Centre for Internet and Society

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures

nishant — 2012-06-01T04:39:12Z

The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Down to Earth published Nishant Shah's Op-ed on May 31, 2012

Unless you have been hiding under an analogue rock, wearing a tin-foil hat and staying away from electricity, chances are you have heard about the recent court order that bans access to a massive number of file-sharing websites from India. A John Doe order by the Madras High Court, following a complaint by the producers of the movie 3, has meant Internet Service Providers across the country have had to deny access to a number of websites that have been listed as providing free access to copyrighted material. In an attempt to ensure box-office collections for their movie, whose claim to fame, ironically, is the viral ‘Kolaveri Di’ song that had captured the country’s pulse last year, the producers have now denied access to something that is the basic function of anybody immersed in Web 2.0 environments–sharing of information.

Much has been written about this ban. The battlelines are clearly drawn and from both sides we have strong arguments being made for and against piracy. Various media and culture industry people are supporting this ban, recounting losses that they have made because of people accessing pirated material online. Hacker and civil liberties groups are decrying this heavy censorship, providing numerous instances of how piracy has actually helped cultural productions gain more fame and money than they would have otherwise. There are yet others, who, while they respect the rights of the right-holders to protect themselves against copyright infringement, are furious that this blanket ban also disallows them to access material which was under a public license and material that they had produced and shared through these networks.

International Hacker groups like Anonymous are mobilising people in large numbers to come to the streets as a sign of protest against such draconian measures.

Most of these debates eventually are at loggerheads, with each side becoming louder and shriller, their positions attaining cult-like devotion and faith. In this cacophony there are some other points which get missed out. This issuance of the John Doe order has betrayed some startling flaws in how the Internet is governed in India and the alarming implications it has to the future of free, open and inclusive information societies.

One thing that this court order has made excruciatingly clear is how the Internet is not the utopian space of exchange, collaboration, crowd sourcing and sharing it was meant to be. Despite the government’s own investments in building digital infrastructure, and its rhetoric of becoming more accountable, transparent and accessible by granting digital access to the citizens, it is obvious that this is still a space that is looked at with great suspicion.

It comes as a shock to many of us that a high court issued an order which does not only impinge on freedom of speech and expression, but also fails to understand the nature of the Internet. In all reality, this ban is a farce. Everybody who has been used to the shared cultures of the online world, has found proxy servers and Internet anonymisers which allow them to hide their identity and continue with their everyday practice online. The cool kids are already doing this anyway. All we have is a stark realisation that the state might be investing heavily in digital technologies but it still has not been able to get out of the centralised broadcast ways of thinking about it.

All sharing is not piracy. Some of it is just actually sharing. All debates seem to centre only around the copyrighted material being accessed through the file sharing websites. It is a concern which is legitimate. What about all the material that is in the public domain, in the commons and available for free? The user generated content, content which might not have direct economic value but is valuable to the people who created and shared it, is also now inaccessible. In order to protect some people from piracy we have also violated the rights of many more to share. And that is a distinction that is worth preserving, as we increasingly move into becoming an information society.

In the Web 2.0 world, we are all producers of data. We not only leave traces but also put out material of cultural significance–from videos of dancing babies to knowledge that we want to share–through these peer-2-peer networks. A sudden collapse of this infrastructure almost seems to show how it is only the money-making material that is important to the state and not the other.

There is not going to be a clear, correct position in this case against file-sharing. The legal technicalities will always be hollow in the face of ideologies of openness and inclusion. The moral indignation will always be countered by facts and numbers. But in the middle of all the fights and discussions, it is also good to pay attention to what is at stake. This battle is not merely about file sharing, though there is nothing “mere” about file sharing. This battle is not about a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. This battle is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

The way we resolve these differences is going to determine the future of what it means to be public, open, free, and inclusive. Those of us who are fighting to get the word out, are not doing it only because the access to our favourite cultural products has become cumbersome, but because scared that this might well be the beginning of the end of all that we had dreamt of our digital futures.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/beyond-sharing

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles

praskrishna — 2012-06-01T04:29:36Z

This event organised by Max Planck Institute was held in Munich, Germany on May 14 and 15, 2012. Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.

List of Participants

Name	Affiliation
Mr. Olatunji Babatunde Adetula	Director, Nigerian Copyright Commission
Prof. Olufunmilayo Arewa	African University for Science and Technology & University of California School of Law, Irvine
Prof. Michael W. Carroll	Professor of Law, Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University, Washington College of Law
Mr. Alberto Cerda Silva	S.J.D. Candidate Georgetown University Law Center, Research Associate,Knowledge Ecology International
Ms. Vera Franz	Senior Program Manager Open Society Information Program Open Society Foundations
Prof. Christophe Geiger	Associate Professor Director General Director of the Research Department CEIPI, Université de Strasbourg
Prof. Daniel Gervais	FedEx Research Professor of Law Co-Director, Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Program Vanderbilt University Law School
Ms. Cristiana Gonzalez	Senior Researcher Universidade de São Paulo
Ms. Teresa Hackett	Programme Manager EIFL
Prof. Dr. Reto M. Hilty	Managing Director Full Professor ad personam at the University of Zurich Honorary Professor at the University of Munich Max Planck Institute
Dr. Zorina Khan	Professor Department of Economics Bowdoin College
Dr. Kaya Köklü	Senior Research Fellow Intellectual Property and Competition Law Max Planck Institute
Ms. Eniko Kovacs	Program Manager Academic Fellowship Program, HESP Open Society Foundations
Mr. Ahmed Abdel Latif	Intellectual Property and Technology Senior Programme Manager International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
Ms. Mayara Nascimento Santos Leal	Division of Intellectual Property Economic Department Ministry of External Relations, Brazil
Prof. Lydia Loren	Professor of Law Kay Kitagawa & Andy Johnson-Laird IP Faculty Scholar Lewis & Clark Law School
Ms. Viviana Munoz Tellez	Programme Officer, IAKP The South Centre
Prof. Ruth Okediji	William L. Prosser Professor of Law University of Minnesota Law School
Mr. Pranesh Prakash	Programme Manager The Center for Internet and Society
Mr. G.R. Raghavender	Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP & CR) Copyright Office Government of India, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resources Development
Prof. Jerome H. Reichman	Bunyan S. Womble Professor of Law Duke University Law School
Dr. Manon Ress	Director of Information Society Projects Knowledge Ecology International
Ms. Carolina Rossini	Senior Fellow at GPOPAI, University of Sao Paulo
Dr. Susan Strba	Expert and Author, Copyright L&Es for Education in Africa
Mr. Luis Villaroel Villalon	Director de Investigación Corporación Innovarte
Dr. Moktar Warida	First Secretary, Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations
Ms. Raquel Xalabarder Plantada	Director, Learning Resources Vice President’s Office, Faculty and Academic Organization Open University of Catalonia

Workshop Associates

Name	Affiliation
Lindsey Niznik	Senior, University of Minnesota
Peju Solarin	Doctoral Candidate International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation, and Punishment, Max Planck Institute

See the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/workshop-on-education-and-copyright

Resisting Revolutions

praskrishna — 2012-05-29T10:28:17Z

Nishant Shah's peer reviewed journal article was published in Democracy, Volume 55, Issue 2.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/resisting-revolutions.pdf

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers?

praskrishna — 2012-05-28T06:08:57Z

The publishing industry seems to have got the better of the Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal. Pranesh Prakash's article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article published in FirstPost on May 25, 2012.

The move to open up the market for distribution of international books to competition has been successfully thwarted with the removal of an amendment allowing parallel imports from the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2012 that was passed by the Lok Sabha on 22 May.

This despite the Parliamentary Standing Committee supporting the amendment on the grounds that it will increase student access to books.

But it could well only be a temporary victory for the publishing giants with Sibal promising to restore the amendment if the National Council of Applied Economic Research – to which the matter has been referred – should in its report (expected in August) recommend parallel imports.

The draft bill (which included the amendment) had created a furore in publishing circles last year. Parallel imports, claimed leading publishing houses, would destroy the industry. Read Thomas Abraham’s Death of Books published last year in The Hindustan Times.

While that remains open for debate, there is no denying the larger common good of faster and cheaper availability of books to millions of students that parallel imports will make possible. Ordering books may no longer be a click away if Flipkart had to take permission from the Indian copyright owner every time you ordered an international title.

In an article titled Why Parallel Importation of Books should be Allowed published by The Centre for Internet and Society Pranesh Prakash makes a compelling case for ending the distribution monopoly.

Underlying the huge benefit to students, the author says “Currently a large percentage of educational books in India are imported, but with different companies having monopoly rights in importation of different books. If this was opened up to competition, the prices of books would drop, since one would not need to get an authorisation to import books—the licence raj that currently exists would be dismantled—and Indian students will benefit.

“This is especially important for students and for libraries because even when low-priced editions are available, they are often of older editions.”

The article also argues how the business model of hugely popular site such as Flipkart depends on parallel imports to deliver books to its customers at great bargains.

Allowing parallel imports, argues the author, will dismantle distribution monopoly rights and help book publishers, libraries, the print-disabled and consumers in general. He also makes the important distinction between the black market and parallel imports, which is legal.

Offering a point-by-point rebuttal of the publishing industry’s claims of the destructive impact of parallel imports, the author observes “It seems to us that the publishing industry – especially foreign publishers with distributorship in India – don’t want to open themselves up to competition in the distribution market and are opposing this most commendable move.”

He concludes that allowing parallel imports will, in fact, result in an expansion of the reading market.

“It is mainly foreign publishers’ monopoly rights over distribution which will be harmed by this amendment, while Indian publishers, Indian authors, and Indian readers, especially students, will stand to gain. Furthermore, in the long run, even foreign publishers will stand to gain due to market expansion. Any legitimate worries that publishers may have are better dealt with under other laws (such as the Customs Act) and not the Copyright Act.”

Read the original from FirstPost.India

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/did-sibal-just-get-arm-twisted-by-book-publishers

John Doe order in UTV Software Communications Limited vs. Home Cable Network Ltd. and Ors. (movie 7 Khoon Maaf)

praskrishna — 2012-05-26T20:09:27Z

This is the case filed by UTV Software Communication against Home cable Network and other uknown network operators. restraining them from infringing the copyrights under Section 14(1) and Section 16 of the Copyright Act, 1957 for its movie '7 Khoon maaf' and 'Thank You' and the Court granted an interim injunction called 'john doe' order under Order 39 Rule 1 and Rule 3 of CPC, 1908.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI

CS(OS) No. 821/2011

UTV SOFTWARE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED ..... Plaintiff
Through Mr. Vikas Singh, Sr. Adv. with Mr. Ravi
Prakash, Mr. Varun Pathak, Adv. ,
Ms. Avni Singh, Adv.

