Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikipedia: Three Years of Active Contributions Gives Life to a Ten Year Old Project

subha — 2014-02-04T08:56:35Z

Odia Wikipedia has carved its mark as the largest online encyclopedia in Odia language that is edited by a volunteer editor community.

This was published by HASTAC on January 31, 2014.

By 29th of January this year it is 10 year old and 5000 articles rich. Though this was started as one of the first four Indic language Wikipedias. In 2011 there were only 550 articles with practically no contributors. The initial Wikipedians struggled to reach out to more people. Luckily, with more people coming on the Internet – primarily on social media platforms, collaboration became easier. Odia Wikipedia’s facebook page and group became the social gateway to get used to working within the Odia language. This is one of the languages which has very little online presence when it comes to having content as Unicode text. Many people still struggle with the outdated pirated operating systems installed in their computers which added more hurdles in the way of all the community led Wikipedia outreach programs. There has been more developments in recent days in language input and online contribution in Odia. More people started searching for online content using Odia in Unicode. This is where Odia Wikipedia played a crucial role in promoting a massive growth in content which is reflected in the readership. Monthly page views which remained consistently low over the years started growing from less than 1000 to more than 400,000 and at times hitting the 500,000 mark. This is the highest among all the websites that have Odia content. With a variety of new projects and more contributors than ever, Wikipedia Odia happily celebrated its its 10th anniversary over two days. Odia Wikipedians gathered in two different educational institutes; Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar on the 28th of January and Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Dhenkanal on the 29th.

Day 1

First day of Odia Wikipedia 10 began with the traditional Chhena poda by noted linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Patnaik. Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) has recently collaborated with The Centre for Internet and Society for the resource gathering, documentation and archival of 62 tribal communities of Odisha and neighboring eastern Indian states and initiating Wikipedia projects in the indigenous tribal languages. The first few phase of the workshop brought about 15 students pursuing their masters in Arts, Science and Commerce disciplines and 10 faculty members.

This project also will also dovetail into the Mother Tongue based Multilingual Lab that has been set up in the institute to foster educational materials in tribal languages. Dr. Patnaik spoke to these contributors about the native languages and the importance of documenting language and cultural heritage online. Subrat Prusty, General Secretary of Janasammilani and founding member of Odia Biswabidyalaya gave a talk on the factors that have diminished the native languages and how collaborative efforts could revive dying languages through a 5000 word free-license dictionary in Odia. With the audio recording of Dr. Patnaik introducing himself, Odia Wikipedians inaugurated the Voice intro project as the first Indic language project. Odia Wikipedians interacted with the students and teachers at KISS to get their inputs on the kind of knowledge imparted by introducing Wikipedia editing. Later these will streamline the process of writing to the linguistic team for pledging for the classical language status of Odia.

Day 2

The second day of Odia Wikipedia 10 was celebrated in the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) Dhenkanal campus . Students who had participated in the series of Odia Wikipedia workshops earlier in the year took part in this event. Sampad Mohapatra, a TV and print media journalist inaugurated the event by lighting Dipa and cutting a birthday Chenapoda. Mohapatra shared his experiences on how the entire media industry relies on Wikipedia for collecting information and how contribution in regional languages will benefit the students through more job availability in the regional media. Professor Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee who heads the institution shared the way accessing knowledge is slowly moving to internet based search. He discussed strategies of how bringing more online content in regional languages will help the academia and the students. Usha Padhee, Secretary of Mass Education Department, Odisha Government distributed awards to the top Wikipedia contributors. She later presented on the role of media in educating society and Open Educational Resources in new tools of imparting knowledge.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/hastac-january-31-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-odia-wikipedia

Access to Knowledge

anirudh — 2014-05-22T04:48:41Z

Unit 4 of Module 2 discusses the right to access knowledge, patents and copyright. There is also a case study of Oxbridge Textbooks.

Introduction

In the middle of the 16th century, Queen Mary was faced with a difficult question that was brought to her by none other than most powerful publishing house in England at the time. The Stationers, like any other craft guild in the business of printing and producing books loved a monopoly in the profits of their books and terribly feared competition.[1] Therefore, they went to Queen Mary with the request of a royal charter. This charter would allow them to seize illicit editions of their books and bar the publication of books unlicensed by the crown. The Queen suddenly thought that this could indeed be a more efficient way to squash sedition and dissent through censorship by puppeteering this craft guild than previous, perhaps less subtle means like torture and death. In 1557, she granted them this early form of a copyright. Notice how the author or the creator of the work has no place in this agreement and the origins of intellectual property in English law are based on privilege, namely power and profit. This rhetoric, however, changes with the coming of the 18^th century and the passing of the Act of Anne in 1707 to one of creativity and learning. The concern for the author has a steady positivist rise after this in the tug of war over intellectual property. In the case Miller v Taylor in 1769, the author sought to extend copyright to common law. Three judges ruled in favor of this motion and two judges ruled against.[2]

A closer examination at the reasoning provided by the three assenting judges will tell us almost all the philosophical justifications of intellectual property. The first judge called upon his notion of justice and said it is just that the author control the destiny of his work as it is a product of his labor. The second judge said that extending the copyright would encourage creativity by making the work the creator’s property. The third judge said it is the authors natural right as the work wouldn’t exist if not for the mental labor of the author. Together, justice, incentives and natural rights are the cornerstones of the justifications of intellectual property.

Although history is littered with theories on property, there have been only sparse discussions on intellectual property. The question then arises, can intellectual property be accommodated within normal property. The similarity is in the fact that intellectual property is also a relationship between people but the difference lies in the fact that the object is an abstract one.[3]

This leads many to believe that it cannot be subject to the same rules of property. The first dissenting judge in Miller v Taylor, for example, said that abstract ideas cannot be occupied like corporeal objects so they cannot be property. He said the author deserves a reward which the Act of Anne provides in the form of limited monopoly but that’s about it. In fact, an idea is almost the perfect example of a resource like the air or light that is not zero sum and inexhaustible in that my use of it doesn’t take away from your use of it. Neither air nor light can become personal property which leaves ideas in a property limbo. This leaves room for very interesting discussions and debates over the existence of intellectual property and the place it should occupy in society. This discourse has largely taken two forms: the deontological and the consequentialist. Deontological justifications for IP come from a priori reasons like rights or duties which can be established in many forms. There is the ontological basis for rights which answers questions like whether rights exist and if so, where they come from. One of the preeminent figures in this discourse has been John Locke, an English philosopher whose argument for individual property as “natural rights” remains relevant even today when applied to intellectual property. Locke’s major assumptions in his claim were:

God has given the world to people in common.
Every person owns his own personality.
A person’s labor belongs to him.
When a person mixes his labor with something in the commons he makes it his property.
The right of property is contingent upon its being good for commoners.[4]

In order to extend this argument, Locke says that exclusive ownership of a resource is a precondition for production. Ideas before labored upon by people, however, are not exclusively owned which resists the cross application of his ideas to intellectual property. Another impediment in extending the natural right to intellectual property is the 5th assumption. Intellectual labor, in annexing an idea, stops it from becoming a part of the intellectual commons. If this labor, armed with the property of becoming property is doing a disservice to society, then it may not be a natural right at all. The notion that ideas are a part of the intellectual commons is also one that needed evidence and Locke found that in scripture as Judeo-Christian philosophy clearly advocates the idea of all worldly resources being part of the commons.

Hegel, on the other hand, took the route of personality theory. He argued that if individuals have claims to anything, they had to be considered an individual first. He states that in order to be individuals, people must have a moral claim to things like their character traits, feelings, talents and experience.[5] The definition of these aspects or the process of self-actualization requires an interaction with tangible and intangible objects in the world. The external actualization process requires property that includes intellectual property for Hegel as he sees the works as an extension or an establishment of the self in the external world that embody the person’s personality in an inseparable and even immortal way.

Another form is in linguistics, where we ask questions like what we mean when we say rights and property. Skinner said that in the history of intellectual property law, the social context of its use and the matrix of assumptions involved in reference is the determining factor. This is why the history of intellectual property is as important as and to the philosophical underpinnings.

The consequentialist justifications of IP assume that the specious connection between IP and creativity is fact and warn of a chilling effect on creative activity in the absence of IP. History shows us that the relationship between IP and creativity is local and contingent rather than necessary and universal. Imperial China, for example, was a creative and inventive empire that gave rise to many technologies and artistic subcultures without any promise of IP. Indeed, Marx’s historical materialism could be seen as condemning IP as a superstructural phenomenon in the industrial development phase of capitalist societies and one that a future society can function well without.[6] If one was interested in the consequentialist debate over IP, then historical empirical data would be more important than an a priori analysis.

The lack of a definitive philosophical, ethical or normative justification for the existence of Intellectual Property rights unlike those for free expression or equal treatment under the law shows us that its application needs to be tempered with other considerations. If, as Rawls suggested, we hide behind the veil of ignorance and tried to form an ideal society, then IP may not feature within it as it tends to create social stratification and further marginalizes the least advantaged in social life and democratic culture.[7] Since IP’s are liberty intrusive privileges that do not “allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.” or “benefit the least advantaged.” or are “open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.”, their utilitarian claims of creativity have to answer to the injustices that manifest from them before they get a carte blanche in society.

The access to knowledge has been a yearning of society to shift and dilute the concentration of this most precious of resources because of the old adage “knowledge is power”. This concept, however, can be understood from many lenses including the sociological and the legal. At first, in order to understand the importance of the legal entities under access to knowledge, we must explore its saliency in society.

Humanity world over is at the cusp of a major shift in the production, consumption, dissemination and distribution of knowledge. This warrants changes in frameworks of looking at knowledge, information and data in the digital era at multiple levels and by multiple players including students, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers, civil society and the State. In order to understand why and how knowledge matters in the world today, we must see how it makes a difference in our world and how it materially changes the world.

Many prominent economists and social theorists have sought to claim that knowledge has affected the organization of society in a manner that is different than in previous eras though knowledge has been an organizing principle of society throughout history. How the exact time of the shift and the nature of the shift are catalogued will depend on what category the basis is. From an economic perspective, Marx said that the capitalist system depends on the constant improvement and dynamism of technology. The real understanding of the role of knowledge in our economy came when Robert Solow posited that the majority of economic growth in the beginning of the 20th century was less due to labor or capital and more due to technological changes. These advances in knowledge came in the form of new machines to new production techniques that made the production process more efficient.[8]

Fritz Machlup stated that in the 1960’s the change in the knowledge intensity of the economy was marked by “an increase in the share of ‘knowledge-producing’ labor in total employment.” The Harvard historian Daniel Bell observed in his study of post-industrial societies that 1/3^rd of the US workers were employed in the service industry at the turn of the century but by the 1980’s almost 7/10^ths of the workers were employed in the service industries.[9]

People who were employed in the industrial sectors were flocking steadily to finance, education, information technology and the cultural industry. The movements of people came as a reaction to the movement of profitability from industrial sectors to finance, biotechnology and information technology. Knowledge basically is a positive feedback loop which means that as more information and communication technologies emerge, it allows more innovation. Manuel Castell categorizes this shift in the place of knowledge as a global one even though it’s concentrated in a few wealthy countries because all the economies ultimately depend on the global one. The disparity between countries is still massive but it used to be just in terms of raw materials and manufactured goods but now at a global level, there is a huge knowledge (high technology low technology, high knowledge services low knowledge services) disparity between wealthy and non-wealthy countries. This claim may seem to imply that knowledge is simply technical and scientific, but there are obviously other important kinds of knowledge like ethical and humanities knowledge. The point here is that the enhanced ability of humans to organize and employ specific kinds of technical and scientific knowledge has created a huge shift in the global economy similar to the effect of the increase in access to knowledge from the invention of printing press. This shift in the importance of knowledge has made our health better as well. The average lifespan has increased exponentially in the past half century and it is our scientific advancement in the mechanisms of disease and medicine that has aided this achievement.

When there is so much integral societal dependence on knowledge, the non market production of knowledge is essential for equality in access to this knowledge. Yochai Benkler stated that the processing power of the modern computers linked together on the internet creates a platform that allows for new kinds of collaboration. Apart from new kinds of political activism, it also leads to decentralized knowledge production like open source/ free software and Wikipedia.

