Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikipedia to Digitise 14 Books

praskrishna — 2014-03-31T14:29:43Z

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day (Utkal Divas) on April 1, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for digitisation of 11 books of eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

This article was published in the Pioneer on March 30, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

According to Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge) of Centre for Internet and Society Bengaluru Subhasis Panigrahi, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) would take up the digitisation project where KISS students would type them on WikiSource, a sister project of Wikipedia.

These books include children’s literature, travelogues and biographical essays penned by Dr Mohanty.Digitisation of three more books, two in Odia Jati, Jagruti O Pragati (on people and culture of Odisha) and Bhasa O Jatiyata in Odia (based on research on Odia language), and an English book Classical Odia (on the literary heritage of Odia) will be also be inaugurated on this day.

All these digitised books will be made available on the Internet with open access through free licences. More than 5,000 pages will be digitised in these two projects.Several public and private organisations have started making serious efforts after Odia got the classical language status recently.

To discuss the need for many new tools and technological advancement, a seminar will be held at Jayadev Bhawan here on March 29. Prof Udayanath Sahu and writers Asit Mohanty and Dr Lenin Mohanty will discuss about spell check for Odia, use of Odia language in the media and tools for typing in Odia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/daily-pioneer-state-editions-bhubaneswar-odia-wikipedia-to-digitise-14-books

India Access To Knowledge/Draft Work plan July 2014 - June 2015

vishnu — 2014-04-08T09:51:27Z

One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in South-Asia and in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008 when Jimmy Wales visited Bangalore. From September 2012 it has been actively involved in growing the movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Based on the 18-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed its Work Plan for July 2014 to June 2015.

This was originally published on Wikimedia blog

This work plan consists of 21 plans across 6 verticals. These are:

7 Language Area Plans: CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts in four focus language areas plans during the last year and has been successful in reaching most of its goals. In 2014-15 we will further deepen our engagement in these four language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu). Further, this experience and the learnings from it will be leveraged to work on three more large Indic language Wikipedia projects, which are Bangla, Hindi and Marathi. We have developed a detailed plan for each of these language areas, which can be seen here.
3 Community Strengthening Initiatives: We propose community strengthening initiatives that will further grow the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated community, both qualitatively and quantitatively. These initiatives, focussing on building capacity and nurturing leadership in the Indic communities, will ensure that growth is sustained beyond the CIS-A2K program. A detailed plan for each of these initiatives is available here.
8 Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects: These stand-alone projects will have clear deliverables in a limited span of time, and will help us understand how to take up bigger initiatives in the respective language. All the stand-alone projects are more fully described here.
Creating Movement Resources: Once CIS-A2K began actively working with the Indic Wikimedia communities, it soon realized that unlike in English there were not many Wikimedia-related resources available in Indic languages. During the last year we produced some resources which were mostly unplanned outcomes. However, we feel there is an urgent need to create movement resources in Indic languages like a Creative Commons (CC) handbook; a Copyright handbook; training manuals; video tutorials, etc. See our plans for concerted efforts to create resources for strengthening the Wikimedia movement in India and in Indic languages here.
Publicity, Research and Documentation: Many of the Indic Wikimedia projects in spite of being in existence for more than 10 years have not received adequate publicity. Also, the Wikimedia movement in India could benefit from more systematic research and documentation. CIS-A2K will put in more intensive efforts into Publicity, Research and Documentation of the Wikimedia movement in India during this year as per the plans discussed here.
General Support and Service to the Movement: CIS-A2K deeply believes in extending support and service to the Wikimedia volunteer community in India. This has been one of the important aspects of our work so far. We have honoured up to 100 requests of all sizes that we received from the Wikimedia volunteer communities across all Indic languages. This page gives more details about the proposed work.

The work plan includes details of aims, objectives, programme activities and expected outcomes. Most of the language area plans were put together in active consultation with the respective Wikimedia language communities. Various inputs and ideas contributed, opportunities provided, and challenges thrown at the CIS-A2K program during the last year by the Wikimedia communities in India, our institutional partners, Executive Committee (EC) of Wikimedia India Chapter (WMIN) and the Wikimedia Foundation's Grantmaking Team have significantly informed our work plans.

Introduction

Background to CIS-A2K Program

The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to CIS in Bangalore, India to expand their A2K programme in India. The grant was released over a three phase period - first in September 2012 (₹ 11,000,000), second in June 2013 (₹ 7,500,000) and third in December 2014(₹ 7,500,000). The purpose of the grant was to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand the Indic Wikimedia projects and associated communities. In addition, the grant was aimed at generating improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

CIS-A2K created an Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) that is being successfully implemented. Most of the projected outcomes against the plans have already been met. There have also been many unplanned outcomes. CIS-A2K has periodically been sharing its work openly with the Wikimedia community in India, WMIN and WMF's Grantmaking team. See all our reports and newsletters here.

Objective

The objective of the CIS-A2K is to catalyse the growth of open knowledge movement in South Asia and in Indic languages. Within the Wikimedia universe CIS-A2K specifically strives to further grow the Indic and English Wikimedia projects and communities by a) supporting and serving the Wikimedia communities; b) building institutional partnerships; c) bringing more content under free license; d) designing and executing projects with community participation; e) strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers; and f) fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.

Context

It is important to understand the two broader contexts in which CIS-A2K program operates, which underpins the implementation of this work plan.

Linguistic Diversity of India: India is known for its linguistic diversity. India is home to several dominant languages and also several small languages which are facing extinction. Due to the large number of languages that exist in India, the country has more than 20 different language Wikipedias. Each Indic Wikimedia language project is different from the others in terms of community structure, speaker base, literacy level, technical knowledge, existing documentation, language corpora and challenges in the cyberspace, etc. Hence, each Indian language has its own strengths and challenges which are quite different from each other.

Since each Indian language is so distinct, we cannot apply a ‘one-size fits all’ approach; hence CIS-A2K early on adopted the strategy of creating a detailed plan for each language. During 2013-14 we chose five (of which only four could be executed) Indic languages for focussed intervention and developed [plans]. This strategy did pay off and we have now decided to work on seven languages. It is important to note that we are cautious about not massively scaling up this strategy and our choice to work on seven language areas is well informed. However, we have planned to execute some stand-alone projects in other Indic languages and will provide need based support to other Indic Wikimedia communities.
Institutional Context: The A2K program is housed at CIS Bangalore. CIS is an almost 6 year old non-profit organisation [with offices in Bengaluru and New Delhi] focussing on interdisciplinary policy and academic research. CIS conducts policy research in the following areas - accessibility, access for knowledge [including free/open source software, open content, open standards, open access and open data], internet governance [including privacy and freedom of speech and expression], telecom [limited to shared backhaul and shared spectrum]. CIS produces academic research focusing on digital natives and digital humanities.

CIS shares the same values as Wikimedia and the free and open source software community. CIS believes Wikimedia's objectives of disseminating free knowledge to each and every individual. There are certain advantages the A2K program has because of its location within CIS. Some of these include: a) opportunity to leverage the strong network CIS has developed with various free culture / openness movement stakeholders in the past 6 years of its existence; b) the advantage of having an office space in a city which is the hub of the openness movement in India; c) readily available administrative and support staff and systems that saves a lot of A2K staff's time; d) cross-pollination of ideas and work done in other CIS programs and vice-versa; e) organisational principles like subsidiarity, war on meta-work, post-facto accountability, and amorphous institutional boundaries give the A2K team members amazing programmatic agility; and f) the right kind of ecosystem for free knowledge work[1] There are also some disadvantages: a) CIS being a non-chapter or Wikimedia volunteer-driven entity faces very valid questions about legitimacy, representation and "voluntary sector" vs. "volunteer" dichotomy; b) a section of the community view CIS-A2K as a competitor to WMIN for financial resources which undermines trust-building and consequently threatens synergies between WMIN and A2K c) CIS has to be conservative about attributing Wikimedia growth and community growth to A2K initiatives as it can be misconstrued as credit-grabbing.[2]

Methodology

Process

This work plan is put together based on an extensive engagement with various stakeholders of Wikimedia movement in India. These include a) some Wikimedia volunteers across Indic Wikimedia projects; b) WMIN Executive Committee; d) Institutional Partners of CIS-A2K; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. Some of the language area plans were shared with that particular language Wikimedia community for feedback over the Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists and social media groups. Each plan document has a list of contributors who have contributed in developing the plan.

Structure

There are 21 diverse plans within this plan. During the work planning exercise we realized that this diversity is both a good feature and a potential bug. We were concerned about making these plans intelligible. So we have worked very hard to come up with a standard template for all plans. Thus a cursory glance may give the impression that some plans look similar, but they are not. However, you may see repetitions in strategies across plans. Also in some plans we had to deviate from the template. Moreover, it is less productive to compare one sub-plan with another sub-plan as each plan was developed taking into consideration a) specific strengths and opportunities that CIS-A2K program could build on; b) particular needs for support to which we could respond; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions.

Granularity

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised if required. The intention of this work plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. Thus this "plans within the plan" structure was essential to evolve a sense of granularity of the CIS-A2K team’s work along with micro-level outcome and impact metrics. This will give us the flexibility to amputate a plan, if it fails, without affecting the rest of the plans. We also believe that this granularity in plans will give a focussed direction for the CIS-A2K team and the volunteers who will collaborate with us in the implementation.

