15 – 17, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local and made a presentation.
#NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages (organized by Medianama, The Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, July 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

News and Media Coverage
CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 7, 2014).
Font problem hits Odia (by Bibhuti Barik, The Telegraph, July 7, 2014).
Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 12, 2014).
‘ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ’ಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನು ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ಹಂಗಿಲ್ಲ (Prajavani, July 14, 2014).
Soon, all 14 volumes of Kannada encyclopaedia to be online (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ (Kannada Prabha, July 15, 2014).
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಆರು ಸಂಪುಟ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ (Udayavani, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ kannada ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ : ಈಗ ಆನ್ ಲೈನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ 6 ಸಂಪುಟಗಳು ಮುಕ್ತ…ಮುಕ್ತ……( Just Kannada, July 15, 2014).
Six Kannada encyclopaedias released (Webindia 123, July 15, 2014).
150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students (by Anila Backer, New Indian Express, July 15, 2014).
Open Access: Students help revive and digitize rare books for Malayalam Wiki Library (Spicy IP, July 15, 2014).
'Trolled' from US Congress, Wikipedia bans edits (by Narayan Lakshman, The Hindu, July 25, 2014).
Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 27, 2014).
The joys of being a Wikipedian (by Svetlana Lasrado, New Indian Express, July 29, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation (Vijayavani, July 30, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers (Prajavani, July 31, 2014).

►Openness

Blog Entries

Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Mozilla Website, July 8, 2014).
Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, July 13, 2014).
Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release Open Access Policy (by Anubha Sinha, July 18, 2014). We have also been acknowledged in the policy.

HasGeek Event

The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, July 25-26, 2014). CIS was a community outreach partner.

Media Coverage

Plan for open access to science research (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 22, 2014).
Indian Govt looks to provide free access to publicly-funded research works (by Riddhi Mukherjee, Medianama, July 23, 2014).

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Internet Governance
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►Freedom of Expression

As part of our project on Freedom of Expression (funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation) to study the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute to the debates around Internet governance and freedom of expression at forums like ICANN, ITU, IGF, WSIS, etc., we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics (by Vinayak Mithal, July 1, 2014).
Reading the Fine Script: Service Providers, Terms and Conditions and Consumer Rights (by Jyoti Panday, July 2, 2014).
Facebook and its Aversion to Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech (by Jessamine Mathew, July 4, 2014).
Free Speech and Surveillance (by Gautam Bhatia, July 7, 2014).
Delhi High Court Orders Blocking of Websites after Sony Complains Infringement of 2014 FIFA World Cup Telecast Rights (by Anubha Sinha, July 8, 2014).
GNI and IAMAI Launch Interactive Slideshow Exploring Impact of India's Internet Laws (by Jyoti Panday, July 17, 2014).

FOEX Live

We are also posting a selection of news from across India implicating online freedom of expression and use of digital technology: July 7, 2014.

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Blog Entries

Models for Surveillance and Interception of Communications Worldwide (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 2, 2014).
The Constitutionality of Indian Surveillance Law: Public Emergency as a Condition Precedent for Intercepting Communications (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 4, 2014).
UK’s Interception of Communications Commissioner — A Model of Accountability (by Joe Sheehan, July 24, 2014).

Event Report

First Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable (by Anandini K Rathore, July 18, 2014).

Article

Private Censorship and the Right to Hear (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hoot, July 17, 2014). The article was also mirrored on the website of the Centre for Communication Governance.

Participation in Events

Information Influx Conference (organized by the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, July 2 – 4, 2014). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker.
Consultation to Frame Rules under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 (organized by National Campaign for People's Right to Information and Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, New Delhi, July 5, 2014). Bhairav Acharya participated in the event.
Best Practices Meet (organized by DSCI, Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore, July 9, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Rethinking Privacy: The Link between Florida v. Jardines and the Surveillance of Nature Films (organized by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, July 11, 2014). Bhairav Acharya gave a talk.
Region as Frame: Politics, Presence, Practice (organized by International Association for Media and Communication Research, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker for these panels: Governing Digital Spaces: Issues of Access, Privacy and Freedom, UNESCO panel debate, and Special Session on Research Paths In and Outside of the Academy.
ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians (organized by Myanmar ICT for Development Organization, July 26 – 27, 2014, Yangon). Sunil Abraham participated in the event as a speaker and presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.