Within this context of the digital turn, openness and transparency are gaining newer significance. On the one hand emerging participatory models of openness like Wikipedia[10] are increasingly pushing us to look beyond the traditional models of the bygone century;[11] on the other hand these models are being thought of to be effective even in governance and policy making. Open data,[12] for instance is becoming a key prerequisite for the State and civil society alike in imagining better governance models. This could potentially create a pre-condition for the transformation of society into a ‘Knowledge Society’, wherein the citizen is increasingly repositioned from a ‘spectator’ to ‘spect-actor’.[13] Eventually, the distinction between a knowledge society and governance could get blurred. However, this process needs strong civil society players to catalyze and cultivate an effective knowledge society. Such work happens at multiple layers of policy coupled with advocacy, research, dissemination and infrastructure creation. The larger policy debate happens in the form of a contest between understandings of knowledge. The two sides are knowledge as property versus knowledge as a common resource. This tension is explored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Right to Access to Knowledge

The discourse around the access to knowledge has been around for a while as it is inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted in 1948. Article 27 of the charter attempts to bring about a balance between the right of access and the protection of material interests.

Article 27[14]

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Here, many academics and Access to Knowledge theorists posit that the right to access to knowledge is the more important right. This is because the right to material protection or rather the Intellectual Property (IP) right is ultimately for sale and transferrable so is not inalienable like the right to access to knowledge. Many right to knowledge theorists are of the opinion that the level of IP protection currently in place in the world is too much.

In 1996, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[15] was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN. As we may expect, the right to free speech has a longer history of acceptance and positivist outlook on it. Article 19 of the ICCPR reads as follows:

“Article 19.

Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
- For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
- For the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals.” (Italics are mine)

The idea that free speech includes the right to seek and receive is something that will be discussed in the chapter on free speech but the important positive externality or reading that one can glean from this wording is that the access to knowledge becomes a right.


Above: Google books Ngram Viewer

However, as you can see in the graph, the discourse around Access to knowledge doesn’t begin to really take off until the early 1960’s when the U.S government was just starting to build a network between computers. In the early stages of the modern internet around the early 1980’s the discourse around access to knowledge becomes even more frequent. This is because intellectual property rights started to eclipse the astronomical increase in the production of knowledge and vast portions of the world’s population remained in the dark. Especially, the production of academic knowledge has increased exponentially in the recent past which has made it essential that the barriers to this knowledge are attenuated as much as possible.Now that we have explored the sociological aspect of access to knowledge and the philosophical debates around it, let us look at how it is codified in law. Specifically we will look at copyright and patents.

Patents

What are Patents?

Of all forms of intellectual property rights (IPR) patents are said to be the most restrictive, granted to inventors of devices or processes on the basis that the invention is novel, can be applied for a useful function, andinvolves an inventive step (and may not be obvious to a professional in the relevant field).

Under Indian patent law, a patent is a statutory right for an invention, giving the inventor the exclusivity to prevent others from making, using, or selling the invention—unless, of course, they are to receive permission from the right holder and pay the necessary royalty fees to do so. For this reason, a patent holder is said to have a monopoly over the invention. [16] In return for this exclusivity, the right holder must disclose a detailed, accurate and complete written description of the invention to be available for the public.[17]

A patent may be a utility patent, issued for the invention of a new and useful process, machine or product; a design patent, for a new and original design to be used in the manufacturing of a product; or a plant patent, for a new and distinct, invented or discovered type of plant.[18] Subject matter that is unpatentable in India includes an invention that is immoral, an invention which claims anything contrary to natural laws (e.g. gravity), the discovery of anything occurring in nature, and the formulation of an abstract theory.[19] That being said, a patentable invention generally must be able to result in a useful, concrete and tangible result, although restrictions of what is not patentable may vary country to country.

Patents are valid for a limited period of time; generally 20 years from the start of the term. A patent’s exclusivity is also limited to the country in which it was granted, meaning that a patent holder may not be able to exclude others from the making, using, or selling of a similar invention in a different jurisdiction that would otherwise infringe upon the their IP right.[20]

Effects on Innovation

There are vast perspectives around the adoption and application of patents, ranging from a strong opposition—by those in favour of free and widespread access to products of innovation and knowledge processes (e.g. medicines and educational materials)—to those in strong support of a more restrictive intellectual property (IP) regime, as a means of protecting the inventor and his or her inventions.

One of the underlying principles for the consideration and enforcement of a patent regime is the claim that this form of IPR serves as an incentive for innovation to take place. By offering a “reward” in the form of statutory recognition, protection, and remuneration, the granting of a patent may encourage innovation. An opposing viewpoint to such a claim, however, may argue that patents do not encourage innovation, but stifle it, by preventing others from being able to innovate through their enforcement. Just as well, a patent is granted after the fact, and the odds of one’s application being approved are quite slim—not to mention expensive!—so a patent would not be an ideal form of incentive, with remuneration only taking place when one’s patent is infringed or one’s monopoly abused.

One’s monopoly may be abused when the right holder of a patent (or thousands!) brings an industry to a standstill by shutting out others from having their new inventions reach the market. Often, patents may prevent the manufacturing and selling of innovations that are not actually relevant, but claim by the right holder to fall within the scope of the patented invention.

The effects of the excessive granting and enforcement of patents may trickle down to the level of the individual when the economic threshold for starting a new business increases, one’s business’s profitability reduces due to the payments of royalties and legal expenses, and the potential for such an entrepreneur to scale beyond national boundaries is undermined.[21]

Case Study: Pervasive Technologies
Because of these limitations placed onto others by patent holders, small-to-medium business and enterprises in India and China tend to ignore existing IPR for inventions they may use within their manufactured products due to the high costs associated to seeking permission and paying royalties to the right holder. For this reason, these businesses may only begin to develop protection and risk-mitigation strategies when they have scaled up and can afford to do so.[22] A phenomenon that has risen out of a restrictive market and resulting repeated efforts to get around such restrictions is the “gray” market, where mobile phone are being manufactured with the likelihood of infringing upon a number of existing patents for inventions used in the manufactures. Mobile phones that are entirely legal may cost well over INR 8000/- (US $120) when gray market devices generally range from INR 3000/- to INR 4000/- (US $48-60), demonstrating the high price of patents on the availability of hardware.[23] The term, pervasive devices, coined by the Centre for Internet & Society, largely refers to sub-$100 communication devices that are becoming near-ubiquitous as a result of their increased availability to reach larger demographics of lesser income brackets. Software Technologies Although software technologies are predominantly protected under Indian copyright law, in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, software is patentable. Unlike American companies, such as IBM which has applied for 5,896 US patents, very seldom do Indian companies apply for software patents, and instead are likely to become at risk for litigation in attempts to penetrate markets elsewhere due to the patents already existing. Most commonly, software producers from India do not own the rights to the IP they have created and instead adopt a “software as a service” (SAAS) business model, within which contracts signed require all IP developed to be signed over to the client. As international players continue to register a multitude of software patents, it becomes increasingly difficult for Indian companies to move away from this SAAS model to developing their own proprietary products due to the increased risk of litigation.[24]

Pre-Grant and Post Grant

Upon signing the Trade Related Aspects Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, India introduced two kinds of patent oppositions, where an individual may write to the Indian Patent Office to oppose the granting of a patent. The first kind, pre-grant opposition, may occur after the patent application has been published by the Patent Office, but has not yet been granted, for the primary purpose of challenging the application’s validity before a patent is granted. One may also give notice of opposition to the Patent Office after the granting of a patent, under post-grant opposition, so long as it occurs within a year of the granted patent’s publication.[25]

Compulsory Licensing

In March 2012, the Government of India granted its first compulsory license ever to Indian generic drug manufacturer, Natco Pharma Ltd. to allow for the manufacturing of Sorateni tosylate, a treatment for advanced kidney and liver cancer. Patent Holder and German pharmaceutical giant, Bayer Corporation, had not been making the drug adequately accessible to the people of India on a commercial scale, and had not imported the drug at all in 2008, and barely in 2009 and 2010. As a result, Natso Pharma Ltd. applied for a compulsory license.

Once granted, Natco was to pay a reduced royalty fee to Bayer quarterly, was required to provide the drug for free to at least 600 needy and deserving patients per year, to sell the drug for a set fee, as specified by the Indian government.

Pharmaceuticals have been an area of fierce debate as drugs for treating serious illnesses, such as malaria, HIV and AIDS, are widely available in the West, and generally too expensive for developing countries due to being protected by patents, where outbreaks are more likely to occur. India’s first compulsory license had been a landmark decision for India, as it is an exemplary case which demonstrates the possibility of a “new” drug under patent to be produced by generic makers at a fraction of the price, compensating the patent holder through royalty payments, while at the same time, enabling access to individuals that would not have otherwise been able to receive this form of treatment.

In the scenario where a government feels a patent holder is abusing one’s monopoly over their patented invention by excessively limiting others to access—and when it could otherwise substantially benefit the public good—a government may grant special privilege to another to use or manufacture such a patented product without the consent of its owner. This is called a compulsory license, and does not take the rights away from the patent holder, but limits them, as to enable increased access. A license fee or royalty payment is still to be paid to the patent holder; however this rate may be negotiated by the government, contrary to a statutory license, where this rate is fixed by the law.

Copyright

Copyright refers to the protection granted, in law, to the expression of some ideas. It is to be noted that the idea itself is not protectable. For instance, if I were to tell you about an ‘idea’ that I had about writing a story about a cat and a mouse, and, a few days later, you wrote a story about a cat and a mouse, the copyright of that story would vest with you, despite the fact that the ‘idea’ for the story was mine. This concept is called the idea-expression dichotomy.

The ‘expression’ that is eligible for protection could be in various forms, including literary, artistic or dramatic works.

Components of Copyright

Copyright recognises the concepts of ownership and authorship of work, and the fact that these might vary in specific instances, when various persons could be involved in the creation of a work. Some may have provided creative input (the author of the book or the director/screen play writer/story writer of the movie), and some may have provided monetary input (the publisher of the book/producer of the movie).

The moral right of ‘attribution’, that is, the right to be recognised for the work vests with the authors. Economic rights associated with copyright vest in the owner of the copyright. The owner could be different from the author. For instance, in case of the book, the owner of the copyright could be the publisher, and in the case of the movie, it could be the producer. In some instances, copyright may be jointly owned as well. Copyright vests in the owner of copyright. It grants the owner the right to exclude all others from making use of/exploiting the work in question commercially. This would essentially prevent others from adapting, copying, distributing, or making any other use of the protected work, unless authorised by the owner.

Copyright and the Law

Copyright law is territorial in nature, that is, copyright granted by law in one nation state is only enforceable in the said that grants the right. One aspect of territoriality could be the term of copyright. Generally, the term is the lifetime of the author (creator/owner) (plus) fifty to hundred years from the death of the author. Anonymous works, or works owned by corporations have a fixed term of copyright, usually between fifty and hundred years. The exception to this general rule of territoriality is if the state in question has entered into any international agreement to the contrary.

Other aspects of copyright regulated by law include subject matter of protection, requirements of registration, term of protection and associated rights. Internationally, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886 is the key instrument. Additionally, some other important international instruments include the WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996 and the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty, 1996.

While the general rule is that all copying and distribution of the copyrighted work has to be done with the express permission of the copyright holder, some exceptional circumstances allow for this requirement to be dispensed with. These are known as fair use/fair dealing (depending on the jurisdiction).