Mapping Plan to Budget/Mission Level Transparency

Each plan has an independent budget and is closely mapped on to the implementation plan. An attempt is made to correlate why we are spending a certain amount on a certain activity. Thus all these budgets are very optimally planned and the overall budget is an assimilation. CIS-A2K believes that this will give mission level transparency to our work and provide a clear structure of accountability to the movement.

Annual Work Plan July 2014-June 2015

Language Area Work Plans

CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts in four focus language areas plans during the last year and has been successful in reaching most of the proposed goals. In 2014-15 we will further deepen our engagement in these four language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu). Further, this experience and the learnings from it will be leveraged to work on three more large Indic Wikipedia projects, which are Bangla, Hindi and Marathi. We have developed a detailed plan for each of these language areas, which is given below.

Some of the key factors that determined the selection of languages areas have included:

Deepening the work. We have decided to continue our work in the language areas chosen last year as we believe that we need to deepen our work to ensure that the momentum we have built will be sustained even after our exit.
Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and expansion of that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities informally, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later stage. We respect the community's decision and express our willingness to work with newer language areas in a subsequent phase.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit or at least read the discussions in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

Community Strengthening Initiatives

CIS-A2K proposes to undertake three community strengthening initiatives that will further grow the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated community, both qualitatively and quantitatively. These initiatives, focussing on building capacity and nurturing leadership in the Indic communities, will ensure that growth is sustained beyond the CIS-A2K program.

Nurturing Mediawiki and Tech Talent in Indic Communities: Through this initiative CIS-A2K aims to make the Indic Wikimedia communities relatively more self-reliant in addressing minor technical issues through nurturing and building community level technical leadership. This could go a long way in reducing excessive dependency on the Engineering resources and will help the Indic communities in building strong technical liaison with the Media Wiki global community and the WMF Engineer team. The detailed plan is available here.
Wikimedia Train the Trainer Program, CIS-A2K: The program will help build capacity and enable community members to conduct outreach sessions independently or with minimal support to introduce Wikipedia to prospective editors in their respective Indian languages. See here for a detailed design of this initiative.
Wiki-Data India Marathon: Wikidata India Marathon will be a month long travelling event (or a set of events) across India. The primary objective of this marathon will be to introduce Wikidata to various Indic Wikimedia communities and show how it can be used and what benefits it has. For more details see here.

Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects

Many project ideas came up as potential opportunities and as unplanned outcomes of our work during the last year. Based on an internal evaluation and thorough due-diligence we have short-listed some projects that could have high rate of success and learning. We propose to take up 8 such projects as stand-alone Wikimedia projects during this work plan period. These stand-alone projects will have clear deliverables in a limited span of time, and will help us understand how to take up bigger initiatives in the respective language.

Med GLAM Project at Calicut Medical College: The main objective of this project is to create, curate and make openly available images from the Department of Pathology, Calicut Medical College (CMC) for the benefit of medical and para-medical students and staff of CMC specifically and for the larger medical fraternity across the world, using free/open knowledge database Wikimedia Commons.
Wiki Loves Public Art (India): This is a photography competition that seeks to get photographs of works of public art on Wikipedia. The competition is modelled on Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) which has been running successfully since 2010. We plan to execute this in active collaboration with WMIN GLAM SIG.
100 Books on Gujarati Wikisource: The main objective of this project is to add significant content to Gujarati Wikisource using OCR. This project will be executed in collaboration with Gujarati Wikimedia community, WMIN Chapter, Forbes Gujarati Sabha (which will provide access to copyright free Gujarati content to be put up on Gujarati Wikisource) and The Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.
Urdu Wikipedia Education Program at MANUU: This project aims to roll out Wikipedia Educational Programme aimed at the students of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.
Odia Wikisource as OER: This project aims to make Odia Wikisource a live project. Towards this three things will be done by CIS-A2K. First, to get a major Odia author's (Dr. Jagannath Mohanty) content re-released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and to host it on Odia Wikisource. Second, with the help of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences undertake a project whereby the students will type and proof read the books on Odia Wikisource, which could be used as OER across various educational institutions. Third, the digitized children's literature in Odia will be freely distributed across the government schools in an offline form. This project is inspired by the Malayalam Wikimedia community's efforts of introducing Wikisource in schools as part of the IT at Schools program in Kerala.
Making the Tulu Wikipedia Live
Making the Santali Wikipedia Live
Telugu Wiki Bus: This pilot project aims to create massive awareness about Indic Wikimedia projects in smaller cities and towns. This is modelled on the Google bus program and will be implemented in the Telugu speaking region of Andhra Pradesh.

Creating Movement Resources

Once CIS-A2K began actively working with the Indic Wikimedia communities, it soon realized that unlike English there are not many Wikimedia related resources available in Indic languages. During the last year we produced some resources, which were mostly unplanned outcomes. However, we feel that there is an urgent need for concerted efforts to create resources to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in India and in Indic languages. We strongly believe that creating these movement resources will go a long way in growing and strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers beyond the limits of CIS-A2K program. Some of the activities in this plan have a larger fit with the larger institutional work of CIS in the domain of Intellectual Property Rights and Openness.[3] We will collaborate with the legal expertise within CIS in executing some of these activities. A detailed plan of activities under this initiative along with a budget can be seen here.

Publicity, Research and Documentation

Many of the Indic Wikimedia projects in spite of being in existence for more than 10 years have not received adequate publicity. Many of the long time Indic Wikimedia volunteers have, during our interactions, expressed the need to increase the publicity about the Indic Wikimedia projects so that there is increased public awareness. CIS-A2K has left no stone unturned to get print and electronic media publicity for Indic Wikimedia projects and communities duirng 2013-14. Because of our efforts there were about 100 news items the print media[4] and about 10 programs on electronic media[5] in the last year.

Also the Wikimedia movement in India could benefit with more systematic research and documentation. It should be noted that CIS has been doing research about the Wikimedia movement way before the Access to Knowledge program got a grant from Wikimedia Foundation. Researching on various elements of the Wikimedia movement is not something new for CIS and the team will continue its efforts in this direction. In addition to action research, we undertook systematic documentation of the movement during the last year. More intensive efforts will be put in Publicity, Research and Documentation of the Wikimedia movement in India during this year as per the plans discussed here.

General Support and Service to the Movement

CIS-A2K deeply believes in extending support and service to the Wikimedia volunteer community in India. This has been one of the important aspects of our work. We have honoured up to 100 requests of all sizes that we received from the Wikimedia volunteer communities across all Indic languages. Most of these requests are listed here and here. CIS-A2K also receives requests over e-mail and some community members do reach out to us over mobile phones to place requests. In general the quick response time of CIS-A2K to these requests has been appreciated by many of the community members. We would like to continue with our efforts in supporting and serving the Wikimedia community in India and maintain the quick response time. CIS-A2K has actively consulted with the Wikimedia India Chapter (WMIN) before supporting most of the community requests, especially when it involved allocating funds for large community events like Tamil Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebrations. We also ensure that supporting community events is done in a transparent manner. However, we would need to review our methods and further streamline systems of support, which will be worked up on during this year. This page will give more details about the proposed work.

Learning and Evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Wikimeda community, the A2K programme had put together some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work during the last year. We have included some more metrics for evaluation this year.

Evaluation Tools

Quarterly growth of no. of articles
Quarterly growth of no. of total editors
Quarterly growth of no. of new editors
Quarterly growth of no. of active editors
Quarterly growth of no. of very active editors
No. of page views
No. of articles < 2 KB < 5 KB
No. of new tools/gadgets made available during a time-slice
No. of mentoring interactions
No. of bugs filed and resolved
No. of edits (Article, Other mainspace edits)
Print and electronic media mentions

Reports

We will undertake quarterly and annually review of its work using the above evaluation tools. The team will also report the successes and learnings to the Wikimedia India & the global community. In addition to this the A2K team will actively review progress of each language area plan in collaboration with the respective Wikimedia community. Based on this feedback we will undertake mid-course corrections, should there be a need. This will be openly shared on the respective plan discussion pages on Meta. In addition to this, A2K will continue to publish monthly newsletter informing the larger community of the various activities A2K has undertaken in a certain month and is planning to undertake in the upcoming month. Towards the the end of the grant, A2K will share an impact report encompassing analysis of all year long work done by A2K. To summarize following reports will be published in the year of 2014 - 2015:

Quarterly Report 1 (July 2014 - October 2014)
Quarterly Report 2 (November 2014 - February 2015)
Quarterly Report 3 (March 2015 - June 2015)
Impact Report (July 2014 - June 2015)
Monthly Newsletters

Monthly Review and Learning Sessions

CIS-A2K conducted many weekly learning sessions to critically reflect on the successes and failures of our work internally. We had also used these weekly sessions to learn about new developments (tools, policies, etc) in the Wikimedia universe. However, this could not be sustained for a long period. We will take measures to revive this and make it a monthly exercise, which we will try to record or screen cast on CIS website. Simultaneously we will use this to do a monthly review of the progress of the various plans and discuss about the upcoming month's events.

Budget

As stated above in the methodology section, each of the 21 plans have an independent budget, which is closely mapped on to the implementation plan. Below we have give a concise picture of the budget requirements against the 6 verticals. As part of the WMF's grant to CIS, we have received Rs. 15,000,000.00 or US$ 242,178.00 during the last year. The proposed budget of Rs. 18,406,454.00 or US$ 297.831.00 is about 23 per cent more than the previous year's grant.