--------------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
--------------------------------------
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Cyber-crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year (by K.V.Kurmanath, Hindu Businessline, July 2, 2014).
COAI, Centre for Internet & Society to hold pan-India meetings on privacy issues (IANS, July 4, 2014). The news was mirrored in the Times of India , NDTV, Business Standard , Economic Times , and World News.
Living in a Fish Bowl (by Shuma Raha, The Telegraph, July 16, 2014).
Terror recruiters target Indians on internet (by Sandhya Soman, July 18, 2014).
The trouble with trolls (by Vishal Mathur, Livemint, July 22, 2014).
India’s dedicated Cryptology centre gets Rs. 115 crore funding (by Harichandan Arakali, SearchSecurity.in, July 28, 2014).

►Cyber Stewards
As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 19 interviews:

Video Interviews

Lobsang Gyatso Sither (July 31, 2014).

Lobsang Sangay (July 31, 2014).

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Digital Humanities
--------------------------------
CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Peer Reviewed Article

Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore (by Nishant Shah, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, July 3, 2014). This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.

Blog Entry

Reading from a Distance — Data as Text (by P.P. Sneha, July 23, 2014).

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About CIS
-----------------------------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2014-bulletin

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — July 2014

praskrishna — 2014-10-04T14:46:22Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of July 2014:

University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License

The University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license. Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by the University of Mysore can easily be termed as the best encyclopaedia in Kannada. It has been modelled after the famous Britannica encyclopaedia. Mysore University Vishwakosha has 14 volumes having a total of 13802 pages. The very first volume was brought out in the year 1969 and the final volume was released in 2004. Many famous Kannada authors, scientists, academicians and stalwarts from other fields have worked on creating this encyclopaedia.

Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.

Announcement

Our grant application to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of the Wikimedia Foundation was approved by its board which met in Frankfurt from May 21 to 24, 2014. CIS had requested a grant of Rs. 18,406,454 and were awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year.

Articles / Blog Entries

Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, Prajavani, July 3, 2014). As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia.
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja, July 4, 2014).
State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Sovereign for national Level Seminar on "Computer Application and Odia Language", July 7, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Sambad, July 23, 2014).
Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia (by Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia Blog, July 25, 2014).
Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, July 27, 2014). This was re-published on the Wikimedia Blog, July 30, 2014.
Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odisha Review, posted on July 28, 2014). The essay was published in the magazine’s June edition.

Event Organized

Open Knowledge Day (co-organized by Mysore University and CIS-A2K, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, July 15, 2014). The event coincided with the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin from July 15 to 17. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the event.
Wikipedia orientation for Christ University UG students, Bangalore

Participation in Events

National Level Seminar on Computer Application and Odia Language (organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, July 6, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist.
Open Knowledge Festival 2014 (organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., Berlin, July 15 – 17, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local and made a presentation.
# NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages (organized by Medianama, The Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, July 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers (organized by Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath at PDA College of Engineering, Gulbarga, July 29, 2014). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave the presentation and demo. Thirty-two participants attended the workshop.
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Students and Research Scholars (organized by Central University of Karnataka, Gulbarga, July 30, 2014). Dr. U. B. Pavanaja gave the presentation and demo. 37 participants attended the presentation.
Talk about Kannada Wikipedia (organized by District Kannada Sahithya Parishath, S.M. Pandit Auditorium, Gulbarga, July 30, 2014). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk as inaugurator of the first session of the Jilla Sahithya Sammelana (district literary festival). About 600 people attended this talk.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 7, 2014).
Font problem hits Odia (by Bibhuti Barik, The Telegraph, July 7, 2014).
Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 12, 2014).
‘ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ’ಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನು ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ಹಂಗಿಲ್ಲ (Prajavani, July 14, 2014).
Soon, all 14 volumes of Kannada encyclopaedia to be online (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ (Kannada Prabha, July 15, 2014).
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಆರು ಸಂಪುಟ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ (Udayavani, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ kannada ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ : ಈಗ ಆನ್ ಲೈನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ 6 ಸಂಪುಟಗಳು ಮುಕ್ತ…ಮುಕ್ತ……(Just Kannada, July 15, 2014).
Six Kannada encyclopaedias released (Webindia 123, July 15, 2014).
150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students (by Anila Backer, New Indian Express, July 15, 2014).
Open Access: Students help revive and digitize rare books for Malayalam Wiki Library (Spicy IP, July 15, 2014).
'Trolled' from US Congress, Wikipedia bans edits (by Narayan Lakshman, The Hindu, July 25, 2014).
Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 27, 2014).
The joys of being a Wikipedian (by Svetlana Lasrado, New Indian Express, July 29, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation (Vijayavani, July 30, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers (Prajavani, July 31, 2014).