Case Study: The Oxbridge Textbooks[26]
The Broad Issue: The issue of copyrights when it comes to academic purposes has always been one that has sparked debates and very compelling arguments on both sides. While research that is published in scientific journals is carried out with the pure intent of spreading knowledge that will ultimately lead to broader scientific inquiry and research, in the past few decades it has transformed into a product of “ruthless capitalism” whose profit margins are far too high. The question then arises that how research that is carried out mostly with government funded public money be made available to the general public across the world at reasonable and affordable rates? Don’t students in the developing world have equal rights to access a level of education and research that would enable them to compete with their affluent counterparts? But this issue isn't just a cause for concern in the developing world as one of the world’s richest schools,Harvard University released a memorandum in mid-2012 that the cost of its journal subscriptions has become prohibitively expensive. This forces us to take a moment and think about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its journal subscriptions? According to Thomes and Clay’s report, commercial publishers within the last twenty to thirty years have taken control over many publications that had been controlled by non-profit academic and scholarly societies. The shift took place during the 1960’s and 1970’s as commercial publishers recognized the potential for profitability in acquiring journals from the societies. This has resulted in publishing houses now commanding hefty profit margins up to 40%. The Broad Solution: The Indian Copyright Act, Section 52, provides for a wide educational fair use exception for academic purposes. Yet the publishing houses, demand for the purchasing of a Blanket License under the IRRO (Indian Reprographic Reproduction Organization)[27] which costs Rs 24,000 per annum for 20 copies of a single publication and not more than 10% of each copy being photographed. This clause can be challenged on the grounds of “fair use exception” under Section 52. The cancellation of these licenses is a fair demand as the risks of purchasing the license and complying to the publishing houses norms have many repercussions. Due to the business model of the publishing industry, a steep increase in prices has been seen for the past decade, the Harvard letter being just the tip of the iceberg. In 2012, over 12,000 researchers have signed a statement promising to boycott any publication published by Elsevier (a publication house accused of pocketing 40% of the profits). The increase in the prices of academic works in the international market has a steep impact on the budget of children who attend public universities such as Delhi University where the annual fees is Rs. 5000 per annum. Specific Issue at Hand: The specific issue here is a lawsuit filed by the Cambridge and Oxford publication press against Delhi University and a small photocopy shop for copyright infringement. The store, who they accuse of creating photocopied “course packs” in agreement with the University that include content from their textbooks, is selling these bundles for much cheaper than the original books. The presses are demanding more than US$110,000 in damages. On one hand we have powerful international publishing houses and on the other students who do not have access to study material from these houses due to their impoverished backgrounds. It is unlikely that the publishing houses’ revenues would increase post this suit, as most students cannot afford to purchase the study material unless the university foots the bill. It is also important to note that a previous lawsuit that Cambridge publication house lost was due to the defendant using only 10% of the book. In this case we have: Average percentage of entire book copied = 8.81 %. The breakup of the amount of material used per book can be found here.[28] Out of the 23 books in question, only 5 extracts exceed the 10% threshold(these have been marked in red in the document). To suggest that the photocopy shop and Delhi University should have to shell out Rs. 60,00,000 in damages for this case, is a case of publishing houses flexing their muscle power over students in the developing world who deserve equal access to academic material.

[1]. Peter Dravos

[2]. Ibid

[3]. Ibid

[4]. Ibid

[5]. For more on intellectual property see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/

[6]. Supra note above.

[7]. For more see Darryl J. Murphy “Are Intellectual Property rights compatible with Rawlsian principles of justice?, Springer, available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10676-012-9288-8

[8]. For more see Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “The Last Cultural Mile”, Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/last-cultural-mile.pdf, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[9]. See citation above.

[10]. Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz, Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader, published by CIS and Institute of Network Cultures, available at http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%237reader_Wikipedia.pdf

[11]. The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) team from CIS has held several workshops and produced more than 50 blog entries in nearly 10 months.

[12]. See Pranesh Prakash, Nishant Shah, Sunil Abraham and Glover Wright, “Open Government Data Study: India” published by Transparency & Accountability Initiative, available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/publications/open-government.pdf

[13]. A term coined by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal in the context of theatre. This formulation of spect-actor is very useful in reimagining the citizen in the digital era that has created preconditions for the citizen to effectively participate in governance. For more on Spect-actor see Augusto, Boal (1993). Theater of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

[14]. For more see Article 27 available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a27, last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[15]. Read the full Covenant at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20999/volume-999-I-14668-English.pdf

[16]. Stephan Kinsella, “Against Intellectual Property”, Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001), available at http://www.stephankinsella.com/publications/against-intellectual-property/, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[17]. See “Inventing the Funture: An Introduction to Patents for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, World Intellectual Property Organization”, available at http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/sme/917/wipo_pub_917.pdf , last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[18]. See “Types of Patents”, available at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/patdesc.htm , last accessed on January 31 , 2014

[19]. See “Inventions not Patentable in India”, available at http://www.cazri.res.in/itmu/pdf/Inventions%20not%20Patentable%20in%20India.pdf, last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[20]. Supra note 62 above.

[21]. See Research Proposal on Pervasive Technologies available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-research-proposal.pdf , last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[22]. Ibid.

[23]. Ibid.

[24]. Ibid.

[25]. See Tech Corp Legal http://bit.ly/NBRg1F

[26]. Ariel Bogle, Cambridge & Oxford University Press sue Delhi University for copyright infringement — over course packs, March 18, 2013, Melville House, available at http://www.mhpbooks.com/cambridge-university-press-oxford-university-press-sue-delhi-university-for-copyright-infringement-over-course-packs/,last accessed on January 29, 2014.

[27]. http://www.irro.in/about.php

[28]. Book-wise Percentage Analysis (DU Photocopying Case), available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnUBa-WkvhlOdDItVENnYkpZZ1ZYYTYwRGVycXVtZ1E#gid=0, last accessed on January 29, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/access-2-knowledge

The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights

salelkar — 2014-02-03T02:21:45Z

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2013 (The RPD Bill) went through three avatars since its commissioning in 2009 under the Sudha Kaul Committee. This blog post brings you a summary of the three stages since it was initially commissioned.

The first was the one the Committee proposed in 2011, after consultations with persons with disabilities and Disabled People's Organizations across the country; the second was notified by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 2012, which was in parts opposed to by several stakeholders; and the third, the RPD BIll of 2013, has actually brought the entire disability lobby, as it were, together, in being entirely appalled at the turn of events. The Bill, which is being furiously evaluated in the short time available between its being made available to the public and its impending introduction (and possible passing in the House), is full of flaws. Not only does it not adhere to the standards of the UNCRPD, but it also violates the spirit of the Indian Constitution, as well as contradicting existing case law, and most importantly it betrays the consensus and recommendations of persons with disabilities who were initially part of these recommendations.

Doubtlessly, while access to government establishments and entities like courts, collectorates, municipal offices, is important for persons with disabilities, there are other establishments which are equally important for persons with disabilities, for purposes of recreation, access to culture, and private services. I've made the point elsewhere that the law proposed is less of an empowering statute and more on the lines of the charity model – and in line with that, the indication is that persons with disabilities will only ever have to come in contact with the government and other entities, so they can enforce rights, take grants, petition government servants, etc. But if the statute itself is rights based, why so much focus on access to forums for rights enforcement, and not on others beyond this?

While they did have their flaws, the 2011 and 2012 versions of the Bill, which had rather comprehensive provisions with regard to ensuring accessibility. To start with, the right of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas, was recognized. The RPD Bill recognizes the obligation of the government to provide accessibility measures, but by now wording it in terms of a right, it does not do complete justice. The 2011 and 2012 drafts were replete with separate sections on the right to transport, personal mobility, communications, services, the built environment, etc. On the other hand, the RPD Bill clumsily lops all of these into a few sections, with repeated emphasis on infrastructure and services run by "establishments", which is, in effect, the government. There is no mention of website accessibility, though a cursory mention is made to the appropriate government ensuring that all contents available in audio, print and electronic media are in accessible format; and that persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning. Again, the ambiguity as to whether this extends to websites which are not run by the government, is not clear.

There is another aspect to accessibility which is lost under the Act by its failure to recognize it as a right. A senior person in the sector, who is blind, told me of an instance where he was barred from entering a bar with some friends. "You won't be able to tell what the bill is or how many drinks you've had", said the manager. He was therefore, being discriminated against entering a place, solely on the grounds of his disability. Persons who have been cured of leprosy are denied access to transport and other public facilities on the basis of outdated statutes. Persons who use crutches and calllipers are denied entry to religious places. The understanding of the Bill on accessibility is extremely limited, and limited to the built environment of government establishments, and this does nothing to extend the rights of persons with disabilities. Groups which are forwarding non negotiables for amendments to the Bill do not consider, at present, the right to accessibility to be a non negotiable. I do wonder, however, whether any of the other rights make sense when express and implied bars to access exist and are effectively encouraged, under this proposed law.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — January 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T05:55:18Z

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

We from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) thank you all for your support and collaboration and wish you a very Happy New Year. We bring you the details of our work for the month of January 2014:

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs
KIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia. Dr.Achyuta Samanta, Founder-Chairman of KIIT and KISS inaugurated both the collaborations formally. Dr. Sasmitarani Samanta, Registrar, KIIT and Surjya Kanta Mohanty, Chief Operating Officer, KISS signed the MoUs of KIIT and KISS respectively whereas T. Vishnuvardhan, Programme Director, CIS-A2K was there to sign in both the MoUs on behalf of CIS along with Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CIS-A2K: http://bit.ly/1j1qtFv.

Article

Odia Wikipedia: Three Years of Active Contributions Gives Life to a Ten Year Old Project (by Subhashish Panigrahi, HASTAC, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1jvxD8r.
WikiSangamotsavam 2013 brings Indian Wikimedians together (by Netha Hussain and Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, January 14, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane: http://bit.ly/1jvynKP.

Blog Entries

Wikipedia Editing as Assessment Tool in the Indian Higher Education Classroom (by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashwin Kumar A.P. and T. Vishnu Vardhan, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1m5QHMD.
Wikipedia at Forefront in Christ University (by Syed Muzamiluddin, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/LTFA8E.

Events Organised

Odia WikiMeetup (Bhubaneswar, January 11, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBkFJi.
Introductory talk about "Wikipedia in Academics" (KIIT School of Technology, Bhubaneswar, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1yv1f.
Wikipedia Editing Demonstration at NIE (Nirmala Institue of Education, Goa, January 15, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fmYkKK
Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary @ KISS (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar, January 28, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsqkJC.
Odia Wikipedia 10th anniversary (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dGRBoy.

Event Participated In

The Dynamics of Education to Employment Journey: Opportunities and Challenges (organized by KIIT School of Management, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, February 21-22, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1ePwqHc.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Digitising contest to preserve rare books in Malayalam (The Hindu, January 4, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBtVgz.
‘With Internet in every pocket, power to the people’ (by Shubhadeep Chaudhury, The Tribune, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ojb1IZ. Shubhadeep interviews T. Vishnu Vardhan on internet and social media.
ଆଦିବାସୀ ଭାଷାର ଉନ୍ନତିକଳ୍ପେ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ (Odishan.com, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kAWJmG.
KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative (India Education Diary.com, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1Rzwk.
Odisha: KISS to create tribal languages and heritage repository (Odisha Diary Bureau, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bLBhmB.
FDC recognition for the Centre for the Internet and Society (Wikimedia Foundation, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fYdxOz. Wikimedia Foundation published a resolution declaring CIS eligible for funding through the Annual Plan Grants program.
Tech-savvy students given tips to enter IT field (The Times of India, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1QvIX.
Odia Wikipedia (Sanchar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePwAON.

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 Muzammiluddin Syed, one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi and one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

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.

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

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

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

Open Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR

samantha — 2014-01-31T07:14:07Z

Due to the Holy See’s demonstrated pro-access position to medicines and published materials for persons with disabilities, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) requested for His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, to also consider copyrights, patents or IPR more generally, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at WIPO. We strongly encourage other organizations and civil society groups to modify this letter, as needed, and to contact the Holy See Mission to the United Nations (and WIPO) in Geneva in order to help us prompt His Excellency to contribute to the international dialogue on IPR.

You may view the original letter sent by CIS here.

His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio
Holy See Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
P.O. Box 28
1292 Chambésy
Geneva, Switzerland
mission.holy-see@ties.itu.int
+41 22 758 98 20

Friday, January 24, 2014

Your Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi,

Subject: Call for the Holy See’s comment on Intellectual Property Rights

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, India, I, Samantha Cassar, write to Your Excellency’s opinion on copyrights, patents and intellectual property rights.

We are a not-for-profit, non-governmental research organization that works on addressing policy issues related to access to knowledge and intellectual property law reform (http://cis-india.org/a2k), and accessibility for persons with disabilities (http://cis-india.org/accessibility) among other areas related to internet and information and communication technologies.

CIS is an accredited organization with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a regular participant at the meetings of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR), the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), as well as the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property.

At the outset, we commend Your Excellency for signing the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. As one of the contributors to this treaty, we appreciate the concern of the Holy See for those who are marginalised within our information society by their disabilities.

As Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director from CIS noted at Marrakesh during the adoption of this treaty, “When copyright doesn't serve public welfare, states must intervene, and the law must change to promote human rights, the freedom of expression and to receive and impart information, and to protect authors and consumers.” We are happy to see this being done through a treaty as such.

Also said by Your Excellency, within the Holy See’s statement at the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), “Among the most damaging concessions developing countries make in regional and bilateral agreements are those enhancing the monopolies on life-saving medicines, which reduce access and affordability and those that provide excessive legal rights to foreign investors, limiting the policy space for nations to promote sustainable and inclusive development.”

Given the Holy See’s demonstrated standpoint on the accessing of medicines and published works, we at the Centre for Internet and Society would like to request Your Excellency to also consider copyrights, patents or more generally, intellectual property rights (IPR), as Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.