Sl. No.	Budget Item	FDC (INR)	FDC (US$)	Other Sources and in kind support (INR)	Other Sources and in kind support (US$)
1	Language Area Plans	Rs. 7,466,440.00	120,813.05338	Rs. 2,100,000.00	33,979.70279
2	Community Strengthening Initiatives	Rs. 2,610,400.00	42,238.3886	Rs. 200,000.00	3,236.16217
3	Stand Alone Wikimedia Projects	Rs. 2,584,300.00	41,816.06949	Rs. 2,495,000.00	40,371.12308
4	Creating Movement Resources	Rs. 1,188,000.00	19,222.80329	Rs. 2,400,000.00	38,833.94605
5	Publicity, Research & Documentation	Rs. 780,000.00	12,621.03247	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
6	General Support and Service to the Movement	Rs. 636,000.00	10,290.99570	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
7	Other Expenses	Rs. 1,468,000.00	23,753.43033	Rs. 2,964,000.00	47,959.92337
	Total before Institutional Development	Rs. 16,733,140.00	270,755.77331	Rs. 10,159,000.00	164,380.85745
8	Institutional Development (10%)	Rs. 1,673,314.00	27,075.57733	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
	TOTAL BUDGET	Rs. 18,406,454.00	297,831.35064	Rs. 10,159,000.00	164,380.85745

Other than item no. 7 and 8 the entire budget will go towards the programmatic implementation of the plans. The staff costs are not separately listed here as we see the CIS-A2K team as a programmatic investment and each of the team member's time is budgeted against a specific activity or plan. We propose to raise Rs. 10,159,000.00 or US$ 163,380.00 other sources and in-kind support towards executing this work plan. A detailed budget analysis is available here. Please See this google spreadsheet which gives a micro level picture of the Budget against each of the planned activity.

Giving Feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here.
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.

For Bangla plan here.
For Hindi plan here.
For Kannada plan here.
For Konkani plan here.
For Marathi plan here.
For Odia plan here.
For Telugu plan here.

For feedback on Community Strengthening initiatives, please write on discussion page of the respective project page.
For feedback on Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects, please write on discussion page of the respective project page.
For feedback on Creating Movement Resources, please write here.
For feedback on Publicity, Research and Documentation, please write here.
For feedback on General Support and Service to the Movement, please write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnu at cis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please write to us and we can set up a telephone/Skype call.

Notes

[1]. CIS supports the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University through a fellowship and participation on the advisory board; CIS supports the open data community through support for the founders of Data Meet; CIS is supporting venue costs for some of Cyber Security and Privacy Foundation's outreach programmes; CIS has supported the last edition of the Goa Project; CIS allows various groups to use its Bangalore and Delhi offices for meetings such as Null Con Bangalore, Bitcoin Delhi, Arduino, Dojo, Crypto Party and Maker Party communities. In the past, CIS has hosted Inclusive Planet India and Has Geek at its Bangalore office.

[2]. See the discussion in this TechCrunch article. Also see this blog which inspired TechCrunch to do a feature about the growth of Indic Wikipedia projects.

[3]. Openness initiative at CIS

[4]. All the four foucs language areas during the last year's plan received significant print media coverage because of CIS-A2K's efforts. In addition, even the mainstream English print media did stories on indic Wikimedia projects, which was unprecedented.

[5].There were 6 television programs and 1 radio program on Telugu Wikipedia and 2 television programs and 1 radio interview on Kannada Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/india-access-to-knowledge-draft-work-plan-july-2014-june-2015

11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource

subha — 2014-04-06T05:01:14Z

This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.

Click to read the post republished on DNA on March 30, 2014. The original posted on Wikimedia Blog can be seen here.

In Kannada poetry, Vachana Sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the eleventh century and flourished in the twelevth, as a part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses, which were published in the 15-volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitised. Two Wikimedians, along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy, are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching the text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were made to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be made easily searchable with an index. This demanded that we build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr Swamy and Vasudendra, we learnt how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System

Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. There have been approximately 500,000 pageviews to our site in the first few months of our platform’s public launch. Interestingly, commonly searched Kannada words like “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en:Work/Deed) , “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya -en:Truthfulness ) and “ನದಿ” (River) have resulted in quick and easy results.

Plans for the Future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new feature – we have a review desk for researchers to help us with the review of content. Later we will also be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works that have been done around this literature. The content is available to the public through OpenData API and will be distributed as public domain through Wikisource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working around building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. This system is meant to evolves around other works rather than having to change and re-invent the wheel for more such projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researchers get together to tag the words, glossary etc in the coming days. We can also fulfill the need of various language tools like spelling and grammar checker for users through crowd-sourcing the development. The next projects under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are in the pipeline with initial phases of work underway. Our idea is to extend this platform from Vyasa to Muddanna and possibly the contemporary literature work available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-march-30-2014-rohini-lakshane-11th-century-kannada-literature-now-on-wikisource

Odia Wikimedia community celebrated Odisha day, bringing 14 copyright free Odia books

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:25:46Z

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated “Odisha day” today at Jayadev Bhawan. Inaugurating this event eminent linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak said, 'Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language an culture'.

This was published in Odishadiary on March 29, 2014.

Odia Wikipedia has been trying to popularize use of Odia language in the Internet since 2002.

To enrich the online encyclopedia and getting more books digitized Wikipedians are organizing a two day event. Along with Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak, Professor Udayanath Sahu, The Odisha Review's editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar's editor Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher Subrat Prusty, Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS)'s principal Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa's chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty along with the trust's secretary Brajamohan Patnaik and senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. KISS will be digitizing these books by training their students. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia community for releasing and digitizing these books. Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by OdiaLanguage.com, a new Odia input tool, free softwares and offline Wikipedia.

It was declared that the Odia WikiSource project will be active soon. Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts being laid for bringing Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. Majority of the Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easily accessible. He discussed about the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm lead manuscripts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-march-29-2014-odia-wikimedia-community-celebrated-odisha-day-bringing-14-copyright-free-odia-books

‘Digitisation only way to preserve valuable literature for posterity’

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:40:33Z

Digitization is the only way to ensure preservation of valuable Odia books and old palm-leaf manuscripts for posterity, said eminent linguist Padmashri Dr Debiprasanna Pattanayak while inaugurating the two-day Odisha Day celebration organized by the Odia Wikimedia Community at Jayadev Bhawan here today.

The article was published in Odisha Sun Times on March 29, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

“Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories can help enrich our language and culture”, Dr. Pattanayak said while taking part in the deliberations. He lamented the fact that the majority of current Odia publications are not available on the net.

Among others, Prof Udayanath Sahu, the editor of Odisha Review Lenin Mohanty, editor, Odisha Bhaskar, Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher, Subrat Prusty from Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS) and principal Dr Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, chairman, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa along with the Trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik, senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash took part in the deliberations.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. Besides, a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by www.OdiaLanguage.com a new Odia input tool, free software and offline Wikipedia were also released on the occasion.

KISS will digitize these books by training its students, the organisers said.

Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech while Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read out the annual report and the vision of Odia Wikipedia.

It was announced that the Odia WikiSource project will be activated soon.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishasuntimes-march-29-2014-digitisation-only-way-to-preserve-valuable-literature-for-posterity

Digitize any Book in the Public Domain

subha — 2014-04-03T08:41:18Z

The article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.

This was originally published in Opensource.com on March 27, 2014.

A form of poetry in India called Vachana sahitya is part of the popular Indian language, Kannada. It evolved in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th as part of the religious Lingayatha movement. Since that time, more than 259 Vachana writers, called Vachanakaru, have compiled over 11,000 Vachanas (verses).

21,000 of these verses were digitally published into 15 volumes, called Samagra Vachana Samputa, by the government of Karnataka. These volumes were then turned into a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya; this project was taken on by two Kannada Wikimedians, a Kannada linguist, and the author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy—to enrich the Kannada WikiSource. This team used Unicode, a standard of consistency for converting text (and code) into a new format.

Swamy was trying to access these poems, and was having trouble because it was in ISCII, an Indian character encoding standard. We began writing scripts to make the Vachanas (poems) searchable by an index. But, in order to do that well, we had to build a platform for everyone to use: the linguistic researchers, students, and the public at large who are interested in reaching this literature.

Omshivaprakash, a Kannada Wikimedian, worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements, and chose the open source software tools to use. I was involved in providing critical hacks for digitization and valuable inputs through suggestions, feedback, and quality assurance.

At present, our repository, Vachana Sanchaya, has around 200,000 unique words that were derived from these poems. The public has been using our repository and accessing Vahanas (poems) from our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. There are thousands of people now who read a Vahana as part of their daily routine. Vachana Sanchaya is not just meant for reading the poems, it is also meant for research. So, we have added a way for researchers to help us review the content and will be adding references from various research papers.


Above: A screenshot of the Vachana sahitya page

The most commonly searched words are:

ಕರ್ಮ(Karma: English: work/deed)
ಸತ್ಯ(SathyaEnglish: truthfulness )
ನದಿ(Nadī: English:river)

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,
ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ, ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ,
ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ,
ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು.
ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ

All of the content is currently available to the public through the OpenData API, and once the reviewing the work is complete, it will be distributed in the public domain through WikiSource. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers, and anyone interested in building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. Users will be able to use our code to digitize any book available in the public domain. Early literature in any language is well-respected, so making it available via an open platform allows for reuse of the content for research, publication, and other documentation work.

We encourage other projects of this kind to follow our method and use any part of our process that is helpful.

