Centre for Internet and Society

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

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

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

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

Pervasive Technologies

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

Wikipedia

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

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

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

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

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

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

Digital Humanities

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

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

About CIS

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

Follow us elsewhere

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

Support Us

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

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

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

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

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia

vishnu — 2014-10-10T11:26:26Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoU) with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS, in its sustained efforts to enhance the content and reach of Kokani Wikepedia (which is in incubation), has signed an MoU for a period of five years with Nirmala Insitute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College established in 1963 by the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in response to the then urgent need for trained teachers in post liberation Goa. The key objectives of this partnership are: a) to design, develop and execute a certificate course titled "Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia", which is aimed at middle and high school teacher-trainees and teachers; and b) to introduce Wikimedia projects into the pedagogic curriculum of NIE.

Both CIS and NIE share a mutual interest in conserving, developing and disseminating knowledge free of cost in Konkani, which incidentally is Goa’s official language. Konkani as a language faces several challenges — it has no official script. The population who speak it are dispersed across the world and have little motivation to further the cause of Konkani, and there are few educational venues that offer a formal course to study Konkani or offer Konkani based curriculum. NIE Principal Dr. Denzil Martins welcomed this MoU and said that "it will guide our teacher-trainees to upload relevant information in Konkani that can be freely accessed by the local population" and "provide the volunteer-trainees with skills that they will be able to use to contribute and enhance the free knowledge in Konkani". The MoU was signed by Dr. Denzil Martins from NIE and T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, Access to Knowledge, CIS) in the presence of staff and students of NIE and volunteers Harriet Vidyasagar and Gayathri Rao Konkar. Dr. Rita Paes, ex-Principal of NIE who worked to forge this MoU sent her best wishes.

CIS-A2K since 2013, has worked to develop partnerships with key educational institutions to promote and grow Konkani Wikipedia. It has previously worked with NIE to design and implement a program to enroll 100 B.Ed. students to increase the amount of information available in Goan villages and towns on Konkani Wikipedia. A2K has also been instrumental in convincing Goa University to re-release Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia) under CC-BY-SA 3.0 , making it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

The course ‘Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia’ will enable the teacher participant to have a) a comprehensive understanding of changes due to digital technology to the knowledge domain; b) an introduction to various openness movements that inform the discourse on Open Educational Resources; c) exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia; and d) practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context. The parties will also co-design and jointly implement programmes to introduce Wikipedia in the NIE curriculum. The curriculum for this workshop is positioned within the context of indian languages (particularly Konkani) and school education to ensure that any learning is practical and can be applied within the teachers immediate pedagogic environment. Speaking about the relevance of this course Gayathri and Harriet (who have been associated with NIE as volunteers) mentioned that "the Goa government has handed out tablets to all school going children in Goa. In order to use them effectively in the classroom will require teachers to rethink their role and teaching methodologies and this course is an important step towards that". Agreeing with this Denzil Martins feels that this course "will provide the teacher-trainees with ideas and inputs for using Wikipedia in creative ways in the classroom".

This partnership could bring huge momentum and scale for the growth of Konkani as participants who graduate from this course will as teachers act as anchors and mentors to teach and assign Wikipedia editing assignments in their respective schools and classrooms.

As Gayathri feels "such courses once fine tuned should be made available to teachers from all over the country and should be part of the package for introducing the digital technology in the school system. Today it ends with setting up computer labls in schools or distribution of hardware to students - they may have a 'computer teacher' but the class and subject teachers never become part of these new initiatives. Only when this happens can we move away from 'teaching computers' to using computers as tools to learn and teach, which is the primary objective of digital technology in schools".

CIS will develop this open course and welcomes anyone to partner in this effort, which will be made available for anyone to use it within their context. The efforts to build free and open knowledge platforms like Konkani Wikipedia will continue and partnerships like NIE will play a crucial role in building a robust knowledge society in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia

Zero Draft of Content Removal Best Practices White Paper

jyoti — 2014-09-10T07:11:09Z

EFF and CIS Intermediary Liability Project is aimed towards the creation of a set of principles for intermediary liability in consultation with groups of Internet-focused NGOs and the academic community.

The draft paper has been created to frame the discussion and will be made available for public comments and feedback. The draft document and the views represented here are not representative of the positions of the organisations involved in the drafting.

http://tinyurl.com/k2u83ya

3 September 2014

Introduction

The purpose of this white paper is to frame the discussion at several meetings between groups of Internet-focused NGOs that will lead to the creation of a set of principles for intermediary liability.

The principles that develop from this white paper are intended as a civil society contribution to help guide companies, regulators and courts, as they continue to build out the legal landscape in which online intermediaries operate. One aim of these principles is to move towards greater consistency with regards to the laws that apply to intermediaries and their application in practice.

There are three general approaches to intermediary liability that have been discussed in much of the recent work in this area, including CDT’s 2012 report called “Shielding the Messengers: Protecting Platforms for Expression and Innovation.” The CDT’s 2012 report divides approaches to intermediary liability into three models: 1. Expansive Protections Against Liability for Intermediaries, 2. Conditional Safe Harbor from Liability, 3. Blanket or Strict Liability for Intermediaries.^[1]

This white paper argues in the alternative that (a) the “expansive protections against liability” model is preferable, but likely not possible given the current state of play in the legal and policy space (b) therefore the white paper supports “conditional safe harbor from liability” operating via a ‘notice-to-notice’ regime if possible, and a ‘notice and action’ regime if ‘notice-to-notice’ is deemed impossible, and finally (c) all of the other principles discussed in this white paper should apply to whatever model for intermediary liability is adopted unless those principles are facially incompatible with the model that is finally adopted.

As further general background, this white paper works from the position that there are three general types of online intermediaries- Internet Service Providers (ISPs), search engines, and social networks. As outlined in the recent draft UNESCO Report (from which this white paper draws extensively);

“With many kinds of companies operating many kinds of products and services, it is important to clarify what constitutes an intermediary. In a 2010 report, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explains that Internet intermediaries “bring together or facilitate transactions between third parties on the Internet. They give access to, host, transmit and index content, products and services originated by third parties on the Internet or provide Internet-based services to third parties.”

Most definitions of intermediaries explicitly exclude content producers. The freedom of expression advocacy group Article 19 distinguishes intermediaries from “those individuals or organizations who are responsible for producing information in the first place and posting it online.” Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology explains that “these entities facilitate access to content created by others.” The OECD emphasizes “their role as ‘pure’ intermediaries between third parties,” excluding “activities where service providers give access to, host, transmit or index content or services that they themselves originate.” These views are endorsed in some laws and court rulings. In other words, publishers and other media that create and disseminate original content are not intermediaries. Examples of such media entities include a news website that publishes articles written and edited by its staff, or a digital video subscription service that hires people to produce videos and disseminates them to subscribers.

For the purpose of this case study we will maintain that intermediaries offer services that host, index, or facilitate the transmission and sharing of content created by others. For example, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) connect a user’s device, whether it is a laptop, a mobile phone or something else, to the network of networks known as the Internet. Once a user is connected to the Internet, search engines make a portion of the World Wide Web accessible by allowing individuals to search their database. Search engines are often an essential go-between between websites and Internet users. Social networks connect individual Internet users by allowing them to exchange messages, photos, videos, as well as by allowing them to post content to their network of contacts, or the public at large. Web hosting providers, in turn, make it possible for websites to be published and to be accessed online.”^[2]

General Principles for ISP Governance - Content Removals

The discussion that follows below outlines nine principles to guide companies, government, and civil society in the development of best practices related to the regulation of online content through intermediaries, as norms, policies, and laws develop in the coming years. The nine principles are: Transparency, Consistency, Clarity, Mindful Community Policy Making, Necessity and Proportionality in Content Restrictions, Privacy, Access to Remedy, Accountability, and Due Process in both Legal and Private Enforcement. Each principle contains subsections that expand upon the theme of the principle to cover more specific issues related to the rights and responsibilities of online intermediaries, government, civil society, and users.

Principle I: Transparency

“Transparency enables users’ right to privacy and right to freedom of expression. Transparency of laws, policies, practices, decisions, rationale, and outcomes related to privacy and restrictions allow users to make informed choices with respect to their actions and speech online. As such - both governments and companies have a responsibility in ensuring that the public is informed through transparency initiatives.” ^[3]

Government Transparency

In general, governments should publish transparency reports:

As part of the democratic process, the citizens of each country have a right to know how their government is applying its laws, and a right to provide feedback about the government’s legal interpretations of its laws. Thus, all governments should be required to publish online transparency reports that provide information about all requests issued by any branch or agency of government for the removal or restriction of online content. Further, governments should allow for the submission of comments and suggestions by a webform hosted on the same webpage where that government’s transparency report is hosted. There should also be some legal mechanism that requires the government to look at the feedback provided by its citizens, ensure that relevant feedback is passed along to legislative bodies, and provide for action to be taken on the citizen-provided feedback where appropriate. Finally, and where possible, the raw data that constitutes each government’s transparency report should be made available online, for free, in a common file format such as .csv, so that civil society may have easy access to it for research purposes.

Governments should be more transparent about content orders that they impose on ISPs
The legislative process proceeds most effectively when the government knows how the laws that it creates are applied in practice and is able to receive feedback from the public about how those laws should change further, or remain the same. Relatedly, regulation of the Internet is most effective when the legislative and judicial branches are aware of what the other is doing. For all of these reasons, governments should publish information about all of the court orders and executive requests for content removals that they send to online intermediaries. Publishing all of this information in one place necessarily requires that some single entity within the government collects the information, which will have the benefits of giving the government a holistic view of how it is regulating the internet, encouraging dialogue between different branches of government about how best to create and enforce internet content regulation, and encouraging dialogue between the government and its citizens about the laws that govern internet content and their application.

Governments should make the compliance requirements they impose on ISPs public
Each government should maintain a public website that publishes as complete a picture as possible of the content removal requests made by any branch of that government, including the judicial branch. The availability of a public website of this type will further many of the goals and objectives discussed elsewhere in this section. The website should be biased towards high levels of detail about each request and towards disclosure that requests were made, subject only to limited exceptions for compelling public policy reasons, where the disclosure bias conflicts directly with another law, or where disclosure would reveal a user’s PII. The information should be published periodically, ideally more than once a year. The general principle should be: the more information made available, the better. On the same website where a government publishes its ‘Transparency Report,’ that government should attempt to provide a plain-language description of its various laws related to online content, to provide users notice about what content is lawful vs. unlawful, as well as to show how the laws that it enacts in the Internet space fit together. Further, and as discussed in section “b,” infra, government should provide citizens with an online feedback mechanism so that they may participate in the legislative process as it applies to online content.