versus

HOME CABLE NETWORK LTD and ORS ..... Defendants
Through

CORAM:
HON'BLE MS. JUSTICE GITA MITTAL

O R D E R
04.04.2011

IA No.5384/2011

Exemption allowed subject to just exceptions.
CS(OS) No.821/2011
Subject to the plaintiff taking steps within one week, issue summons in the suit to the defendants by ordinary process, registered cover and through approved courier, returnable on 14th July, 2011 before the Joint Registrar.
The summons to the defendants shall indicate that a written statement to the plaint shall be positively filed within four weeks of the receipt of the summons. Liberty is given to the plaintiff to file replicationand rejoinder within two weeks of the receipt of the advance copy of the written statement and reply.
In case the written statement is not filed within the time stipulated above, the same shall be taken on record only subject to imposition of heavy costs.
The parties shall file all original documents in support of their respective claims alongwith their respective pleadings. In case parties are placing reliance on a document which is not in their power and possession, its details and source shall be mentioned in the list of reliance which shall be also filed within the pleadings.
Admission/denial of documents shall be filed on affidavit by the parties within two weeks of the completion of the pleadings. The affidavit shall include the list of the documents of the other party. The deponent shall indicate its position with regard to the documents against the particulars of each document.
Learned counsel for the plaintiff submits that without prejudice to its rights, contentions and claims in the suit, his client would be willing to explore the possibility of settlement by recourse to mediation.
The summons shall indicate that it is open to the parties to access the facility of negotiating a settlement with the other side before the Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre in the court complex. In case the defendants are so desirous of pursuing negotiations, it shall be open to them to do so. Such participation in the mediation shall be without prejudice to their rights and contentions in the suit.
In such eventuality, the defendant shall inform the plaintiff as well as his counsel of the same by a written notice. Such written notices shall be treated as consent of the parties to the mediation process.
The plaintiff and/or defendants may then approach the Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre for facilitating mediation in the matter. Any or both of the parties shall place the copy of this order as well as the written notice before the Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre which shall proceed in accordance with the rules of the Centre.
During the course of mediation, it shall be open to the mediator to join any other person(s) considered necessary for effective mediation and dispute resolution.
The Registry shall enclose the information brochure published by Samadhan the Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre with the summons.
The parties shall appear before the Joint Registrar for marking of exhibits on 14th July, 2011.
The matter shall be fixed before the court for reporting outcome of the mediation/framing of issues on 15th September, 2011.
The schedule fixed by this order shall not be interdicted by the pendency of the matter in mediation. IA No. 5383/2011 (Under Order 39 Rule 1 and 2 CPC).
Issue notice, returnable on 15th September, 2011.
The plaintiff is the producer/co-producer/distributor of several movies detailed in the plaint including the film "7 Khoon Maaf" which has been recently released. It is asserted that the latest film produced by the plaintiff titled "Thank you" is to be released on 8th April, 2011.
The suit has been necessitated for the reason that the plaintiff has experienced large scale violation of its copyright in earlier films produced by it by several known and unknown cable operators who telecast pirated version of the films of the plaintiff on cable networks, violating rights of the plaintiff and causing irreparable loss and damage. A single telecast by the defendants and other operators would simultaneously reach several hundred thousand homes. As a result, the loss which results to the plaintiff is irreparable and cannot be computed in terms of money.
The plaintiff also complains that additionally the quality of the film which is telecast by these cable operators is inferior and impacts its reputation. Loss to the exchequer by way of collection of entertainment tax, etc. has been also pointed out.
Based on its past experience, it is urged by Mr. Vikas Singh, learned senior counsel for the plaintiff that an investigation was undertaken into the business being run by the defendant no.1 and extensive positive information with regard to the violation of the plaintiff?s copyright in the plaintiff's film "7 Khoon Maaf", has been received. The investigation report obtained by the plaintiff has been placed on record.
It has also been urged at great length that apart from the cable operators who have been arrayed as defendants, there are several other cable operators in the field who operate in an identical manner to cause violation of the plaintiff?s copyright. The plaintiff is not able to establish the full particulars of these persons which have consequently not been placed in the plaint. Such persons have been collectively arrayed as defendant nos.19 to 50 named as ?Mr. Ashok Kumar?. The plaintiff urges that these defendants are unknown identities who would also telecast the unauthorizedly and illegally telecast pirated version of the plaintiff's films by their network without any licence.
The plaintiff invokes the inherent power of this court under Section 151 of the CPC to evolve a fair and reasonable procedure to address the peculiar facts and circumstances over the pleaded violations by the defendants including defendant nos.19 to 50. In this regard, reliance is placed on the internationally adopted "John Doe" practice obtaining in USA, Canada, UK, Australia and other jurisdictions as well as this country's obligation under the TRIPPS agreement to effectively enforce IPR rights of parties including those as in the present one. It is urged that a similar order deserves to be passed in the present case.
In support of this submission, my attention has been drawn to a judgment dated 14th June, 2002 passed in CS(OS) No. 1072/2002 Taj Television Ltd. and Ors. vs. Rajan Mandal and Ors. reported at 2003 FSR 22 on similar facts, this court had noticed the following submissions of counsel for the plaintiff seeking a John Doe order:- 11. Mr. Anand submitted that conduct of various unscrupulous cable channel companies/distributors such as the defendants is well known. The aspect of channel is being illegally aired on the local cable networks has almost taken on a regular feature. He prayed that in the facts and circumstances apart from giving necessary directions be also given for defendant Nos. 7 to 20, in other words, the court may pass "John Doe" orders.

Mr. Anand placed reliance on Trade Marks Law of Canada in which it is mentioned that John Doe? orders enabling the order to be served upon persons whose identity is unknown to the plaintiff at the time the action was commenced, but whose activity falls within the scope of the action. This form of naming a party is considered a mere "misnomer", and as long as the "litigating finger" is pointed at such person then the misnomer is not fatal. This proposition has been taken from Jackson v/s Bubels (1972) 28 DLT. (3d) 500 (B.C.C.A.) and Dukoff vs.Teronto General Hospital (1986),54,O.R.(2d) 50(H.C.).

Mr. Anand submitted that ?John Doe? orders are passed by American, English, Canadian and Australian Courts frequently. He further submitted that this court also possesses enormous inherent powers to formulate the orders which are necessary to meet the peculiar facts and peculiar situations., In the first U.S. Federal "John Doe" order, Shaw vs Various John Does, No 80 Civ,722 (S.D.N.Y.Fe,6,1980) the court held that a court of equity was always free to fashion a decree in keeping with the needs of the litigants. Similarly, in Billy Joel vs. Various John Does, 1980 U.S. Dist LEXIS 12841 the Court held:

Were the Injunction to be denied, Plaintiffs would be without any legal means to prevent what is clearly a blatant infringement of their valid property rights. While the proposed remedy is novel, that in itself should not weigh against its adoption by this court. A court of equity is free to fashion whatever remedies will adequately protect the rights for the parties before it.

Mr. Anand placed reliance on the judgment of the Supreme Court in Manohar Lal Chopra vs. Rai Bahadur Rao Raja Seth Hiralal, AIR 1962 SC 527. The Court held that the inherent powers of the Court are in addition to the powers specifically conferred on the Court by the Code. They are complementary to those powers and therefore, it must be held that the court is free to exercise them for the purposes mentioned in Section 151 of the Code when the exercise of those powers is not in any way in conflict with what has been expressly provided in the Code or against the intentions of the legislature. Mr. Anand placed reliance on EMI Records Ltd . v. Kudhail and others (1985) FSR 36, (1983) Com LR 280.

Mr. Anand , Learned counsel for the plaintiffs, has made references to a large number of Canadian, Australian, English and American cases but I would not like to burden this order with all the judgments on which reliance has been placed at this stage. Since ?John Doe? orders are passed in the court of Canada, America, England, Australia and in some other countries. The judicial systems of all these countries have basic similarity with our judicial system. Therefore, looking to the extra ordinary facts and circumstances of the case, in the interest of justice the courts in India would also be justified in passing "John Doe" orders. It is noteworthy that after such finding keeping in view the peculiar facts of the CS(OS) No. 1072/2002, a John Doe order was not passed.
My attention has also been drawn to an order dated 24th November, 2006 in CS(OS) No. 2189/2006 wherein the court has granted an injunction order in terms of the above observations. This court as such has the jurisdiction to pass an order in the nature of a John Doe order injunction unknown persons in circumstances as have been pleaded by the plaintiff in the present case. Mr. Vikas Singh, learned senior counsel for the plaintiff has placed reliance on the following observations of the court in Tej Television (Supra) in the context of cable operators:-
I have carefully considered the relevant documents, averments of the application and judgments of various courts. Undoubtedly, the cable operators in India have a long history of violating copyrights. A very large number of court orders are testimony to this. The cable operators are encouraged owning to the unique nature of cable piracy and the unstructured nature of the cable industry, the speed with which any trace of infringement can be erased by the cable operators, enforcement of rights in conservative nature is unlikely to effectively redress the plaintiffs' grievance.
The plaintiff has approached this court seeking protection of its valuable rights against such unwarranted, unauthorized and illegal actions of the defendants nos. 1 to 18 as well as the Mr. Ashok Kumars arrayed as defendant nos. 19 to 50 which have violated and diluted the exclusive copyright vested with the plaintiff in respect of the films "7 Khoon Maaf". The plaintiff has expressed apprehensions that the defendants would violate the plaintiff's rights in its film "Thank You".
The plaintiff has asserted violation of its rights and violations of the Copyright Act, 1957, the Cable Network (Regulation) Act, 1995 before this court. The material placed before this court would show that the plaintiff has copyright in the films produced by it and only authorized licensees can telecast the films.
The plaintiff has specifically averred that the defendants in the suit have not signed any agreement with regard to the film. As such telecast of these films is violative of section 14(1)(d) and 16 of the Copyright Act.
It is urged that unauthorized cable transmission of the plaintiff's films shall result in irreparable loss and damage to the plaintiff. It would also encourage other cable operators who have currently procured licenses/entered into agreements with the plaintiff and possess valid license/agreements, to also telecast the films without making necessary payments. In support of the grievance that the damage would be irreparable, it is pointed out that the cable industry has an unstructured composition and it would be impossible to assess the damages which may result on account of unauthorized telecast/broadcast/distribution.
The modus operandi adopted by unauthorized cable operators is to prepare poor copies of the films when they are being screened in the picture hall and telecast the same on their network to cable homes attached to them. It would appear that public interest would also suffer on account of poor programme quality. There is prima facie substance in the plaintiff's contention that the same would impact the plaintiffs reputation as well.
In view of the foregoing, it would prima facie appear that unlicensed broadcast of the reproduction rights vested in the plaintiff by telecasting the plaintiff's films "7 Khoon Maaf" and the forthcoming film "Thank You" in the foregoing manner is illegal, unfair and deserves to be prohibited. Consequently, unless injunction as prayed for is granted by this court, the business of the plaintiff herein would be irreparably impacted. Balance of convenience and interest of justice are in favour of the plaintiff and against the defendants.
It is accordingly directed as follows :-
(i) that the defendants/their agents, representatives, franchisees, sub-operators, head ends and/or anyone claiming under them are hereby restrained from telecasting or in any other manner communicating to the viewing pubic/subscribers either by means of wireless diffusion or by wire a pirated version of the films "7 Khoon Maaf" and "Thank You" and/or in any other manner infringing the copyright of the plaintiff therein.
(ii) It is further directed that till the present order is vacated or modified, the direction shall operate against the defendants, their agents,representatives, franchises, sub-operators or any person claiming under them an injunction.
(iii) Further injunction in terms of serial no. (i) above is passed against un-named and undisclosed persons who may be likewise committing breach of the rights of the plaintiff in a similar manner.
(iv) The SHO/Superintendent of the concerned police station(s) are directed to render assistance to the plaintiff should any be required for purposes of enforcement of the present order as it is the obligation of the police authorities and the State to enforce judicial orders passed.
(v) The plaintiff is permitted to publish the John Doe injunction order issued today in local newspapers in all states where it has expressed apprehensions of violation of its rights. Consequences in accordance with law would thereafter follow.
(vi) The plaintiff shall comply with the provisions of the proviso to rule 3 of order 39 of the CPC within a period of ten days from today.

Copy of this order be given dasti as well as dasti under the signatures of the court master of this court.

GITA MITTAL, J
APRIL 04, 2011

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/john-doe-order-utv-communications-v.-home-cable-network-and-ors.-movie-7-khoon-maaf

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

praskrishna — 2012-05-24T15:38:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012.