Going foward, we would like to:

Initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researches help to tag words and grow the glossary
Continue work on subsequent, similar projects for Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya (work has begun) and Vyasa and Muddann (work not yet started)
Extend this platform to other the contemporary literature works available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-march-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-digitize-any-book-in-public-domain

Odia Wikipedia to digitize 14 books

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T10:40:56Z

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for the digitization of 11 books of the eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

The article was published in the Odisha Sun Times Bureau on March 27, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for the digitization of 11 books of the eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

In a release, programme officer (Access to Knowledge) of Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru Subhashish Panigrahi said the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) would take up the digitization project where KISS students would type them on WikiSource, a sister project of Wikipedia.

These books include children’s literature, travelogues and biographical essays penned by Dr Mohanty.

Digitization of three more books: two in Odia-”Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” (book on people and culture of Odisha), “Bhasa O Jatiyata in Odia” ( a book based on research on Odia language) and an English book on the literary heritage of Odia, “Classical Odia” will be also be inaugurated on this day.

All these digitised books will be made available on the Internet with open access through free licenses. More than 5000 pages will be digitized in these two projects, Panigrahi said.

He said several public and private organizations have started taking the effort seriously after Odia got classical status recently.

Stating that the Odia language is lagging behind since it is not being accessed and used by the people due to the relatively inadequate and low content, Panigrahi said there is a great need for making content available in regional languages for a better sharing of knowledge with the new generations.

With a view to discussing the need for many new tools and technological advancement, a seminar would be held at Jayadev Bhawan in the city here on March 29.

Prof Udayanath Sahu, writer Asit Mohanty, litterateur Dr Lenin Mohanty would participate and discuss about spell check for Odia, use of Odia language in the media and tools for typing in Odia.

It may be mentioned that the Odia Wikipedia has become a useful tool to access vast amount of knowledge in Odia.

Available for free at https://or.wikipedia.org , it is an online encyclopedia that has about 5000 articles. Unlike conventional encyclopedias anyone can create and edit Wikipedia articles by abiding few basic guidelines.

About 20 Wikipedians are contributing articles on diverse topics. Wikipedia has a self correcting mechanism of experienced editors guiding new ones to proofread and correct language and add citations.

So far, about 25 outreach programs have been organized in over 10 educational and community organizations to educate people \with two Wikipedia education programmes running for 3-4 months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odisha-sun-times-odia-wikipedia-digitize-14-books

Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India

nirmita — 2014-03-24T10:22:34Z

Given the impending elections in India across April and May 2014, a test was conducted to determine the accessibility of websites of the Election Commission of India, the Parliament and some key political parties in India. This report summarises the results of the test.

Introduction

The Internet has rapidly become a preferred medium for accessing information on various topics, ranging from politics, news, governance, recreation, business, education and carrying on social interaction. While this was initially a trend found more in urban areas, with the proliferation of the mobile phone, there is an ever expanding number of rural, elderly and illiterate persons accessing and downloading content from the Internet.

The focus shift of the government to carrying on administration and governance through electronic media and to enable G2C transactions over the Internet underscores the absolute necessity of ensuring that information and communications technologies realise their full potential as a tool for inclusion and participation. Even policymakers and parliamentarians have started using it as an effective medium to engage with the public. The Government of India has made some efforts in this direction, since it formulated Guidelines for Indian Government websites and also the recently notified National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility. Both of these require all Government websites and those of other entities such as essential service providers, research and academic institutions and other stakeholders to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, the universally accepted standard for measuring web accessibility formulated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Since inaccessibility of websites impedes access on all platforms, it is one of the most important domains of electronic accessibility.

Highlights

41 websites were tested
13 websites failed to open or had no official website address / URL
Most of the remaining 28 websites have some accessibility barriers, with only 2 websites having no known accessibility errors
The average number of errors per homepage across all tested websites is 91, with around 10 websites having more than 100 errors.
28.5% of homepages have over 500 cumulative errors
21.4% of websites have no alternate text for non-text objects
21.4% of the websites have no navigation-markup
Only 1 website has a colour change option
Around 50% of the web pages have form links of which only 50% were accessible

Click to download the full report below

as PDF
as Word file

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessibility-of-political-parties-websites-in-india

ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to São Paulo, and Beyond

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T09:54:08Z

A conference to be held on Friday 21 March 2014 at the ICANN 49 meeting venue, the Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore, in the Olivia Room, from 10:00 to 18:00. Organized by the NonCommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) of the Generic Names Supporting Organization, with the generous support of ICANN. Geetha Hariharan participated in this event.

Click to read more on the conference here.

The NETMundial Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of the Internet Governance will be held in São Paulo, Brazil on 23-24 April 2014.

Initiated by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé, and co-organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and /1Net, the meeting will bring together a wide range of government, business, technical community, civil society and academic participants from around the world. The organizers describe its objectives as, “crafting Internet governance principles and proposing a roadmap for the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.”

The purpose of this NCUC conference is to provide a first opportunity for intensive, F2F cross-community dialogue on the main substantive topics likely to be addressed in São Paulo. Stakeholders from across the ICANN community have expressed a range of views and uncertainties about the meeting’s precise substantive focus, expected outcomes, and potential significance in the continuing evolution of the global Internet governance ecosystem. It is hoped that the NCUC conference will help the community to work through the issues at stake and to prepare for its participation in the NETMundial.

On Site Participation
The meeting is free of charge and open to all members of the ICANN community. People wishing to attend must register for the conference and indicate whether they wish to be included in the lunch and/or the reception. Attendees must also register for the ICANN meeting in order to access the conference venue.

Remote Participation
ICANN will provide live remote participation via Adobe Connect, audiocast, and telephone dial-in. They also will videotape the conference for subsequent web access. For access please visit http://singapore49.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-ncuc-ig

Written Inputs
Members of the ICANN community are invited to provide personal or organizational written inputs related to the four panel topics indicated on the conference program. These will be added to the online repository associated with each of the sessions. If interested, please send your inputs to ncuc@ncuc.org.

Programme details here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/non-commercial-users-constituency-icann-and-global-internet-governance

Vachana Sanchaya: 11th century Kannada literature to enrich Wikisource

subha — 2014-03-20T11:13:22Z

Kannada Wikipedian Omshivaprakash, Pavithra and I co-authored this article on digitizing Vachana Sahitya, a 11th century Kannada literature on WikiSource.

Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI, Wikimedians from India are co-authors with Subhashish Panigrahi in this article. This was originally posted on Wikimedia blog and published by GlobalVoices on March 18, 2014.

In the poetry of Kannada (an Indic language), Vachana sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the 11th Century C.E. and flourished in the 12th century, as part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses which were published in a 15 volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitized. Two Wikimedians along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were had to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be easily searchable with an index. This demanded us to build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends & holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr. Swamy and Vasudendra, we learned how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!	Vachana Sanchaya Website Screenshot

Working System

Vachana Sanchaya Website Screenshot

Public Response

Plans for the future

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ, ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ, ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು. ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/vachana-sanchaya-11th-century-kannada-literature-to-enrich-wikisource

Broadcast Treaty: An Overview

nehaa — 2014-03-20T09:55:45Z

In this blog post, CIS intern Varun Baliga, a third year law student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, presents an overview of the Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations, currently being deliberated by nations at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR).

Negotiations on the Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (“Broadcast Treaty”) (draft circulated for discussion at the 26^th SCCR available here- http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_26/sccr_26_6.pdf) were initiated for the purpose of protecting such organizations from signal piracy. For a broadcasting organization, their signal is the prime source of revenue. Therefore, state intervention at the international level was required to quell the transnational issue of signal piracy. Moves by a majority of nations indicated that the mood was in favour of drafting a treaty that would codify certain protections for broadcasting organizations in the form of rights. The obvious concerns that arose were the nature and scope of those rights. Overbroad rights often posed significant obstacles to the free flow of information. A number of developing nations were concerned that the latest move was a further entrenchment of the colonization of information and knowledge. It was in the common interest to balance the dire need to combat signal piracy in order to maintain the integrity of the business of broadcasting organizations while at the same time ensuring that it doesn’t come at the cost of the access to the information itself.

From the perspective of the Global South, the focus of the text was Article that protected possible action that states may take in the public interest. The South was interested in elevating the status of the public interest to that of an aspiration that states must seek to live up to. So, public interest must continue to guide even negotiations that seek to protect the interests of multinational corporations. The Broadcast Treaty also protects against the restriction of free flow of technology and access to the same in Article 4. One of the sticking points of negotiations has been the nature and scope of the protection that is to be offered to broadcasting organizations. India, among other countries, has advocated for a strict signal-based approach to the protection. It opines that protection should be offered to the signal alone and not the subject matter that is carried by the signal. Many nations of the developed world look at this as a distinction without a difference. There has also been a strong push from the South to limit protection only to transmission and not cover the retransmission of signals within the aegis of the treaty. Another cleavage of opinion has been on definitional concerns that have plagued the negotiations ever since they commenced. Institutions such as Knowledge Ecology International among others have noted with caution the wide meanings conferred on beneficiaries of protection. Understanding broadcasting organizations and cablecasting organizations in an all-encompassing way would result in not just the proliferation of rights, thereby harming the sanctity associated with the concept, but would also lead to the manifestation of those rights on contexts that harm free speech and access to information. For example, the protection of the rights of broadcasting organizations on the internet could play out in a pernicious fashion, particularly since the internet space has long been one of open and free access.