Governments should give their citizens a way to provide input on these policies
Private citizens should have the right to provide feedback on the balancing between their civil liberties and other public policies such as security that their government engages in on their behalf. If and when these policies and the compliance requirements they impose on online intermediaries are made publicly available online, there should also be a feedback mechanism built into the site where this information is published. This public feedback mechanism could take a number of different forms, like, for example, a webform that allowed users to indicate their level of satisfaction with prevailing policy choices by choosing amongst several radio buttons, while also providing open text fields to allow the user to submit clarifying comments and specific suggestions. In order to be effective, this online feedback mechanism would have to be accompanied by some sort of legal and budgetary apparatus that would ensure that the feedback was monitored and given some minimum level of deference in the discussions and meetings that led to new policies being created.

Government should meet users concerned about its content policies in the online domain. Internet users, as citizens of both the internet and the country their country of origin, have a natural interest in defining and defending their civil liberties online; government should meet them there to extend the democratic process to the Internet. Denying Internet users a voice in the policymaking processes that determine their rights undermines government credibility and negatively influences users’ ability to freely share information online. As such, content policies should be posted in general terms online and users should have the ability to provide input on those policies online.

ISP Transparency
“The transparency practices of a company impact users’ freedom expression by providing insight into the scope of restriction that is taking in place in specific jurisdiction. Key areas of transparency for companies include: specific restrictions, aggregate numbers related to restrictions, company imposed regulations on content, and transparency of applicable law and regulation that the service provider must abide by.”^[4]

“Disclosure by service providers of notices received and actions taken can provide an important check against abuse. In addition to providing valuable data for assessing the value and effectiveness of a N&A system, creating the expectation that notices will be disclosed may help deter fraudulent or otherwise unjustified notices. In contrast, without transparency, Internet users may remain unaware that content they have posted or searched for has been removed pursuant due to a notice of alleged illegality. Requiring notices to be submitted to a central publication site would provide the most benefit, enabling patterns of poor quality or abusive notices to be readily exposed.”^[5] Therefore, ISPs at all levels should publish transparency reports that include:

Government Requests

All requests from government agencies and courts should be published in a periodic transparency report, accessible on the intermediary’s website, that publishes information about the requests the intermediary received and what the intermediary did with them in the highest level of detail that is legally possible. The more information that is provided about each request, the better the understanding that the public will have about how laws that affect their rights online are being applied. That said, steps should be taken to prevent the disclosure of personal information in relation to the publication of transparency reports. Beyond redaction of personal information, however, the maximum amount of information about each request should be published, subject as well to the (ideally minimal) restrictions imposed by applicable law. A thorough Transparency Report published by an ISP or online intermediary should include information about the following categories of requests:

Police and/or Executive Requests
This category includes all requests to the intermediary from an agency that is wholly a part of the national government; from police departments, to intelligence agencies, to school boards from small towns. Surfacing information about all requests from any part of the government helps to avoid corruption and/or inappropriate exercises of governmental power by reminding all government officials, regardless of their rank or seniority, that information about the requests they submit to online intermediaries is subject to public scrutiny.

Court Orders
This category includes all orders issued by courts and signed by a judicial officer. It can include ex-parte orders, default judgments, court orders directed at an online intermediary, or court orders directed at a third party presented to the intermediary as evidence in support of a removal request. To the extent legally possible, detailed information should be published about these court orders detailing the type of court order each request was, its constituent elements, and the actions(s) that the intermediary took in response to it. All personally identifying information should be redacted from any court orders that are published by the intermediary as part of a transparency report before publication.

First Party
Information about court orders should be further broken down into two groups; first party and third party. First party court orders are orders directed at the online intermediary in an adversarial proceeding to which the online intermediary was a party.

Third Party
As mentioned above, ‘third party’ refers to court orders that are not directed at the online intermediary, but rather a third party such as an individual user who posted an allegedly defamatory remark on the intermediary’s platform. If the user who obtains a court order approaches an online intermediary seeking removal of content with a court order directed at the poster of, say, the defamatory content, and the intermediary decides to remove the content in response to the request, the online intermediary that decided to perform the takedown should publish a record of that removal. To be accepted by an intermediary, third party court orders should be issued by a court of appropriate jurisdiction after an adversarial legal proceeding, contain a certified and specific statement that certain content is unlawful, and specifically identify the content that the court has found to be unlawful, by specific, permalinked URL where possible.

This type of court order should be broken out separately from court orders directed at the applicable online intermediary in companies’ transparency reports because merely providing aggregate numbers that do not distinguish between the two types gives an inaccurate impression to users that a government is attempting to censor more content than it actually is. The idea of including first party court orders to remove content as a subcategory of ‘government requests’ is that a government’s judiciary speaks on behalf of the government, making determinations about what is permitted under the laws of that country. This analogy does not hold for court orders directed at third parties- when the court made its determination of legality on the content in question, it did not contemplate that the intermediary would remove the content. As such, the court likely did not weigh the relevant public interest and policy factors that would include the importance of freedom of expression or the precedential value of its decision. Therefore, the determination does not fairly reflect an attempt by the government to censor content and should not be considered as such.

Instead, and especially considering that these third party court order may be the basis for a number of content removals, third party court orders should be counted separately and presented with some published explanation in the company’s transparency report as to what they are and why the company has decided it should removed content pursuant to its receipt of one.

Private-Party Requests
Private-party requests are requests to remove content that are not issued by a government agency or accompanied by a court order. Some examples of private party requests include copyright complaints submitted pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or complaints based on the laws of specific countries, such as laws banning holocaust denial in Germany.

Policy/TOS Enforcement
To give users a complete picture of the content that is being removed from the platforms that they use, corporate transparency reports should also provide information about the content that the intermediary removes pursuant to its own policies or terms of service, though there may not be a legal requirement to do so.

User Data Requests
While this white paper is squarely focused on liability for content posted online and best practices for deciding when and how content should be removed from online services, corporate transparency reports should also provide information about requests for user data from executive agencies, courts, and others.

Principle II: Consistency

Legal requirements for ISPs should be consistent, based on a global legal framework that establishes baseline limitations on legal immunity
Broad variation amongst the legal regimes of the countries in which online intermediaries operate increases compliance costs for companies and may discourage them from offering their services in some countries due to the high costs of localized compliance. Reducing the number of speech platforms that citizens have access to limits their ability to express themselves. Therefore, to ensure that citizens of a particular country have access to a robust range of speech platforms, each country should work to harmonize the requirements that it imposes upon online intermediaries with the requirements of other countries. While a certain degree of variation between what is permitted in one country as compared to another is inevitable, all countries should agree on certain limitations to intermediary liability, such as the following:

Conduits should be immune from claims about content that they neither created nor modified
As noted in the 2011 Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet, “[n]o one who simply provides technical Internet services such as providing access, or searching for, or transmission or caching of information, should be liable for content generated by others, which is disseminated using those services, as long as they do not specifically intervene in that content or refuse to obey a court order to remove that content, where they have the capacity to do so (‘mere conduit principle’).”^[6]

Court orders should be required for the removal of content that is related to speech, such as defamation removal requests
In the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Additional Responses Regarding Notice and Action, CDT outlines the case against allowing notice and action procedures to apply to defamation removal requests. They write:

“Uniform notice-and-action procedures should not apply horizontally to all types of illegal content. In particular, CDT believes notice-and-takedown is inappropriate for defamation and other areas of law requiring complex legal and factual questions that make private notices especially subject to abuse. Blocking or removing content on the basis of mere allegations of illegality raises serious concerns for free expression and access to information. Hosts are likely to err on the side of caution and comply with most if not all notices they receive, because evaluating notices is burdensome and declining to comply may jeopardize their protection from liability. The risk of legal content being taken down is especially high in cases where assessing the illegality of the content would require detailed factual analysis and careful legal judgments that balance competing fundamental rights and interests. Intermediaries will be extremely reluctant to exercise their own judgment when the legal issues are unclear, and it will be easy for any party submitting a notice to claim a good faith belief that the content in question is unlawful. In short, the murkier the legal analysis, the greater the potential for abuse.

To reduce this risk, removal of or disablement of access to content based on unadjudicated allegations of illegality (i.e., notices from private parties) should be limited to cases where the content at issue is manifestly illegal – and then only with necessary safeguards against abuse as described above.

CDT believes that online free expression is best served by narrowing what is considered manifestly illegal and subject to takedown upon private notice. With proper safeguards against abuse, for example, notice-and-action can be an appropriate policy for addressing online copyright infringement. Copyright is an area of law where there is reasonable international consensus regarding what is illegal and where much infringement is straightforward. There can be difficult questions at the margins – for example concerning the applicability of limitations and exceptions such as “fair use” – but much online infringement is not disputable.

Quite different considerations apply to the extension of notice-and-action procedures to allegations of defamation or other illegal content. Other areas of law, including defamation, routinely require far more difficult factual and legal determinations. There is greater potential for abuse of notice-and-action where illegality is less manifest and more disputable. If private notices are sufficient to have allegedly defamatory content removed, for example, any person unhappy about something that has been written about him or her would have the ability and incentive to make an allegation of defamation, creating a significant potential for unjustified notices that harm free expression. This and other areas where illegality is more disputable require different approaches to notice and action. In the case of defamation, CDT believes “notice” for purposes of removing or disabling access to content should come only from a competent court after full adjudication.

In cases where it would be inappropriate to remove or disable access to content based on untested allegations of illegality, service providers receiving allegations of illegal content may be able to take alternative actions in response to notices. Forwarding notices to the content provider or preserving data necessary to facilitate the initiation of legal proceedings, for example, can pose less risk to content providers’ free expression rights, provided there is sufficient process to allow the content provider to challenge the allegations and assert his or her rights, including the right to speak anonymously.”^[7]

Principle III: Clarity

All notices that request the removal of content should be clear and meet certain minimum requirements
The Center for Democracy and Technology outlined requirements for clear notices in a notice and action system in response a European Commission public comment period on a revised notice and action regime.^[8] They write:

“Notices should include the following features:

Specificity. Notices should be required to specify the exact location of the material – such as a specific URL – in order to be valid. This is perhaps the most important requirement, in that it allows hosts to take targeted action against identified illegal material without having to engage in burdensome search or monitoring. Notices that demand the removal of particular content wherever it appears on a site without specifying any location(s) are not sufficiently precise to enable targeted action.
Description of alleged illegal content. Notices should be required to include a detailed description of the specific content alleged to be illegal and to make specific reference to the law allegedly being violated. In the case of copyright, the notice should identify the specific work or works claimed to be infringed.
Contact details. Notices should be required to contain contact information for the sender. This facilitates assessment of notices’ validity, feedback to senders regarding invalid notices, sanctions for abusive notices, and communication or legal action between the sending party and the poster of the material in question.
Standing: Notices should be issued only by or on behalf of the party harmed by the content. For copyright, this would be the rightsholder or an agent acting on the rightsholderʼs behalf. For child sexual abuse images, a suitable issuer of notice would be a law enforcement agency or a child abuse hotline with expertise in assessing such content. For terrorism content, only government agencies would have standing to submit notice.
Certification: A sender of a notice should be required to attest under legal penalty to a good-faith belief that the content being complained of is in fact illegal; that the information contained in the notice is accurate; and, if applicable, that the sender either is the harmed party or is authorized to act on behalf of the harmed party. This kind of formal certification requirement signals to notice-senders that they should view misrepresentation or inaccuracies on notices as akin to making false or inaccurate statements to a court or administrative body.
Consideration of limitations, exceptions, and defenses: Senders should be required to certify that they have considered in good faith whether any limitations, exceptions, or defenses apply to the material in question. This is particularly relevant for copyright and other areas of law in which exceptions are specifically described in law.
An effective appeal and counter-notice mechanism. A notice-and-action regime should include counter-notice procedures so that content providers can contest mistaken and abusive notices and have their content reinstated if its removal was wrongful.
Penalties for unjustified notices. Senders of erroneous or abusive notices should face possible sanctions. In the US, senders may face penalties for knowingly misrepresenting that content is infringing, but the standard for “knowingly misrepresenting” is quite high and the provision has rarely been invoked. A better approach might be to use a negligence standard, whereby a sender could be held liable for damages or attorneys’ fees for making negligent misrepresentations (or for repeatedly making negligent misrepresentations). In addition, the notice-and-action system should allow content hosts to ignore notices from senders with an established record of sending erroneous or abusive notices or allow them to demand more information or assurances in notices from those who have in the past submitted erroneous notices. (For example, hosts might be deemed within the safe harbor if they require repeat abusers to specifically certify that they have actually examined the alleged infringing content before sending a notice).”^[9]