The Google Policy Fellowship offers successful candidates an opportunity to develop research and debate on the fellowship focus areas, which include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom, for a period of about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

To apply, please send to google.fellowship@cis-india.org the following materials:

Statement of Purpose: A brief write-up outlining about your interest and qualifications for the programme including the relevant academic, professional and extracurricular experiences. As part of the write-up, also explain on what you hope to gain from participation in the programme and what research work concerning free expression online you would like to further through this programme. (About 1200 words max).
Resume
Three references

Fellowship Focus Areas

Access to Knowledge: Studies looking at access to knowledge issues in India in light of copyright law, consumers law, parallel imports and the interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property rights, targeted at policymakers, Members of Parliament, publishers, photographers, filmmakers, etc.
Openness in India: Studies with policy recommendations on open access to scholarly literature, free access to law, open content, open standards, free and open source software, aimed at policymakers, policy researchers, academics and the general public.
Freedom of Expression: Studies on policy, regulatory and legislative issues concerning censorship and freedom of speech and expression online, aimed at bloggers, journalists, authors and the general public.
Privacy: Studies on privacy issues like data protection and the right to information, limits to privacy in light of the provisions of the constitution, media norms and privacy, banking and financial privacy, workplace privacy, privacy and wire-tapping, e-governance and privacy, medical privacy, consumer privacy, etc., aimed at policymakers and the public.
Telecom: Building awareness and capacity on telecommunication policy in India for researchers and academicians, policymakers and regulators, consumer and civil society organisations, education and library institutions and lay persons through the creation of a dedicated web based resource focusing on knowledge dissemination.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Google Policy Fellowship program?
The Google Policy Fellowship program offers students interested in Internet and technology related policy issues with an opportunity to spend their summer working on these issues at the Centre for Internet and Society at Bangalore. Students will work for a period of ten weeks starting from July 2012. The research agenda for the program is based on legal and policy frameworks in the region connected to the ground-level perceptions of the fellowship focus areas mentioned above.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program? Are there any age restrictions on participating?
Yes. You must be 18 years of age or older by January 1, 2012 to be eligible to participate in Google Policy Fellowship program in 2012.

Are there citizenship requirements for the Fellowship?
For the time being, we are only accepting students eligible to work in India (e.g. Indian citizens, permanent residents of India, and individuals presently holding an Indian student visa. Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet the criteria.

Who is eligible to participate as a student in Google Policy Fellowship program?
In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs. Eligibility is based on enrollment in an accredited university by January 1, 2012.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program?
In order to participate in the program, you must be a student (see Google's definition of a student above). You must also be eligible to work in India (see section on citizen requirements for fellowship above). Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet this criterion.
I have been accepted into an accredited post-secondary school program, but have not yet begun attending. Can I still take part in the program?
As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2012, you are eligible to participate in the program.
I graduate in the middle of the program. Can I still participate?
As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2012, you are eligible to participate in the program.

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

How do payments work?*

Google will provide a stipend of USD 7,500 equivalent to each Fellow for the summer.

Accepted students in good standing with their host organization will receive a USD 2,500 stipend payable shortly after they begin the Fellowship in August 2012.
Students who receive passing mid-term evaluations by their host organization will receive a USD 1,500 stipend shortly after the mid-term evaluation in September 2012.
Students who receive passing final evaluations by their host organization and who have submitted their final program evaluations will receive a USD 3,500 stipend shortly after final evaluations in October 2012.

Please note: Payments will be made by electronic bank transfer, and are contingent upon satisfactory evaluations by the host organization, completion of all required enrollment and other forms. Fellows are responsible for payment of any taxes associated with their receipt of the Fellowship stipend.

*While the three step payment structure given here corresponds to the one in the United States, disbursement of the amount may be altered as felt necessary.

What documentation is required from students?

Students should be prepared, upon request, to provide Google or the host organization with transcripts from their accredited institution as proof of enrollment or admission status. Transcripts do not need to be official (photo copy of original will be sufficient).

I would like to use the work I did for my Google Policy Fellowship to obtain course credit from my university. Is this acceptable?

Yes. If you need documentation from Google to provide to your school for course credit, you can contact Google. We will not provide documentation until we have received a final evaluation from your mentoring organization.

Host Organizations

What is Google's relationship with the Centre for Internet and Society?

Google provides the funding and administrative support for individual fellows directly. Google and the Centre for Internet and Society are not partners or affiliates. The Centre for Internet and Society does not represent the views or opinions of Google and cannot bind Google legally.

Important Dates

What is the program timeline?

June 27, 2012	Student Application Deadline. Applications must be received by midnight.
July 18, 2012	Student applicants are notified of the status of their applications.
August 2012	Students begin their fellowship with the host organization (start date to be determined by students and the host organization); Google issues initial student stipends.
September 2012	Mid-term evaluations; Google issues mid-term stipends.
October 2012	Final evaluations; Google issues final stipends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/google-policy-fellowship

The Coming Telecom Monopoly

Shyam Ponappa — 2012-05-24T07:36:55Z

The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.

Shyam Ponappa's column was published in the Business Standard on May 3, 2012

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or Trai, has delivered a stunning blow to the telecom sector in the form of its spectrum pricing and refarming recommendations. The sector was already reeling from scandals and misgovernance, and staggered by a confused Supreme Court judgment based on inappropriate assumptions (for details, see “Time for a review”, March 1, 2012, and “Open access is the future,” March 4, 2012). This will cripple an erstwhile sunrise sector that drove (and still can) India’s prosperity through productivity, enabling many factors to converge positively — such as its economic momentum, enterprise, resilience and, most important, a demographic bulge that could become a blessing or a curse. This convergence was (and is) possible because of the enabling ability of telecom and broadband to provide access to education, vocational training and continuing education; health care and other public services; and commerce, including the delivery of individual output, within easy reach. All this is stalled, as we deliberately disembowel ourselves, as it were.

If Trai’s recommendations are implemented, they will ensure that a lone survivor dominates the sector, annihilating all significant competitors – Bharti, Vodafone, Idea, Tata, and newcomers like Telenor and Sistema – through their having to pay exorbitant fees just to keep their current business going, even without expansion. That is, provided the lawsuits that are likely to follow don’t obliterate everything for the next 10 years.

Are these setbacks happenstance, heaven-sent, or acts of man? Analysing the components shows that much is attributable to the machinations of men, although rendered by different individuals or groups under varying compulsions. The afflictions that began with cronyism and misgovernance have been aggravated by a judgment based on misapprehensions regarding: (a) spectrum technology; (b) the economics of auctions and; (c) competition in network economies.

In trying to get at the corrupt nexus of corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, and just plain crooked people, indiscriminate zealotry is destroying legitimate enterprise. The judgment lumps the guilty with the circumstantially proximate. Coupled with defining auctions as best for the public interest, this set the stage for what has followed. The furore over corruption and the Anna Hazare movement ensure that any objective recommendation would come under fire, with a mobocracy baying for revenge.

Is being deprived of ubiquitous, reasonably-priced broadband so devastating? Yes, because of broadband’s great potential in India’s vastness for enabling people at relatively low cost, compared with, say, fixing energy supply, or sanitation and water, or roads, or growing food. All these are necessary; but broadband is much easier to achieve, at lower cost, and would bring it all more easily within our grasp, especially in rural areas.

Performance

Some question the beneficial effect of revenue sharing from the National Telecom Policy, 1999, (NTP-99) suggesting the sector might have done as well or better without the change. Pakistan is cited as an example for growth with auctions. Consider the performance of the sector in both countries.

Chart 1 - Mobile Subscriptions (Millions) 2003-2010

(The third line shows India’s numbers reduced to 70 per cent, reflecting an estimate of live subscriptions.)

Chart 2 shows the percentage of population served. Pakistan’s coverage grew

Chart 2: Percent Population Covered

Sources: India – TRAI; PIB; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Statistics_in_India
Pakistan - http://www.pta.gov.pk/index.php

rapidly until about 60 per cent, then tapered off. India started more gradually before accelerating to 60 per cent a couple of years later, and kept going. In March 2011, both were around 70 per cent. At the end of December 2011, India was at 76.86 per cent.

However, there are two major differences. One is the scale of India’s operations. Sheer magnitude makes for much greater complexity, and the achievement is therefore remarkable. The second is the significantly higher government levies in India. India’s telecom sector is perhaps the world’s most heavily burdened, with government collections higher than in Pakistan by 15 to 24 per cent of revenues.* (Compared with China,where government charges are only 3.5 per cent, India’s levies are even more grossly out of line.) Had Indian enterprises not had this burden, it’s conceivable they might have had the capacity and stomach to effectively address rural coverage, especially with the right incentives.

Achieving Ubiquitous Broadband

Now consider what needs doing for countrywide access to broadband, and what odds have to be overcome. First, there’s the addition necessary to rural and semi-urban networks, where almost three times the existing coverage is needed. Much of this needs wireless access. This is why spectrum pricing critically affects outcomes. Many people in India harp on a litany of sunk-costs-not-affecting-tariffs, oblivious to the vast deficiency in network coverage, ie, areas and people without access. It’s like arguing over pricing without any production plant or products. Without capital investments in network coverage, there can be no services, nor any tariffs, high or low. There is little doubt of the effects of high spectrum and licence fees: these needs remain unmet. Hence the low rural teledensity of under 39 per cent at the end of February 2012, with urban coverage at nearly 170 per cent, and overall teledensity at 78 per cent. Separately, there’s the issue of inadequate incentives for broadband delivery.

Statements from Trai and the Department of Telecommunications about the spectrum pricing recommendations being reasonable because of the revenue potential simply don’t add up. Their projections are based on a fantasy of booming growth (like the Budget projection of 7.6 per cent GDP growth, but even more exaggerated). Whereas the combined effect of the scam and its fallout, sentiment, momentum, and misguided efforts at tax-gouging will ensure that telecom revenue growth is no more than a stunted five to seven per cent, at best. No bank will lend seven-year funds in such uncertain circumstances to what was once a sunrise sector — but is now like heavy infrastructure, with a need for 20-year financing. Add the costs and difficulty of refarming the 900 MHz spectrum, and one has to wonder: who is going to bid, and why? It makes sense only for one survivor. All this is aside from the extension of subsidised non-performance at the PSUs, instead of transforming them into anchors of an open-access national network.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/coming-telecom-monopoly

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in WCIT

Center for Democracy & Technology — 2012-05-24T06:55:30Z

This page features a letter from academics and civil society groups from around the world to International Telecommunication Union Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) process.

This letter was published by the Center for Democracy & Technology.

A PDF of the letter is available here. ONG Derechos Digitales has provided a Spanish translation of the letter. For more background on the WCIT, see our policy post, Civil Society Must Have Voice as ITU Debates the Internet, and our ITU resource page.

Civil society organizations and academics are invited to join this call to address deficiencies in the WCIT process. For more information, contact signon@cdt.org.

17 May 2012

To Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré, the Council Working Group to Prepare for the WCIT-12, and ITU Member States:

The undersigned human rights advocates, academics, freedom of expression groups, and civil society organizations write to express our desire to participate in the preparatory process undertaken for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The current preparatory process lacks the transparency, openness of process, and inclusiveness of all relevant stakeholders that are imperative under commitments made at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). We ask that the Secretary-General, the Council Working Group, and Member States work to resolve these process deficiencies in several concrete ways.

The continued success of the information society depends on the full, equal, and meaningful participation of civil society stakeholders (along side the private sector, the academic and technical community, and governments) in the management of information and communications technology, including both technical and public policy issues. Indeed, WSIS outcome documents recognize the need for a multi-stakeholder approach in technical management and policy decision-making for ICTs. The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society urges international organizations “to ensure that all stakeholders, particularly from developing countries, have the opportunity to participate in policy decision-making … and to promote and facilitate such participation.” And such participation depends on transparency and openness of process at every stage of substantive and procedural dialogue.

Yet there has been scant participation by civil society in the Council Working Group’s preparatory process for the WCIT so far, even as media reports indicate that some Member States have proposed amending the International Telecommunication Regulations to address issues that could impact the exercise of human rights in the digital age, including freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy rights. Under the current process, civil society participation is severely limited by restrictions on sharing of preparatory documents, high barriers for ITU membership (including cost), and lack of mechanisms for remote participation in preparatory meetings.