Many countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa, have questioned the need for the treaty in the first place. Adopting this position doesn’t mean a devaluation of the harms of signal piracy. On the other hand, questions have been raised as to whether the creation of rights is the most effective, or even the right, solution. The harms of this problem-solution mismatch mean that the stakes are high; therefore, subjecting this treaty to critical scrutiny assumes great importance.

India, South Africa and the entire bloc has also argued against the inclusion of webcasts and netcasts in the spectrum of rights being conferred on broadcasting organizations. Broadcasting and webcasting work on completely different investment models and don’t work on the same kind of infrastructure. For that and other speech and access reasons, protection should be given, it was argued, only for traditional transmission of the signal. Consensus was ultimately achieved with the US agreeing that the focus of the treaty should be “true signal piracy, real-time transmission of the signal to the public without authorization".[1]

The Centre for Internet and Society has expressed its reservations about the treaty in no uncertain terms in the past. The underlying philosophy has consistently been a robust signal-based approach to the treaty. A consequence of this would be no term of protection for signals since the rights would exist only for infinitesimal amount of time that the signal does. The absence of a term of protection would also preclude concerns about harm to free flow of information from creeping up. CIS noted that there was a need for greater clarity on the meaning of ‘mere retransmissions’ which would not be granted any rights in the April 2007 Non-Paper circulated for the delegates. When the transmission is over a computer networks, there should be inkling of doubt as to the exclusion of both transmission and retransmission from the ambit of protection. Finally, it has called for a different structure of limitations and exceptions to be conceptualized for the treaty. A simplistic transplantation of the Berne Convention provisions would be ignorant of the particular needs of broadcasting. It is critical that the limitations and exceptions be actualized in a manner that is enabling and empowering for the most vulnerable stakeholders.

[1]. http://keionline.org/node/1701

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/broadcast-treaty-an-overview

WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 2 of 3)

nehaa — 2014-03-20T04:52:53Z

From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th session. This blog post (Part 2 of 3) summarizes Days 3 and 4 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.

Many thanks to Varun Baliga for putting this together, and to Alexandra Bhattacharya of the Third World Network for her notes and inputs.

26th SCCR – Consolidated Notes

Day 3

The Chair commenced proceedings by noting the need to take stock of the work done over the course of the first two days of proceedings. He stated that we needed to see the points of agreement as well as sticking points that persisted in order to chart a path towards resolution. There was an urgent need for clarity.

The floor was opened to Delegations and Regional Groups. The document before the countries is the one on draft conclusions for the discussions surrounding the Broadcast Treaty.

Belarus starts by expressing its support for the document before it and is ready to engage with any proposals that nations might have on it. Poland wanted the wording changed to broadcasting an cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense, but expressed its support for the document otherwise. A few other delegations, such as the one from Trinidad and Tobago, also expressed unease at the terminology of ‘traditional broadcasting organizations” in the document and much preferred broadcasting and cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense. Notwithstanding these concerns, there was considerable support for the draft conclusions.

The EU wants its discussions on transmissions over the internet to also be included as a part of the draft conclusions.

Libraries and Archives

Trinidad and Tobago expressed its full support for the exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. They were keen to “close this gap to strengthen the copyright system as well as the human and collective rights for the benefit of creators and users alike”. It stated that the progress made in this regard was entirely consistentwith the Millennium Development Goals and the Development Agenda of WIPO. The CEBS group also came out in support of this framework. Further, it added that it would benefit greatly from the sharing of national experiences in this matter. It was stated that the modern copyright system should have a licensing system that is supportive of libraries, archives and other every day research. CEBS was sceptical however of the need to enter into any sort of international treaty in this regard. The delegate from Bangladesh pointed out the acute need for this limitation and exception particularly from the perspective of a developing nation in dire need of free flow of information. In this context, the Indian delegate was invited to make comments. The EU put on record its opposition to any sort of binding international instrument in this regard, and they wished to see this desire reflected in the title of the document. Iran called for the commencement of text-based negotiation since it was fairly clear that there was a need for an international instrument in this matter. Colombia concluded by stating that access to knowledge should be the guiding principle for the exceptions and limitations. It was very important for the libraries to fulfil the public interest for there to be copyright protection to its activities. It stresses however the need to continue to provide incentive and legitimate copyright protection even within this framework.

Day 4

Discussions continued on the first topic of preservation as found in the SCCR/26/3 which focusses on exceptions and limitations enabling libraries and archives. For this session, the Chair outlined the issue up for comments as the right of reproduction and safeguarding copies.

Azerbaijan, speaking for the first time, stated that it took cognizance of the importance of exceptions and limitations and supported an international instrument on it. The purpose of limitations and exceptions should be to allow librarians and archives to preserve the documents. The documents protected should be used solely for research purposes and must be in accordance with fair practice. Australia clarified the role of preservation to be the continuing availability of physical and digital works already held in the collections of a library or archive for the benefit of present or past users. Critical to be very specific when talking about preservation in order to prevent the proliferation of rights. It stated that it was yet to be convinced of the need for an international instrument. Belarus noted that it supported the need for an international legislation. It supported the formulation of rules in this regard on the basis of the three step test, in order to maintain the balance of interests at play. It is imperative that strict rules of interpretation are employed while introducing this into domestic legislation in order to avoid ambiguous approaches that will lead to the abuse of the freedoms codified. The non-commercial and non-profit making nature of libraries and archives were emphasized. In explaining the merits of the three step test that would facilitate the entry of this international document into domestic law, Poland shared its national experiences in this regard with the group. Brazil suggested that the concern of proliferation of works voiced by many countries could be resolved by engaging in deliberations that result in clear definitions. It suggested that the intervention made by Canada be made into an annex as a subject that can discussed in the text in the future. Russia noted that the Berne Convention is the bedrock of international intellectual property and copyright law and coupled with reference to national legislation would help in reaching a common understanding on preservation. Morocco was in support of an international legislation since dealing with the problem nationally would be woeful piecemeal approach. Senegal pointed out definitional issues that were plaguing the discussion. If there was no common ground on the idea of a library and an archive, then the discussions on exceptions and limitations would not break any new ground. Therefore, the discussions appeared to be proceeding on two tracks – nature and scope of the exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives and the need for an international instrument that went beyond national legislation. The Chair opened comments on the latter track since that is foundational. The United States reiterated its opposition to any agreement that transcended national legislation. It also wished to introduce a bit of complexity in its discussions by pointing out that its domestic copyright law had no understanding of a library or archive. Therefore, it was going to be difficult to come to an understanding at the international level when national legislations themselves have not reached that point in their trajectory. Both El Salvador and Ecuador tacitly stated that they were in favour of an international legislation by continuing the discussion on merits. El Salvador opined that there was some degree of good faith involved and that was unavoidable in the pursuit of the desire to facilitate the sharing of knowledge. Greece stated that limitations and exceptions should only be applicable when an additional copy is not available in the market. Significantly, it stated that libraries and archives could enter into agreements with the rights holders by themselves. A flexible international framework was what Greece was aiming at, not an international legislation that went beyond national legislation. Both Greece and the EU suggested using the EU Copyright Directive as a starting point for defining libraries and archives. It asked for the flexibility it already had within the EU framework to be respected. Italy stated that it saw no international interest in a transnational agreement on exceptions and limitations. India emphasized the point that there was an international interest in preserving the culture of countries. The international dimension was in the context of cross-border cultural exchange. Congo came out in support of an international agreement as well. There was some degree of opposition from Greece that questioned India on why either manuscripts on cross-border cultural exchange had anything to do with preservation. In its opinion, those two goals could be achieved even without the formation of an international agreement on exceptions and limitations. India responded by clarifying that it did not use the example about ancient manuscripts in the context of copyright but the existence of an international interest in the matter of preservation. The issue of preservation of works within a library are for present and future use. This use, in today’s globalized world, is not just for the citizens of that country but for researchers the world over. In order to allow for thus cultural exchange, it was imperative that the copyright of the work not come in the way. Hence, there was the need for an international, and not merely national, legislation on the issue.

On France’s concern about Ecuador’s vague understanding of fair use, Ecuador clarified that this would be the same as in the Berne Convention and the three step test would apply. Finland, Jordan and Senegal then shared their countries’ national experience in this regard.

The Chair concluded the discussion on the first topic by articulating what he saw as a principle that is in the common agreement of all. In order to ensure that libraries and archives can develop their public service of the preservation of works in order to preserve knowledge and heritage, we need exceptions and limitations. Certain circumstances and guarantees are yet to be discussed and disagreements persist but none that threaten the need for a discussion.

Topic 2 – Right of Reproduction and Safeguarding of Copies

The Secretariat noted that there were proposals from the African Group, Brazil, Ecuador, India and the United States.

The EU opened the discussion with the suggestion that the title of this topic should only be focussed on the right to reproduction. This was in light of the nature of the proposals made by the various groups and nations. Ecuador situated the debate on the right to reproduction within the broader framework of limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. It was imperative, it stated, that a right for libraries be carved out in order to facilitate the important social role they discharge. France added to the concern voiced by the EU in stating that it felt that safeguarding was already covered within the ambit of the previous topic. Brazil responded to this by drawing a clear cut distinction between the first and second topics. The right of reproduction was applicable to libraries while safeguarding was for archives. Both the role of the library and that of the archive merit discussion, it was emphasized, and both should equally be included in the second topic. Senegal supported the idea of an inclusive topic that mentions both the right of reproduction and safeguarding of copies. It stated that a distinct right of safeguarding was crucial at a time when vital cultural artefacts are vulnerable to destruction. The example of the museum in Timbuktu that was ravaged by militants leading to the irreparable loss of invaluable manuscripts was cited in support.