All ISPs should publish their content removal policies online and keep them current as they evolve
The UNESCO report states, by way of background, that “[c]ontent restriction practices based on Terms of Service are opaque. How companies remove content based on Terms of Service violations is more opaque than their handling of content removals based on requests from authorized authorities. When content is removed from a platform based on company policy, [our] research found that all companies provide a generic notice of this restriction to the user, but do not provide the reason for the restriction. Furthermore, most companies do not provide notice to the public that the content has been removed. In addition, companies are inconsistently open about removal of accounts and their reasons for doing so.”^[10]

There are legitimate reasons why an ISP may want to have policies that permit less content, and a narrower range of content, than is technically permitted under the law, such as maintaining a product that appeals to families. However, if a company is going to go beyond the minimal legal requirements in terms of content that it must restrict, the company should have clear policies that are published online and kept up-to-date to provide its users notice of what content is and is not permitted on the company’s platform. Notice to the user about the types of content that are permitted encourages her to speak freely and helps her to understand why content that she posted was taken down if it must be taken down for violating a company policy.

When content is removed, a clear notice should be provided in the product that explains in simple terms that content has been removed and why
This subsection works in conjunction with “ii,” above. If content is removed for any reason, either pursuant to a legal request or because of a violation of company policy, a user should be able to learn that content was removed if they try to access it. Requiring an on-screen message that explains that content has been removed and why is the post-takedown accompaniment to the pre-takedown published online policy of the online intermediary: both work together to show the user what types of content are and are not permitted on each online platform. Explaining to users why content has been removed in sufficient detail may also spark their curiosity as to the laws or policies that caused the content to be removed, resulting in increased civic engagement in the internet law and policy space, and a community of citizens that demands that the companies and governments it interacts with are more responsive to how it thinks content regulation should work in the online context.

The UNESCO report provides the following example of how Google provides notice to its users when a search result is removed, which includes a link to a page hosted by Chilling Effects:^[11]

“When search results are removed in response to government or copyright holder demands, a notice describing the number of results removed and the reasons for their removal is displayed to users (see screenshot below) and a copy of the request to the independent non-proft organization ChillingEffects.org, which archives and publishes the request. When possible the company also contacts the website’s owners.”^[12]

This is an example of the message that is displayed when Google removes a search result pursuant to a copyright complaint.^[13]

Requirements that governments impose on intermediaries should be as clear and unambiguous as possible
Imposing liability on internet intermediaries without providing clear guidance as to the precise type of content that is not lawful and the precise requirements of a legally sufficient notice encourages intermediaries to over-remove content. As Article 19 noted in its 2013 report on intermediary liability:

“International bodies have also criticized ‘notice and takedown’ procedures as they lack a clear legal basis. For example, the 2011 OSCE report on Freedom of Expression on the internet highlighted that: Liability provisions for service providers are not always clear and complex notice and takedown provisions exist for content removal from the Internet within a number of participating States. Approximately 30 participating States have laws based on the EU E-Commerce Directive. However, the EU Directive provisions rather than aligning state level policies, created differences in interpretation during the national implementation process. These differences emerged once the national courts applied the provisions.

These procedures have also been criticized for being unfair. Rather than obtaining a court order requiring the host to remove unlawful material (which, in principle at least, would involve an independent judicial determination that the material is indeed unlawful), hosts are required to act merely on the say-so of a private party or public body. This is problematic because hosts tend to err on the side of caution and therefore take down material that may be perfectly legitimate and lawful. For example, in his report, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression noted:

[W]hile a notice-and-takedown system is one way to prevent intermediaries from actively engaging in or encouraging unlawful behavior on their services, it is subject to abuse by both State and private actors. Users who are notiﬁed by the service provider that their content has been ﬂagged as unlawful often has little recourse or few resources to challenge the takedown. Moreover, given that intermediaries may still be held ﬁnancially or in some cases criminally liable if they do not remove content upon receipt of notiﬁcation by users regarding unlawful content, they are inclined to err on the side of safety by overcensoring potentially illegal content. Lack of transparency in the intermediaries’ decision-making process also often obscures discriminatory practices or political pressure affecting the companies’ decisions. Furthermore, intermediaries, as private entities, are not best placed to make the determination of whether a particular content is illegal, which requires careful balancing of competing interests and consideration of defenses.”^[14]

Considering the above, if liability is to be imposed on intermediaries for certain types of unlawful content, the legal requirements that outline what is unlawful content and how to report it must be clear. Lack of clarity in this area will result in over-removal of content by rational intermediaries that want to minimize their legal exposure and compliance costs. Over-removal of content is at odds with the goals of freedom of expression.

The UNESCO Report made a similar recommendation, stating that; “Governments need to ensure that legal frameworks and company policies are in place to address issues arising out of intermediary liability. These legal frameworks and policies should be contextually adapted and be consistent with a human rights framework and a commitment to due process and fair dealing. Legal and regulatory frameworks should also be precise and grounded in a clear understanding of the technology they are meant to address, removing legal uncertainty that would provide opportunity for abuse.”^[15]

Similarly, the 2011 Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet states:

“Consideration should be given to insulating fully other intermediaries, including those mentioned in the preamble, from liability for content generated by others under the same conditions as in paragraph 2(a). At a minimum, intermediaries should not be required to monitor user-generated content and should not be subject to extrajudicial content takedown rules which fail to provide sufficient protection for freedom of expression (which is the case with many of the ‘notice and takedown’ rules currently being applied).”^[16]

Principle IV: Mindful Community Policy Making

“Laws and regulations as well as corporate policies are more likely to be compatible with freedom of expression if they are developed in consultation with all affected stakeholders – particularly those whose free expression rights are known to be at risk.”^[17] To be effective, policies should be created through a multi-stakeholder consultation process that gives voice to the communities most at risk of being targeted for the information they share online. Further, both companies and governments should embed an ‘outreach to at-risk communities’ step into both legislative and policymaking processes to be especially sure that their voices are heard. Finally, civil society should work to ensure that all relevant stakeholders have a voice in both the creation and revision of policies that affect online intermediaries. In the context of corporate policymaking, civil society can use strategies from activist investing to encourage investors to make the human rights and freedom of expression policies of Internet companies’ part of the calculus that investors use to decide where to place their money. Considering the above;

Human rights impact assessments, considering the impact of the proposed law or policy on various communities from the perspectives of gender, sexuality, sexual preference, ethnicity, religion, and freedom of expression, should be required before:
New laws are written that govern content issues affecting ISPs or conduct that occurs primarily online
“Protection of online freedom of expression will be strengthened if governments carry out human rights impact assessments to determine how proposed laws or regulations will affect Internet users’ freedom of expression domestically and globally.”^[18]

Intermediaries enact new policies
“Protection of online freedom of expression will be strengthened if companies carry out human rights impact assessments to determine how their policies, practices, and business operations affect Internet users’ freedom of expression. This assessment process should be anchored in robust engagement with stakeholders whose freedom of expression rights are at greatest risk online, as well as stakeholders who harbor concerns about other human rights affected by online speech.”^[19]

Multi-stakeholder consultation processes should precede any new legislation that will apply to content issues affecting online intermediaries or online conduct
“Laws and regulations as well as corporate policies are more likely to be compatible with freedom of expression if they are developed in consultation with all affected stakeholders – particularly those whose free expression rights are known to be at risk.”^[20]

Civil society and public interest groups should encourage responsible investment in companies who implement policies that reflect best practices for internet intermediaries
“Over the past thirty years, responsible investors have played a powerful role in incentivizing companies to improve environmental sustainability, supply chain labor practices, and respect for human rights of communities where companies physically operate. Responsible investors can also play a powerful role in incentivizing companies to improve their policies and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy by developing metrics and criteria for evaluating companies on these issues in the same way that they evaluate companies on other “environmental, social, and governance” criteria.”^[21]

Principle V: Necessity and Proportionality in Content Restriction

Content should only be restricted when there is a legal basis for doing so, or the removal is performed in accordance with a clear, published policy of the ISP
As CDT outlined in its 2012 intermediary liability report, “[a]ctions required of intermediaries must be narrowly tailored and proportionate, to protect the fundamental rights of Internet users. Any actions that a safe-harbor regime requires intermediaries to take must be evaluated in terms of the principle of proportionality and their impact on Internet users’ fundamental rights, including rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and protection of personal data. Laws that encourage intermediaries to take down or block certain content have the potential to impair online expression or access to information. Such laws must therefore ensure that the actions they call for are proportional to a legitimate aim, no more restrictive than is required for achievement of the aim, and effective for achieving the aim. In particular, intermediary action requirements should be narrowly drawn, targeting specific unlawful content rather than entire websites or other Internet resources that may support both lawful and unlawful uses.”^[22]

When content must be restricted, it should be restricted in the most minimal way possible (i.e., prefer domain removals to IP-blocking)
There are a number of different ways that access to content can be restricted. Examples include hard deletion of the content from all of a company’s servers, blocking the download of an app or other software program in a particular country, blocking the content on all IP addresses affiliated with a particular country (“IP-Blocking”), removing the content from a particular domain of a product (i.e., removing from a link from the .fr version of a search engine that remains accessible on the .com version), blocking content from a ‘version’ of an online product that is accessible through a ‘country’ or ‘language’ setting on that product, or some combination of the last three options (i.e., an online product that directs the user to a version of the product based on the country that their IP address is coming from, but where the user can alter a URL or manipulate a drop-down menu to show her a different ‘country version’ of the product, providing access to content that may otherwise be inaccessible).