On behalf of CIS, I am honoured to be writing to Your Excellency and for this request to be considered. Due to the ability of copyright and other forms of IPR to obstruct the access of one’s own human rights and even the sustainable development of one’s country, we feel this area must be crucially considered within an international dialogue—not only from a place of political strategy but also from principles of mercy and compassion.

With meetings approaching for both WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (January 27-31, 2014) and WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (May 19-23, 2014), we are very excited at the possibility of the Holy See enriching this discussion, and hope for such a contribution to take place when the international community is listening—at these meetings, or in any other form.

With Every Best Wish,
Sincerely Yours,

Samantha Cassar

Programme Associate
The Centre for Internet & Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr

CIS Original Open Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR

samantha — 2014-01-31T07:05:27Z

Due to the Holy See’s demonstrated pro-access position to medicines and published materials for persons with disabilities, CIS has requested for His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, to also consider copyrights, patents or IPR more generally, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at WIPO. The following is the original letter sent by CIS.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-original-open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr

Bhutan's Google Apps

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T12:17:53Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bhutan-google.pdf

January 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-04-07T07:09:59Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of its newsletter (January) for the year 2014:

-------------------------------
Highlights
-------------------------------

Amba Salelkar provides an analysis of the three stages of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities 2013 since it was initially commissioned.
We published revised chapters for the states of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as part of our National Resource Kit project.
In the first of a three-part study Ananth Padmanabhan examines the "John Doe" orders that courts have passed against ISPs, which entertainment companies have used to block websites.
The second Institute on Internet and Society is being held in Pune from February 11 to 17.
CIS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences for furthering Odia Wikipedia.
Dr. Nishant Shah co-authored a chapter on video games in a book published by Palestinian Art Court-al Hoash.
Sneha gives an overview of the research enquiry in the field of Digital Humanities in her blog post on Mapping Digital Humanities in India.
In the first of the insightful seven part series, Gautam Bhatia looks at surveillance and the right to privacy in India from a constitutional perspective, tracing its genealogy through Supreme Court case law and compares it with the law in the USA.

-----------------------------------------------
Jobs
-----------------------------------------------
CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Program Officer (Access to Knowledge): http://bit.ly/1fnydB0 and Program Officer (Internet Governance): http://bit.ly/1aA57K6. There are two vacancies each for these posts and these are full-time based in Delhi. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

----------------------------------------------
Accessibility and Inclusion
----------------------------------------------
As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 27 states and 5 union territories.

Based on the feedback and comments received from our readers the following chapters were revised:

► National Resource Kit Chapter

Andhra Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1lzUFcG.
Chhattisgarh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fY4NZ0.

# Blog Entry

The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights (by Amba Salelkar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1diSg40.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software.

# Analysis

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 1) (by Ananth Padmanabhan, January 30, 2014). Ananth looks at the theory behind John Doe orders and finds that it would be wrong for Indian courts to grant "John Doe" orders against ISPs: http://bit.ly/1nteYaK.

# Blog Entries

Open Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR (by Samantha Cassar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dGN7OS.
The Game of IPR: Insights from the 6th Global Intellectual Property Convention in Hyderabad (by Samantha Cassar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fY5qS6.

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we organised 4 workshops in the month of January, published an article in DNA, and signed a memorandum of understanding with KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences to further the development of Odia Wikipedia:

►Wikipedia

# Articles / Newspaper Columns

Odia Wikipedia: Three Years of Active Contributions Gives Life to a Ten Year Old Project (by Subhashish Panigrahi, HASTAC, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1jvxD8r.
WikiSangamotsavam 2013 brings Indian Wikimedians together (by Netha Hussain and Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, January 14, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane: http://bit.ly/1jvynKP.

# Announcement

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs (by Subhashish Panigrahi, January 11, 2014): KIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1j1qtFv.

# Blog Entries

Wikipedia Editing as Assessment Tool in the Indian Higher Education Classroom (by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashwin Kumar A.P. and T. Vishnu Vardhan, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1m5QHMD.
Wikipedia at Forefront in Christ University (by Syed Muzamiluddin, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/LTFA8E.

# Events Organised

Odia WikiMeetup (Bhubaneswar, January 11, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBkFJi.
Introductory talk about "Wikipedia in Academics" (KIIT School of Technology, Bhubaneswar, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1yv1f.
Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary @ KISS (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar, January 28, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsqkJC.
Odia Wikipedia 10th anniversary (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dGRBoy.

# Event Participated In

The Dynamics of Education to Employment Journey: Opportunities and Challenges (organized by KIIT School of Management, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, February 21-22, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1ePwqHc.

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Digitising contest to preserve rare books in Malayalam (The Hindu, January 4, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBtVgz.
‘With Internet in every pocket, power to the people’ (by Shubhadeep Chaudhury, The Tribune, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ojb1IZ. Shubhadeep interviews T. Vishnu Vardhan on internet and social media.
ଆଦିବାସୀଭାଷାରଉନ୍ନତିକଳ୍ପେଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ(Odishan.com, January 12, 2014):http://bit.ly/1kAWJmG.
KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative (India Education Diary.com, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1Rzwk.
Odisha: KISS to create tribal languages and heritage repository (Odisha Diary Bureau, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bLBhmB.
FDC recognition for the Centre for the Internet and Society (Wikimedia Foundation, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fYdxOz. Wikimedia Foundation published a resolution declaring CIS eligible for funding through the Annual Plan Grants program.
Tech-savvy students given tips to enter IT field (The Times of India, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1QvIX.
Odia Wikipedia (Sanchar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePwAON.

Openness

# Event Organised

What is happening in South America and how Openness is an opportunity to Social, Political and Activist Movements? (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, January 17, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bnZaq0.

-----------------------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------------------
CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. Gautam Bhatia gives an analysis of the right to privacy from a constitutional perspective and Elonnai Hickok analyses a public report published by GNI.

# Analyses

Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 1: Foundations (by Gautam Bhatia, January 13, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ntqsen.
Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 2: Gobind and the Compelling State Interest Test (by Gautam Bhatia, January 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dH3meL.

# Newspaper Columns / Book Chapter

Big Brother is Watching You (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, January 3, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cGpg0K.
Making the Powerful Accountable (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1nvzSpC.
Video Games: A Case Study of a Cross-cultural Video Collaboration (by Larissa Hjorth and Nishant Shah, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eTaXLX. A new book focusing on Palestinian artists’ video, edited by Bashir Makhoul and published by Palestinian Art Court- al Hoash, 2013, includes a chapter co-authored by Larissa and Nishant.

# Blog Entries

Letter requesting public consultation on position of GoI at WGEC (by Snehashish Ghosh, January 7, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g66bL7.
Electoral Databases – Privacy and Security Concerns (by Snehashish Ghosh, January 16, 2014): http://bit.ly/Mb4ktM.
GNI Assessment Finds ICT Companies Protect User Privacy and Freedom of Expression (by Elonnai Hickok, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1mjbpmL.
Interview with Mathew Thomas from the Say No to UID campaign - UID Court Cases (by Maria Xynou, January 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eT9XHv. Maria interviewed Mathew Thomas on UID.
India's Central Monitoring System (CMS): Something to Worry About? (by Maria Xynou, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsM4oQ.

# Events Organized

Biometrics or Bust? Implications of the UID for Participation and Inclusion (CIS, Bangalore, January 10, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1lJZhuK.
Digital Citizens: Why Cyber Security and Online Privacy are Vital to the Success of Democracy and Freedom of Expression (CIS, Bangalore, January 14, 2014): http://bit.ly/KucEU5. Michael Oghia gave a talk.
Nullcon Goa Feb 2014 — International Security Conference (organised by Nullcon, Bogmallo Beach Resort, Goa, February 12 – 15, 2014). CIS is one of the sponsors for this event: http://bit.ly/1lrBu5I.

# Events Co-organised

CPDP 2014 Reforming Data Protection: The Global Perspective (organised by CPDP, Brussels, January 22 – 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/KsgCws. CIS is one of the sponsors for this event. Malavika Jayaram was a speaker.
The Future of the Internet, Who Should Govern It and What is at Stake for You? (organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India, Cellular Operators Association of India, Internet Democracy project, Media for Change, SFLC and CIS, India International Centre, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eqkSUu. Chinmayi Arun moderated a session. Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event as a speaker.

# Events Participated In

Seminar on "Hate Speech and Social Media" (organized by NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and British Deputy High Commission, Hyderabad, January 4 – 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dmcEkT. Chinmayi Arun was one of the speakers.
Multistakeholders Consultation on International Public Policy Issues (organized by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, New Delhi, January 21, 2014): http://bit.ly/Mbfkao. Snehashish Ghosh participated in this meeting.
Internet Governance and India: The Way Forward (organized by Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, January 22, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePFueY. Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event.
Data Privacy Day 2014 (organized by Data Security Council of India, Infosys, Bangalore, January 28, 2014). Elonnai Hickok was a panelist: http://bit.ly/1ePFfk8.
TACTIS Symposium 2014 (organized by Tata Consultancy Service, TCS Siruseri, Chennai, January 28 and 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bo9y0R. Sunil Abraham gave the keynote address.

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

Inventions that will make a difference (by Geeta Padmanabhan, The Hindu, January 1, 2014): http://bit.ly/MKwmfu.
Rise of the bot: all you need to know about the latest threat online (by Danish Raza, Hindustan Times, January 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dHgNex.
Despite apex court order, IOC proceeds with Aadhaar-linked DBT (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, January 6, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g6ffjn.
Worldwide: International Privacy - 2013 Year in Review – Asia (by Gonzalo S. Zeballos, James A. Sherer and Alan M. Pate, Mondaq Yearly Review, January 8, 2014): http://bit.ly/1iOaYRO.
Election panel rejects Google’s proposal for electoral services tie-up (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, January 9, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gpaGjF.
Social Notworking - 'Murder by Twitter'(by Malini Nair, The Times of India, January 19, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j2kT63.
The net is taking over (by Veenu Sandhu and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, January 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1hb4eQL.
The Dangers of Birdsong (by Namrata Joshi, January 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kB8J7L.
Is Bhutan selling its soul to Google? (by Lucky Wangmo from Thimphu and Pema Seldon form Bangalore, Business Bhutan, January 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fYl3sO.
What is net neutrality and why it is important (The Times of India, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePFZ8P.

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Digital Humanities
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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:

# Blog Entry

Mapping Digital Humanities in India (by Sneha PP, January 16, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsQEEQ.

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Digital Natives
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CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

►Making Change Project

# Blog Entry

Creative Activism - Voices of Young Change Makers in India (UDAAN) (by Denisse Albornoz, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cxXAMI.

►Other
# Newspaper Column

10 Ways to Say Nothing New (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, January 19, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsONjn.

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Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
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CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

►Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (organised by Ford Foundation and CIS, Yashada, Pune, February 11-17, 2014): http://bit.ly/180mQi9.

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About CIS
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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, 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/january-2014-bulletin

Government of India's Response to WGEC Questionnaire

snehashish — 2014-01-22T16:55:43Z

The Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation circulated a questionnaire to collect the views and positions of the stakeholders on the various aspects of enhanced cooperation. India's response to the questionnaire is documented below for archival purposes.

INDIA, Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations Office
9, RUE DU VALAIS, 1202, GENEVA
Mission.india@ties.itu.int

1. Which stakeholder category do you belong to?
Government
If non-government, please indicate:
If non-government, please indicate if you are:

2. What do you think is the significance, purpose and scope of enhanced cooperation as per the Tunis Agenda? 1) Significance 2) Purpose 3) Scope

Significance
The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), held in two phases had discussed the issues relating to Internet Governance at a great length and in detail and recommended (i) convening a new forum for multi-stake holder policy dialogue and (ii) beginning the process towards Enhanced Cooperation. As a result of the first recommendation, an Internet Governance Forum was established in 2006 as a forum for dialogue among various stakeholders. However, the process towards Enhanced Cooperation to develop international public policy issues pertaining to Internet in a fair and equitable manner is yet to take off. The use of internet and its socio-economic impact has grown further in the last few years. This has made the need for Enhanced Cooperation even more significant and urgent.
Purpose
The purpose of Enhanced Cooperation is to enable governments, on an equal footing, through a suitable multilateral, transparent and democratic mechanism, to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, in consultation with all other stakeholders.
Scope
The scope of Enhanced Cooperation covers international public policy issues pertaining to the internet as well as the development of globally-applicable principles on public policy issues pertaining to the coordination and management of critical internet resources, but not the dayto-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on international public policy issues.

3. To what extent has or has not enhanced cooperation been implemented? Please use the space below to explain and to provide examples to support your answer.