As an important step towards fulfilling WSIS commitments for building a more inclusive information society, the undersigned request that the Secretary-General, the Council Working Group, and Member States:

Remove restrictions on the sharing of WCIT documents and release all preparatory materials, including the Council Working Group’s final report, consolidated reports from all preparatory activity, and proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations;
Open the preparatory process to meaningful participation by civil society in its own right and without cost at Council Working Group meetings and the WCIT itself, providing formal speaking opportunities and according civil society views an equal weight as those of other stakeholders. Facilitate remote participation to the extent possible; and
For Member States, open public processes at the national level to solicit input on proposed amendments to the International Telecommunication Regulations from all relevant stakeholders, including civil society, and release individual proposals for public debate.

We welcome Secretary-General Touré’s commitment to creating a more inclusive information society and ensuring equitable access to ICT around the world. Collectively and individually, the undersigned human rights advocates, academics, freedom of expression groups, and civil society organizations work to fulfill this vision through a range of national and global institutions and we call for the same opportunity to engage at the WCIT, consistent with WSIS commitments. We urge you to ensure the outcomes of the WCIT and its preparatory process truly represent the common interests of all who have a stake in the future of our information society.

Sincerely,
Access
Article 19
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Eduardo Bertoni, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la
Información (CELE), Universidad de Palermo, Argentina
Bytes for All, Pakistan
Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Technology and Society (CTS/FGV), Brazil
Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), India
Consumers International
Digitale Gesellschaft e.V.
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Electronic Frontier Foundation
European Digital Rights
Freedom House
Global Partners & Associates
Global Voices Advocacy
Human Rights in China
Human Rights Watch
Internet Democracy Project, India
Internet Governance Project (IGP)
Kictanet, Kenya
Rebecca MacKinnon
MobileActive Corp
New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute
ONG Derechos Digitales, Chile
Open Rights Group
Panoptykon Foundation, Poland
Public Knowledge
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
World Press Freedom Committee

Ageia Densi, Argentina
Bolo Bhi, Pakistan
Index on Censorship
IP Justice
Julia Group, Sweden
Net Users' Rights Protection Association, Belgium

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/letter-for-civil-society-involvement

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You!

nishant — 2012-05-23T07:02:03Z

When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.

This article by Nishant Shah was published in First Post on May 22, 2012.

No matter which part of the fault-line you fall under, this is the time for all good (and otherwise ambiguously identified) people to come to the aid of the party. This is an open call for anybody who has been on the interwebz, to share and distribute one particular object whose rights protector have recently taken your right to access countless platforms which are a part of your everyday life online.

If you haven’t yet grasped it, I am referring to the recent events where, following a John Doe order from the High Court of Chennai, all kinds of file sharing platforms are suddenly being blocked by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across India.

The film producers of ‘3’, the movie whose claim to fame has been the spectacular viral success of the Kolaveri Di song, have moved the courts to issue a blanket order that has suddenly made it impossible for Indian netizens to access file sharing, user-generated-content hosting websites which allowed for digital cultural texts – from print to music to movies to presentations – to be shared and disseminated freely online.

The producers and those who support them, are glorying in this legal battle where they have identified nodes in our networks, through which their copyright information was potentially being pirated. They are hoping that by ensuring this lack of digital mobility for their film, they will be able to entice audiences to come into the theatres and spend their money ‘legitimately’ on the film.

They are revelling in the fact that hundreds of thousands of users have been thwarted in their attempts at copyright infringement. What they haven’t realised is that they have justified their box-office greed by infringing on your and my rights to perform everyday activities online.

I am sure there is going to be a smart-aleck riding a moral high horse, who will applaud this move and point out to me about the rights of the producers to protect their content. There are many who support this high-censorship which not only betrays the power of the Music And Film Industry Association (MAFIA, to friends) to curb us of our rights, but also the completely depraved technology apparatus of the State which seems to have no understanding of how the internet actually works.

However, i want to shift the focus from the rights of these victimised producers and right-holders to the right of the individual who is actually the structural unit of cyberspaces. And I want to suggest to you that these right-holders, who incidentally, have such global value only because the Kolaveri Di song put them on the global meme map, have now infringed upon my right to access my content which I had put out to share.

There are open content videos on Vimeo that we have produced through years of research and a huge amount of financial investment, which are now no longer available to people who want to view them.

There are powerpoint presentations and publications on file sharing sites, seeded through torrents, which are now impossible to access for people in India. A large amount of our personal research and lectures, which we have shared for educational purposes, are now not even available for us to download.

And we are not alone in this. Hundreds of thousands of individuals, who have shared openly licensed material, have now lost the ability to access that information because one private company wanted to make sure it made its profits.

I am not going to write a manifesto for the digital world, but I do want to put it out there, this new cultural MAFIA, grant to me my rights which their actions have violated. For every site that they have included in their banned list, they have disrespected the open, collaborative licenses that enabled sharing of information whose value, usage and worth is more than their commercial pot boiler, which shall hopefully be forgotten before we realise it was released in the markets.

Their commercially driven arrogance has suddenly demanded that we pay a price for the shared information, and that price should be to those who hold rights over the movie.

And so I am writing this open call, for you to come and demand your right. If that movie producer has the right to protect his interests, you and I have the right to protect ours. I demand that for every site that I am not able to access, for public domain information that I am entitled to, they pay us a penalty.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/open-letter-to-kolaveri-di

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012

pranesh — 2013-11-12T14:13:04Z

There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era.

The Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012 has been passed by both Houses of Parliament, and will become law as soon as the President gives her assent and it is published in the Gazette of India. While we celebrate the passage of some progressive amendments to the Copyright Act, 1957 — including an excellent exception for persons with disabilities — we must keep in mind that there are some regressive amendments as well. In this blog post, I will try to highlight those provisions of the amendment that have not received much public attention (unlike the issue of lyricists’ and composers’ ‘right to royalty’).

Welcome Changes

Provisions for Persons with Disabilities

India now has amongst the most progressive exception for persons with disabilities, alongside countries like Chile. Under the amendments, sections 51(1)(zb) and 31B carve out exceptions and limitations for persons with disabilities. Earlier s.52(1)(zb) dealt only with formats that were “special designed only for the use of persons suffering from visual, aural, or other disabilities”. Thanks to a campaign mounted by disability rights groups and public interest groups such as CIS, it now covers “any accessible format”. Section 52(1)(zb) allows any person to facilitate access by persons with disabilities to copyrighted works without any payment of compensation to the copyright holder, and any organization working the benefit of persons with disabilities to do so as long as it is done on a non-profit basis and with reasonable steps being taken to prevent entry of reproductions of the copyrighted work into the mainstream. Even for-profit businesses are allowed to do so if they obtain a compulsory licence on a work-by-work basis, and pay the royalties fixed by the Copyright Board. The onerousness of this provision puts its utility into question, and this won’t disappear unless the expression “work” in s.31B is read to include a class of works.

Given that the Delhi High Court has — wrongly and per incuriam, since it did not refer to s.14(a)(ii) as it was amended in 1994 — held parallel importation to be barred by the Copyright Act, it was important for Parliament to clarify that the Copyright Act in fact follows international exhaustion. Without this, even if any person can facilitate access for persons with disabilities to copyrighted works, those works are restricted to those that are circulated in India. Given that not many books are converted into accessible formats in India (not to mention the costs of doing so), and given the much larger budgets for book conversion in the developed world, this is truly restrictive.

Extension of Fair Dealing to All Works

The law earlier dealt with fair dealing rights with regard to “literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works”. Now it covers all works (except software), in effect covering sound recordings and video as well. This will help make personal copies of songs and films, to make copies for research, to use film clips in classrooms, etc.

Creative Commons, Open Licensing Get a Boost

The little-known s.21 of the Copyright Act, which deals with the right of authors to relinquish copyright, has been amended. While earlier one could only relinquish parts of one’s copyright by submitting a form to the Registrar of Copyrights, now a simple public notice suffices. Additionally, s.30 of the Act, which required licences to be in writing and signed, now only requires it to be in writing. This puts Creative Commons, the GNU Public Licence, and other open licensing models, on a much surer footing in India.

Physical Libraries Should Celebrate, Perhaps Virtual Libraries Too

Everywhere that the word “hire” occurs (except s.51, curiously), the word “commercial rental” has been substituted. This has been done, seemingly, to bring India in conformance with the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). The welcome side-effect of this is that the legality of lending by non-profit public libraries has been clarified. The amendment states:

"2(1)(fa) “commercial rental” does not include the rental, lease or lending of a lawfully acquired copy of a computer programme, sound recording, visual recording or cinematograph film for non-profit purposes by a non-profit library or non-profit educational institution."

Even after this, the overwhelming majority of the ‘video lending libraries’ that you see in Indian cities and towns continue to remain illegal.

Another welcome provision is the amended s.52(1)(n), which now allows “non-commercial public libraries” to store an electronic copy of a work if it already has a physical copy of the work. However, given that this provision says that the storage shall be “for preservation”, it seems limited. However, libraries might be able to use this — in conjunction with the fact that under s.14 of the Copyright Act lending rights of authors is limited to “commercial rental” and s.51(b) only covers lending of “infringing copies” — to argue that they can legally scan and lend electronic copies of works in the same manner that they lend physical copies. Whether this argument would succeed is unclear. Thus, India has not boldly gone where the European Commission is treading with talks of a European Digital Library Project, or where scholars in the US are headed with the Digital Public Library of America. But we might have gone there quietly. Thus, this amendment might help foster an Indian Internet Archive, or help spread the idea of the Open Library in India.

On a final note, different phrases are used to refer to libraries in the amendment. In s.2(1)(fa), it talks about "non-profit library"; in s.52(1)(n) and (o), it refers to "non-commercial public library"; and in s.52(1)(zb), it talks of "library or archives", but s.52(1)(zb) also requires that the works be made available on a "non-profit basis". The differentiation, if any, that is sought to be drawn between these is unclear.

Limited Protection to Some Internet Intermediaries

There are two new provisions, s.52(1)(b) and 52(1)(c), which provide some degree of protection to 'transient or incidental' storage of a work or performance. Section 52(1)(b) allows for "the transient or incidental storage of a work or performance purely in the technical process of electronic transmission or communication to the public", hence applying primarily to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), VPN providers, etc. Section 52(1)(c) allows for "transient or incidental storage of a work or performance for the purpose of providing electronic links, access or integration, where such links, access or integration has not been expressly prohibited by the right holder, unless the person responsible is aware or has reasonable grounds for believing that such storage is of an infringing copy". This seems to make it applicable primarily to search engines, with other kinds of online services being covered or not covered depending on one’s interpretation of the word 'incidental'.

Compulsory Licensing Now Applies to Foreign Works Also

Sections 31 ("compulsory licence in works withheld from public") and 31A ("compulsory licence in unpublished Indian works") used to apply to Indian works. Now they apply to all works, whether Indian or not (and now s.31A is about "compulsory licence in unpublished or published works", mainly orphan works). This is a welcome amendment, making foreign works capable of being licensed compulsorily in case it is published elsewhere but withheld in India. Given how onerous our compulsory licensing sections are, especially sections 32 and 32A (which deal with translations, and with literary, scientific or artistic works), it is not a surprise that they have not been used even once. However, given the modifications to s.31 and s.31A, we might just see those starting to be used by publishers, and not just radio broadcasters.

Worrisome Changes

Term of Copyright for Photographs Nearly Doubled

The term of copyright for photographs has now gone from sixty years from publication to sixty years from the death of the photographer. This would mean that copyright in a photograph clicked today (2012) by a 20 year old who dies at the 80 will only expire on January 1, 2133. This applies not only to artistic photographs, to all photographs because copyright is an opt-out system, not an opt-in system. Quite obviously, most photoshopping is illegal under copyright law.