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Rahmanuddin Shaikh. One team member Nitika Tandon is based in Delhi. We also have one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-july-2014

Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, 2015

sinha — 2015-06-24T16:45:21Z

We are pleased to announce that the Centre for Internet and Society will be hosting the fourth edition of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest at New Delhi, India, tentatively in the first two weeks of December, 2015. This post seeks your participation and invites your queries and suggestions for the event.

The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS.” We are now inviting applications to participate in the Congress, including session participation and presentations. We are also welcoming proposals for panels and workshops.

The application form is available now at [http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?] Please note that this form is for application purposes, and does not amount to confirmation of participation. The registrations for the plenary sessions, which are open to the public, will open closer to the date of the Global Congress.

Deadlines

August 1st: Priority Deadline for Applications- Applicants will be considered on a rolling basis, with applications made by August 1st being given first consideration. Applications after August 1st to receive travel assistance will be considered only under exceptional circumstances (these details will be collected in a subsequent form).

November 1st: All applications for session participation and paper submissions will close on November 1st.

Application Information

For applications to participate/host: Applications to present or host workshops shall be considered based on the proposals to be submitted in the form.

For applications to attend sessions: Applications to attend sessions as discussants will be considered based on the statement of purpose and/or any other relevant information provided by the applicant.

Limited travel grants to cover accommodation and/or travel to the Congress will be available, with priority to those from developing countries.

Background, Theme and Expected Outcomes

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest is the most significant event on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. By sharing their research and strategies, the network of experts and activists supported by the Global Congress are empowered to put forward a positive agenda for policy reform. The Global Congress began in Washington D.C. in 2011, moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and was held in Cape Town in 2013. The fourth Global Congress will now be held in New Delhi, in December 2015. The event would be the largest convening of public interest-oriented intellectual property practitioners ever held in Asia, and would help link in the world's most populous region to these global debates around how intellectual property policy can best serve the public interest.

The fourth edition of the Global Congress brings research, civil society, industry and regulatory and policy-making communities together for active, intense engagement on key public-interest intellectual property issues. Opportunities for these groups to interact are rare but valuable; and have been proven to lead to successful policy outcomes. The 4^th edition of the Congress, slated to be held in December, 2015 in New Delhi seeks to be one such opportunity.

The theme for the 2015 Congress is Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS-coming at a pivotal time for reflection, revision, and further strategizing. Specifically, the 2015 Congress seeks to produce three outcomes- first, the mobilization of existing scholarly research directly into the hands of civil society advocates, business leaders and policy makers, leading to evidence-based policies and practices; second, the collaborative identification of urgent, global and local research priorities and generation of a joint research/advocacy agenda; and third, the solidification of an inter-disciplinary, cross-sector and global networked community of experts focused on public interest aspects of IP policy and practice.

Participation Opportunities

Discussions at the Global Congress will be carried out in the form of plenary sessions, thematic tracks, cross-track sessions, and the room of scholars. Participation is invited for the thematic track sessions, cross-track sessions and the room of scholars.