Enhanced Cooperation, as envisaged in Paras 68 and 69 of the Tunis Agenda, has not been realized. This remains a major shortcoming in implementation of WSIS Outcomes related to Enhanced Cooperation, considering that a specific mandate was given by the World Summit for Information Society (WSIS) in 2005 to begin such a process of Enhanced Cooperation in the first quarter of 2006. There is no multilateral, transparent and democratic global platform where governments can, on an equal footing, decide the full range of international public policies related to internet, in a holistic manner. There is also no mechanism for the development of globally-applicable principles on public policy issues including those pertaining to coordination and management of critical Internet resources. Not establishing an Enhanced Cooperation process has denied the Governments an opportunity to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public-policy issues pertaining to the internet.

4. What are the relevant international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet?
The Working Group on Internet Governance set up by WSIS identified many public policy issues pertaining to internet, which continue to be relevant today, as listed below:

Issues relating to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the domain name system and Internet protocol addresses (IP addresses), administration of the root server system, technical standards, peering and interconnection, telecommunications infrastructure, including innovative and convergent technologies, as well as multilingualization;
Issues relating to the use of the Internet, including spam, network security and cybercrime;
Issues that are relevant to the Internet but have an impact much wider than the Internet and for which existing organizations are responsible, such as intellectual property rights (IPRs) or international trade;
Issues relating to the developmental aspects of Internet governance, in particular capacity building in developing countries;
Issues relating to interconnection costs, meaningful participation in global policy development, freedom of expression, Data protection and privacy rights, Consumer rights, convergence and “next generation networks” (NGNs), as well as trade and e-commerce; Furthermore, Para 59 of the Tunis Agenda recognised that Internet Governance includes social, economic and technical issues including affordability, reliability and quality of service and para 60 of the Tunis Agenda recognised that there are many cross-cutting public policy issues that require attention. Since WSIS, international internet-related public policy issues have only grown in their number as well as importance. Several issues such as cloud computing have emerged in the last few years. Newer issues will keep arising with significant international public policy dimensions as the Internet continues to evolve and grow in its reach and spread.

5. What are the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders, including governments, in implementation of the various aspects of enhanced cooperation?

Enhanced Cooperation is a dynamic process due to the dynamic nature of internet. As a result, the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders would need to be broadly defined. In this regard, we concur with the recommendations of the Working Group on Internet Governance on the role of different stakeholders — as listed below: Governments: Public authority for Internet related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States and that they have rights and responsibilities for international Internet public policy.

Their roles and responsibilities include:-

Public policy-making and coordination and implementation, as appropriate, at the national level, and policy development and coordination at the regional and international levels;
Creating an enabling environment for information and communication technology (ICT) development; Oversight functions; Development and adoption of laws, regulations and standards;
Treaty-making; Development of best practices; Fostering capacity-building in and through ICTs;
Promoting research and development of technologies and standards;
Promoting access to ICT services; Combating cybercrime;
Fostering international and regional cooperation;
Promoting the development of infrastructure and ICT applications;
Addressing general developmental issues;
Promoting multilingualism and cultural diversity;

Dispute resolution and arbitration.

Private sector: The private sector has important role and responsibilities which include the following:-
Industry self-regulation; Development of best practices; Development of policy proposals, guidelines and tools for policymakers and other stakeholders; Research and development of technologies, standards and processes; Contribution to the drafting of national law and participation in national and international policy development; Fostering innovation; Arbitration and dispute resolution; Promoting capacity-building.

Civil society: Civil society has also played an important role on Internet matters especially at the community level and should continue to play such roles. The roles and responsibilities of civil society include:

Awareness-raising and capacity-building (knowledge, training, skills sharing);
Promoting various public interest objectives; Facilitating network-building; Mobilizing citizens in democratic processes;
Bringing perspectives of marginalized groups, including, for example, excluded communities and grass-roots activists;
Engaging in policy processes; Contributing expertise, skills, experience and knowledge in a range of ICT policy areas;
Contributing to policy processes and policies that are more bottom-up, people-centred and inclusive; Research and development of technologies and standards; Development and dissemination of best practices;
Helping to ensure that political and market forces are accountable to the needs of all members of society;
Encouraging social responsibility and good governance practice. Advocating for the development of social projects and activities that are critical but may not be “fashionable” or profitable;
Contributing to shaping visions of human-centred information societies based on human rights, sustainable development, social justice and empowerment.

Furthermore, the contribution to the Internet of the academic community is very valuable and constitutes one of its main sources of inspiration, innovation and creativity. Similarly, the technical community and its organizations are deeply involved in Internet operation, Internet standard-setting and Internet services development. Both of these groups make a permanent and valuable contribution to the stability, security, functioning and evolution of the Internet. They interact extensively with and within all stakeholder groups. The para 35 of the Tunis Agenda recognises the role of intergovernmental organizations in facilitating the coordination of internet related public policy issues and international organizations in the development of internet related technical standards and relevant policies.

6. How should enhanced cooperation be implemented to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet?

A suitable multilateral, transparent and democratic mechanism must be created where governments, on an equal footing, may carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and public policy issues pertaining to coordination and management of critical Internet resources, in consultation with all other stakeholders. India would submit its recommendations on such a mechanism separately to the WGEC.
WGEC should submit its recommendation on the broad parameters of such a mechanism to the UNGA through CSTD as an input to the overall review of the outcomes of the WSIS.

7. How can enhanced cooperation enable other stakeholders to carry out their roles and responsibilities?

The mechanism should be designed so as to enable the other stakeholders to discharge their respective roles and responsibilities as mentioned above in response to Question 5 above in an effective manner. Further, Para 70 of the Tunis Agenda stated that relevant international organizations responsible for essential tasks associated with the Internet should contribute in creating an environment that facilitates the development of public policy principles. Therefore these organizations would need to make necessary changes to facilitate an appropriate interface with the mechanism of Enhanced Cooperation.

8. What are the most appropriate mechanisms to fully implement enhanced cooperation as recognized in the Tunis Agenda, including on international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and public policy issues associated with coordination and management of critical Internet resources?

It is relevant to recall relevant paragraphs of the Tunis Agenda to identify most appropriate mechanisms to fully implement enhanced cooperation. The Para 69 sets the tone for Governments to define a mechanism of the enhanced cooperation. This paragraph together with other paras in the Tunis Agenda, when read with the WSIS outcomes clearly provides the basis for establishing the mechanism of enhanced cooperation. The sequence of paragraphs that help define the contours of a mechanism is as follows:

Para 29 states that international management of internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic with the full involvement of governments and other stakeholders.
Para 31 commits to full participation of all stakeholders, within respective roles and responsibilities, to ensure requisite legitimacy of governance of internet.
The roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders have been defined in brief in para 35 of the Tunis Agenda and in detail in paras 29-34 of WGIG report.
In Para 60 of the Tunis Agenda, the Leaders have clearly pointed out the inadequacy of the current mechanisms for dealing with many cross-cutting international public policy issues. As a sequel to this recognition, Para 61 stresses the need to initiate, and reinforce, as appropriate, a transparent, democratic, and multilateral process, with the participation of governments, private sector, civil society and international organizations, in their respective roles.
Para 68 further recognizes the need for development of public policy by governments in consultation with all stakeholders. The Para 69 recognises the importance of the governments to act on an equal footing with each other. Thus, there is a clear mandate for defining a mechanism for effective and enhanced cooperation on global internet governance. India would submit its recommendations on such a mechanism separately to the WGEC.

9. What is the possible relationship between enhanced cooperation and the IGF?

The IGF is a forum for multi-stakeholder dialogue. The discussions and dialogue in IGF would enrich the process of development of the international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet by the mechanism proposed under Enhanced Cooperation. Enhanced Cooperation is a mechanism for policy development whereas IGF is a forum for policy dialogue - IGF is, thus, a distinct and a complementary process to the enhanced cooperation mechanism. IGF should contribute its outcomes as inputs into the policy development/ making processes to be undertaken by the new mechanism for Enhanced Cooperation.

10. How can the role of developing countries be made more effective in global Internet governance?

Paragraph 65 of the Tunis Agenda underlines the need to maximize the participation of developing countries in decisions regarding Internet governance, which should reflect their interests, as well as in the development of capacity building. The developing countries are integral part of the global Internet governance. They would participate, at equal footing in the mechanism explained above.

11. What barriers remain for all stakeholders to fully participate in their respective roles in global Internet governance? How can these barriers best be overcome?

The main barrier to the participation of stakeholders is the absence of a mechanism for global internet governance where they can participate in their respective roles. Second barrier to participation of stakeholders is the nature of selection process of participants who represent these stakeholders. The process of selection of the representatives should be made in a transparent manner and using an inclusive approach.
12. What actions are needed to promote effective participation of all marginalised people in the global information society?

The mechanism proposed above involves all stakeholders, having important role to play in addressing the challenge to effective participation of marginalised people. Challenges like accessibility, availability and affordability of information services have to be addressed at regional, national and international level with participation of all stakeholders in their respective roles and responsibilities effectively.

13. How can enhanced cooperation address key issues toward global, social and economic development?

Since enhanced cooperation would facilitate establishment of a mechanism to formulate international internet related public policies with the participation of all stakeholders in their respective roles from developed and developing countries, the implementation of these policies would be able to address the issues toward global, social and economic development in a better way than today.

14. What is the role of various stakeholders in promoting the development of local language content?

Development of local language content is an important element in ensuring overall socioeconomic development. All stakeholders have an important role to play in generation, dissemination and consumption of the local language content. National governments would be responsible for creation of an enabling environment including, development of relevant standards, legal protection and business opportunities. Private sector would be responsible to provide innovative solutions to the challenge. Civil society would play a very important role in supporting and generating community interest towards local language content development.

15. What are the international internet-related public policy issues that are of special relevance to developing countries?

The issues important for developing countries include accessibility, affordability and availability of the information services and technologies. The public policy issues contained in our replies to Question No. 4 are also equally important for developing countries.

16. What are the key issues to be addressed to promote the affordability of the Internet, in particular in developing countries and least developed countries?

The key issues relating to affordability of the Internet, include the following:-

Co-location of content in geographically dispersed location along with Content Distribution Networks (CDNs)
Lowering of Interconnection costs
Internet Exchange Points with peering for routing local traffic and interconnection across borders
Location of Internet “host” computers in the country and/or region.
Regional backbones that interlink countries in the region and which also link to international backbones
Location of the root server systems in these countries
Interoperability and Net Neutrality - In response to the limitation posed by propriety software, alternative products such as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and alternative licensing regimes (for example Creative Commons, Copy left etc.) to help reduce the costs and (legal) risks associated with proprietary software and content.
Multi-lingualization (Internationalized Domain Names and Local Language Content).
Affordability in accessing International internet connectivity.

17. What are the national capacities to be developed and modalities to be considered for national governments to develop Internet-related public policy with participation of all stakeholders?

The national capacities that need to be considered by national governments to develop Internet related public policy include:

Setting up of Centre of Excellence on Internet Governance and related issues.
Establishment of R&D centers in the area of Internet related Public Policy.
Introduction of formal courses on Internet governance in premier educational institutes for Industries, Academia & Civil Society.
Introduction of Training and Awareness building programmes in the area of Internet Governance.
Creation of online Knowledge Repository Portal on Internet Governance.

18. Are there other comments, or areas of concern, on enhanced cooperation you would like to submit?

Enhanced Cooperation is a dynamic process, and hence it requires periodic reassessment – based on the feedback from Governments as well as other relevant stakeholders, on any inter-governmental mechanism that is set up to oversee its operationalization.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/government-of-indias-response-to-wgec-questionnaire-1

KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T09:57:50Z

The blog post was published by India Education Diary.com on January 20, 2014.

Its Access To Knowledge program is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and works in fostering the volunteer Wikimedia community that contributes in enhancing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Its primary mandate is upbringing Wikipedia editors by outreach, creating primary resources for sources of reference in multiple ways that lead to enrich Wikipedia.

From a technical institution, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology has grown to a multidisciplinary world class University. KIIT University is a world class university spread over 25 sq. km. of land accommodating 20 sprawling wi-fi campuses with 10 million sq.ft. built up area. The university has 25 constituent schools offering more than 100 programmes. Being accredited by NAAC of UGC and NBA of AICTE, KIIT has 20,000 students pursuing under graduate and post graduate studies in the fields of Engineering, Computer Application, Management, Rural Management, Law, Biotechnology, MBBS, M.D., BDS, Nursing, Fashion Technology, Cinema & Media Studies and Languages. KIIT stands out as one of the finest universities in India declared under section 3 of the UGC Act of 1956. KIIT educational conglomerate is unique in offering a wide spectrum of academic programmes from kindergarten to postgraduate level, earning it a place in the Limca Book of Records.