While almost all of the different types of content restrictions described above can be circumvented by technical means such as the use of proxies, IP-cloaking, or Tor, the average internet user does not know that these techniques exist, much less how to use them. Of the different types of content restrictions described above, a domain removal, for example, is easier for an individual user to circumvent than IP-Blocked content because you only have to change the URL of the product you are using to, i.e. “.com” to see content that has been locally restricted. To get around an IP-block, you would have to be sufficiently savvy to employ a proxy or cloak your true IP address.

Therefore, the technical means used to restrict access to controversial content has a direct impact on the magnitude of the actual restriction on speech. The more restrictive the technical removal method, the fewer people that will have access to that content. To preserve access to lawful content, online intermediaries should choose the least restrictive means of complying with removal requests, especially when the removal request is based on the law of a particular country that makes certain content unlawful that is not unlawful in other countries. Further, when building new products and services, intermediaries should built in removal capability that minimally restricts access to controversial content.

If content is restricted due to its illegality in a particular country, the geographical scope of the content restriction should be as minimal as possible
Building on the discussion in “ii,” supra, a user should be able to access content that is lawful in her country even if it is not lawful in another country. Different countries have different laws and it is often difficult for intermediaries to determine how to effectively respond to requests and reconcile the inherent conflicts that result. For example, content that denies the holocaust is illegal in certain countries, but not in others. If an intermediary receives a request to remove content based on the laws of a particular country and determines that it will comply because the content is not lawful in that country, it should not restrict access to the content such that it cannot be accessed by users in other countries where the content is lawful. To respond to a request based on the law of a particular country by blocking access to that content for users around the world, or even users of more than one country, essentially allows for extraterritorial application of the laws of the country that the request came from. While it is preferable to standardize and limit the legal requirements imposed on online intermediaries throughout the world, to the extent that this is not possible, the next-best option is to limit the application of laws that are interpreted to declare certain content unlawful to the users that live in that country. Therefore, intermediaries should choose the technical means of content restriction that is most narrowly tailored to limit the geographical scope and impact of the removal.

The ability of conduits (telecommunications/internet service providers) to filter content should be minimized to the extent technically and legally possible

The 2011 Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet made the following points about the dangers of allowing filtering technology:

“Mandatory blocking of entire websites, IP addresses, ports, network protocols or types of uses (such as social networking) is an extreme measure – analogous to banning a newspaper or broadcaster – which can only be justified in accordance with international standards, for example where necessary to protect children against sexual abuse.

Content filtering systems which are imposed by a government or commercial service provider and which are not end-user controlled are a form of prior censorship and are not justifiable as a restriction on freedom of expression.

Products designed to facilitate end-user filtering should be required to be accompanied by clear information to end-users about how they work and their potential pitfalls in terms of over-inclusive filtering.”^[23]

In short, filtering at the conduit level is a blunt instrument that should be avoided whenever possible. Similar to how conduits should not be legally responsible for content that they neither host nor modify (the ‘mere conduit’ rule discussed supra), conduits should technically restrict their ability to filter content such that it would be inefficient for government agencies to contact them to have content filtered. Mere conduits are not able to assess the context surrounding the controversial content that they are asked to remove and are therefore not the appropriate party to receive takedown requests. Further, when mere conduits have the technical ability to filter content, they open themselves to pressure from government to exercise that capability. Therefore, mere conduits should limit or not build in the capability to filter content.

Notice and notice, or notice and judicial takedown, should be preferred to notice and takedown, which should be preferred to unilateral removal
Mechanisms for content removal that involve intermediaries acting without any oversight or accountability, or those which only respond to the interests of the party requesting removal, are unlikely to do a very good job at balancing public and private interests. A much better balance is likely to be struck through a mechanism where power is distributed between the parties, and/or where an independent and accountable oversight mechanism exists.

Considered in this way, there is a continuum of content removal mechanisms that ranges from those are the least balanced and accountable, and those that are more so. The least accountable is the unilateral removal of content by the intermediary without legal compulsion in response to a request received, without affording the uploader of the content the right to be heard or access to remedy.

Notice and takedown mechanisms fit next along the continuum, provided that they incorporate, as the DMCA attempts to do, an effective appeal and counter-notice mechanism. However where notice and takedown falls down is that the cost and incentive structure is weighted towards removal of content in the case of doubt or dispute, resulting in more content being taken down and staying down than would be socially optimal.

A better balance is likely to be struck by a “notice and notice” regime, which provides strong social incentives for those whose content is reported to be unlawful to remove the content, but does not legally compel them to do so. If legal compulsion is required, a court order must be separately obtained.

Canada is an example of a jurisdiction with a notice and notice regime, though limited to copyright content disputes. Although this regime is now established in legislation, it formalizes a previous voluntary regime, whereby major ISPs would forward copyright infringement notifications received from rightsholders to subscribers, but without removing any content and without releasing subscriber data to the rightsholders absent a court order. Under the new legislation additional record-keeping requirements are imposed on ISPs, but otherwise the essential features of the regime remain unchanged.

Analysis of data collected during this voluntary regime indicates that it has been effective in changing the behavior of allegedly infringing subscribers. A 2010 study by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) found that 71% of notice recipients did not infringe again, whereas a similar 2011 study by Canadian ISP Rogers found 68% only received one notice, and 89% received no more than two notices, with only 1 subscriber in 800,000 receiving numerous notices.^[24] However, in cases where a subscriber has a strong good faith belief that the notice they received was wrong, there is no risk to them in disregarding the erroneous notice – a feature that does not apply to notice and takedown.

Another similar way in which public and private interests can be balanced is through a notice and judicial takedown regime, whereby the rightsholder who issues a notice about offending content must have it assessed by an independent judicial (or perhaps administrative) authority before the intermediary will respond by taking the content down.

An example of this is found in Chile, again limited to the case of copyright.^[25] In response to its Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the system introduced in 2010 is broadly similar to the DMCA, with the critical difference that intermediaries are not required to take material down in order to benefit from a liability safe harbor, until such time as a court order for removal of the material is made. Responsibility for evaluating the copyright claims made is therefore shifted from intermediaries onto the courts.

Although this requirement does impose a burden on the rightsholder, this serves a purpose by disincentivizing the issue of automated or otherwise unjustified notices that are more likely to restrict or chill freedom of expression. In cases where there is no serious dispute about the legality of the content, it is unlikely that the lawsuit would be defended. In any case, the legislation authorizes the court to issue a preliminary injunction on an ex parte basis, on condition of payment of a bond.

Intermediaries should be allowed to charge for the time and expense associated with processing legal requests
As an intermediary, it is time consuming and relatively expensive to understand the obligations that each country’s legal regime imposes on you, and to accurately how each legal request should be handled. Especially for intermediaries without many resources, such as forum operators or owners of home Wifi networks, the costs associated with being an intermediary can be prohibitive. Therefore, it should be within their rights to charge for their compliance costs if they are either below a certain user threshold or can show financial necessity in some way.

Legal requirements imposed on intermediaries should be a floor, not a ceiling- ISPs can adopt more restrictive policies to more effectively serve their users as long as they have published policies that explain what they are doing
The Internet has space for a wide range of platforms and applications directed to different communities, with different needs and desires. A social networking site directed at children, for example, may reasonably want to have policies that are much more restrictive than a political discussion board. Therefore, legal requirements that compel intermediaries to take down content should be seen as a ‘floor,’ but not a ‘ceiling’ on the range and quantity that of content those intermediaries may remove. Intermediaries should retain control over their own policies as long as they are transparent about what those policies are, what type of content the intermediary removes, and why they removed certain pieces of content.

Principle VI: Privacy

It is important to protect the ability of Internet users to speak by narrowing and making less ambiguous the range of content that intermediaries can be held liable for, but it is also very important to make users feel comfortable sharing their view by ensuring that their privacy is protected. Protecting the user’s ability to share her views, especially when those views are controversial or have a direct bearing on important political issues, requires that the user can trust the intermediaries that she uses. This concept can be further broken down into three sub-principles:

The user’s personal information should be protected to the greatest extent possible given the state of the art in encryption, security, and policy
Users will be less willing to speak on important topics if they have legitimate concerns that their data may be taken from them. As stated in the UNESCO Report, “[b]ecause of the amount of personal information held by companies and ability to access the same, a company’s practices around collection, access, disclosure, and retention are key. To a large extent a service provider’s privacy practices are influenced by applicable law and operating licenses required by the host government. These can include requirements for service providers to verify subscribers, collect and retain subscriber location data, and cooperate with law enforcement when requested. Outcome: The implications of companies trying to balance a user’s expectation for privacy with a government’s expectation for cooperation can be serious and are inadequately managed in all jurisdictions studied.”^[26]

Where possible, ISPs should help to preserve the user’s right to speak anonymously
An important aspect of an Internet user’s ability to exercise her right to free expression online is ability to speak anonymously. Anonymous speech is one of the great advances of the Internet as a communications medium and should be preserved to the extent possible. As noted by special rapporteur Frank LaRue, “[i]n order for individuals to exercise their right to privacy in communications, they must be able to ensure that these remain private, secure and, if they choose, anonymous. Privacy of communications infers that individuals are able to exchange information and ideas in a space that is beyond the reach of other members of society, the private sector, and ultimately the State itself. Security of communications means that individuals should be able to verify that only their intended recipients, without interference or alteration, receive their communications and that the communications they receive are equally free from intrusion. Anonymity of communications is one of the most important advances enabled by the Internet, and allows individuals to express themselves freely without fear of retribution or condemnation.”^[27]

The user’s PII should never be sold or used without her consent, and she should always know what is being done with it via an easily comprehensible dashboard
The user’s trust in the online platform that she uses and relies upon is influenced not only by the relationships the intermediary maintains with the government, but also with other commercial entities. A user, who feels that her data will be constantly shared with third parties, perhaps without her consent and/or for marketing purposes, will never feel like she is able to freely express her opinion. Therefore, it is the intermediary’s responsibility to ensure that its users know exactly what information it retains about them, who it shares that information with and under what circumstances, and how to change the way that her data is shared. All of this information should be available on a dashboard that is comprehensible to the average user, and which gives her the ability to easily modify or withdraw her consent to the way her data is being shared, or the amount of data, or specific data, that the intermediary is retaining about her.

Principle VII: Access to Remedy

As noted in the UNESCO Report, “Remedy is the third central pillar of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, placing an obligation both on governments and on companies to provide individuals access to effective remedy. This area is where both governments and companies are almost consistently lacking. Across intermediary types, across jurisdictions and across the types of restriction, individuals whose content is restricted and individuals who wish to access such content are offered little or no effective recourse to appeal restriction decisions, whether in response to government orders, third party requests or in accordance with company policy. There are no private grievance or due process mechanisms that are clearly communicated and readily available to all users, or consistently applied.”^[28]

Any notice and takedown system is subject to abuse, and any company policy that results in the removal of content is subject to mistaken or inaccurate takedowns, both of which are substantial problems that can only be remedied by the ability for users to let the intermediary know when the intermediary improperly removed a specific piece of content and the technical and procedural ability of the intermediary to put the content back. However, the technical ability to reinstate content that was improperly removed may conflict with data retention laws. This conflict should be explored in more detail. In general, however, every time content is removed, there should be:

A clear mechanism through which users can request reinstatement of content
When an intermediary decides to remove content, it should be immediately clear to the user that content has been removed and why it was removed (see discussion of in-product notice, supra). If the user disagrees with the content removal decision, there should be an obvious, online method for her to request reinstatement of the content.