The thematic tracks at the Global Congress are: 1) Openness, 2) Access to Medicines, 3) User Rights, 4) IP and Development. Cross-track sessions will feature research that cuts across tracks in order to facilitate engagement between tracks on themes of mutual interest.

The Room of Scholars will feature presentations of research outputs such as draft works or white papers that may not fit directly within the thematic tracks but fall within the overall theme of the Global Congress.

Participation could be in the form of presenting / discussing conference papers or policy briefs, or by conducting workshops where they may share their own work and solicit feedback from peers, during the aforementioned sessions.

The application form for participation is available now at http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?. Please forward this invitation to interested lists and individuals. For more information or questions, you may contact global-congress@cis-india.org.

Organisation

The 4^th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, is being organised in cooperation with National Law University, Delhi, by the American Assembly at Columbia University, the Centre for Internet and Society, Open A.I.R., and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law.

For any clarifications or queries, please contact:

Global Congress organising team: global-congress@cis-india.org

Swaraj Paul Barooah: swaraj.barooah@gmail.com
Shruthi Chandrasekaran: shruthi.chandrasekaran@gmail.com

The planning team also includes:

Anubha Sinha: anubha@cis-india.org
M.P. Nagaraj: nagaraj@cis-india.org
Maggie Huang: maggie@cis-india.org
Pranesh Prakash: pranesh@cis-india.org
Rohini Lakshane: rohini@cis-india.org
Sunil Abraham: sunil@cis-india.org
Nehaa Chaudhari: nehaa@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/2015-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest

The joys of being a Wikipedian

praskrishna — 2014-07-30T05:19:16Z

Radha Krishna, an engineer, had always wanted to share information online so that people who wanted to learn more could just log in and benefit by reading his articles. Eight years ago he started his own website for this very purpose. But he found it hard to maintain the site. He then chanced upon Wikipedia, the largest open-source encyclopedia, which was then just becoming popular in the country.

The article by Svetlana Lasrado was published in the New Indian Express on July 29, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

He registered an account on the website and started contributing to it by editing articles and adding references. Krishna, who has contributed over 4000 articles so far, prides himself on being one of the first few Wiki editors from Bangalore.

Komal Khatokar, on the other hand, has not spent as much time on the site as Krishna.

This 19-year-old B Com student of Christ University had to contribute one article to the Indian language Wikipedia last year as part of her assignment in a language of her choice, Sanskrit. She says, “I wrote an article on G V Iyer, who was the first person to direct a movie in Sanskrit.”

But it did not stop there. Last May, she took up an internship project with The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), which acts as a catalyst for the Wikipedia movement in India. She wanted to explore the world of Wiki writing.

“I took part in a project to add articles from the Kannada encyclopedia online. We uploaded over 1200 articles, which will go live on the main website in October.” Komal now edits copies on the site and despite her hectic college schedule, wants to continue contributing to Wikipedia in any way that she can.

Anybody with an Internet access can edit an article on Wikipedia. Globally, the English Wikipedia has over 4 million articles and there are over a million registered users.

And in Bangalore, from just 10 members five years ago, there are now over 100 registered volunteers who contribute to the website on a daily basis, says Vishnu Vardhan, from CIS and adds, “Now, the maximum number of Wikipedians from India are from Bangalore and majority of the founding members of the Wikimedia India Chapter are also from here.”

Apart from English content, world over Wikipedia has many regional chapters covering over 200 languages to increase representation of region-specific content. In India, the Access to Knowledge programme developed by CIS works towards the growth of Indian language Wikipedias. In this regard, Vishnu states that Bangalore has a majority of active Kannada Wikipedia volunteers and is the single largest location for active Malayalam Wikipedians. Bangalore is also the second largest location for Telugu Wikipedia community after Hyderabad, he observes. The strong volunteer community is involved in the Wiki movement in ways more than one.