This has two problems. First, there was no case made out for why this term needed to be increased. No socio-economic report was commissioned on the effects of such a term increase. This clause was not even examined by the Parliamentary Standing Committee. While the WCT requires a ‘life + 50′ years term for photographs, we are not signatories to the WCT, and hence have no obligation to enforce this. We are signatories to the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement, which require a copyright term of 25 years for photographs. Instead, we have gone even above the WCT requirement and provide a life + 60 years term.

The second problem is that it is easier to say when a photograph was published than to say who the photographer was and when that photographer died. Even when you are the subject of a photograph, the copyright in the photograph belongs to the photographer. Unless a photograph was made under commission or the photographer assigned copyright to you, you do not own the copyright in the photographs. (Thanks to Bipin Aspatwar, for pointing out a mistake in an earlier version, with "employment" and "commission" being treated differently.) This will most definitely harm projects like Wikipedia, and other projects that aim at archiving and making historical photographs available publicly, since it is difficult to say whether the copyright in a photograph still persists.

Cover Versions Made More Difficult: Kolaveri Di Singers Remain Criminals

The present amendments have brought about the following changes, which make it more difficult to produce cover versions:

Time period after which a cover version can be made has increased from 2 years to 5 years.
Requirement of same medium as the original. So if the original is on a cassette, the cover cannot be released on a CD.
Payment has to be made in advance, and for a minimum of 50000 copies. This can be lowered by Copyright Board having regard to unpopular dialects.
While earlier it was prohibited to mislead the public (i.e., pretend the cover was the original, or endorsed by the original artists), now cover versions are not allowed to "contain the name or depict in any way any performer of an earlier sound recording of the same work or any cinematograph film in which such sound recording was incorporated".
All cover versions must state that they are cover versions.
No alterations are allowed from the original song, and alteration is qualified as ‘alteration in the literary or musical work’. So no imaginative covers in which the lyrics are changed or in which the music is reworked are allowed without the copyright owners’ permission. Only note-for-note and word-for-word covers are allowed.
Alterations were allowed if they were "reasonably necessary for the adaptation of the work" now they are only allowed if it is "technically necessary for the purpose of making of the sound recording".

This ignores present-day realities. Kolaveri Di was covered numerous times without permission, and each one of those illegal acts helped spread its popularity. The singers and producers of those unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars. Film producers and music companies want both the audience reach that comes from less stringent copyright laws (and things like cover versions), as well as the ability to prosecute that same behaviour at will. It is indeed ironic that T-Series, the company that broke HMV’s stranglehold over the Indian recording market thanks to cover versions, is itself one of the main movers behind ever-more stringent copyright laws.

Digital Locks Now Provided Legal Protection Without Accountability

As I have covered the issue of Technological Protection Measures (TPM) and Rights Management Information (RMI), which are ‘digital locks’ also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), in great detail earlier, I won’t repeat the arguments at length. Very briefly:

It is unclear that anyone has been demanding the grant of legal protection to DRMs in India, and We have no obligation under any international treaties to do so. It is not clear how DRM will help authors and artists, but it is clear how it will harm users.
While the TPM and RMI provisions are much more balanced than the equivalent provisions in laws like the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMC), that isn’t saying much. Importantly, while users are given certain rights to break the digital locks, they are helpless if they aren’t also provided the technological means of doing so. Simply put: music and movie companies have rights to place digital locks, and under some limited circumstances users have the right to break them. But if the locks are difficult to break, the users have no choice but to live with the lock, despite having a legal right.

Removal of Parallel Importation

In past blog posts I have covered why allowing parallel imports makes sense in India. And as explained above, the Delhi High Court acted per incuriam when holding that the Copyright Act does not allow parallel importation. The Copyright Act only prohibits import of infringing copies of a work, and a copy of a book that has been legally sold in a foreign country is not an “infringing copy”. The government was set to introduce a provision making it clear that parallel importation was allowed. The Parliamentary Standing Committee heard objections to this proposal from a foreign publishers’ association, but decided to recommend the retention of the clause. Still, due to pressure from a few publishing companies whose business relies on monopolies over importation of works into India, the government has decided to delete the provision. However, thankfully, the HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, has assured both houses of Parliament that he will move a further amendment if an NCAER report he has commissioned (which will be out by August or September) recommends the introduction of parallel imports.

Expansion of Moral Rights Without Safeguards

Changes have been made to author’s moral rights (and performer’s moral rights have been introduced) but these have been made without adequate safeguards. The changes might allow the legal heir of an author, artist, etc., to object to ‘distortion, mutilation, modification, or other act’ of her ancestors work even when the ancestor might not have. By this amendment, this right continues in perpetuity, even after the original creator dies and even after the work enters into the public domain. It seems Indian policymakers had not heard of Stephen Joyce, the grandson of James Joyce, who has “brought numerous lawsuits or threats of legal action against scholars, biographers and artists attempting to quote from Joyce’s literary work or personal correspondence”. Quoting from his Wikipedia page:

In 2004, Stephen threatened legal action against the Irish government when the Rejoyce Dublin 2004 festival proposed public reading of excerpts of Ulysses on Bloomsday. In 1988 Stephen Joyce burnt a collection of letters written by Lucia Joyce, his aunt. In 1989 he forced Brenda Maddox to delete a postscript concerning Lucia from her biography Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom. After 1995 Stephen announced no permissions would be granted to quote from his grandfather’s work. Libraries holding letters by Joyce were unable to show them without permission. Versions of his work online were disallowed. Stephen claimed to be protecting his grandfather’s and families reputation, but would sometimes grant permission to use material in exchange for fees that were often "extortionate".

Because in countries like the UK and Canada the works of James Joyce are now in the public domain, Stephen Joyce can no longer restrict apply such conditions. However now, in India, despite James Joyce’s works being in the public domain, Stephen Joyce’s indefensible demands may well carry legal weight.

Backdoor Censorship

As noted above, the provision that safeguard Internet intermediaries (like search engines) is very limited. However, that provision has an extensive removal provision:

Provided that if the person responsible for the storage of the copy has received a written complaint from the owner of copyright in the work, complaining that such transient or incidental storage is an infringement, such person responsible for the storage shall refrain from facilitating such access for a period of twenty-one days or till he receives an order from the competent court refraining from facilitating access and in case no such order is received before the expiry of such period of twenty-one days, he may continue to provide the facility of such access;

There are two things to be noted here. First, that without proof (or negative consequences for false complaints) the service provider is mandated to prevent access to the copy for 21 day. Second, after the elapsing of 21 days, the service provider may 'put back' the content, but is not mandated to do so. This would allow people to file multiple frivolous complaints against any kind of material, even falsely (since there is no penalty for false compalaints), and keep some material permanently censored.

Missed Opportunities

Fair Dealing Guidelines, Criminal Provisions, Government Works, and Other Missed Opportunities

The following important changes should have been made by the government, but haven’t. While on some issues the Standing Committee has gone beyond the proposed amendments, it has not touched upon any of the following, which we believe are very important changes that are required to be made.

Criminal provisions: Our law still criminalises individual, non-commercial copyright infringement. This has now been extended to the proposal for circumvention of Technological Protection Measures and removal of Rights Management Information also.
Fair dealing guidelines: We would benefit greatly if, apart from the specific exceptions provided for in the Act, more general guidelines were also provided as to what do not constitute infringement. This would not take away from the existing exceptions, but would act as a more general framework for those cases which are not covered by the specific exceptions.
Government works: Taxpayers are still not free to use works that were paid for by them. This goes against the direction that India has elected to march towards with the Right to Information Act. A simple amendment of s.52(1)(q) would suffice. The amended subsection could simply allow for “the reproduction, communication to the public, or publication of any government work” as being non-infringing uses.
Copyright terms: The duration of all copyrights are above the minimum required by our international obligations, thus decreasing the public domain which is crucial for all scientific and cultural progress.
Educational exceptions: The exceptions for education still do not fully embrace distance and digital education.
Communication to the public: No clear definition is given of what constitute a ‘public’, and no distinction is drawn between commercial and non-commercial ‘public’ communication.
Internet intermediaries: More protections are required to be granted to Internet intermediaries to ensure that non-market based peer-production projects such as Wikipedia, and other forms of social media and grassroots innovation are not stifled. Importantly, after the terrible judgment passed by Justice Manmohan Singh of the Delhi High Court in the Super Cassettes v. Myspace case, any website hosting user-generated content is vulnerable to payment of hefty damages even if it removes content speedily on the basis of complaints.

Amendments Not Examined

For the sake of brevity, I have not examined the major changes that have been made with regard to copyright societies, lyricists and composers, and statutory licensing for broadcasters, all of which have received considerable attention by copyright experts elsewhere, nor have I examined many minor amendments.

A Note on the Parliamentary Process

Much of the discussions around the Copyright Act have been around the rights of composers and lyricists vis-à-vis producers. As this has been covered elsewhere, I won’t comment much on it, other than to say that it is quite unfortunate that the trees are lost for the forest. It is indeed a good thing that lyricists and composers are being provided additional protection against producers who are usually in a more advantageous bargaining position. This fact came out well in both houses of Parliament during the debate on the Copyright Bill.

However, the mechanism of providing this protection — by preventing assignment of “the right to receive royalties”, though the “right to receive royalties” is never mentioned as a separate right anywhere else in the Copyright Act — was not critically examined by any of the MPs who spoke. What about the unintended consequences of such an amendment? Might this not lead to new contracts where instead of lump-sums, lyricists and music composers might instead be asked to bear the risk of not earning anything at all unless the film is profitable? What about a situation where a producer asks a lyricist to first assign all rights (including royalty rights) to her heirs and then enters into a contract with those heirs? The law, unfortunately at times, revolves around words used by the legislature and not just the intent of the legislature. While one cannot predict which way the amendment will go, one would have expected better discussions around this in Parliament.

Much of the discussion (in both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha) was rhetoric about the wonders of famous Indian songwriters and music composers and the abject penury in which some not-so-famous ones live, and there was very little discussion about the actual merits of the content of the Bill in terms of how this problem will be overcome. A few MPs did deal with issues of substance. Some asked the HRD Minister tough questions about the Statement of Objects and Reasons noting that amendments have been brought about to comply with the WCT and WPPT which were “adopted … by consensus”, even though this is false as India is not a signatory to the WCT and WPPT. MP P. Rajeeve further raised the issue of parallel imports and that of there being no public demand for including TPM in the Act, but that being a reaction to the US’s flawed Special 301 reports. Many, however, spoke about issues such as the non-award of the Bharat Ratna to Bhupen Hazarika, about the need to tackle plagiarism, and how the real wealth of a country is not material wealth but intellectual wealth.

This preponderance of rhetoric over content is not new when it comes to copyright policy in India. In 1991, when an amendment was presented to increase term of copyright in all works by ten years (from expiring 50 years from the author’s death to 60 years post-mortem), the vast majority of the Parliamentarians who stood up to speak on the issue waxed eloquent about the greatness of Rabindranath Tagore (whose works were about to lapse into the public domain), and how we must protect his works. Little did they reflect that extending copyright — for all works, whether by Tagore or not — will not help ‘protect’ the great Bengali artist, but would only make his (and all) works costlier for 10 additional years. Good-quality and cheaper editions of Tagore’s works are more easily available post-2001 (when his copyright finally lapsed) than before, since companies like Rupa could produce cheap editions without seeking a licence from Visva Bharati. And last I checked Tagore’s works have not been sullied by them having passed into the public domain in 2001.

Further, one could find outright mistakes in the assertions of Parliamentarians. In both Houses, DMK MPs raised objections with regard to parallel importation being allowed in the Bill — only in the version of the Bill they were debating, parallel importation was not being allowed. One MP stated that “statutory licensing provisions like these are not found anywhere else in the world”. This is incorrect, given that there are extensive statutory licensing provision in countries like the United States, covering a variety of situations, from transmission of sound recordings over Internet radio to secondary transmission of the over-the-air programming.