Reinstatement of content should be technically possible
When intermediaries (who are subject to intermediary liability) are building new products, they should build the capability to remove content into the product with a high degree of specificity so as to allow for narrowly tailored content removals when a removal is legally required. Relatedly, all online intermediaries should build the capability to reinstate content into their products while maintaining compliance with data retention laws.

Intermediaries should have policies and procedures in place to handle reinstatement requests
Between the front end (online mechanism to request reinstatement of content) and the backend (technical ability to reinstate content) is the necessary middle layer, which consists of the intermediary’s internal policies and processes that allow for valid reinstatement requests to be assessed and acted upon. In line with the corporate ‘responsibility to respect’ human rights, and considered along with the human rights principle of ‘access to remedy,’ intermediaries should have a system in place from the time that an online product launches to ensure that reinstatement requests can be made and will be processed quickly and appropriately.

Principle VIII: Accountability

Governments must ensure that independent, transparent, and impartial accountability mechanisms exist to verify the practices of government and companies with regards to managing content created online
“While it is important that companies make commitments to core principles on freedom of expression and privacy, make efforts to implement those principles through transparency, policy advocacy, and human rights impact assessments, it is also important that companies take these steps in a manner that is accountable to stakeholders. One way of doing this is by committing to external third party assurance to verify that their policies and practices are being implemented to a meaningful standard, with acceptable consistency wherever their service is offered. Such assurance gains further public credibility when carried out with the supervision and affirmation of multiple stakeholders including civil society groups, academics, and responsible investors. The Global Network Initiative provides one such mechanism for public accountability. Companies not currently participating in GNI, or a process of similar rigor and multi-stakeholder involvement, should be urged by users, investors, and regulators to do so.”^[29]

Civil society should encourage comparative studies between countries and between ISPs with regards to their content removal practices to identify best practices
Civil society has the unique ability to look longitudinally across this issue to determine and compare how different intermediaries and governments are responding to content removal requests. Without information about how other governments and intermediaries are handling these issues, it will be difficult for each government or intermediary to learn how to improve its laws or policies. Therefore, civil society has an important role to play in the process of creating increasingly better human rights outcomes for online platforms by performing and sharing ongoing, comparative research.

Civil society should establish best practices and benchmarks against which ISPs and government can be measured, and should track governments and ISPs over time in public reports
“A number of projects that seek, define and implement indicators and benchmarks for governments or companies are either in development (examples include: UNESCO’s Indicators of Internet Development project examining country performance, Ranking Digital Rights focusing on companies) or already in operation (examples include the Web Foundation’s Web Index, Freedom House’s Internet Freedom Index, etc.). The emergence of credible, widely-used benchmarks and indicators that enable measurement of country and company performance on freedom of expression will help to inform policy, practice, stakeholder engagement processes, and advocacy.”^[30]

Principle IX: Due Process - In Both Legal and Private Enforcement

ISPs should always consider context before removing content and Governments and courts should always consider context before ordering that certain content be removed
“Governments need to ensure that legal frameworks and company policies are in place to address issues arising out of intermediary liability. These legal frameworks and policies should be contextually adapted and be consistent with a human rights framework and a commitment to due process and fair dealing. Legal and regulatory frameworks should also be precise and grounded in a clear understanding of the technology they are meant to address, removing legal uncertainty that would provide opportunity for abuse.”^[31]

Principles for Courts

An independent and impartial judiciary exists, at least in part, to preserve the citizen’s due process rights. Many have called for an increased reliance on courts to make determinations about the legality of content posted online in order to both shift the censorship function from unaccountable private actors and to ensure that courts only order the removal of content that is actually unlawful. However, when courts do not have an adequate technical understanding of how content is created and shared on the internet, the rights of the intermediaries that facilitate the posting of the content, and who should be ordered to remove unlawful content, they do not add value to the online ecosystem. Therefore, courts should keep certain principles in mind to preserve the due process rights of the users that post content and the intermediaries that host the content.

Preserve due process for intermediaries- do not order them to do something before giving them notice and the opportunity to appear before the court

In a dispute between two private parties over a specific piece of content posted online, it may appear to the court that the easy solution is to order the intermediary who hosts the content to remove it. However, this approach does not extend any due process protections to the intermediary and does not adequately reflect the intermediary's status as something other than the creator of the content. If a court feels that it is necessary for an intermediary to intervene in a legal proceeding between two private parties, the court should provide the intermediary with proper notice and give them the opportunity to appear before the court before issuing any orders.

Necessity and proportionality of judicial determinations- judicial orders determining the illegality of specific content should be narrowly tailored to avoid over-removal of content

With regards to government removal requests, the UNESCO Report notes that “[o]ver-broad law and heavy liability regimes cause intermediaries to over-comply with government requests in ways that compromise users’ right to freedom of expression, or broadly restrict content in anticipation of government demands even if demands are never received and if the content could potentially be found legitimate even in a domestic court of law.”^[32] Courts should follow the same principle: only order the removal of the bare minimum of content that is necessary to remedy the harm identified and nothing more.

Courts should clarify whether ISPs have to remove content in response to court orders directed to third parties, or only have to remove content when directly ordered to do so (first party court orders) after an adversarial proceeding to which the ISP was a party

See discussion of the difference between first party and third party court orders (supra, section a., “Transparency”). Ideally, any decision that courts reach on this issue would be consistent across different countries.

Questions- related unresolved issues that should be kicked to the larger group

How should the conflict between access to remedy and data retention laws that say content must be hard deleted after a certain period of time be resolved? I think the access to remedy has to be subordinated to the data protection laws. Let's make that our draft position, but continue to flag it for discussion.

Should ISPs have to remove content in response to court orders directed to third parties, or only have to remove content when directly ordered to do so (first party court orders) after an adversarial proceeding to which the ISP was a party? I think first party orders. Let's make that our draft position, but continue to flag it for discussion.

[1] Center for Democracy and Technology, Shielding the Messengers: Protecting Platforms for Expression and Innovation at 4-15 (Version 2, 2012), available at https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CDT-Intermediary-Liability-2012.pdf (see pp.4-15 for an explanation of these different models and the pros and cons of each).

[2] UNESCO, “Fostering Freedom Online: The Roles, Challenges, and Obstacles of Internet Intermediaries” at 6-7 (Draft Version, June 16th, 2014) (Hereinafter “UNESCO Report”).

[3] UNESCO Report at 56.

[4] UNESCO Report at 37.

[5] Center for Democracy and Technology, Additional Responses Regarding Notice and Action, Available at https://www.cdt.org/files/file/CDT%20N&A%20supplement.pdf.

[6] The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, the Organization of American States (OAS) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, Article 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, and the Centre for Law and Democracy, JOINT DECLARATION ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE INTERNET at 2 (2011), available at http://www.osce.org/fom/78309 (Hereinafter “Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression).

[7] Center for Democracy and Technology, Additional Responses Regarding Notice and Action, Available at https://www.cdt.org/files/file/CDT%20N&A%20supplement.pdf.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] UNESCO Report at 113-14.

[11] ‘Chilling Effects’ is a website that allows recipients of ‘cease and desist’ notices to submit the notice to the site and receive information about their legal rights. For more information about ‘Chilling Effects’ see: http://www.chillingeffects.org.

[12] Id. at 73. You can see an example of a complaint published on Chilling Effects at the following location. “DtecNet DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google,” Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, March 12, 2013, www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=841442.

[13] UNESCO Report at 73.

[14] Article 19, Internet Intermediaries: Dilemma of Liability (2013), available at http://www.article19.org/data/files/Intermediaries_ENGLISH.pdf.

[15] UNESCO Report at 120.

[16] Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet at 2.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Id. at 121.

[20] Id. at 104.

[21] Id. at 122.

[22] Center for Democracy and Technology, Shielding the Messengers: Protecting Platforms for Expression and Innovation at 12 (Version 2, 2012), available at https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CDT-Intermediary-Liability-2012.pdf.

[23] Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression at 2-3.

[24] Geist, Michael, Rogers Provides New Evidence on Effectiveness of Notice-and-Notice System (2011), available at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2011/03/effectiveness-of-notice-and-notice/

[25] Center for Democracy and Technology, Chile’s Notice-and-Takedown System for Copyright Protection: An Alternative Approach (2012), available at https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/Chile-notice-takedown.pdf

[26] UNESCO Report at 54.

[27] “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue (A/HRC/23/40),” United Nations Human Rights, 17 April 2013, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session23/A.HRC.23.40_EN.pdf, § 24, p. 7.

[28] UNESCO Report at 118.

[29] UNESCO Report at 122.

[30] Id.

[31] UNESCO Report at 120.

[32] Id. at 119.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/zero-draft-of-content-removal-best-practices-white-paper

August 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-10-04T06:09:57Z

Eighth issue of the newsletter (August 2014) below:

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

Highlights

CIS published a policy guide on Privacy in Healthcare that seeks to understand the legal regulations governing data flow in the health sector - particularly hospitals, and how these regulations are implemented.
Nehaa Chaudhari wrote two articles on the Karnataka Goondas Act in Spicy IP. The first one is an overview on the various provisions of the law and discusses the potential impact of the amendment . The second one is a note on legislative competence .

Andhra Loyola College and CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.
In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India released a draft Open Access Policy. CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by the Drafting Committee to develop and review the open access policy. As a follow-up, CIS prepared comments to the draft Policy .

Anandini K. Rathore wrote a report on the second privacy and surveillance roundtable held in New Delhi at the India International Centre on July 4, 2014.
As part of its project on mapping cyber security experts in Asia with funding from Citizen's Lab, CIS interviewed Tibetan monkGyanak Tsering and Saumil Shah, security expert.

Published a white paper on content removal best practices and put it up for feedback. The draft paper has been created to frame the discussion towards the creation of a set of principles for intermediary liability in consultation with groups of Internet-focused NGOs and the academic community.
Shyam Ponappa's monthly column Transformation, or Drift? published in Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot was mirrored on the CIS website.
P.P. Sneha blogged on the emergence of the phenomenon of the alt-academy in the West and the nuances and possibilities of such a space in the Indian context .

Accessibility and Inclusion

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

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

Blog Entry

Smartphones and the Return to Dependency (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 30, 2014).

Participation in Event

Towards an Accessible Internet for People with Disabilities (organized by International Centre for Free and Open Source Software and ISOC Australia, Delhi, August 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this workshop organized as part of APrIGF.

Access to Knowledge

Blog Entries

Preventive Detention for Copyright Violation: Karnataka Amends the 'Goondas' Act (by Nehaa Chaudhari, August 13, 2014).

Karnataka Goondas Act - A note on Legislative Competence (by Nehaa Chaudhari, August 28, 2014).

Interviews with App Developers: [dis]regard towards IPR vs. Patent Hype - Part II (by Samantha Cassar, August 14, 2014).