Italy voiced a two-pronged opposition to the very idea of articulating a right to reproduction. First, it stated that allowing for reproduction, even in University libraries, would open the floodgates to copyright violations. It was afraid that copyrighted material would be reproduced within the library which would then lead to that material appearing on for a not envisaged within the rubric of the treaty. Second, it was against the extension of the idea of research to private research. The transmission of the reproduced material to third parties would lead to a loss of revenue to the rights holder in question. To Italy, the latter was even more egregious since the former at least allowed for the possibility of, via the money paid for the reproduction, monetary compensation of the rights holder. The latter however had no room for this to be effected.

Belarus supported the EU position on the exclusion of safeguarding from the present discussions. Further, Belarus stressed that it wanted a caveat to the exception for scientific and educational research. It wanted the kind of material that would fall under the exception to be limited to “just articles or short works or excerpts from books” since “the student or researcher probably doesn’t need the whole book”.

Brazil assuaged the concerns of the right holders by pointing out that its proposal in paragraph 2 makes national legislation the focus. Fuether, it added that with respect to the international dimension to the rights, the GA had already stated that there would be an “international legal instrument”. Therefore, the multilateral nature of both the subject matter and scope of the negotiations is beyond the pale of doubt.

The representative from the International Council of Museums noted that all of the rights were equally applicable to museums as well. Very often, museums suffered from a lack of uniformity and harmonization of rules across multiple jurisdictions. This was the need it saw for an international treaty on the issue.

The Chair summed up the discussions. Despite the emergence of any sort of consensus, most countries had agreed for a need to have exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. Further, a right to reproduction of works for libraries was recognized to facilitate the reproduction of certain works under certain conditions for the purposes of research. The scope of none of these terms have been agreed upon by states nor has there been much agreement on whether this extends to distribution of the material and to what extent. The EU and the USA mentioned that they did not think there was a need for an international agreement on this and the GA wording was not binding in any sense.

Topic 3 – Legal Deposit

The Secretariat noted that there were proposals from the African Group and India on this. This was not received very warmly by the delegates. Most thought it was out of the place in the current discussions. The US opposed the need for any discussion at the international level since the issues in question were codified in domestic law to varying degrees. Therefore, it could not be said that it was “ripe for harmonization”. Colombia found the concept of legal deposit “strange” in a document on exceptions and limitations.

Topic 4 – Library Lending

The Secretariat noted that there were proposals from the African Group, India, Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay.

Ecuador explained in great detail that the reason behind this was to allow for libraries to lend copyrighted works to its users or to another library. Very often, research necessitates the movement of the physical copy of a particular work. In other instances, the presence of a particular copyrighted work in a specific library has great symbolic and cultural value, apart from its patent value for research activities. In furtherance of its earlier objections, Italy explained that lending could also lead to egregious copyright violations. Along these lines, it objected to the idea of digital lending since it went against the grain of lending because returning a digital copy was not possible or meaningful. The International Federation of Libraries, representative from civil society, pointed out that there were technological tools that would prevent the unintended and harmful proliferation of lent digital copies. Digital lending could take place by passing along a password encrypted digital copy that would expire after a set period of time.

Greece furthered the harm that this would have on copyrighted works by asking why anybody would want to get the original if lending is applied to the realm of films via digital transmission. Responding to the African Group proposal, it asked how this was in conformity with the three step test. The US responded by drawing a positive causal link between lending and commercial purchase of the product. Again, the Chair summed up by stating that agreement was that exceptions and limitations must extend to library lending but agreement on the scope and nature of this extension evaded consensus.

Additional Links

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-26-session-consolidated-notes-part-2

Open Source Project Brings 11th Century Kannada Verses Online

subha — 2014-04-06T06:00:47Z

The post was co-authored by Pavithra Hanchagaiah, Omshivaprakash H L and Subhashish Panigrahi and published in the March issue of Foss Force.

Click to read the original published on the website of Foss Force here.

Vachana sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing in Kannada poetry that evolved in the 11th century C.E. and flourished in the 12th century as a part of the Lingayatha movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses which were published in a 15 volume set, “Samagra Vachana Samputa,” by the Government of Karnataka, a state in South West India, have been digitized. Two Wikimedians along with Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing the preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya and ready to enrich Kannada WikiSource.


Palm leaf of 11th and 12th Century with Vachana poems in Kannada language

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O. L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra to easily access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had challenges in using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII and searching text was a huge problem. Pavithra Hanchagaiah started helping to collect information about about vachanas and document them into Unicode by writing scripts to customize open source software to convert the Kannada fonts from ASCII into Unicode.

After further discussions, it was decided to get thousands of vachanas into a database, making them easily searchable with an index. This required us to build a platform on which this could be done. The fruits of our labors will help linguistic researchers and students as well as the public at large, anybody who’s interested in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime, Pavithra was running various scripts to fix errors in the conversion of the ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to be consumed by the modules developed for the concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home and would sync up once in a while online.	Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash H L

After further discussions, it was decided to get thousands of vachanas into a database, making them easily searchable with an index. This required us to build a platform on which this could be done. The fruits of our labors will help linguistic researchers and students as well as the public at large, anybody who’s interested in reading and studying Vachana literature.

With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime, Pavithra was running various scripts to fix errors in the conversion of the ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to be consumed by the modules developed for the concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home and would sync up once in a while online.

Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash H L

With constant feedback and guidance from Mr. Swamy and Vasudendra, we learned how a concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to do their research. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements and managed the entire project. Free and open source software technologies were used for keeping the platform active. Pavithra was involved in providing critical hacks for digitization and offered valuable input through suggestions, feedback and Q&A.

Working system

At present, the system has around 200,000 unique words in the repository. It was an extensive learning process, as we used our free time to solve real time issues. Moreover, it was a work of the Kannada language that needed quick attention. Vachana Sanchaya is meant to be more than just a repository of the text online; it’s meant to be a tool for researchers.

For example, as a user searches the words on our system, he or she can see who has used the word in which Vachanas. To improve readability, the searched text string is highlighted in each Vachana that is displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakaara, the user needs only to click on his or her name on the graph provided on the result page. We have used the MediaWiki jquery-ime input tool architecture that helps us provide the user with the ability to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for a search.

Public response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. Thousands read them every day and it has become a part of many people’s daily routine. There have been more than 50,000 page views on social networks and 500,000 page views on our site in the first few months after our platform’s public launch. Some of the most commonly searched Kannada words are “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en: Work/Deed), “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya en: Truthfulness) and “ನದಿ” (River).

ಆಂಗೀರಸ, ಪುಲಸ್ತ್ಯ, ಪುಲಹ, ಶಾಂತ,
ದಕ್ಷ, ವಸಿಷ್ಠ, ವಾಮದೇವ, ನವಬ್ರಹ್ಮ, ಕೌಶಿಕ, ಶೌನಕ, ಸ್ವಯಂಭು, ಸ್ವಾರೋಚಿಷ, ಉತ್ತಮ, ತಾಮಸ, ರೈವತ, ಚಾಕ್ಷಷ, ವೈವಸ್ವತ, ಸೂರ್ಯಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಚಂದ್ರಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಸಾವರ್ಣಿ, ಇಂದ್ರ ಸಾವರ್ಣಿ ಇವರು ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು ಮಂದಿ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ನಿರ್ಮಾಣ ಸಹಾಯ[ದ]ವರು. ಹತ್ತೊಂಬತ್ತು ಎಂದರೆ ಪುಣ್ಯನದಿಗಳು. ಅದು ಎಂತೆಂದಡೆ: ಗ್ರಂಥ

– An example of a vachana from the Vachana Sanchaya project.

Plans for the future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new features. We have a review desk for researchers to help with the review of content. Later we will be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works on this literature. The content is available for the public through OpenData API and will be distributed in the public domain through WikiSource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working to build linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages.

This system will evolve so it can be used for other literature projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researches get together to tag the words, glossary, etc. We can also add various language tools such as a spell checker and grammar checker through crowd-sourcing development. The forthcoming project under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are already in the pipeline. Our idea is to extend this platform to include works from antiquity (Vyasa, for example) to the early 20th century (e.g., Muddanna) and possibly even include contemporary literature that’s available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/foss-force-open-source-project-brings-11th-century-kannada-verses-online

NVDA e-Speak Text-to-Speech Project Update (March 2014)

suman — 2014-04-09T06:27:07Z

CIS in partnership with the Daisy Forum of India is engaged in a project supported by The Hans Foundation to develop enhancements to the open source screen reader for Windows NVDA (Non Visual desktop Access) and e-Speak text-to-speech synthesiser in 15 Indian languages.