Unfortunately, though that MP did not raise this issue, there is a larger problem that underlies copyright policymaking in India, and that is the fact that there is no impartial evidence gathered and no proper studies that are done before making of policies. We have no equivalent of the Hargreaves Report or the Gowers Report, or the studies by the Productivity Council in Australia or the New Zealand government study of parallel importation.

There was no economic analysis conducted of the effect of the increase in copyright term for photographs. We have evidence from elsewhere that copyright terms are already too long, and all increases in term are what economists refer to as deadweight losses. There is no justification whatsoever for increasing term of copyright for photographs, since India is not even a signatory to the WCT (which requires this term increase). In fact, we have lost precious negotiation space internationally since in bilateral trade agreements we have been asked to bring our laws in compliance with the WCT, and we have asked for other conditions in return. By unilaterally bringing ourselves in compliance with WCT, we have lost important bargaining power.

Users and Smaller Creators Left Out of Discussions

Thankfully, the Parliamentary Standing Committee went into these minutiae in greater detail. Though, as I have noted elsewhere, the Parliamentary Standing Committee did not invite any non-industry groups for deposition before it, other than the disability rights groups which had campaigned really hard. So while changes that would affect libraries were included, not a single librarian was called by the Standing Committee. Despite comments having been submitted to the Standing Committee on behalf of 22 civil society organizations, none of those organizations were asked to depose. Importantly, non-industry users of copyrighted materials — consumers, historians, teachers, students, documentary film-makers, RTI activists, independent publishers, and people like you and I — are not seen as legitimate interested parties in the copyright debate. This is amply clear from the the fact that only one MP each in the two houses of Parliament raised the issue of users’ rights at all.

Concluding Thoughts

What stands out most from this process of amendment of the copyright law, which has been going on since 2006, is how out-of-touch the law is with current cultural practices. Most instances of photoshopping are illegal. Goodbye Lolcats. Cover versions (for which payments have to be made) have to wait for five years. Goodbye Kolaveri Di. Do you own the jokes you e-mail to others, and have you taken licences for quoting older e-mails in your replies? Goodbye e-mail. The strict laws of copyright, with a limited set of exceptions, just do not fit the digital era where everything digital transaction results in a bytes being copied. We need to take a much more thoughtful approach to rationalizing copyright: introduction of general fair dealing guidelines, reduction of copyright term, decriminalization of non-commercial infringement, and other such measures. If we don’t take such measures soon, we will all have to be prepared to be treated as criminals for all our lives. Breaking copyright law shouldn’t be as easy as breathing, yet thanks to outdated laws, it is.

This was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-copyright-amendment-bill-2012

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

praskrishna — 2012-09-11T14:54:08Z

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 200,000 to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) over a period of two years (2011-2013) to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India.

The project involves the following key activities:

Knowledge repository: Creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience.
Capacity building: organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues.
Dissemination: using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Background

Access to telecommunications facilities and services is a key enabler of socio-economic development of countries in the Information Society. The rapid proliferation of internet and mobile phones as a medium of administration and governance, commerce, education, social networking and communication, has made the development of telecommunications infrastructure and policies a high priority for governments worldwide.

India’s telecommunications sector has been growing at a phenomenal rate of 45 per cent over the past few years and according to Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has become the world’s third largest network[1] with a tele-density of 65 per cent, 785 million telephone connections (750 million mobile and 35 million fixed landline connections), and 10 million broadband subscribers as of December 2010. The growth of mobile phones has surpassed fixed line networks, making the mobile the primary means of communication.

However, despite the rapid growth and expansion of telecommunications infrastructure in India, there still remains an underserved need for access and availability of services and facilities to persons living in rural and remote areas, poor persons, disabled, illiterate and elderly persons. The rural tele density remains low at 30 per cent and the number of broadband connections is also comparatively quite low. In addition to this, there is also an overall lack of public awareness about legislative and regulatory issues, market trends, international debates and research in this area, which is essential to ensuring that regulatory and market developments promote consumer choice and interests. The imperative to educate and build capacity is one which needs to be addressed both within India and globally.

Problem Statement

The rapid growth in telecommunications infrastructure and services in India over the past decade has not been complemented by correspondingly desirable levels of public awareness and participation. The lacuna in awareness about regulation, international trends and research among stakeholders has given way to minimal representation of public and consumer groups in the policy formulation and regulation process.

There are very few courses on telecommunications which are offered online and in Indian universities and institutions. These deal primarily with technical aspects of telecommunications and do not adequately touch upon other important elements such as regulations and policies or international best practices.[2]

There is a dire need for a dedicated resource focusing on informing and training people on a wide range of issues in the telecommunications sector, as well as bringing transparency to current national developments in policy and project implementation. Such a resource is important to ensure that public interest is protected and critical national resources are deployed in an efficient, just and transparent manner. Similar initiatives such as the Link Centre offer limited support to persons living in India since they do not focus on India.

Project Description

CIS proposes to build awareness and capacity on telecom issues for a multi-stakeholder audience comprising researchers and academicians, policy makers and regulators, consumer and civil society organisations, education and library institutions and lay persons through the creation of a dedicated web based resource focusing on knowledge dissemination. This resource will comprise a repository containing articles and sample course modules on telecommunications issues and policies It will be built on an open platform and all content will be openly licensed under a creative commons license which will be made available free of charge to the users. The content will be on par with international standards and will undergo constant review and updates to keep abreast of current trends and debates. The Moodle learning management system will be used to manage the content.

Project Goals and Activities

The goals and activities of this project are given below:

Knowledge Repository

Goal: To create an on line repository of telecommunications related information and learning materials targeted at a multi stakeholder audience.
Activities:

Create and maintain open educational resources[3] on telecommunications that facilitates self directed and collaborative learning in a Multi user environment.
Provide information in a variety of audio, video, text and alternate accessible formats on telecommunications related topics,
Provide a single source for all information and documentation related to policy environment for telecommunications in India

Capacity Building

Goal: To raise levels of expertise and provide a set of comprehensive skills to interested students, bureaucrats, media personnel and members of civil society, so that they can understand, engage with and influence the development of telecommunications in India.

Activities:

Organise 6 workshops over two years in different locations to test the open education resources and solicit feedback. These will be conducted by the CIS project team and some external resource persons.
Organise 10 public talks by subject experts at the CIS office in Bangalore and different venues around India, which will be podcast live from the CIS web site. These may be more topical and relevant to current developments.

Dissemination

Goal:

To ensure the mainstreaming and sustainability of the learning materials created by CIS by partnering with academia;
To make the telecom policy process in India more scrutable to civil society and politicians; and
To create awareness amongst the Indian Diaspora and Internet users in India.

Activities:

To work with academia to develop teaching modules from the content available in the repository. These modules could be in the form of text or video lectures, podcasts, etc.
To disseminate content in the form of easy to read FAQs, posters, Primers, cheat sheets, DVDs, audio visual materials and other accessible formats to civil society organisations and policy makers.
To execute a comprehensive social media strategy for disseminating information and increasing public engagement. These could include:

Using social networking platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, My Space etc to infiltrate existing on line communities using carefully crafted tit bits from the repository to increase traffic.
Using You Tube, Blip TV etc for video uploads, web casts and podcasts.
Engaging with existing on line communities by contributing to ongoing and new discussions on mailing lists and blogs.
Building on a regular basis a data base of opinion and thought leaders on line and off line using a constituent relationship management software and using mass personalised e mail to encourage them to popularise our content repository through their communication channels.

Overall project activities:
Identify other senior experts and consultants for the project
Set up server infrastructure and the Moodle Learning Management System and training the project team to use it.
Organise six workshops and 10 public talks with live podcasts over two years to disseminate information on these topics.

Plan and Measurable Progress Indicators

For the purpose of measuring progress, the project can be divided into four phases of six months duration. The total number of learning materials to be created is 230 over two years. These are divided into 150 text lessons (Primers, FAQs, cheat sheets and posters) and 72 videos. The target for each phase will be to create approx 37 texts and 18 videos. Based on that, the project deliverables are as follows:

Phase I

Activities:

Hiring the core team, consultants and technology person to set up and manage the system.
Setting up the Moodle Learning Management System and training the team in using it. Mapping out topics for content generation and allocating work.

Milestones:

Complete the hiring of all project personnel.
Complete the Moodle Learning Management system set up and training.
Completion of 37 text lessons and 18 videos.

4. Organised one workshop and two public lectures to get feedback on the completed modules.
5. Awareness raising and inviting comments on completed modules through social media and mailing lists.

Phase II

Activities:

All relevant policies, legislations, rules and important case law will be mirrored on the web site
Another 38 text lessons and 18 videos will be added to the repository.
The next 2 Workshops and 3 public lectures will be conducted to get feedback on the learning materials and build awareness.
Awareness building, call for comments and community engagement activities will continue through social media, mailing lists and the CIS news letter

Milestones:

Half of the course content (75 text lessons and 36 videos) created and available on site.
Policy and regulatory information available on site.
Engagement with communities on social networking platforms, mailing lists and blogs continues.
A total of 3 Workshops and 5 public lectures conducted.
Engagement with academia for creating course content begins.

Phase III

Activities:

Content generation, capacity building and dissemination activities continue.

Milestones:

75 per cent of the content (112 text lessons and 54 videos) will be up on the web site.
4 workshops and 8 public lectures conducted.
Social media outreach continues with regular traffic on the web site.
Engagement with academia to create course modules continues.

Phase IV

Activities:

All the course modules will be completed and events conducted. A lot of effort will be taken for Dissemination and outreach.

Milestones:

All the content (150 text lessons and 72 videos) will be up on the web site.
All relevant policies, rules and legislations will be on line.
Data bases of course participants, media and other persons who were part of the course outreach will be prepared.
All six workshops and ten public lectures conducted.

CIS interest in the project:

CIS is committed to ensuring public access and participation in the information society through the internet. We work towards creating a policy environment which promotes consumer interests by facilitating unhindered access to web sites, digital content and technologies and fosters creation of networks for sharing knowledge and culture.

Since our engagement with telecommunications issues has been at a very nascent level, we would like to build expertise in this area through this project.

Policy

Regularly provide feedback and comments to proposals and notifications which are issued by the Department of Telecommunications and TRAI,[4] especially with respect to spectrum allocation.
We recently sent some notes to the Government of India in December 2010/January 2011: facts, assessments and suggestions and in February, we expect to meet with a Member, Planning Commission (Arun Maira) to advocate coordinated scenario.
We have initiated the Universal Service Obligation Fund of India to fund several projects for persons with disabilities. To that end, we created a framework document which is available on the USOF website.[5] these projects may come to approximately 1 million dollars.
Providing recommendations on accessibility in telecommunications for persons with disabilities and elderly persons to be included in the New Telecom Policy which is to come out in March 2011.

The International Telecommunications Union

We were contracted by the ITU to prepare a paper on Mobile best practices for Persons with Disabilities in December 2010. The report is complete and we are awaiting feedback from the ITU for finalisation
Edited and published a print version of the handbook on e-accessibility for persons with disabilities, which was sent to over 200 regulators and Ministries of ICT around the world.
Co-organised an event on Enabling Access to Education for Persons with Disabilities (Edict 2010) with ITU and other UN agencies, the Department of IT and civil society organisations in October 2010.
Presently working on a global paper with the co-operation of ITU and G3ict which will look at how the Universal Service Funds of countries are being utilised to fund projects to promote access for the disabled.