Openness

Submission

Comments on the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy (by Anubha Sinha, August 22, 2014).

Participation in Event

Connecting the Next Two Billion: The Role of FOSS (organized by ICFOSS, Noida, August 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this workshop held as part of the APrIGF.

Wikipedia

Announcement

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, August 19, 2014): Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ were released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0); For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia; ALC faculty and students will create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia; Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance will be produced on Telugu Wikipedia.

News and Media Coverage

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

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia (by H.M.Shruthi, Deccan Herald, August 5, 2014).

CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada (Eenadu, August 15, 2014).

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

Participation in Event

Konkani Global Enclave (organized by Jagotik Konknni Songhotton, Kalaangann, Shaktinagar, August 24, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan participated in the event.

Internet Governance

Privacy

Policy Guide

Privacy in Healthcare: Policy Guide (by Tanvi Mani, August 26, 2014).

Event Report

Second Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable (by Anandini K Rathore, August 6, 2014).

Blog Entries

Surat's Massive Surveillance Network Should Cause Concern, Not Celebration (by Joe Sheehan, August 3, 2014).

Learning to Forget the ECJ's Decision on the Right to be Forgotten and its Implications (by Divij Joshi, August 14, 2014).

Participation in Events

Learning Event - The Internet and Economic, Cultural and Social Rights (organized by the International Development Research Centre and Association for Progressive Communications, August 8 - 10, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a remote participant.

Understanding Surveillance and Privacy in India (organized by Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, August 28, 2014). Bhairav Acharya delivered a lecture.

Free Speech

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

White Paper

Zero Draft of Content Removal Best Practices White Paper (by Jyoti Panday, August 31, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'I'm going to ruin you, dear' (by Prasun Chaudhuri with additional reporting by Varuna Verma in Bangalore, August 3, 2014).
We the goondas (by Shyam Prasad, Bangalore Mirror, August 4, 2014).
Sunil Abraham | The online warrior (by Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2014).
Dot Bharat domain to roll out on August 21 (originally published by IANS and mirrored in FirstPost, August 19, 2014).
The Uncertain Future of India's Plan to Biometrically Identify Everyone (by Jessica Mckenzie, TechPresident, August 28, 2014).
Will domain dot भारत spur the growth of Indian languages on the internet? (by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, August 29, 2014).
SC seeks govt reply on PIL challenging powers of IT Act (by Shreeja Sen, Livemint, August 30, 2014).

Cyber Stewards

As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 21 interviews:

Video Interviews

Saumil Shah (August 30, 2014).

Gyanak Tsering (August 31, 2014).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

Transformation, or Drift? (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, August 6, 2014 and Organizing India Blogspot, August 7, 2014).

Blog Entry

"OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue": Telcos in India (by Geetha Hariharan, August 7, 2014).

Digital Humanities

Blog Entry

Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy (by P.P. Sneha, August 19, 2014).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration:

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

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

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2014

praskrishna — 2014-10-04T15:51:15Z

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

India Access to Knowledge/Newsletter/August 2014 - Meta

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

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

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

Blog Entries

We are Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices Online, June 18, 2014)
OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGlam, August 27, 2014)

News and Media Coverage

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

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia (by H.M.Shruthi, Deccan Herald, August 5, 2014).
CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada (Eenadu, August 15, 2014).
ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014).

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

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

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

Request for Collaboration:

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

Retrieved from "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=India_Access_to_Knowledge/Newsletter/August_2014&oldid=9929126"

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

SC seeks govt reply on PIL challenging powers of IT Act

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T04:45:51Z

Section 66A of the IT Act punishes sending offensive messages through communication services, including posts on social media websites like Facebook.

The article by Shreeja Sen was published in Livemint on August 30, 2014. Leslie D’Monte contributed to this story. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

The Supreme Court on Friday asked for the central government’s response in a writ petition filed by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) challenging the arbitrary powers that the Information Technology (IT) Act confers on the government to remove user-generated content.

This is not the first time that the amended provisions of the IT Act 2000 and the IT (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 have been challenged. The rules were released by the government in April 2011, and laid down detailed procedures for regulation of intermediaries and online content.

A bench of justices J. Chelameswar and A.K. Sikri, while issuing notice to the central government, tagged the cases with others of a similar nature, including ones by MouthShut.com, a consumer review website, and Shreya Singhal, a public interest litigant who challenged the constitutionality of Section 66A in support of Shaheen Dhada, who was arrested for criticizing the shutdown of Mumbai after the death of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray in 2012. Section 66A of the IT Act punishes sending offensive messages through communication services, including posts on social media websites like Facebook.

“We’re very happy at MouthShut that IAMAI decided to take a stand regarding this,” said Faisal Farooqui, chief executive officer of MouthShut.com.

The petition, which runs into 1,100 pages according to those familiar with the case, seeks to challenge Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act. The section holds an Internet service provider (ISP) responsible for content which may be unlawful, published by third parties (not the ISPs) when they’ve been intimated by the government. It takes away the safe harbour rule, which protects ISPs from being sued because of third party actions.

According to a statement by IAMAI, the industry lobby approached the apex court for “objective interpretation of the laws”. Referring to the court agreeing to hear the petition, the statement said, “This admission today allows the industry an opportunity to argue for a clear Safe Harbour Provision for the intermediaries, which is an essential pre-condition of a thriving digital content business.”

“In my view, the court may be sympathetic to this particular situation because there is a body of research and evidence that demonstrates that the private censorship regime instituted by Section 79A that places unconstitutional limits of freedom of speech and expression,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India, a non-profit organization involved with research in freedom of expression, privacy and open access to literature.

On 27 April 2012, CIS-India had released a paper which, among other things, listed why the IT Rules 2011 could have a “chilling” effect on intermediaries. No much has changed since. The paper argued that not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources (or the willingness to devote such legal resources) to deliberate on the legality of an expression, as a result of which, intermediaries have a tendency to err on the side of caution. It also pointed out that the qualifications and due diligence requirements of different classes of intermediaries have not been clearly defined in the Rules resulting in uncertainty in the steps to be followed by the intermediary. It noted that depending on the nature of a service, it may be technically unfeasible for an intermediary to comply with the takedown within 36 hours.

“The chilling effect can primarily be attributed to the requirement for private intermediaries to perform subjective judicial determination in the course of administering the takedown. From the responses to the takedown notices, it is apparent that not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources to deliberate on the legality of an expression, as a result of which, such intermediaries have a tendency to err on the side of caution and chill legitimate expressions in order to limit their liability,” the paper said.

Another privacy lobby body, SFLC.in, had submitted feedback to the government when the draft IT Rules were put up for consultation but said that “when the final Rules were notified we found that most of our concerns were not addressed and that the Rules exceeded the scope of the parent act”.

In a July paper, SFLC.in reiterated that “Words and phrases like grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, disparaging and “harm minors in any way” are not defined in these Rules or in the Act or in any other legislation. These ambiguous words make the Rules susceptible to misuse…(and have a) chilling effect on free speech rights of users by making them too cautious about the content they post and byforcing them to self-censor…As technology evolves at a fast pace, the law should not be found wanting. The law should be an enabling factor that ensures that citizens enjoy their right to freedom of speech and expression without any hindrance. India, being the largest democracy in the world should lead the world in ensuring that the citizens enjoy the right to express themselves freely online.”

SFLC.in is a donor-supported legal services organization that brings together lawyers, policy analysts, technologists, and students.

According to a March study commissioned by the Global Network Initiative, a multistakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations, investors, and academics and conducted by Copenhagen Economics, an economic consultancy, the GDP contribution of online intermediaries may increase to more than 1.3 % ($ 241 billion) by 2015, provided the current liability regime is improved.

In another development, hearing a petition asking to take down pornographic website, the court deemed it fit to send it to an advisory committee that has been set up under Section 88 of the Information Technology Act. The petition, filed by lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani in 2013, asked for a direction to the central government to block pornography websites, platforms, links or downloading. Speaking to reporters, Vaswani’s lawyer Vijay Panjwani said, “as on date, there are 4 crore pornographic websites. For 18 months, the government has not blocked them.”

The central government informed the committee was considering several options to address the issue of including methods used in the US and UK. This case was being heard by a three-judge bench headed by the chief justice of India R.M. Lodha, who said that to address these technological issues, a “synthesis of law, technology and governance is required.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-august-30-2014-shreeja-sen-sc-seeks-govt-reply-on-pil-challenging-powers-of-it-act

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014

subha — 2014-10-06T05:09:19Z

GLAM activities in the last two months have been quite happening!

Subhashish Panigrahi's blog post was published on OpenGLAM website on August 27, 2014.

After Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin, OpenGLAM members and other GLAM contributors met again during Wikimania London, the official annual event of the Wikimedia movement focused on what people are making with wikis and open content. There were GLAM talks, workshops, discussions and brown bag talks: in this blog I’ll go into some of the highlights, but you can find an overview of all GLAM & Free culture submissions here.

Best practices for the evaluation of GLAM-Wiki cooperation

A GLAM-Wiki evaluation workshop was organized by Beat Estermann, Maarten Brinkerink and Wikimedia Foundation’s Program Evaluation specialist Jaime Anstee to assess the impact of the past GLAM projects and to create a road map by placing evaluation parameters in place for institutional collaboration. From the GLAM wiki residency project at Wikimedia UK, Jonathan Cardy presented the evaluation process needed in place for Wikipedia-in-Residence programs. Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE)’s Lilli Iliev shared information about the evaluation practices WMDE has put in place in order to implement small to large scale GLAM projects in Germany. While working with various cultural institutions in Germany, they focused on qualitative aspects of the content acquired, on goal oriented programs like “GLAM on Tour”, and on mass outreach by popular media and post campaign impact measuring. Four groups were then formed to work on particular GLAM projects, how they plan to evaluate tangible output and measure return on investments.

Have you heard?

In the scope of the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project that he founded, Andy Marbett (http://pigsonthewing.org.uk) spoke about the beauty of having recordings of notable people where they not just pronounce their names in their native languages, but introduce themselves with their dates and places of birth. With BBC’s collaboration, this project has grew to an avenue on Wikipedia to enrich biography-articles. This is indeed a project that has run absolutely in zero cost and aims at making Wikimedians meet their stars and document their voices for ever on the Internet. The full video of the talk is available below.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-glam-august-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-open-glam-at-wikimania-2014

CIS' Comments on the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy

sinha — 2014-08-22T15:46:45Z

In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India released a draft Open Access Policy. CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by the Drafting Committee to develop and review the open access policy. As a follow-up, CIS prepared comments to the draft Policy. This post makes available CIS' comments to the draft Policy.

The Policy was drafted after multiple rounds of consultation with Ministry officials, eminent academics and experts with prior experience of drafting open-access policies, and CIS. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam along with the Open Access Policy Committee led the discussions. The draft Policy may be accessed here. You may access CIS' detailed post on its previous work on the draft Policy here. The comments provided by CIS follow.

Click here to download a pdf version of the comments.