Different ways to contribute

Jeph Paul is not a Wikipedian in the traditional sense of the word. Why? Because he doesn't contribute or edit articles on the website. What he does is very technical. He develops tools and gadgets for Wikipedia in India to enhance user experience. Jeph got involved when Wikipedia started providing grants of up to $30000 to people who wanted to improve the usability and functionality of the website. Jeph applied and received $500 for his project. His project was simple -- he created a visual representation of how an article evolved. He explains, “There are over 100 editors who pore over just one article and modify it — the edits can be a sentence that is rewritten, a reference link added or citations made. But the changes are a lot and minute. I created a tool where people could see what changes are made and how the article evolves over a period of time.”

Besides developing tools and software, Jeph points out that users can generate visual content. For instance, there are some topics such as historical monuments which require visual documentation. Users can submit their visual repository to Wikipedia to enhance text content.

Wikipedia Caveats

Wikipedia, globally ranked sixth among all the websites based on web traffic, has laid down a list of rules and guidelines which users are required to follow. For instance, when one edits articles, one should avoid personal opinions. Komal cites a recent furore when there were slanderous remarks made against actor Ambarish.

“Such personal opinions should be reserved for blogs. Wikipedia is a public domain website. Hence, when you become a contributor, you have a certain responsibility. You should refrain from portraying biased sentiments through your articles,” she observes. Contemplating on this, Komal adds that Wikipedians should not fabricate content. "They should only include what’s already published and authenticate it using a credible source," she adds.

Another rule that is of utmost importance is compliance with copyright. Radha Krishna explains, “If you want to include information from a website or article, you can't copy the text verbatim. You have to analyse the content and paraphrase it based on your own understanding, citing legitimate references.”

When in doubt, the Wikipedians assert, it is always best to take help from other editors and collaborators through the ‘Talk’ option on the website or through monthly meetings.

It's easy to be a Wikipedia contributor:

Register: Although a visitor can edit articles, it is good to register to keep a record of your edits. You will also get an access to Wikipedia’s enhanced editing features.

Start with editing: Click the ‘Edit’ tab on the article’s page to modify the copy -- check typos, grammar, sentence structure and add an explanation. For example, if it is a spelling correction, add 'Typo'.

Preview: After editing, see a preview of the modifications by clicking ‘Show Preview’.

Save: Then save the changes by clicking the ‘Save Page’ tab.

Format: Wiki uses a markup language called wikitext to format text. Acquaint yourself with this language by reading the online tutorial. For instance, you can change a text to bold or italics by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes.

Link: You can add inline citations by linking a word to another Wikipedia page. To do so, put the word in double square brackets. You can also change the display text.

Categorise: Add categories near the bottom of the article by typing the topic using Category:

Add footnotes: You can add reference tags around your source using <ref>Your Source</ref>.

Add external links: To add a link to an external credible website, type the URL inside a single set of brackets, followed by a space and the text to be displayed.

Talk to other editors: Use talk pages to discuss articles or any issues with other Wikipedians.

For a detailed tutorial on how to edit an article, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Wiki meets and awareness programmes: Since 2010, the Bangalore Wikipedia community has conducted over 40 meet-ups, according to Vishnu. “This helps increase participation among all volunteers, improves engagement and understanding of the work that is being done on an ongoing basis,” he opines.

Apart from this, their main focus is to get more people to join the fray through ‘Wiki Academy’ which travels to different organisations in the country to get people acquainted to the website and give them hands-on training on editing articles. Radha Krishna explains, “We recently conducted a workshop at C-DOT and Don Bosco Engineering College.” He adds, “Wikipedia has a lot of sister projects too like Wikiversity, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary, which people are not aware of. We want people to make use of these tools too.”

Rules every Wikipedian should follow:

Don't share unpublished results

Don't expound your personal theories or start debates

Respect other editors

If you spot an error, correct it

Write without using jargons

Do not violate copyright and attribute statements

Do not promote yourself

Do not be biased in your tone of writing. Always cover significant point of views

Don't be afraid to ask for help

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-july-29-2014-svetlana-lasrado

India’s dedicated Cryptology centre gets Rs. 115 crore funding

praskrishna — 2014-07-29T07:18:08Z

Work on India's first dedicated cryptology centre – plans for which were first announced in June 2012 – will likely accelerate as the project has gained initial funding of Rs. 115 crore from the federal government, stepping up the nation's efforts to stay on top of an area critical to its military and financial interests.