Media Intervention

Columns by Shyam Ponappa

Spectrum Auctions: 'Jhatka' or 'Halal'?, Business Standard, February 3, 2011
The Policy Langurs, Business Standard, January 6, 2011
Take 'Model T' for Telecom, Business Standard, December 2, 2010
Ideology & ICT Policies, Business Standard, November 6, 2010
Broad-basing Broadband, Business Standard, October 7, 2010
What a Highway Can Do, Business Standard, September 2, 2010
'Containing Inflation' - A Myth, Business Standard, August 7, 2010
Catching up on Broadband, Business Standard, July 1, 2010
India's Sorry Spectrum Story, Business Standard, June 3, 2010
China Club instead of Bombay Club?, Business Standard, May 13, 2010
The Right Ring Tone, Business Standard, April 1, 2010
Understanding Spectrum, Business Standard, March 4, 2010
Alternative Scenarios, Business Standard, February 4, 2010
Plan and Execute for Results, Business Standard, January 10, 210
Developments in Spectrum Sharing, Business Standard, December 3, 2009
Managing Spectrum, Business Standard, November 5, 2009

Column by Nishant Shah

3G Life, Indian Express, November 14, 2010

Association for Progressive Communication (APC)

APC Open Spectrum for Development India Case Study by Shyam Ponappa, November 2010. The report covers chapters on Spectrum Policy Regulatory Environment, the Spectrum Management Process, Spectrum Management – The Future, Access to Unlicensed/License-Exempt Spectrum, Exploiting Wireless, National Broadband Strategy, International Coordination, etc.
APC Open Spectrum for Development India Case Study by Shyam Ponappa, November 2010.
Article on spectrum policy based on APC’s Open Spectrum Project (by APC in monthly news magazine: ‘India's untapped potential: Are a billion people losing out because of spectrum?’ http://bit.ly/fFQzXj

Open Society Institute

A report on spectrum in India is to be prepared by Robert Horvitz as part of a project of Open Spectrum Foundation in collaboration with the Open Society Institute – Information Programme.
Presently preparing a report on digital media and technology in India, which is part of a larger global survey on Mapping Digital Media in collaboration with Jamia Milla Islamia - Centre Culture and Media Governance?

Academic Interventions

Organised a lecture tour for telecom expert Sagie Chetti in collaboration with the Link Centre in 2009 to share information in various universities and institutions around the country on the landscape of the telecommunications sector in South Africa. Presentations were held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai and IIT, Mumbai, the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) and Jamia Millia Islamia University – all based in Delhi. The visit concluded with meetings with officials from the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

List of Topics for the Knowledge Repository

Module 1: Introduction to Telecommunications
Forms of Telecommunication

Data
Telephony
Unit 1: Fixed line telephone (Text) - 1
Unit 2: Wireless Communication: Mobiles (Text + Video)
Unit 3: Wireless Communication: PDAs and Stand alone devices (Text ) - 1
Video
Unit 1: Different forms of Video Communication (Text + Video)
Telephony networks
Unit 1: Fixed Networks and their standards (Text) – 1 + Unit 2: Mobile (Text) – 1 + 1 FAQ
Unit 3: Cable TV Networks/ Converged Networks (Text) – 1 + 1

Total = 9 E + 4 V = 13

Module 2: Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies

Passive Infrastructure
Active Infrastructure
Unit 1: Access – 1 +1 FAQ
Unit 2: Core - 1
Unit 3: Transport – 1 + 1
Unit 4: Network Management – 1 + 1
Transmission Technology (Text)
Unit 1: Optical Fibre - 1
Unit 2: Microwaves - 1
Unit 3: Satellites - 1
Technology
Unit 1: Fundamental Concepts and changes - 1
Unit 2: Digitalization (Text ) – 1 + 1
Unit 3: Compression (Text) – 1 + 1
Unit 4:Multiplexing and Modulation (Text) – 1 + 1
Unit 4:Packetization (Text) - 1
Customer Premises Devices
Unit 1: Different kinds of handsets available in India (Text) - 1
Unit 2: Various features in the handsets (Text) – 1 + 1FAQ + 1
Unit 3: Technology (Text) – 1 + 1
Unit 4: Standards (Text) - 1
Unit 5: Future Technology (Text) - 1
Technology for Computers Communication:Wifi,WiMax, etc
Unit 1: Internet (Protocols, Security, VoIP etc) - 1
Unit 1: Internet Protocols(Text) - 1
Unit 2: Design Principles(Text) - 1
Unit 3: QoS and Security(Text+ Audio)
Unit 4: Mobility and Nomdicity(Text) - 1
Unit 5: IPv6 (Text) - 1
Unit 6: Standards (Text) - 1
Technology for Mobiles: GSM, CDMA, GPRS etc
Unit 1: Evolution - 1 + 1Overview
Unit1: First Generation (Text)- 1
Unit 2: Second Generation (Text) - 1
Unit 3: 2.5 G – GPRS and EDGE (Text) - 1
Unit 4: Third Generation (Text) – 1 + 1FAQ
Unit 5: Standards (Text) - 1
Services
Unit1: Voice Service (Text) – 1 + 1Overview
Unit 2: Location based service (Text) - 1
Unit 3: Multimedia Service (Text) - 1
Unit 4: Corporate Service (Text) - 1
Unit 5: Mobile Internet (Text + Video) – 1+1
Unit 6: Mobi TV (Text + video) – 1+1
Unit 7: Service Providers (Text) – 1 + 1FAQ
Unit 8: Customer care services (Text) - 1
Future Technology(4G, LTE)
Unit 1: Software Defined Radio (Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: Cognitive Radio (Text) – 1 + 1
Unit 3: 4G and LTE (Text) – 1+1
Convergence
Unit 1: Telecom-Mobile Broadcast Convergence (Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: Fixed-Mobile Convergence (Text) – 1+1
Unit 3: Converged services – VOIP and IPTV(Text+ Video) – 1+1
NGN [Next Generation Networks]
Unit 1: Next Generation Core Networks (NGCN) (Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: Next Generation Access Networks (NGAN) Fixed (Text) – 1+1
Unit 3: Next Generation Access Networks (NGAN) Wireless (Text) – 1+1

Total = 30 E+ 6FAQs + 4PR+ 6 CS + 22 V + 4 PO = 72
46 T + 22V + 4PO

Module 3: Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom

Overview of the Indian regulatory environment and relevant legislations
Unit 1: The National Telecom Policies of 1994 and 1999 (includes amendments and sequels) (Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: Cable TV Act (Text) – 1+1
Unit 3: Indian Telegraph Act 1885 (Text) – 1+1
Unit 4: Indian Telegraph Act Amendment Act of 2003(Text) – 1+1
Unit 5: The Indian Wireless Act 1993(Text) – 1+1
Unit 6: TRAI Act of 1995, TRAI Act of 1997, TRAI Amendment Act of 2000(Text) – 1+1
Unit 7: Other relevant legislations and policies - The Indian Copyright Act 1957, privacy and data security, National Electronic Accessibility Policy, The Information Technology Act 2000, Right to Information Act 2005, Consumer Protection Act 1986, Policy on Open standards and Biometric standards, Technical standards for interoperability of E-governance infrastructure, the draft Electronic Service Delivery Bill etc. (Text) – 1+2FAQs
Government Bodies responsible for Telecommunications in India
DOT- its powers and responsibilities
Unit 1: Government Policy and Guidelines (Text) - 1
Unit 2: Regulations (Text) - 1
TRAI
Unit 1: Tariffs (Text) – 1 FAQ
Unit 2: Revenue Sharing(Text, FAQs) – 1 + 1FAQ
Unit 3: Issuance of Licenses (all kinds of licenses including VSAT) (Text) - 1
Criterion to be fulfilled(Text) – 1FAQ + 1
Terms and conditions for every license type. (Text) - 1
Unit 4: Consultation Papers: Impact of consultation papers on policies, regulations and recommendations(Text) – 1FAQ + 1
Unit 5 Mobile Number Portability(Text, FAQs) - 1
Unit 6 NDNC (Text, Faqs) - 2
Unit 7 Policy recommendations (Text) – 1+1
TDSAT
Important Judgements (Text) - 2
Centre for Excellence in Telecom Technology and Management (includes all the centres under this) (CETTM) (Text) - 1
Other Agencies
TCIL
Unit 1: Various Projects (Concentrate on SWAN) (Text) - 1
Unit 2: Role of TCIL in India (Text, FAQs) - 1
BSNL and MTNL (phone, internet and broadband, mobile phones etc)(Text) – 1+1
Services
Unit 1: Basic Telecom Services - 1
Unit 2 Captive user services (Text) – 1
Unit 3: Commercial User Services (Text) – 1
Spectrum Management
Unit 1: Auctioning and allocating process for all kinds of spectrum- 1FAQ+1
Unit 2: The initial process of auctioning (Text) – 1
Unit 3: How are the bidders selected (Text, faqs) - 1
Unit 4: Criterion for allocation (Text) - 1
Unit 5: Time taken to allocate (Text) - 1
Unit 6: Selection of band (Text) - 1
Unit 7: Interference issues (Text) - 1
Unit 8: Spectrum Refarming (Text – 1
Unit 9: Spectrum Reallocation (Text,faqs) – 1FAQ + 1
National Frequency Allocation Plan (Text) - 1
Numbering(Text)
Objectives of numbering - 1
Regulatory framework for numbering - 1
Interconnection issues (Text) - 1
Digital Dividend (Text) – 1+1FAQ

Total = 26 E +13 V +8 FAQ +3 CS+ 3 PR
40 Text+ 13 Videos= 53

Module 4: Telecommunication and the Market

Unit 1: Licensing framework for Telecom including a historical overview – 1

Unit 1: Investment and Ownership in Telecoms – 1+1
6.1.1 Market Structure levels (Text)
Kinds of Competitions (Text) - 1
Unit 1: Revenue Generation (Text) - 1
Unit 1: Taxes and other charges (Text) – 1
Unit 1: SWOT Analysis of current regime – 1+1

6 Text+ 2 Videos + 1 Poster

Module 5: Universal Access and Accessibility

Background of Universal Service regulation - 1

Universal Service Obligation Fund – 1FAQ + 1
Need for rural and remote access - 1+1
Need for accessibility(Text) - 1
Large demographic group - persons with disabilities, elderly persons and illiterate persons
Legal imperative: equality and non discrimination -1
Good business opportunity -1 +1
Accessibility key concepts and requirements(Text)
Universal design – 1+1Overview
Web accessibility – 1+1
Accessibility in services – 1+1
Organizations focusing on providing accessibility to rural areas
TeNet -1+1

Total = 9E+7V+1 FAQ+1 CS+1 PO= 19
11 Text+ 1 Poster + 7 videos

Module 6: The International Telecommunications Union and other International Bodies

ITU
ITU sectors- ITU-R, ITU-T, ITU-D and ITU Telecom. – 2+1
Regulation - 1
Radio spectrum sharing – 1FAQ+1
Standards setting - 1
WSIS
Other international agencies
South Asia Association of Regional Co-operation(SAARC) - 2+1
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
Commonwealth Telecom Organisation (CTO)
International Telecommunication Satellite Organisation (UTSO)
International Mobile Satellite Organisation (IMSO)
Asia-Pacific Satellite Communication Council (APSCC)
International instruments and bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements - 2
Treaty on Broadcasting and the proposed instruments on limitations and exceptions which are being negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organisation. (Text)
International best practices for policy (Text) –2

8 E+ 3V+1 FAQ+ 1 CS + 2 PR= 15
12 Text + 3 Videos

Module 7: Broadcasting

Radio
Types of radio broadcasting in India – 1+ 2
Unit 1 AIR (Text)
Unit 2 Private Fms which include both commercial radio, campus radio and community radios (Text) – 1+3
Television
Unit 1: Cable TV (Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: IP TV (Text,Faqs) – 1+1
Unit 3: Mobile TV(Text, Faqs) – 1+1
Unit 4: DTH(Text, Faqs) – 1+1
Unit 5: Terrestrial TV(Text) – 1+1
Unit 6: Standards(Text) - 1
Associations regulating broadcasting in India(Text) – 1