Wikipedia has a critical stand in academia when it comes to peer academic research. But on the other side students ofter access and use Wikipedia for their assignment work despite of the non acceptance of Wikipedia content by the teacher community. The primary reason of Wikipedia's factual errors in many Indic related articles being Wikipedia's low contribution from the global south needs more contribution. Academicians and subject experts who are in charge of building the infrastructure of providing free knowledge to everyone often were stuck because of this setback.

This led to an conjugation of subject experts and Wikimedia contributor communities to set up a system called Wikipedia Education Program (WEP) where editing, correcting and enhancing Wikipedia articles become part of the curriculum.

To begin with the students in different schools at KIIT University the local Wikipedia community with the support from CIS-A2K is going to conduct classroom Wikipedia workshops to pilot Wikipedia contribution. KIIT University would be one of world's few universities to pilot student Wikipedia contribution as part oftheir curricula in any regional language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-education-diary-january-20-2014-kiit-university-to-lead-building-free-knowledge-repository-initiative

Odisha: KISS to create tribal languages and heritage repository

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T08:33:08Z

World' largest tribal residential institute Kalinga Institute of Social Studies (KISS) is going to initiate a project in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K) to gather academic and research resources on tribal languages and diverse cultural heritage.

The report by Odisha Diary Bureau was published on January 20, 2014.

Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) is the largest tribal residential institution in the world. It is home to over 20,000 tribal students from 64 tribes living in Eastern and North-Eastern parts of India that not only provide them accommodation, food, and free education from kindergarten to post graduation but also provide them 24/7 health care in the in-house hospital and many vocational trainings to empower them as able citizens of this nation ensuring their successful future. UNICEF in association with KISS has established a Children Development Resource Centre (CDRC) as part of the larger UNICEF-KIIT University joint initiative for the Centre for Children Studies (CCS) that aims in promoting evidence-based policy making by building a knowledge base thorough research and other development programmes on children's issues focusing on the state of Odisha.

KISS in collaboration with Bernard van Leer Foundation is currently devising education systems in native tribal languages that even do not have scripts. With over 17 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)s and many more in process. KISS is bringing up a new stream of sustainable growth for tribals below poverty line by educating them and imparting knowledge in their own languages.

UNICEF, UNESCO, UNFPA, College of Charleson (USA), Bernard van Leer Foundation, Vedanta Foundation, NALCO Foundation, English Access Micro-Scholarship Program (Federal Govt.), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Oracle Educational Foundation, Intel Technology, CPU Joint Volunteers (South Korea) are some of the organisations that KISS is working in tandem with to take the Indian tribal cultural diversity and heritage to the outside world by giving the aboriginal natives their space in this world.

Centre for Internet and Society is a Bangalore based Non profit organization which works primarily in the broader domains ofinternet and policy research, accessibility, open knowledge and open education. Its Access To Knowledge program is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and works in fostering the volunteer Wikimedia community that contributes in enhancing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Its primary mandate is upbringing Wikipedia editors by outreach, creating primary resources for sources of reference in multiple ways that lead to enrich Wikipedia.

This collaboration will bring detailed research and multilingual documentation about several aspects of tribals of India and would work as an Open Education Resources (OER) for academicians and researchers. This event is organized on 11th January 2014 atKalinga Institute of Social Studies premises at 11 am. KIITUniversity's Founder-Chairman Dr. Achyuta Samanta is going to inaugurate this project formally on this occasion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-january-20-2014-kiss-to-create-tribal-languages-and-heritage-repository

What is net neutrality and why it is important

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T08:24:34Z

Internet is built around the idea of openness. It allows people to connect and exchange information freely, if the information or service is not illegal.

The article was published in the Times of India on January 20, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Much of this is because of the idea of net neutrality. If you like the current state of the internet, you should know about net neutrality. Many web users are aware of it. But if you are not, don't worry. We explain it here:

What is net neutrality?
Net neutrality is an idea derived from how telephone lines have worked since the beginning of the 20th century. In case of a telephone line, you can dial any number and connect to it. It does not matter if you are calling from operator A to operator B. It doesn't matter if you are calling a restaurant or a drug dealer. The operators neither block the access to a number nor deliberately delay connection to a particular number, unless forced by the law. Most of the countries have rules that ask telecom operators to provide an unfiltered and unrestricted phone service.

When the internet started to take off in 1980s and 1990s, there were no specific rules that asked that internet service providers (ISPs) should follow the same principle. But, mostly because telecom operators were also ISPs, they adhered to the same principle. This principle is known as net neutrality. An ISP does not control the traffic that passes its servers. When a web user connects to a website or web service, he or she gets the same speed. Data rate for Youtube videos and Facebook photos is theoretically same. Users can access any legal website or web service without any interference from an ISP.

Some countries have rules that enforce net neutrality but most don't. Instead, the principle is followed because that is how it has always been. It is more of a norm than a law.

How did net neutrality shape the internet?
Net neutrality has shaped the internet in two fundamental ways.

One, web users are free to connect to whatever website or service they want. ISPs do not bother with what kind of content is flowing from their servers. This has allowed the internet to grow into a truly global network and has allowed people to freely express themselves. For example, you can criticize your ISP on a blog post and the ISP will not restrict access to that post for its other subscribers even though the post may harm its business.

But more importantly, net neutrality has enabled a level playing field on the internet. To start a website, you don't need lot of money or connections. Just host your website and you are good to go. If your service is good, it will find favour with web users. Unlike the cable TV where you have to forge alliances with cable connection providers to make sure that your channel reaches viewers, on internet you don't have to talk to ISPs to put your website online.

This has led to creation Google, Facebook, Twitter and countless other services. All of these services had very humble beginnings. They started as a basic websites with modest resources. But they succeeded because net neutrality allowed web users to access these websites in an easy and unhindered way.

What will happen if there is no net neutrality?
If there is no net neutrality, ISPs will have the power (and inclination) to shape internet traffic so that they can derive extra benefit from it. For example, several ISPs believe that they should be allowed to charge companies for services like YouTube and Netflix because these services consume more bandwidth compared to a normal website. Basically, these ISPs want a share in the money that YouTube or Netflix make.

Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it will not exist. Instead of free access, there could be "package plans" for consumers. For example, if you pay Rs 500, you will only be able to access websites based in India. To access international websites, you may have to pay a more. Or maybe there can be different connection speed for different type of content, depending on how much you are paying for the service and what "add-on package" you have bought.

Lack of net neutrality, will also spell doom for innovation on the web. It is possible that ISPs will charge web companies to enable faster access to their websites. Those who don't pay may see that their websites will open slowly. This means bigger companies like Google will be able to pay more to make access to Youtube or Google+ faster for web users but a startup that wants to create a different and better video hosting site may not be able to do that.

Instead of an open and free internet, without net neutrality we are likely to get a web that has silos in it and to enter each silo, you will have to pay some "tax" to ISPs.

What is the state of net neutrality in India?
Legally, the concept of net neutrality doesn't exist in India. Sunil Abraham, director of Centre for internet and Society in Bangalore, says that Trai, which regulates the telecom industry, has tried to come up with some rules regarding net neutrality several times. For example it invited comments on the concept of net neutrality from industry bodies and stakeholders in 2006. But no formal rules have been formed to uphold and enforce net neutrality.

However, despite lack of formal rules, ISPs in India mostly adhere to the principal of net neutrality. There have been some incidents where Indian ISPs have ignored net neutrality but these are few and far between.

Will the concept of net neutrality survive?
Net neutrality is sort of gentlemen's agreement. It has survived so far because few people realized the potential of internet when it took off around 30 years ago. But now when the internet is an integral part of the society and incredibly important, ISPs across the world are trying to get the power to shape and control the traffic. But there are ways to keep net neutrality alive.

Consumers should demand that ISPs continue their hands-off approach from the internet traffic. If consumers see a violation of net neutrality, they ought to take a proactive approach and register their displeasure with the ISP. They should also reward ISPs that uphold the net neutrality.

At the same time, as Abraham says, Trai needs to come out with a set of clear and precise rules that protect the net neutrality. "We have started seeing ISPs trying to take control of the traffic that flows from their servers but Trai can regulate them. It can keep the internet open and consumer-friendly by forming rules that protect net neutrality. These are early days so it is easy to do. If ISPs manage to change the system, it may become too late," he says.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-january-20-2014-what-is-net-neutrality-and-why-is-it-important

Creative Activism - Voices of Young Change Makers in India (UDAAN)

denisse — 2015-04-14T13:21:22Z

This post is a short account of what happened at UDAAN in December 2013 — a conference that gathered 100 youth from across the country to discuss pressing environmental issues and creative strategies to tackle them. We conducted a survey to map the perspectives of these young change-makers and get a glimpse of how India's youth is now framing and going about making 'change'



CHANGE-MAKERS: Youth (India)

EVENT: UDAAN 2013 organized by 350 India: a global organization building grassroots movements across the country.

METHOD OF CHANGE: Behavioral change, solidarity networks and creative activism.

“Change or making change is to bring about a paradigm shift in the way we do certain things. To alter our general way of life as it remains now into something that is positive and ideal.”

This is one of the many responses we collected from UDAAN participants on what it means to make change in India today. So far, in previous articles, we have looked at organizations working with specific demographics and themes. On this opportunity, we are exploring the ideas behind a group conformed by individuals coming from different walks of life, who embody an array of historical, linguistic and cultural understandings of the world, yet still find an intersection at their intents for change. We addressed the core questions raised in the project's thought piece: Whose Change is it Anyway: “What is the understanding of change with which we were working? What are the kinds of changes being imagened? Whose change is it, anyway?” -to start touching base with the ideas underpinning their actions, and identify how -or whether- it introduces new ways to define this concept.

UDAAN 2013

I had the privilege of joining this inspiring group during a four day conference and got the opportunity to share with students, activists and entrepreneurs from 13 states of India (chosen from a pool of 2000 applicants) involved in social change practices across the country. Despite the diverging world views among participants, the sense of a common purpose was almost undisputed. Every attendee was committed to mitigate the detrimental impact of climate change in their cities, protect vulnerable populations and advocate for justice. However, the most interesting points of contention lied on how to translate this commitment into individual and collective action, create conditions that enable change, and encourage community participation in environmental, political and social issues.

With these questions in mind, the conference focused on providing strategies of action and the attendees explored all sorts of lobbying and political participation mechanisms through its workshops. Three main elements stood out for me. First, the cocktail of tactics provided by experienced campaigners: from direct resistance and non-violent action to story-telling and street theater; participants were inspired to experiment and re-conceptualize activism.

Space Theatre Ensemble

Educators Collective

Second, the use of gamification in the workshops, facilitated by the experiential learning group Educators Collective, was the key to introduce values of leadership, solidarity and sustainability into individual behaviour and team practices. And finally, the add of 'unconference slots' to the program empowered attendees to share their methods, initiatives and projects in an open platform. This fostered peer-to-peer learning and more importantly reinforced the net of support and the immense amount of admiration (that grew exponentially between participants) for each other's work.

Youth and Activism in India

Coming from the perspective of our research project: Making Change, it was second nature to me to question frameworks utilized around "making change". I was pleasantly surprised to find an array of perspectives and experiences floating around panels, workshops and keynote presentations. They were definitely seeking consensus, yet in a way that did not inhibit diversity of thought, intellectual curiosity and self-reflection. This sparked the idea of collecting these views and use them as a sample of the current status of youth activism in India. Particularly considering how many of the strategies taught at UDAAN, while incredibly powerful, require a set of resources (including capital, time and energy) that are not readily accessible for all aspiring activists in the country.

These thoughts are consistent with a couple of articles I referred to for context on Indian youth and activism. Starting with the IRIS Knowledge Foundation and the UN-HABITAT's report: "State of the Urban Youth, India 2012: Employment, Livelihoods, Skills". It states that in only seven years, India will become the youngest country of the world with a median age of 29 years old. This, coupled with the fact that India's youth is the largest group in the working-age population — in a country that is expected to become one of the world's next major economic powers (Ilavasaran, 2013) — has, according to Padma Prakash, led demographers and economists to consider youth as the future of the country's economic growth. Having said that, these promising prospects do not reflect that 87.2% of the unemployed of the country are youth, only 27% of Indian youth is literate and 64% is located in rural areas. These facts display a constant negotiation between precariousness and hope, and particularly the high level of dissonance between the expectations and opportunities surrounding this group. Furthermore, as put by Prakash, despite the amount of economic information we have on this group, we lack a deep understanding of the social constructs underpinning their motivations and actions. On one hand, Ilavasaran suggests precariousness is the trigger behind both their unrest and their activism. On the other, the path they end up taking will depend on how they understand making change and their role within this process.