Under the NVDA project, we have been working in the past year on issues relating to Excel, Power Point and MS Outlook. The issues which have been fixed are:

3680 : Read all formula in excel sheet (NVDA+f7).
3681 : Read all comments in excel sheet (NVDA+f7).
Finished implementation for 'viewing modes' supported like Cells-Flat, Row-Cells, Column-Cells, etc.
Pressing NVDA+f7 will print a dialog box. This has a choice to show cells with comment or formula. Pressing 'Enter' at any selection in the tree will close dialog and select cell or area.
3231: NVDA incorrectly speaks previously entered but later deleted characters when the space bar is pressed in PowerPoint.
#3538: Office 2010, NVDA now reads the selected symbols in the insert|symbols dialog box in Word and Excel 2010.
#2921: In Excel, NVDA will say 'has comment' if the cell has a comment in it.
#3043 : In Excel, Ctrl+A doesn't notify the change in selection.
#1938 : In word 2007 and 2010, NVDA does not automatically speak the error text in the spell checker dialog after the first time the dialog is launched if the focus is already in the error text field.
Ctrl + Up and Down arrows in Word now skip blank paragraphs.
#3431: Spell check in Word 2010 now reads the correct context error text instead of reading all bolded text in the context.
#3290: Bulleted text is now correctly read with Ctrl+Up and Down arrows.
#1686: Protected documents are now read in Word 2010.
#649: Status bar in Word Office 2010 is now read.
#2816: Auto complete suggested contacts in Outlook 2010 are now read.
2047: Language detection in Word is available now.

Some of these fixes are available in NVDA and can be downloaded from www.nvaccess.org. The info about these fixes can be checked in what’s new section of the application at the website.

We have also been working on some documentation for the project, primarily FAQs to cater to the community’s needs for users switching from Jaws to NVDA which is available at http://code.google.com/p/saksham-projects/wiki/Tutorials.

The project wiki is available at http://code.google.com/p/saksham-projects/wiki/WikiContrib.

We are also working on the development of e-speak text-to-speech synthesisers for the following languages:

Hindi,
Bengali,
Telugu,
Malayalam,
Sindhi,
Punjabi,
Gujrati,
Oriya,
Asamese and
Manipuri.

They are all in different stages of development. We are near to closing our work on Gujrati this month. The issues which we have worked on are:

Introduction of Gujarati in e-speak.
The following issues were identified by the reviewer and closed:

Character support for Gujarati language was introduced.
Introduced rules for Gujarati language.
Gujarati numbers have been introduced and set according to the feedback received.
Several other changes made.
Fixed the R sound which was sounding inappropriate when at the end of a word.Fixed the number sound 200 according to the feedback received.
Problems with half characters where the half characters come before the same full character have been fixed.
e-Speak could not join sounds of these two characters: ka, ch, tta, ta.
The character name of the character [anna] has been modified according to the feedback received.
Number 2 has been modified when it comes as the third character from the right.
The name of two characters: [Hnna], [ ણ ], [adda] [ ડ઼ ] was modified according to the feedback received.
The phoneme sound of letter [Gnna] [ જ્ઞ ] has been modified according to feedback received.
Phoneme [ra] [ર] has been improved because at the end of a Word it was pronounced wrongly.
When [Va] [વ] comes at the end of the word the matra was sounding wrong. This has been fixed.
Incorrect pronnounciations: All words which ended with "Va" like Sarva Maanava Daanava Sarva Kharava Jakhava, etc., have been fixed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nvda-e-speak-update-march-2014

WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 1 of 3)

nehaa — 2014-03-20T04:49:55Z

From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th Session. This blog post (Part 1 of 3) summarizes Days 1 and 2 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.

Many thanks to Varun Baliga for putting this together, and to Alexandra Bhattacharya of the Third World Network for her notes and inputs.

26th SCCR – Consolidated Notes of the Proceedings

Day 1
There are three salient issues outlined as part of the agenda – i) work towards a treaty for the protection of broadcasting organizations, ii) exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives and for iii) educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities. [1] The number of days to be spent deliberating on each issue was also outlined – two days each on the first two issues and one day on the last issue i.e. exceptions and limitations for educational and research institutions.

The Chair of the SCCR was elected to be Mr. Martin Moscoso, head of copyright for Peru and Chair of the Drafting Group for the Marrakeech Treaty.

Opening Statements by Regional Coordinators
Trinidad and Tobago
The representative commenced his speech by pledging the commitment of the Latin American and Caribbean group of states to work on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives, educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities. It emphasized the need for coherence between the activities of this group and the Millennium Development Goals of the UN and the Development Agenda of WIPO. Effecting the vision articulated by the agenda of this SCCR will help bring about this coherence. Finally, he added that the Group wished to discuss the broadcasting treaty on the basis of the mandate offered by the 2007 General Assembly. This mandate was to pursue a “signal-based approach” to the drafting process of any new treaty.

Poland
On behalf of the Central European and Baltic states, the representative reaffirmed the group’s support for establishing standards for the protection of broadcasting organizations in the form of a binding treaty. To this end, the Group put forth its proposal for a Diplomatic Conference in 2015 to the end of negotiating and implementing such a treaty. Finally, best practices were also emphasized and, pertinently, the Group indicated that it understood that the digitalized and globalized business and information economy of the contemporary necessitated a licensing of rights that was adequately reflective of its needs.

Japan
On behalf of Group B, Japan emphasized the importance the Group placed on text based discussions to the developing treaty mechanism for the protection of broadcasting organizations. It noted that any further understanding or future negotiations must rest on a common understanding of critical foundational issues such as definitions, scope of application of the instruments and the spectrum of rights or protections to be granted. Finally, an offer to share experience for the optimum functioning of limitations and exceptions was made. It was the opinion of Group B that the extant copyright framework enabled the limitations and exceptions to play out both in the digital and analogue world.

Bangladesh
On behalf of the Pacific Group, Bangladesh underscored the importance of situating all countries’ concerns and deliberations on the bedrock of the social and economic development needs of the Pacific Group nations. It identified the responsibility of countries to ensure that the limitations and exceptions were articulated in a manner that copyrighted works were made available to individuals in need. Thus, its vision was for an inclusive and comprehensive framework that catered to the needs of all stakeholders, particularly the most vulnerable and needy. To this end, it saw new international legal instruments as the means.

Russia
The Russian representative supported the 2015 Diplomatic Conference time frame and emphasized the value of transparency throughout the course of the proceedings.

Algeria
On behalf of the African Group, the signal-based approach was affirmed as the basis for any treaty. The needs of the developing countries were also given special importance. While the exchange if best practices and experience is helpful, the Group does not see it as a substitute for tangible, binding treaty provisions.

European Union
Representative called for the provisions of the Marrakeesh Treaty to be implemented. The existing treaty framework was understood to be sufficient for the full realization of the limitations and exceptions in the various realms envisaged by the outlined agenda. It was necessary, it opined, for copyright to continue to remain a key incentive for creative processes. In light of this, no further international legal instruments were necessary. Finally, the licensing of rights was also within the scope of this body.

Protection by Broadcasting Organizations
The working document for the treaty for the protection of broadcasting organizations[2] was declared to be the basis for any future text-based deliberation.

Proposal by Japan – SCCR/26/6[3]
The Representative outlined the purpose behind the proposal at the very outset as a step forward from the common understanding regarding the privacy of the broadcasting towards establishing the contours of the scope of application. The proposal was for the introduction of Article 6bis that included two things – first, that signal transmitted over computer networks be included within the aegis of the treaty with an exception carved out for on demand transmission signal and second, flexibility for states in deciding to afford protection for transmission signals over networks by the broadcasting organizations; in other words, the idea of national treatment in the realm of transmission signals.

While welcoming the Japanese proposal, the US Representative noted that the text was still open to changes. Given limited time for deliberations on this, he culled out three points of focus that would aid a streamlined approach to the text: beneficiaries of protection, objects of protection and the scope of the rights.

The EU had two questions directed at the Japanese proposal: whether the two alternatives proposed by Japan (simultaneous and unchanged transmission) have a different or same meaning and whether the nature of the protection is an entirely optional one or at least partially mandatory? Japan later clarified that if the former alternative had webcasting as subject to the protection of the treaty and the latter used the scope of application of this treaty.

Iran highlighted the issue of conflict of treaty protections with the legitimate interests of other stakeholders and urged that this conflict situation should never arise. Further, it added that the definition of broadcasting should not be an anachronistic one and should adapt to the needs of today’s broadcasting organizations and should, in no way, hinder free access to knowledge and information by society.

Venezuela adopted a diametrically opposite stance to most other countries on the issue. It was not of the opinion that broadcasting organizations are entities worthy of rights protection. It stated that the treaty seemed to be more for the benefit of multi-national organizations rather than member states and its citizens.

Day 2
The Chair outlined the agenda of the meeting as comments on Articles 6 and 7 which is to do with the scope of the treaty and beneficiaries respectively. Further, it was also put forth that the session would attempt to resolve and break common ground on the various discussions had in the regional groups in the previous day. Finally, deliberations would be focussed on Article 5 followed by Article 9.

The Japanese delegate outlined the conclusions of his groups’ deliberations. They want both beneficiaries and broadcasting to be included within the scope of the treaty. The country is of the view that all obligations should be made optional rather than obligatory. There is also general consensus, subject to final wording and definition of on demand, for an exceptions to be culled out for on demand transmission. Belarus expressed its wish for the scope of the treaty to be extended to both broadcasting and cablecasting organizations. It states in no uncertain terms that the signal should be protected. The proposal was to use the terminology broadcasting organizations and rights holding organization. Signals transmitted over satellite must also be protected in the model envisaged by this Group. Its application to the internet was also affirmed; pertinent, since this is a sticking point between the views of the nations and that of important third party stakeholders to this deliberative process. It did mention a clear caveat that these rights should, in no way, affect the rights of the author of the work or that of the users. Responding, in some sense directly to the words of the Venezuelan delegate’s comments the previous day, the Belarusian delegate stressed that his Group does support the idea of conferring rights on broadcasting organizations.