The blog post by Harichandan Arakali was published in SearchSecurity.in on July 28, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

The research facility, called the RC Bose Centre For Cryptology and Security, is to be built on the campus of the Indian Statistical Institute at Kolkata, where there is already ongoing cryptology research and consultancy work, albeit on a smaller scale, according to professor Rana Barua, the centre's head.

In a world where electronic transactions and access to an ever-increasing number of places, installations and objects have made physical borders less relevant, the task of securing them against threats means strong encryption of data is critical to national defense.

"This centre is of course a welcome initial step, but it can't be the only thing. We will have to, ideally, take a billion dollars from some of the big funds, such as the Universal Service Obligation fund or from the next (wireless) spectrum auctions, and throw it at cryptography," said Sunil Abraham, director for policy at the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit research organisation.

"If the country takes our military superiority seriously, then when it comes to cyber wars, without having an upper hand in cryptography, there is no use discussing anything else," he added.

The new cryptology centre will focus on basic research, but take on applied work for India's defense needs and those of its financial institutions, professor Barua said, developing algorithms, testing encryption products for robustness, detecting vulnerabilities and so on.

The center will augment indigenous capabilities in cryptology and information security, Bimal K Roy, director of the India Statistical Institute told India's Press Trust, which reported the funding earlier this month.

"It is an important element of the overall efforts and framework to enhance capabilities to ensure holistic security of the Indian cyber space. With an eminent body of world class experts, it will act as a hub for all cryptographic requirements, cutting edge research and technology development within the country," Press Trust cited Roy as saying.

Once centre is up and running and, over the next two years, it will have the infrastructure to allow more than 30 researchers to work, but "the problem of course is to get good researchers in this area," Barua said.

Pretty much all the best mathematicians in the world today work with the US government either directly or as part of the American academia and via research projects funded by the US government, said the Centre for Internet and Society's Abraham.

Given that most of the standards used today are those set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the US standard-setting organisation, "we should ensure that our participation at NIST is of the highest quality and we need an army of mathematicians," he said.

However, in India there may be a small number of mathematicians who are capable of the highest level of cryptology research. Even if there are more, there is another problem for them to keep abreast of the latest advances.

In the past, maths used to be an open science and all advances would be published and available for peers to learn from each other. With the militarisation of the areas of maths that deal with cryptology, the latest research isn't available and mathematicians have to essentially work things out on their own as well as conjecture what others might be doing.

Today, every country other than the US faces a shortage of skilled cryptographers, according to Abraham: "Everybody is in the soup, but India is in worse soup because we went with this engineering craze instead of pure sciences and math, we've ignored building capacity in that area."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/search-security-july-28-2014-harichandan-arakali-indias-dedicated-cryptology-centre-gets-funding

OK Festival 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T10:15:00Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ok-festival.pdf

Open Knowledge Festival 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T10:17:38Z

Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local in Berlin. The event was organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., in Berlin from July 15 to 17, 2014.

Click to read the details on the website here. See the official programme here. Download Subhashish's presentation at this page.

Subhashish presented on the following:

Situation in India

Wikimedia India chapter and WMF's India program working on first India GLAM project
Good traction of image contribution through Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest
Mass communication and other media institutes slowly taking interest in open audio library
Digitization is a priority across government departments, with funding available
Majority of GLAMs lack knowledge about open culture, need for outreach
Relicensing and book digitization have gained public interest
Goals of the survey
Data
Mapping the sector
Encourage institutions to think beyond their digital strategy
Show institutions what is there for them

What we have done so far

Started filing Right to Information (RT) asking state government departments for lists of institutions
Reached out to WMIN (Wikimedia India chapter) for help in creating a list
Difficulty with getting people and contact details

Collaborative Presentation

OKFest2014 glam-survey_workshop_20140717 from Beat Estermann

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ok-festival-2014