This dilemma was quite evident at UDAAN. Youth from all over India came together to fervently speak about the grievances climate change is causing in their regions and share the stories behind their struggles. On this note, the conference represented an incubator for their ideas and frustrations. and one of its main goals was to steer all this energy towards a path of constructive positive change. Carpini on his work on civic engagement (2000) outlines three factors that lead to participation: motivation, opportunities and capabilities; and how the interplay of the three result in different patterns of change-making. Hence, what is left to answer is how will this chaotic ecosystem shape youth's ideas of creating change? And to what extent will these conditions determine their motivation, opportunities and capacities of participating in the process? The survey we sent out to participants is only a starting point to reflect on these points. It did not aim to resolve these questions, but instead gather a snapshot of how politically and socially active young citizens are locating change and framing some of the biggest challenges of its generation.

Online Survey

About 25 people participated in the survey. The survey had five questions that explored three concepts analyzed in the Making Change research project: change, civic engagement and methods of change. It was divided into three sections:

a) Definitions: Participants were asked how they understand 'change' and 'making change'.

b) Actors: Participants were asked to reflect on their role and the role of youth in the process of making change. It also touched on concepts of active citizenship and engagement.

c) Methods: This section looked at the practices and methods preferred by youth for making change. Participants were asked to think about strategies and tactics discussed at the UDAAN workshops or other initiatives of interest, and how ICT/technology affect the process.

The purpose was to collate as many ideas and perspectives around change-making from this group and hence, the questions were broad and open-ended. The participants remained anonymous and details about their age, religion, region, socio-economic status, etc., were not disclosed. The language barrier and access (and frequency of access) to social media platforms was a big limitation to obtain a larger sample but the responses still reflected interesting patterns, which were later classified and categorized using a keyword system.

The results were displayed on the info-graphics found below:

Infographic 1* reflects the different ways participants outlined change-making: definitions of 'change' and 'making change', type of change (positive, neutral or confrontational), location of change (individual, society or system) and time of change (now, future, long-term).
Infographics 2* and 3 outline the profiles of a change-maker and an active citizen.
Infographic 4 lists their preferred methods of change -in no particular order. The bottom section reflects the spectrum of opinions around the use of technology.

*The percentages reflect the portion of respondents who reflected this view and the texts are excerpts of the respondents' answers.

This presentation format was chosen for three reasons: first, to facilitate the consumption of raw data collected from the survey and make visual associations between themes. Second, to put into practice some the recommendations from the storytelling workshop to make research more accessible to the public. And third, as a somewhat self-serving experiment to measure a) the ability of a graphic designer rookie, with no previous experience (like me), to create visual aids and graphics with free online tools, and b) explore empirically some of the methods I have encountered through my research: Methods for Social Change. Hence, the following results will not be of an academic nature as previous posts, but will instead clarify some of the patterns, evident in the original responses, that may have been lost in graphic translation.

Locating Change: Definitions

"Change is any alteration from an established status-quo. Making change is creating a system that is self-sustaining and capable of surviving over a long period of time"

In spite of including both concepts on the same question, most respondents differentiated them in their answers. Approximately 50% of the sample responded 'change' was either an irreversible process or an outcome to a process, while the other 50% implicated themselves in the 'change' process, stating it means to shift and modify how we act and think. A similar spirit was reflected about 'making change'. About 29% of the participants acknowledges a break from previous practices, and 29% considers we are implicated through the adoption of a new model of action. Interestingly enough, only 5% considers making change a duty or a responsibility. This low percentage signals making change is understood as non-compulsory which does not affect active politically involved citizens but leaves the more passive and idle off the hook when it comes to acknowledging their role in the process of change.

Moving on to type of change: 38% of the respondents consider making change a neutral process that does not guarantee a positive change (as considered by 33% of the sample). It was defined as an event that merely breaks the norm or from usual practices. A possible reading of this is that a group is not mobilizing its efforts with a plausible positive alternative in mind. Instead, it seeks difference without a deeper considerations of how will it differ from the conditions it is breaking from. This fits into the 'politics of hope' paradigm brought up by Shah in the piece: This approach to change and the idiom 'making a difference' is "so infused with the joy of possibilities" that it doesn't evaluate whether the outcome will lead to further assurance or precariousness, when compared to the earlier structure. This approach limits structural, systemic and sustainable change, an issue that was also evident in the results of the time-line. 0% thinks change must be made immediately but the rest of the sample was divided into making plans for the future (19%) and a smaller number on securing a self-sustaining system (10%) to replace the former.

Infographic 1: Making Change (Generated using: easel.ly-)

Finally, on the question of where is change located, we find the first instance of a pattern that was evident throughout the survey. On this category 38% finds change must occur externally: either in society and others (19%), or through the shift from a status quo that is perpetuating inequality (19%). Yet the largest group (24%) identified that change must occur internally first. The role of the self was also very prominent in the following sections as well.

Agents of Change

After locating change, the project also intends to understand who are the main actors and stakeholders lumped into the category of 'citizen' or 'citizen action'. On this survey, these actors were dubbed 'change-makers'. Respondents were free to describe what they understood by the term and the social construct determining the model they were working towards (as aspiring change-makers themselves). The second actor we inquired about was 'active citizen'. The concept of citizenship is ambiguous terrain, yet there seems to be a connection between the identity confered by the 'citizen' status and the respondents' inner call for action.

a) The Change-Maker:

"I think that all of us can be change-makers. We need to be sure of what and why we need to change and have a vision of how the world will be after making the change"

The Change-Maker (Infographic 2) was defined by the four characteristics outlined below.

Infographic 2: The Change Maker (Generated using: easel.ly )

Each characteristic was coupled by actions that reinforce this behaviour. For example, understanding the issue (33%) comes hand-in-hand with inciting motivation through information: 'If one aspires to change, then one must first understand what is to be changed, how it is to be changed and what would replace the changed system. The primary step is to realize and acknowledge the problem, educate others and then action” (Anonymous survey respondent, 2013) Another interesting example is how the 28% that identified the individual as the source of change, also recommend self-reflection on how to create the most impact: "[My role as a change-maker is] practicing what I preach and learning to critique myself constructively and in a manner that helps me improve" (Anonymous survey respondent, 2013) This brings a different light to Carpinis categorization of 'capabilities' in social change. It is no longer about participation in an external movement but more about how the individual secures sustained change through his own consistent and coherent behaviour.

b) The Active Citizen

"An active citizen is who follows the constitution, understands and takes responsibility for himself and for influencing his family and community for the betterment of life's social, economic and environmental issues"

Self-awareness was a key point in how the active citizen was personified. It was one of most emphasized points, placing more responsibility on the role of the citizen as opposed to on the issue at hand. Attitudes such as 'realizing the problem', 'taking responsibility' and 'taking initiative' reflect that the individual is finding motivation on taking ownership of his choices and decision-making power. The individual is focusing less on antagonizing the structure and is instead elevating his identity to a fearless, noble status -the citizen is becoming the hero of its own narrative. This ego-emphasis, is also motivating the citizen to invest on increasing its own knowledge capital and attain a thorough understanding of the issues, to then heighten individual and collective awareness around them. The objective is either local -give back to its community- or normative -work towards justice and equity- but there seems to be consensus on the starting point.

Infographic 3 - The Active Citizen (Generated using: easel.ly)

Methods for Change

“By going out there and making the change! Get down and dirty. Then use those examples in the form of story, pictures, etc. and inspire others around you to first change themselves and then help change society!”

Finally, infographic 4 displays a mapping of the methods brought up by participants. Again, awareness and behavioural change were the most popular, placing information and the individual at the epicenter of change-making. The impact of the theater and story telling workshops on participants was also evident, on several mentions to the power of 'artivism'.

Infographic 4: Methods for Social Change (Generated using: easel.ly )

In regards to communication and technology, I was surprised to find that many respondents find it insufficient. They instead recognize the need for strong offline communities making sure activism online translates into the offline realm. “[online platforms] are vital in building quick connections amongst those who feel alike towards bringing change. But eventually, all struggles for change have to be offline [...] technology could be the first step that eventually leads the path to more offline and personal connections.”(Anonymous survey respondent, 2013) : Others were wary about its power and they recognize it can be used to both help and contain the activist with the same intensity: "Technology can either blind people or give them sight."(Anonymous survey respondent, 2013) These views reflect youth has moved on from the tech hype that pervades the digital activism discourse. The role of technology was not excluded from the conference's tactic package and the group perceives technology as a powerful complement, yet it still places a lot more emphasis on creating sustainable change through education, behaviour and offline interactions than through digital interventions.

Conclusion

Comments at the aftermath of the event reflected participants had undergone a collective mental shift on how to create social change. We arrived looking outwards: accustomed to pointing fingers and scouting for common enemies that personify the misdoings of inequality perpetrators. Five days at Fireflies later and after UDAAN's intervention, I can safely say we left looking inwards. We are now determined to seek information and identify the most effective ways to mainstream it and make it accessible; we are impelled to reconnect with our creative and artistic selves and put them at service of communication; we are encouraged to share our personal stories and have them inspire solidarity and movement in our communities, and above all, we will continue to pursue the level of behaviour-action consistency that legitimizes our efforts at making change. The conference turned out to be a very organic experience and it provided all of us with a space to connect with ourselves and one another in a time of growing loneliness and isolation in the digital age.

Furthermore, the thoughts that surfaced on the survey are important pointers to continue uncovering what drives civic engagement among youth. Seeing these activists locate change in the self was a refreshing break from the times we used to overindulge in the possibilities of technology-mediated change. It seems that the digital is already so embedded in our interactions and ecosystems that it has not only has ceased to be novel, but it is recognized as insufficent, and hence, the attention has returned back to the user and its offline communities. With this in mind, the group that attended UDAAN, as part of the demographic who represents "the promise and future of India's growth", is taking up the challenge of strengthening ideas of making change in their networks. Have them succeed, and this 'growth' will be met by a current of better informed, better armed young activists working to secure a self-sustaining system for the generations to come.

** Thanks to everyone who participated on the survey, Special mention to UDAAN organizers, Educators Collective and the wonderful UDAAN 2013 group**

Sources:

HABITAT, UN. "State of the Urban Youth, India 2012.", (2013)
Ilavarasan, P. Vigneswara. "Community work and limited online activism among India youth." International Communication Gazette 75, no. 3 (2013): 284-299.
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. (April 30, 2013).

Resources:

Easel.ly: To create and share visual ideas online: www.easel.ly/‎
Info.gram: Create infographics: infogr.am
More on UDAAN: http://world.350.org/udaan/
More on Global Power Shift (350) - http://globalpowershift.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/young-voices-udaan

Mapping Digital Humanities in India

snehapp — 2014-01-16T08:29:01Z

As part of the research enquiry in the field of Digital Humanities (DH), this mapping exercise aims to provide an overview of key people, institutions and emerging literature in the field, and identify some of the pertinent questions and challenges to better locate and contextualise the work done in DH in India.

The field of Digital Humanities (DH) has today emerged as a space for much interdisciplinary work in knowledge production and innovation in India. At a time when the arts and humanities are perceived to be in a state of crisis thereby calling for them to demonstrate their relevance, the move towards the ‘digital’ is seen as an interesting development, away from traditional methods and objects of research enquiry. The growth of networked environments and proliferation of digital technologies particularly in education in the last couple of decades has several implications for new humanities scholarship. However, what is DH as a field, what are its historical and disciplinary moorings, its significance for new research and pedagogy, and more importantly how can we locate or contextualize it with respect to work in India have been some preliminary challenges to developing a further understanding of the field.

Historically the basis of DH lies in humanities computing, driven by the need to process and disseminate large sets of data generated by research. DH in the West has seen two distinct phases – the computational and the digital turn; the first largely characterized by the process of digitization itself, and the second seeing the internet become a space for production and sharing of multi-dimensional forms of knowledge, and moving away from traditional text-based models. The present phase sees digital technology as an integral part of the process of knowledge production, wherein objects and methods of enquiry already inhabit the digital space. In India, these three phases have been simultaneous rather than successive, which gives rise to additional challenges in summarizing the field. There is also the inherited separation between the ‘digital’ and the ‘humanities’, with the former being in some sense inaccessible to certain groups or classes of society for various reasons. This problematises the notion of the ‘digital’ as a post- gender, race, and class space. Tracing a historical trajectory of the development of DH in India would therefore be imperative, to see how it mediates this space between the traditional humanities and changes that are imminent with the advent of digital technology, and whether this discourse has been inclusive of all groups of people.