India reminded the nations present that the 2007 mandate, on the basis of which this meeting was being conducted, was for work towards a treaty for the protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations using a signal-based approach. A question was raised as to whether the current discussion transcended the limits of this mandate. Chair noted this observation and asked for the views of other states’ on the matter of mandate. The response of the delegate from Trinidad and Tobago on behalf of the group of Latin American and Caribbean states was non-committal in his answer as he briefed the chair about the difference of opinion on this matter within his group.

Moving on to the scope of the application of this treaty and the beneficiaries, it was the view of the CEBS Group, as articulated by the Polish delegate, that the protection afforded by the treaty should be effective, contemporary and technology neutral, else its purpose would be defeated by its obsoleteness. It reiterated that the transmission via the internet must also be included within the scope of the treaty, because that is a major route of circumvention that could be used to undermine the raison d’etre of the treaty. It was also of the opinion that the difference of opinion on webcasting could be overcome using the opt-in system envisaged by the Japanese proposal. CEBS was also of the firm view that, notwithstanding any foundational disagreements, those on demand transmissions that are based on multiple transmissions at the same time should be included within the scope of the protection. On behalf of the African Group, Senegal concerned about questions of mandate. It said that the strict, textual or broad, liberal interpretation of the words of 2007 mandate should be a sine qua non to any further deliberations. The Chair noted this concern and said that the floor was open to this issue as well. The EU stated that simulcasting should be the basic minimum and obligatory minimum, of any protection. It stated that it was open to discussing the extension of the protections to other transmission as its saw merit in such extension. Finally, it clarified that since current discussions were on transmissions and the scope of protection they were well within the 2007 mandate – protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense.

The Chair then turned over the floor for comments by individual countries. Senegal commenced by posing a question to Belarus on the nature of reservations that it envisaged in light of its proposal to protect transmissions, no matter what its nature. Belarus responded that the protection definitely extends to transmissions over the internet but that does not preclude a discussion on deferred retransmissions. Reservations should ideally be outlined be provided for in the treaty itself. However, they can also be in the form of national legislation but it made it clear that such a stance would be a compromise for its Group and would be considered only if nations thought it necessary.

The floor was yielded to Canada. It noted that it is encouraged by the deliberations it had witnessed so far surrounding the various proposals received. It emphasized the value of the optional approach envisioned by Japan, as it embodied the critical component of successful negotiations – the embracing and incorporation of difference of opinion. Russia underscored its support for the unified approach of Belarus. Russia also wished to implement the kind of model that was in the Audiovisual Treaty and the Marrakeech Treaty. It wanted a reservation in the treaty itself that would establish a minimum standard of protection for cablecasting organizations as per national legislation. This would balance out the views of those in favour of an optional system against those who prefer an entirely mandatory one. Mexico welcomes the Japanese proposal and seemed to be generally in favour of it. Australia outlined three distinct issues. It was in favour of protection of transmission over the internet and saw simulcasting as a minimum obligatory protection. Its support for the Japanese proposal would depend on the definition of on demand services. Finally, Australia underlined that this entire discussion should be careful in how it understood the idea of traditional broadcasters and cablecasters. Keen to introduce an air of pragmatism to talk about the 2007 mandate, Kenya pointed out that the concept of transmission has undergone a change since 2007 and since the mandate was one that was conferred by the countries present at this discussion, there was no need to be very rigid about it. It wanted a technology neutral approach. Kenya was also keen on clarity on whether this international treaty was meant to build in existing international protections or was intended to be a stand-alone replacement for any protections that may exist for certain or all countries. It welcomes the flexibility that the Japanese proposal offered. The discussion veered in the direction of mandate yet again as India noted that any change to the mandate must be done by the GA alone. Else, the reinterpretation could be in such a manner as to allow for a treaty to emerge under the rubric of this mandate with countries reserving the freedom to enter into another treaty on the same matter in the future. It spelled out that it was crucial to remain within the confines of the GA mandate through the course of these proceedings.

The US delegate opined that the proceedings were completely in conformity with the mandate of the 2007 General Assembly. It reiterated its 2007 desire to have a clear common definition of a broadcasting and cablecasting organization. Notwithstanding that, simply because of a different mode of transmission, internet and webcasting do not fall outside the ambit of protection. As far as the signal based approach is concerned, the US interpreted that to mean the signal itself and nothing to do with the content – an issue the nations are grappling with at present.

Further, the delegate suggested a refocus on the prime problem facing broadcasters i.e. signal piracy. The suggestion is to give the broadcasters control of the retransmission. This would avoid protection for the content being broadcast and would not fall into the trap of post-fixation rights. An argument was also made for retransmission over any medium in a technologically neutral system. Such retransmission would be limited to simultaneous or near simultaneous (a term that needs definition) only to the extent necessary where the delay is meet technical requirements of delivery or to account for time differences. This would also include prebroadcast signal. There are clear advantages to this approach, as noted by the delegate

Short and simple.
Avoids a proliferation of superfluous rights.
Dos not overlap with the rights in content and does not create additional, unnecessarily layers of protection and authorization.
Affirms and codifies the kind of protection that broadcasters require to fortify against signal piracy.
Greater range of rights that could also be codified at the domestic level.
Could avoid the need for any defined term whatsoever.
The potential impact on consumer or private use also covered.

Japan adopted a self-confessed cautious approach to obligatory protection for transmission across computer networks due to the absence of a unified domestic viewpoint on the matter. South Africa was also of the opinion that the protection should not go beyond broadcasters and cablecasters. Colombia, however, was of the opinion that the protection should cover both traditional and non-traditional signals due to the advance in technology in the future that the treaty must anticipate. A broad and flexible approach was therefore preferred by this delegate. India expressed a desire to introduce an alternative.

Afternoon Session

Inclusion of transmission over the internet within the scope of the treaty
Whether or not simulcasting is within the mandate of this meeting
Inclusion of transmission of original programming by webcasting in the treaty
Deferred and unchanged transmission of broadcasting programmes within transmission over the internet

These four topics have witnessed some form of input or discussion thus far.

Comments on Article 9
Article 9 relates to protection of broadcasting organization and embodies two alternatives – A and B. Alternative A provides for a short list of exclusive rights, a limited right to authorize including retransmission of signal to the public by any means. Alternative B provides for a broader list of exclusive rights, including post-fixation rights and the exclusive right of fix and right of retransmission by any means and making available to the public.

In response to the US proposal articulated earlier, India put forth an alternative.

On the table for comments at this juncture are the US Proposal, the Indian alternative and the alternatives A and B to Article 9.

The EU stated that its position would fall closer to Alternative B than A. It was important for the EU to have broad rights of retransmission of broadcasts on all platforms. Retransmissions should be both simultaneous and based on fixations. They also wanted fixed broadcasts – the right of retransmission where the recipient pf the transmission chooses the place and the time of such transmission – to be included within the treaty. With respect to performance of broadcast signals ij places accessible to the public, the EU stressed that it should be limited to places accessible to the public on payment of an entrance fee as envisioned by the Rome Convention. Protection for prebroadcast signals was also sought, thereby covering a comprehensive list of protections.

The EU wanted to know whether the near to simultaneous transmission would be included within the US proposal. It thought the US proposal was based on a single right and was narrow vis-à-vis the EU one, but it expressed a willingness to engage. On the Indian proposal, the EU wished to enquire whether computer retransmissions would be protected against, given its ease.

Ecuador stated that it wished to add “and cablecasting” to India’s proposal Article 9(1)(i) after the mention of traditional broadcasters. India indicated that this addition was agreeable.

Japan mentioned that Alternative B was preferable to it since it had flexibility built into it thereby allowing for better harmonization and incorporation in the domestic law. Further, it stated that signal piracy had three major classifications – unauthorized access or useof prebroadcast signal, programming carrying signals and fixed broadcast. Finally, it clarified that simultaneous and near simultaneous transmission are protected under the Japanese proposal.

South Africa had two quick comments – that it was interested in the US proposal and preferred Alternative B. The EU also noted with interest the Indian proposal and expressed keen interested to engage with the same.

Both Senegal and Poland affirmed their preference for Alternative B in the deliberations on Article 9.

Iran steps in and articulates the stance that India has taken in a cogent manner. It noted the concern that if the content owner does not grant the right to broadcast over a computer or internet, then piracy could result in the absence of protection for the broadcasting organization. It is important to understand that a broadcasting organization is the owner of the signal. Therefore, if the broadcasting organization is not allowed to rebroadcast or retransmit over certain networks due to the contract then this would defeat the purpose of the treaty. Critically, this point is to do with the need for affirming the right of the broadcaster to prevent his own signal from getting used elsewhere without authorization.

India then went to make two critical clarifications on definitions. Broadcast means the transmission of a set of electronically generated signals by wireless and carrying a specific programme for conception of the general public and it should not include the transmission of signals over computer networks. Broadcasting organization means the legal entity taking the interior of packaging, assembling, scheduling of the programme and converting of the signals with the authorization of the owner of the copyright and related rights for broadcast for the reception of the public. Article 5 of the Indian proposal was distributed to all members and comments were invited. The meeting was adjourned to give time to the regional coordinators.

[1]. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_26/sccr_26_1_prov.pdf

[2]. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_24/sccr_24_10_corr.pdf

[3]. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_26/sccr_26_6.pdf

Meeting Documents for the 26th SCCR are available at this link.

Videos/Webcast of the 26th SCCR can be seen here.
CIS Statement on Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities here.
CIS Statement on the proposed treaty for Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-consolidated-26-session-consolidated-notes-part-1