Total= 7 E+ 8V+1 FAQ+1CS=17

9 text+ 8 Video

Module 8: Emerging Topics

Broadband Wireless Access
Unit 1: Standards(Text) – 1+1
Unit 2: Technology(Text) – 1+1
IPTV (Text, FAQs) –1FAQ+1
Mobile TV (Text, FAQs) – 1FAQ+1
Fibre to the home (FTTH) – 1+1
Broadband over power-lines – 1+1
Mesh networking – 1+1
FEMTO-Cell and Cable TV – 2+1
Relevant regulations and legal issues – 2+1

Total= 7E+9V+2 FAQ+2CS+2 PO= 22

11 Text +2 Posters +9 Videos

Module 9: Way Forward

Policy Reform – 1+1
Licensing Reform – 1+1FAQ
Regulation Reform – 1+1
Market Place Reform – 1+1

6 Text + 4 Videos

Grand total = 150 Text + 8 Posters + 72 Videos = 230 Lessons

Work Plan for 3 people working on the project

No. of videos in 6 months	18	6 per person
No. of articles in 6 months	26-27	9 per person
No. of videos in 1 year	36	12 per person
No. of articles in 1 year	52-54	18 per person
No. of videos in 2 years	72	24 per person
No. of articles in 2 years	105	35 per person

List of Potential Partners

Centre for Excellence in Telecom Technology and Management (CETTM), Mumbai
Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), Bangalore and Kolkatta
ISRO, Bangalore
National Knowledge Network, New Delhi ( Programme implementation unit)
Telecommunication Engineering Centre, New Delhi
IITCOE at IIM Ahmedabad
AIIScCET at IISc Bangalore
BITCOE at IIT Kanpur
RITCOE at IIT Madras, Chennai
VEICET at IIT Kharagpur
AICET at IIT Delhi
TICET at IIT Bombay, Mumbai
Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, New Delhi
IEEE Bangalore Section

Key contact details

Sunil Abraham (Executive Director)
Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur 2nd stage, Bengaluru: 560071
Tel: 080 25350955
Mob: + 91-9611100817
Email: sunil@cis-india.org
Nirmita Narasimhan (Programme Manager)
Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur 2nd stage, Bengaluru: 560071
Tel: 080 25350955
Mob: + 91-9845868078
Email: nirmita@cis-india.org
Narasimha Rao (Administrative Officer)
Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur 2nd stage, Bengaluru: 560071
Tel: 080 25350955
Mob: + 91-9886193846

[1].http://www.dot.gov.in/osp/Brochure/Brochure.htm

[2].Examples of such courses are:Telecom datacom and networking- 3 days course http://goo.gl/cvnai Telefocal Asia http://www.telefocal.com/topics.php
[3].These open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Whenever possible, they should also be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who do not yet have access to the Internet.
[4].Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
[5].http://goo.gl/t2XRs

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/knowledge-and-capacity-around-telecom-policy

Cancel the Subscription

Subbiah Arunachalam — 2012-05-09T03:44:50Z

It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available, writes Prof. Arunachalam in an article published by the Indian Express on May 8, 2012.

Most of us spend a few hundred rupees a year on the magazines we buy for leisure reading or for keeping abreast of current affairs. But if you are a scientist, you may be shelling out a few thousand rupees for the journal your professional society publishes for its members. Of course, if you are a serious researcher, you may have to read or refer to many journals, not two or three. And you will depend on your institution’s library for those journals.

Till 20-30 years ago, most academic libraries, at least in the West, did not find it difficult to subscribe to most journals needed by the scientists in their institutions. Then things started changing and journal subscription prices started skyrocketing — some costing $20,000-40,000 — leading to what librarians call the serials crisis. Much of the price rise was caused by commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. These three control most of the 24,000 science, technology and medicine journals and publish more than 40 per cent of all journal articles today. Elsevier reported a profit of 37 per cent of its revenue in 2011 (up from 36 per cent in 2010); the profit of the other two is no less than 30 per cent despite the recession.

A few years ago, academic librarians, even in the US, had to cut down their budgets for books and monographs to keep journal subscriptions going. Early this year, Harvard, reputed to have the richest endowment among universities, announced that it was finding it to difficult to hold on to its subscriptions and requested its faculty to publish their work in “open access journals” which would be free to read and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls. The irony of it all was summed up nicely by Professor Robert Darnton, director of libraries at Harvard: “We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free, and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.”

A few months ago, a Fields Medal winner, mathematician Timothy Gowers of Cambridge, made it publicly known that he had stopped publishing in, refereeing for and being on the editorial boards of journals published by Elsevier. Gowers created a website called The Cost of Knowledge and close to 11,000 scientists from around the world have signed it already, pledging to boycott Elsevier journals.

Cost, however, is only part of the issue. A more serious issue is the exclusive control enjoyed by publishers over how research gets distributed and shared. They demand that authors surrender copyright to the papers they publish and use it to throttle scholarly communication and hinder the progress of science. It is common sense that if we make scholarly information freely available it will reach a larger audience and help advance further research and lead to wider economic benefits.

The boycott had a salutary effect. Elsevier withdrew its lobbying for the rather absurd Research Works Act, which, if passed in the US Congress, would kill public access to federally funded research and reverse the mandate of the National Institutes of Health putting in one go all the 21 million freely available records in the PubMed library into a fee-to-see system.

Long before Gowers’s boycott of Elsevier and Harvard’s request to its faculty, there have been many stellar initiatives to usher in an era of open access to science and scholarship. For example, all seven research councils in the UK have mandated open access to research funded by them. So has the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest private-sector funder of life science research. Apart from these funder mandates, there are many institutional mandates, including the ones at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, and the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. All these developments have been meticulously chronicled by the philosophy professor, Peter Suber, in the US and the technology writer, Richard Poynder, in the UK.

Recently, the British government enlisted the cooperation of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. Says David Willetts, minister for universities and science: “Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the very forefront of open research.”

In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

The writer is with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

Read the original article in the Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/cancel-the-subscription

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date

praskrishna — 2012-05-02T05:05:57Z

The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest will take place in FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil from December 15 to 17, 2012. The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Setting the positive agenda in motion.” We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Application and Cost

The application form is available online . Due to generous support from our sponsors, the Congress will cover the registration fees and all on-site costs for all attendees, including lunches and dinner receptions. Limited travel grants to cover accommodation and/or travel to the Congress will be available, with priorities for those from developing countries.

Deadlines

Priority applications for travel assistance and to present or chair a workshop at the Congress will be due by August 1, 2012.
Final applications for travel grants, subject to funding availability, as well as applications to present at the Congress, will be due by September 1, 2012.
Applicants not seeking travel assistance or presentation opportunities may apply to attend the Congress by November 1, 2012.

Background and Explanation of the Theme

The first Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was convened in 2011 to define a positive agenda for policy reform, build a global network of scholars and advocates to promote the agenda and provide opportunities for the sharing of research and strategies. The nearly 200 inaugural participants from over 30 countries and 6 continents deliberated over three days through in-person meetings and web-based collaboration to produce the Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (http://infojustice.org/washington-declaration) -- an action agenda for promoting the public interest in intellectual property and information law reform around the world.

Sixteen months later, we come together to measure our progress and expand the positive agenda. To this end, we invite applications to attend the Congress and contribute to its deliberations identifying forums where policy is being developed, proposing policies or actions that promote public interest goals and principles, and identifying and planning to respond to research and analysis needs.

Presentation Opportunities

Because the primary purpose of the Congress is to promote deliberation and action planning, the opportunities for formal presentation will be somewhat limited. We will, however, have spaces for keynote presentations or panel discussions for each session (see below). In addition, as in the inaugural year, the Congress will host small works-in-progress workshops to allow participants to share their own work and solicit feedback from peers.

Draft Workshop Sessions

Six main tracks will include a half day workshop introduced by a lecture or panel discussion on one or more of the themes noted below. The keynote introduction will be followed by deliberation in which participants will, first, review progress and opportunity in existing or potential policy forums and, second, review the current state of research and identify policy and empirical research needs and resources. Tracks will also have opportunities to draft statements or action plans for adoption at the closing plenary of the Congress or for discussion and online after the Congress ends.

We encourage applicants to identify specific sessions in which they would like to contribute.

Regulating Intellectual Property: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to regulate uses of intellectual property through other legal doctrines that express and safeguard human values, including human rights, consumer protection, competition and privacy laws.

Valuing Openness and the Public Domain: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to ensure that creative and innovative works ultimately become free for all to use as part of the public domain, including through open licensing, open access, open educational resources, open data, open standards, open government, and related open information policies.

Strengthening Limitations and Exceptions as Enabling Tools for Innovation and Expression: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to use limitations and exceptions as positive enabling doctrines to ensure that intellectual property law fulfills its ultimate purpose of promoting essential aspects of the public interest.

Setting Public Interest Priorities for Patent and Research and Development Reform: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to ensure that patent and other research and development policies serve all segments of society, and particularly the most disadvantaged, and accommodate the diverse needs of a complex world with a more diverse structure of incentives for innovation.

Supporting Cultural Creativity: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to maximize opportunities for creativity while increasing access to creative works and helping to end disputes over practices like non-commercial file-sharing.

Checking Enforcement Excesses: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to ensure that intellectual property enforcement policies and practices respect the human rights principle of proportionality and are not used as a diversion from the difficult task of tailoring intellectual property norms to their social contexts.

Implementing Development Agendas: This session will survey recent developments and proposals to fully integrate the development dimension into intellectual property policy and norm-setting at all levels of international and national intellectual policy making. The session will have a special focus on developments in the BRICS group of emerging economies.

Targeted Research: Given the spectrum of issues described above, what are the key research needs? Given academic incentive structures, what kinds of research fall through the cracks? Given the funding crisis in this field, how can we meet research needs on the cheap? Given the international scope of many policy issues, how can we work collaboratively and comparatively? Given the Internet, how can we develop and leverage new software tools for data collection?

In addition to the above sessions, we invite presentations on other topics relevant to the positive agenda the Washington Declaration promotes, including:

the role of mobilisation and activism.
collaboration between ISPs and governments in enforcement
the ecology of access to educational materials
designing copyright from scratch
updates and lessons from specific forms, e.g. WIPO, national legislatures, trade negotiations, etc.

The application form is available here . Please forward this invitation to interested lists and individuals. For more information or questions, you may contact globalcongress2012@gmail.com.

Global Congress Planning Committee

Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade – CTS | FGV DIREITO RIO, 2012 Chair
American Assembly, Columbia University, New York
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Geneva
Centre for Internet and Society, India
Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open AIR) initiative
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University, Wash. D.C.

Click to read the original published in infojustice.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/global-congress-on-ip-call-for-participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

praskrishna — 2012-05-02T05:04:57Z

We are pleased to announce the Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Setting the positive agenda in motion,” and will have a special focus on developments and opportunities in the so-called “BRICS” group of emerging economies. This note invites applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Application and Cost Information

The application form is available now at http://infojustice.org/globalcongress2012/registration. Due to generous support from our sponsors, the Congress will cover the registration fees and all on-site costs for all attendees, including lunches and dinner receptions. Limited travel grants to cover accommodation and/or travel to the Congress will be available, with priorities for those from developing countries.

Deadline

Priority applications for travel assistance and to present or chair a workshop at the Congress will be due by August 1, 2012.
Final applications for travel grants, subject to funding availability, as well as applications to present at the Congress, will be due by September 1, 2012.
Applicants not seeking travel assistance or presentation opportunities may apply to attend the Congress by November 1, 2012.

Please forward this invitation to interested lists and individuals. For more information or questions, you may contact globalcongress2012@gmail.com

Global Congress Planning Committee

Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade – CTS | FGV DIREITO RIO, 2012 Chair
American Assembly, Columbia University, New York
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Geneva
Centre for Internet and Society, India
Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open AIR) initiative
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University, Wash. D.C.

Read the original published on infojustice.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/global-congress-on-ip

All India Privacy Symposium (File)

praskrishna — 2012-04-30T05:13:14Z

This is the file of the event organised in Delhi in February 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-privacy-symposium.pdf