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COMMENTS ON THE

PROPOSED OPEN ACCESS POLICY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOTECHNOLOGY AND DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE

THE CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY, INDIA

I. PRELIMINARY

1. This submission presents preliminary clause-by-clause comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) on the Proposed Open Access Policy (“the Policy”) of the Department of Biotechnology (“DBT”) and Department of Science (“DST”).

2. This submission is based on the draft document for an open access policy by the DBT/DST. The draft document may be accessed on the website of the DBT.^¹

3. CIS commends the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India for its efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders prior to the release of its open access policy. CIS is thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of the discussion during the framing of the Policy; and to provide this clause-by-clause submission, in furtherance of the feedback process continuing from the aforesaid draft Policy.

II. OVERVIEW

4. The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-governmental organization engaged in research and policy work in the areas of, inter alia, access to knowledge and openness.^² This clause-by-clause submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles and are limited to those clauses that most directly have an impact on them.

III. CLAUSE-BY-CLAUSE COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS

5. “An important function of DBT/DST is to support basic, translational and applied scientific research through the creation of suitable infrastructure, by providing funding to individual scientists, institutions and start-ups, and through any other means deemed necessary.”

5.1. CIS has observed the superior standard of scientific research and development performed at DST/DBT^³, and the steps taken to create high quality infrastructure by providing direct and indirect funding to several individual scientists, institutions and start-ups.

5.2. CIS strongly supports DBT/DST’s endeavour to extend the benefits of scientific research to the public produced by the persons in the foregoing comment by creating an open access policy.

5.3. CIS believes that the creation of an open access policy will advance the “creation of suitable infrastructure” by DBT/DST. Further, academic literature argues that open access works have a greater impact than works that are not freely available^⁴ and the public ought to benefit from research funded by the taxpayers’ money.^⁵

6. “Since all funds disbursed by DBT/DST are public funds, it is important that the information and knowledge generated through the use of these funds are made publicly available as soon as possible.”

6.1. The Policy proposes usage of the phrase “made publicly available.”

6.2. It is submitted that the phrase “made publicly available” does not sufficiently convey or establish the specific rights of the public with regard to the use of the information and knowledge generated at DBT/DST.

6.3. Under Indian Copyright law^⁶, the Government is the first owner of research “made or published under the control or direction” of any of its department or public undertaking in the absence of a contract to the contrary. Therefore, the Government is the owner of the knowledge and information generated at DBT/DST.^⁷ The author by virtue of section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, however, retains the following rights in the publication:

a. Identification right or attribution right;

b. Right to maintain integrity in the work; and

c. Right to prevent destruction of the work.

These rights are collectively known as the author’s moral rights. They remain with the author even after assignment of the copyright or first ownership vesting with the Government. Whereas, the Policy permits unfettered access to research, there are limitations on further use of the work placed on third parties by virtue of the aforementioned rights.

6.4. CIS, therefore, in support of maintaining precision of the Policy recommends use of the phrase “made publicly available as soon as possible, subject to limitations prescribed under Indian law.”

6.5. CIS strongly supports the Policy’s rationale to make all knowledge openly accessible because it is produced by public funding. The rationale also aligns with academic literature advocating that the public ought to benefit from research funded by the taxpayers’ money.^⁸

7. “Research funded by DBT/DST results in new ideas and knowledge. However, DBT/DST will not underwrite article processing charges levied by some journals.”

7.1. CIS observes that while a majority of open access publications may not charge subscription or other access fees, they usually cover their operating expenses through other sources by levying processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal.^⁹

7.2. CIS believes that the Policy should not cause detriment to persons performing research under DBT/DST, safeguard each person’s interest and career advancement. DBT/DST must create suitable infrastructure to accommodate prevalent practices and ensure the best support for its researchers.

7.3. CIS, therefore, suggests the need to establish a durable mechanism for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.^¹⁰

7.4. The following methods may be elected to further the aforementioned comment:

a. DST/DBT may insert a provision to factor Article Processing Charges into the researcher’s grant; or

b. DST/DBT may establish an OA Publishing Fund. Funding may emerge from potential sources such as the institution al research division responsible with tracking and managing grant funding.

c. DST/DBT may purchase an institutional membership with OA publishers. Several major OA publishers discount their processing charges if an author is affiliated with an institution that has a membership.^¹¹

8. “The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author’s work is published, should be considered in making future funding decisions. DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.”

8.1. CIS strongly believes that the policy successfully creates a level playing field for assessment of quality of publications by making the title of the journal irrelevant.

8.2. CIS observes that the particular clause uses “title of the journal” to imply that the title is irrelevant as a factor to judge the merit of the work; whereas in the following sentence uses “DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors” as a factor to assess quality of the work. The synonymous use creates an impression that “journal impact factor” is similar to “title of the journal”, which is a specious representation.

8.3. CIS submits that “journal impact factor” is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal, and is only one of the many methods of calculating quality of a publication.^¹²

8.4. CIS suggests that the clause may be amended as follows, insofar as the preceding comments are concerned:

“The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author’s work is published, should be considered in making future funding decisions. DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors either, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.”

8.5. Further, CIS submits that open access is in a nascent stage in Indian academia, and a person performing research under DBT/DST may lose external benefits by adhering to this clause. In reality, open access journals are yet to cultivate the high quality readership that certain subscription based journals enjoy. The clause prematurely puts a burden on researchers to not publish in subscription based journals enjoying a stellar reputation. Further, mere posting in online repositories will not ensure that the research will be successfully read and critiqued by other members of the academia.

8.6. CIS believes that DBT/DST should provide sufficient infrastructure and freedom to allow researchers to publish by a method of their choice, and not put unnecessary restrictions on the same.

9. “The DBT/DST believe/s that maximizing the distribution of these publications by providing free online access by depositing them in a gratis open access repository is the most effective way of ensuring that the research it funds can be accessed, read and built upon. This, in turn, will foster a richer research culture.”

9.1. CIS strongly agrees with DBT/DST’s method of disseminating research. The method is in harmony with the principles of open access since it provides free online access by depositing manuscripts in an open access repository.

9.2. CIS submits that the clause may include depositing full-text, metadata and supplementary materials in addition to the paper, in consonance with Clause 12 of this submission.

10. “Grantees can make their papers open-access by publishing in an open-access journal or, if they choose to publish in a subscription journal, by posting the final accepted manuscript to an online repository.”

10.1. The clause indicates that papers may be made open access via two routes, firstly, publishing the paper in an open-access journal, and secondly, publishing the paper in a subscription journal. Publishing the paper in a subscription journal entails the grantee to also post the final manuscript to an online repository.

10.2. CIS strongly supports the Policy’s direction to grantees to deposit “the final accepted manuscript to an online repository” upon adoption of the second route.

10.3. However, CIS believes that to ensure that ends of open access completely meet; the papers should be mandatorily deposited in online repositories which are freely accessible to the public i.e. following the Green OA route completely.

10.4. To strengthen foregoing comment, CIS strongly suggests establishment of a central online repository under the aegis of DST/DBT. This will guarantee open access to the manuscript in the unfortunate case of the institutional repository failing or delaying in tying up with other institutional repositories and the central repository.

10.4. It is submitted that the clause may be accordingly amended as follows^¹³:

“Grantees can make their papers open-access by publishing in an open-access journal and posting the final manuscript to a central online repository, or by publishing in a subscription journal and posting the final accepted manuscript i.e. the pre-print version to the central online repository. A preprint is any version of the paper prior to peer-review and publication, usually the version submitted to a journal.”

What should be deposited?

11. “The final accepted manuscript (after refereeing, revision, etc.) resulting from research projects fully or partially funded by DBT/DST or performed using infrastructure built with the support of DBT/DST and to appear in peer-reviewed professional journals. This also includes review articles, both invited and author initiated, for those who received funding from DBT/DST during that period.”

11.1. It is submitted that the clause fails to declare the applicability of the Policy to non-peer reviewed works, inter alia, doctoral dissertations.

11.2. CIS observed that the DBT offers post-graduate programs, including the DBT Postdoctoral Fellowship (DBT- PDF) programme and Post-Graduate programs, inter alia.^¹⁴

11.3. CIS supports the extension of the policy to works produced under all programs at DBT/DST (mentioned in the foregoing comment) to increase the efficacy of the Policy and to fulfil greatest dissemination of public funded research.

12. “The full-text of the paper and metadata should be deposited. Supplementary materials should be made available along with the publication. At the end of the full-text the acknowledgement should carry the grant number.”

12.1. CIS strongly supports the deposit of metadata, full-text of the paper to be made available along with other supplementary materials.

12.2. This clause rightly seeks supplementary material to ensure holistic access to the research.

12.3. CIS believes that DST/DBT should ensure that the aforementioned material is deposited in a machine readable format thereby permitting accurate search across the open access infrastructure and supporting interoperability. This will lead to a high degree of openness and foster a more rigorous academic culture.

12.4. In furtherance of the preceding comment, CIS submits that DBT/DST may use Digital Object Identifiers (“DOI”) to create persistent citations of publications available online. DOI ensures interoperability across systems and accurate linking of all material in relation to a publication. OECD has successfully implemented the system in its library system, namely, the OECD iLibrary.^¹⁵

12.4. CIS encourages DBT/DST to develop a more detailed policy on issues affecting the infrastructure required to successfully implement open access at it.

13. “Papers resulting from funds received from the fiscal year 2012-13 onwards are required to be deposited. Authors are strongly urged to also deposit final accepted manuscripts from funding received in earlier years.”

13.1. CIS strongly agrees with the scheme of depositing papers.

13.2. It is submitted that this clause will dispel ambiguity for requirement of depositing papers published prior to 2012.

Where to deposit?

14. “The manuscript should be deposited in the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository (IR). If the institution does not yet have an IR of its own, then the paper should be deposited in the central repository, which will be created by DBT/DST.”

14.1. CIS strongly supports depositing papers in the aforementioned repositories.

14.2. It is submitted that the manuscript may be mandatorily be deposited in a central online repository (as suggested in the preceding comments), in addition to the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository.^¹⁶ This will guarantee open access to the manuscript in the unfortunate case of the institutional repository failing or delaying in tying up with other institutional repositories and the central online repository.

When to deposit?

15. “Deposits should be made within one week of acceptance by the journal. However, if the journal insists on an embargo, the material should still be deposited, but the repository will keep the deposited papers non-OA and only make it fully OA at the end of the embargo period.²Suggest that the period of embargo not be greater than one year.”

15.1. CIS strongly supports the time-frame provided for depositing the paper, and the subsequent clause for keeping the paper “dark OA” in the case of an embargo placed on the paper by the publisher.

15.2. CIS suggests that the sentence “Suggest that the period of embargo not be greater than one year” be re-framed to reflect a conclusive position of the DST/DBT.

15.3. CIS submits that the clause may be amended as follows:

“Deposits should be made within one week of acceptance by the journal. However, if the journal insists on an embargo, the material should still be deposited, but the repository will keep the deposited papers non-OA and only make it fully OA at the end of the embargo period. The embargo should operate for a maximum period of one year.”