In the context of higher education in India, the challenges are multiple. The ‘digital divide’ still persists, which requires us to consistently re-imagine pedagogy and curricular resources that employ technology. Policy initiatives to integrate ICTs in education and large–scale projects on digitization are some efforts in trying to address the access question. Developing teaching-learning materials for a socially diverse and multi-lingual classroom, integrating archival material and training researchers and teachers in using new kinds of technology are some other areas that need intervention. More importantly, how do students or young people negotiate with these changes in the learning environment is a case in point. The present generation has the ubiquitous reputation of being ‘digital natives’ and therefore already possessing the access, skills and competence required in mediating both worlds. With increased access to technology, the role of youth in social change through participation in civil society and the political process is also being recognized. Today throughout the world, the importance of developing the potential of youth for social change has been emphasized by policy makers, institutions and societies at large. In the Indian context, where 20% of the population[1] consists of people between the ages of 15-24, this factor acquires even more significance. This number is also said to increase to 40% by 2016.According to a more recent report commissioned by the UN Global Urban Youth Research Network, there are 430 million young people in the age group of 15 – 34 years in India. The report also includes a survey on political participation by youth, in which 71% of urban youth (aged 18-34) said they are moderately interested in politics, and attributed this change to education and increased media exposure.[2] The National Youth Policy (2003) emphasises the need for the active involvement of youth in the political process, through their increased representation in civic bodies and also stresses that young people be provided with the requisite knowledge, skills and capacities towards this end. Higher education then is a crucial space to address these gaps in knowledge and skills that would contribute towards this development. The importance of technology in facilitating this process cannot be ignored, but then how do we see its role beyond that of access and skill-building, to fostering critical engagement with questions of socio-political concern would be imperative. The ‘digital classroom’ has today fostered new forms of iteration, sharing and collaboration. More importantly, what then is the perception of the youth of the ‘digital’ and how do they see its relevance to the processes of knowledge production, learning and change would be key questions for DH scholarship.

Under the larger rubric of youth, technology and higher education, this proposed mapping exercise will try to examine some of the broader questions that are central to defining and setting the agenda for further work in DH in India. The study shall span several institutions and disciplines, but would focus on the demographic of youth in higher education. Some specific areas of interest would be:

Youth and technology: studies on how young people engage with collaborative multimedia technologies today, both within and outside the classroom, what are the tools and devices at their disposal and the creation of new learning environments in higher education.
Histories of the present: studies mapping the digital landscape today and its antecedents, and looking at the emergence of the techno-social subject as a focus of the research enquiry.
Technology and Institutions: studies to survey and assess existing digitization efforts in India, creation of open access archives and new resources, particularly materials in Indian languages and the need for integration of content, new curricular initiatives and pedagogic strategies.

The project consists of interviews with key people and an overview of institutions and emerging literature in the field, as well as short-term commissioned research on emerging digital habits, socio-political participation, citizenship and identity politics and new modes of research and pedagogy in the digital humanities in India. This exercise is being conducted with the collaboration and support of the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) programme at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. HEIRA-CSCS has previously collaborated with CIS on a four-year programme in selected undergraduate colleges on enhancing the quality of access to higher education by disadvantaged students. The present mapping exercise also aims to build on some of the learning from this programme, particularly with respect to the digital and linguistic divide in higher education.

Institutions and individuals interested in joining us in these conversations are most welcome to write to us.

[1].Youth in India: Situation and Needs Study, Policy Brief No. 30, 2010. International Institute for Population Sciences and Population Council.

[2].State of the Urban Youth in India: Employment, Livelihoods and Skills, 2012. IRIS Knowledge Foundation. Commissioned by UN-HABITAT’s Global Youth Research Network .

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/mapping-digital-humanities-in-india

Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 1: Foundations

pranesh — 2014-01-23T15:12:30Z

In this insightful seven-part series, Gautam Bhatia looks at surveillance and the right to privacy in India from a constitutional perspective, tracing its genealogy through Supreme Court case law and compares it with the law in the USA.

Note: This was originally posted on the Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy blog.

On previous occasions, we have discussed the ongoing litigation in ACLU v. Clapper in the United States, a challenge to the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk surveillance program. Recall that a short while after the initial Edward Snowden disclosures, The Hindu revealed the extent of domestic surveillance in India, under the aegis of the Central Monitoring System (CMS). The CMS (and what it does) is excellently summarized here. To put thing starkly and briefly:

“With the C.M.S., the government will get centralized access to all communications metadata and content traversing through all telecom networks in India. This means that the government can listen to all your calls, track a mobile phone and its user’s location, read all your text messages, personal e-mails and chat conversations. It can also see all your Google searches, Web site visits, usernames and passwords if your communications aren’t encrypted.”

The CMS is not sanctioned by parliamentary legislation. It also raises serious privacy concerns. In order to understand the constitutional implications, therefore, we need to investigate Indian privacy jurisprudence. In a series of posts, we plan to discuss that.

Privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution. It plays no part in the Constituent Assembly Debates. The place of the right – if it exists – must therefore be located within the structure of the Constitution, as fleshed out by judicial decisions. The first case to address the issue was M. P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra, in 1954. In that case, the Court upheld search and seizure in the following terms:

"A power of search and seizure is in any system of jurisprudence an overriding power of the State for the protection of social security and that power is necessarily regulated by law. When the Constitution makers have thought fit not to subject such regulation to Constitutional limitations by recognition of a fundamental right to privacy, analogous to the American Fourth Amendment, we have no justification to import it, into a totally different fundamental right. by some process of strained construction."

The right in question was 19(1)(f) – the right to property. Notice here that the Court did not reject a right to privacy altogether – it only rejected it in the context of searches and seizures for documents, the specific prohibition of the American Fourth Amendment (that has no analogue in India). This specific position, however, would not last too long, and was undermined by the very next case to consider this question, Kharak Singh.

In Kharak Singh v. State of UP, the UP Police Regulations conferred surveillance power upon certain “history sheeters” – that is, those charged (though not necessarily convicted) of a crime. These surveillance powers included secret picketing of the suspect’s house, domiciliary visits at night, enquiries into his habits and associations, and reporting and verifying his movements. These were challenged on Article 19(1)(d) (freedom of movement) and Article 21 (personal liberty) grounds. It is the second ground that particularly concerns us.

As a preliminary matter, we may observe that the Regulations in question were administrative – that is, they did not constitute a “law”, passed by the legislature. This automatically ruled out a 19(2) – 19(6) defence, and a 21 “procedure established by law” defence – which were only applicable when the State made a law. The reason for this is obvious: fundamental rights are extremely important. If one is to limit them, then that judgment must be made by a competent legislature, acting through the proper, deliberative channels of lawmaking – and not by mere administrative or executive action. Consequently – and this is quite apart from the question of administrative/executive competence - if the Police Regulations were found to violate Article 19 or Article 21, that made them ipso facto void, without the exceptions kicking in. (Paragraph 5)

It is also important to note one other thing: as a defence, it was expressly argued by the State that the police action was reasonable and in the interests of maintaining public order precisely because it was “directed only against those who were on proper grounds suspected to be of proved anti-social habits and tendencies and on whom it was necessary to impose some restraints for the protection of society.” The Court agreed, observing that this would have “an overwhelming and even decisive weight in establishing that the classification was rational and that the restrictions were reasonable and designed to preserve public order by suitable preventive action” – if there had been a law in the first place, which there wasn’t. Thus, this issue itself was hypothetical, but what is crucial to note is that the State argued – and the Court endorsed – the basic idea that what makes surveillance reasonable under Article 19 is the very fact that it is targeted – targeted at individuals who are specifically suspected of being a threat to society because of a history of criminality.

Let us now move to the merits. The Court upheld secret picketing on the ground that it could not affect the petitioner’s freedom of movement since it was, well secret – and what you don’t know, apparently, cannot hurt you. What the Court found fault with was the intrusion into the petitioner’s dwelling, and knocking at his door late at night to wake him up. The finding required the Court to interpret the meaning of the term “personal liberty” in Article 21. By contrasting the very specific rights listed in Article 21, the Court held that:

“Is then the word “personal liberty” to be construed as excluding from its purview an invasion on the part of the police of the sanctity of a man’s home and an intrusion into his personal security and his right to sleep which is the normal comfort and a dire necessity for human existence even as an animal? It might not be inappropriate to refer here to the words of the preamble to the Constitution that it is designed to “assure the dignity of the individual” and therefore of those cherished human value as the means of ensuring his full development and evolution. We are referring to these objectives of the framers merely to draw attention to the concepts underlying the constitution which would point to such vital words as “personal liberty” having to be construed in a reasonable manner and to be attributed that these which would promote and achieve those objectives and by no means to stretch the meaning of the phrase to square with any preconceived notions or doctrinaire constitutional theories.” (Paragraph 16)

A few important observations need to be made about this paragraph. The first is that it immediately follows the Court’s examination of the American Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, with their guarantees of “life, liberty and property…” and is, in turn, followed by the Court’s examination of the American Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the protection of a person’s houses, papers, effects etc from unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court’s engagement with the Fourth Amendment is ambiguous. It admits that “our Constitution contains no like guarantee…”, but holds that nonetheless “these extracts [from the 1949 case, Wolf v Colorado] would show that an unauthorised intrusion into a person’s home and the disturbance caused to him thereby, is as it were the violation of a common law right of a man – an ultimate essential of ordered liberty”, thus tying its own holding in some way to the American Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. But here’s the crucial thing: at this point, American Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was propertarian based – that is, the Fourth Amendment was understood to codify – with added protection – the common law of trespass, whereby a man’s property was held sacrosanct, and not open to be trespassed against. Four years later, in 1967, in Katz, the Supreme Court would shift its own jurisprudence, to holding that the Fourth Amendment protected zones where persons had a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, as opposed to simply protecting listed items of property (homes, papers, effects etc). Kharak Singh was handed down before Katz. Yet the quoted paragraph expressly shows that the Court anticipated Katz, and in expressly grounding the Article 21 personal liberty right within the meaning of dignity, utterly rejected the propertarian-tresspass foundations that it might have had. To use a phrase invoked by later Courts – in this proto-privacy case, the Court already set the tone by holding it to attach to persons, not places.

While effectively finding a right to privacy in the Constitution, the Court expressly declined to frame it that way. In examining police action which involved tracking a person’s location, association and movements, the Court upheld it, holding that “the right of privacy is not a guaranteed right under our Constitution and therefore the attempt to ascertain the movements of an individual which is merely a manner in which privacy is invaded is not an infringement of a fundamental right guaranteed by Part III.”

The “therefore” is crucial. Although not expressly, the Court virtually holds, in terms, that tracking location, association and movements does violate privacy, and only finds that constitutional because there is no guaranteed right to privacy within the Constitution. Yet.

In his partly concurring and partly dissenting opinion, Subba Rao J. went one further, by holding that the idea of privacy was, in fact, contained within the meaning of Article 21: “it is true our Constitution does not expressly declare a right to privacy as a fundamental right, but the said right is an essential ingredient of personal liberty.” Privacy he defined as the right to “be free from restrictions or encroachments on his person, whether those restrictions or encroachments are directly imposed or indirectly brought about by calculated measures.” On this ground, he held all the surveillance measures unconstitutional.

Justice Subba Rao’s opinion also explored a proto-version of the chilling effect. Placing specific attention upon the word “freely” contained within 19(1)(d)’s guarantee of free movment, Justice Subba Rao went specifically against the majority, and observed:

“The freedom of movement in clause (d) therefore must be a movement in a free country, i.e., in a country where he can do whatever he likes, speak to whomsoever he wants, meet people of his own choice without any apprehension, subject of course to the law of social control. The petitioner under the shadow of surveillance is certainly deprived of this freedom. He can move physically, but he cannot do so freely, for all his activities are watched and noted. The shroud of surveillance cast upon him perforce engender inhibitions in him and he cannot act freely as he would like to do. We would, therefore, hold that the entire Regulation 236 offends also Art. 19(1)(d) of the Constitution.”

This early case, therefore, has all the aspects that plague the CMS today. What to do with administrative action that does not have the sanction of law? What role does targeting play in reasonableness – assuming there is a law? What is the philosophical basis for the implicit right to privacy within the meaning of Article 21’s guarantee of personal liberty? And is the chilling effect a valid constitutional concern?

We shall continue with the development of the jurisprudence in the next post.

You can follow Gautam Bhatia on Twitter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/surveillance-and-the-indian-consitution-part-1