Who should deposit?

16. “This policy applies to individual scientists/institutions who have directly received ad-hoc funding or other support/benefits/infrastructure from DBT/DST as well as to scientists working at DBT/DST-aided autonomous institutions who benefit directly or indirectly from the infrastructure and core funding provided by DBT/DST.”

16.1. CIS strongly supports the inclusion of scientists and researchers into the scope of the Policy.

16.2. It is submitted that extending the scope of the Policy to apply to direct beneficiaries as well as indirect beneficiaries of DBT/DST funding/infrastructure shall ensure open access to a large amount of invaluable research.

16.3. The clause may be amended as follows:

“This policy applies to individual scientists/researchers/institutions who have directly received ad-hoc funding or other support/benefits/infrastructure from DBT/DST as well as to scientists/researchers working at DBT/DST-aided autonomous institutions who benefit directly or indirectly from the infrastructure and core funding provided by DBT/DST.”

17. “The principal investigator (PI) or someone authorized by the PI, or anyone authorized by the head of the institution where the work is carried out (such as the librarian), can deposit the papers. Both the PI and the head of the institution will be responsible for timely deposit of the paper.”

17.1. CIS supports the process chalked out to deposit the papers.

17.2. It is submitted that a formal procedure shall ensure efficient and timely deposit of the papers.

Depositing in a repository is mandatory

18. “Unless the deposit ID is quoted in the project report as well as in future proposals for funding, the proposals will not be considered.

Unless the deposit ID is quoted in the project report as well as in future proposals for funding, the proposals will not be considered.

In the rare case where the PI or head of the institution has some valid reasons for not complying with these requirements they should give a suitable explanation in the final report.

For research carried out in institutions under the administrative control of DBT/DST:

Authors of papers that will have no such deposit ID shall not be considered for promotion/appointment/ award/Fellowship/Research Grant.”

18.1. CIS supports the procedure to ensure mandatory deposits in a repository.

18.2. It is submitted that creating unique deposit IDs shall ensure that the PI or head of the institution oversees the process of making a paper open access more efficiently. Further, the clause incentivises authors to gain a deposit ID by depositing their papers in a repository, thereby maximizing open access.

How to deposit?

19. “In case of IRs, the IR administrator (and his/her team) will deposit the material on behalf of the authors. If one wants to deposit the material in the central repository, the author (or one of the authors in case of many) should forward the material to the administrator of the central repository. Those who want to self-archive in an IR may obtain the credentials from the administrators.”

19.1. The clause prescribes the methods prescribed in the Policy to deposit a paper.

19.2. However, CIS believes that depositing papers in the Central repository should be mandatory, since tie-ups with the institutional repositories may fail or get delayed. The Policy should aim at reducing administrative barriers in interest of making papers open access in the least amount of time.

Copyright

20. “In case the scientist produces research as part of her employment with a government body, the copyright vests in the government body, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. Therefore, if the copyright continues to vest in the Government, transfer of rights would have to be by the Government, or by the scientist after prior permission from the Government. If the research has been produced by the scientist in the course of her employment with any institution, copyrights vests in the institution concerned, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. The institution should retain the right to make the articles freely available gratis, whether the journal is open- access or subscription-based.”

20.1. CIS strongly supports the Policy in regard to informing the author about their ownership rights in the research.

20.2. CIS strongly supports a legal arrangement whereby the author is transferred complete copyright in his/her work; and the Government retains a non-exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence to disseminate the work publicly for the purposes of this Policy.

20.3. In furtherance of the preceding comment, the clause may be amended as follows:

“In case the scientist/researcher produces research as part of her employment with a government body, the copyright legally vests in the government body, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. In the interest of the authors, the Government will transfer copyright in the work to the author, subject to reservation of certain rights. The Government should retain the right to reproduction of works, to issue copies of the works freely available gratis, whether the journal is open- access or subscription-based.”

21. “The DBT/DST recommend/s that all authors receiving funds from DBT/DST should, at the time of returning the copyright transfer form, inform the publisher that they would retain the right to place the full-text of the final author version in the institution’s IR and DBT/DST Central. This can be achieved by attaching to the copyright transfer agreement the DBT/DST author addendum.”

21.1. CIS strongly supports the pre-condition to be placed by the authors before the publisher before permitting publication of their papers.

21.2. It is submitted that retaining the right to deposit papers in the appropriate repositories shall ensure open access to research produced by the authors, and place a legal obligation on the publisher to honour the principle of open access by virtue of the copyright transfer agreement.

IV. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

22. The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposed Open Access Policy of the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science and commends the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India for its initiative in seeking inputs from the stakeholders.

23. To that end, reiterating its commitment to the values of access to knowledge, openness, freedom of information, protection of general public interest and safeguarding various stakeholders’ interests and rights, the Centre for Internet and Society presents the following concluding observations:

a. That the Policy uses the phrase “made publicly available as soon as possible, subject to limitations prescribed under Indian laws” to adequately convey its purposes.

b. That the Policy may create various mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which the respective institutions would not be expected to provide funds. The mechanisms are as follows:

(i) DST/DBT may insert a provision to factor Article Processing Charges into the researcher’s grant; or

(ii) DST/DBT may establish an OA Publishing Fund. Funding may emerge from potential sources such as the institutional research division responsible with tracking and managing grant funding.

(iii) DST/DBT may purchase an institutional membership with OA publishers.

c. That the Policy should clearly distinguish between journal impact factors and title of the journal in respect of assessing the quality of the publication

d. That to ensure that ends of open access completely meet; the papers should be mandatorily deposited in a central online repository (established by DBT/DST) which is freely accessible to the public i.e. following the Green OA route in toto.

e. That non- peer reviewed works produced at DBT/DST, in addition to peer reviewed works also be deposited by the authors and therefore be included in the appropriate clause.

f. That to ensure that the full-text, meta data and supplementary material is deposited in a machine readable format thereby permitting accurate search across the open access infrastructure; The policy may develop a more rigorous plan for creating adequate infrastructure to ensure interoperability.

g. That the Policy may consider using DOI to establish a robust infrastructure.

h. That the manuscript may be mandatorily deposited a central online repository, in addition to the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository to ensure that ends of open access are met.

i. That the copyright should vest with the author and the Government may retain rights to reproduction of the work in order to issue free copies of the work to the public.

j. That certain sentences be suitably modified, as discussed in the preceding sections of these comments.

k. That the Policy fails to establish a target timeline to achieve the objectives and setting up of required infrastructure, thereby rendering the collaborative obligations and duties of various stakeholders undefined. The Policy may insert a clause for the same as follows:

“Targets of the DST-DBT Open Access Policy Implementation (broadly):

Conclude the final terms and conditions of the Policy by <insert date>.
Create a central online repository for authors to submit their material by <insert date>.¹⁷
Encourage institutions to create respective institutional repositories.
Create a website with a user-friendly interface to enable access to the public by <insert date>”

That the Policy fails to address the remedies for non-compliance of its terms and condtitions by any party i.e Government, institution, researcher/scientist. A clause may be inserted as follows:

“Compliance

Researcher/scientist

1. In the event of the researcher/scientist entering into an agreement with a journal publisher, which stipulates unreasonable conditions on the accessiblity, thereby being incompatible with the Policy, the terms of the Policy shall have an overriding effect with regard to making the material publicly accessible.

Institution

2. The insititution shall faciliate and assist the author in depositing the required material in the central online repository.

Government

3. The Government shall enter into a copyright transfer agreement with the author contemporaneously alongwith the conclusion of the employment agreement, and agree to transfer the copyright to the author whilst reserving a non-exclusive, irrevocable and perputal right of reproduction and dissemination of the material deposited. In the absence/violation of a copyright transfer agreement, the Policy grants the researcher/scientist the copyright in the material so authored.”

24. The Centre for Internet and Society would be willing discuss these submissions with the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India; and supplement these with further submissions if necessary, and offer any other assistance towards the efforts at developing an open access policy for the DBT/DST.

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society

Nehaa Chaudhari

Anubha Sinha

August 19, 2014

1See “DBT-DST Open Access Policy” available at <http://dbt india.nic.in/docs/DBT-DST_Open_Access_Policy.pdf> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

2See www.cis-india.org (last accessed August 11, 2014) for details about CIS’ work.

3See “Annual Report 2012-13”, Ministry of Science and Technology, available at http://www.dst.gov.in/about_us/ar12-13/annual-report-2012-13.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014).

4See ‘Do Open access articles have a greater research impact?’, Kristine Antelman available at <http://eprints.rclis.org/5463/1/do_open_access_CRL.pdf> (last accessed August 5, 2014).

5 See “Academic knowledge, Open access and Democracy”, available at http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/media/5454/open-access.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014)

6Copyright Act, 1957.

7Section 2(k) of the Copyright Act, 1957 read with Section 17 of the Copyright Act, 1957.

8See “Academic knowledge, Open access and Democracy”, available at http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/media/5454/open-access.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014)

9See “Compact for Open access publishing Equity”, available at <http://www.oacompact.org/compact/>(last accessed August 10,2014)

10ibid.

11See “Funding open access journal publishing”, Christine Fruin, Fred Rascoe, available at <http://crln.acrl.org/content/75/5/240> (last accessed August 10, 2014)

12 See “Impact factors: arbiter of excellence?”, Martin Frank, available at < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC141180/#n102> (last accessed August 14, 2014)

13 See “Open Access Overview”, Peter Suber, available at <http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm> (last accessed August 14, 2014).

14See “Human Resource Development: Program”, available at <http://dbtindia.nic.in/uniquepage.asp?id_pk=16> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

15 See "We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables", Green T, available at < http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.40/2010/wp.8.e.pdf> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

16See “CORE: Three Access Levels to Underpin Open Access”, available at <http://www.dlib.org/dli b/november12/knoth/11knoth.html> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

17See “Streamlined Manual Deposit Progress” available at <https://wiki.library.ucsf.edu/display/OAPI/Streamlined+Manual+Deposit+Progress> (last accessed August 4, 2014)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/cis-comments-to-the-department-of-biotechnology-and-department-of-science-open-access-policy

CIS Comments to the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy

sinha — 2014-08-22T11:05:45Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-comments-to-the-department-of-biotechnology-and-department-of-science-open-access-policy

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Dot Bharat domain to roll out on August 21

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T07:08:32Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy

sneha — 2015-11-13T05:29:48Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

rahim — 2015-01-20T18:47:13Z

Highlights

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

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

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

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

The event was organized by ALC and CIS.

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

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

Media Coverage

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

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

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

samantha — 2014-08-19T03:51:39Z

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

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

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

Question 2: “How is your IP protected?”

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

How they responded

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

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

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

Reasons for IPR protection

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

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

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

Security not so easily attainable

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nevermind enforcement...

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

Planting the initial seed

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

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

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

Loss of faith in patents for SMEs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can mobile apps be patented?[2]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To recap

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

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

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

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

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

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

geetha — 2014-09-10T05:36:37Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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