Centre for Internet and Society

April 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-09-04T14:36:41Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for April 2019.

Highlights for March 2019

The unprecedented growth of the fintech space in India has concomitantly come with regulatory challenges around inter alia privacy and security concerns. Aayush Rathi and Shweta Mohandas have co-authored a report which has analysed the privacy policies of 48 fintech companies operating in India to better understand some of these concerns.
In today’s increasingly digitized world where an increasing volume of information is being stored in the digital format, access to data generated by digital technologies and on digital platforms is important in solving crimes online and offline. One such mechanism for international cooperation is the Convention on Cybercrime adopted in Budapest (“Budapest Convention”). Vipul Kharbanda has provided a deeper analysis on this in his research paper.
CIS has responded to ICANN's proposed renewal of .org Registry. CIS has found severe issues with the proposed agreement. These centre around the removal of price caps and imposing obligations being currently deliberated in an ongoing Policy Development Process. Akriti Bopanna drafted the response.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion released a draft e-commerce policy in February for which stakeholder comments were sought. CIS responded to the request for comments.
CIS Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) has submitted its proposal form for the year 2019 - 2020 to the Wikimedia Foundation. CIS thanks all community members who gave valuable suggestions and inputs for drafting this proposal.
In 2017–2018, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and Google collaborated to start a pilot project in India, working closely with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Wikimedia Indiachapter (WMIN). This project, titled Project Tiger was aimed at encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. CIS-A2K team submitted Project Tiger final report.
The r@w blog features works by researchers and practitioners working in India and elsewhere at the intersections of internet, digital media and society, and highlights and materials from ongoing research and events at the researchers@work programme at CIS. On the r@w blog we featured an essay titled 'The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination' by Divij Joshi, as part of a series on Studying Internet in India (2015); and audio recording of a session titled #ObjectsofDigitalGovernance by Khetrimayum Monish Singh, Rajiv K. Mishra, and Vidya Subramanian which was part of the Internet Researchers Conference, 2017.

Jobs

CIS is hiring:

CIS-A2K Finance Officer: Call for application (Only women candidates).
Internship - applications accepted throughout the year.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in January:

Delayed Cash Flows and NPAs (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 3, 2019).
To preserve freedoms online, amend the IT Act (Gurshabad Grover; April 16, 2019).
Digital Native: Getting through an election made for the social media gaze (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 21, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Reddit, Telegram among websites blocked in India, say internet groups (Sai Sachin Ravikumar; Business Standard; April 3, 2019).
Data leaks could wreak havoc in India, so why aren’t they an issue this election? (Aria Thaker; Quartz India; April 4, 2019).
Cookies, not the monster you may think (Sweta Akundi; Hindu; April 8, 2019).
TikTok craze a ticking time bomb for city (Gulam Jeelani with inputs from Priyanka Sharma and Ajay Kumar; India Today; April 17, 2019).
Almost every social network has a porn problem—so why is India banning only TikTok? (Ananya Bhattacharya; Quartz India; April 19, 2019).
Child protection and cyber-grooming: Indian court rescinds its own Tiktok ban (Leon Kaiser; Netzpolitik.org; April 24, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Wikipdedia

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

Project Proposal / Reports

Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program/Report (Gopala Krishna A; April 5, 2019).

CIS-A2K proposal to Wikimedia Foundation for 2019-2020 (Ananth Subray; April 15, 2019).

Blog Entries

Wikimedia projects orientation session at Tata Trust's Vikas Anvesh Foundation (Subodh Kulkarni; April 9, 2019).
Indic Wikisource Speak: Sushant Savla (Jayanta Nath; April 10, 2019).
SVG Translation Workshop at KBC North Maharashtra University (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2019).
Content Donation Sessions with Authors (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2019).
Indic Wikisource speak : Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Jayanta Nath; April 11, 2019).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Cyber Security

Research Paper

International Cooperation in Cybercrime: The Budapest Convention (Vipul Kharbanda; April 29, 2019).

Privacy

Research Paper

FinTech in India: A Study of Privacy and Security Commitments (Aayush Rathi and Shweta Mohandas; April 30, 2019).

Submission

CIS Response to Call for Stakeholder Comments: Draft E-Commerce Policy (Arindrajit Basu, Vipul Kharbanda, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; April 10, 2019).

Participation in Events

IETF 104 Prague (Organized by IETF; Prague; March 23 - 29, 2019). Karan Saini and Gurshabad Grover participated in the event.
The Phantom Public: The Role of Social Media in Democracy (Organized by Ambedkar University; New Delhi; April 3, 2019).
(re) conference (Organized by CREA; New Delhi; April 10 - 12, 2019).
Data for Development: Mapping key considerations for policy and practice in India (Organized by Azim Premchand University; April 24, 2019). Arindrajit Basu delivered a talk.

Artificial Intelligence

Participation in Event

Policy Lab on Artificial Intelligence & Democracy (Organized by Tandem Research, in partnership with Microsoft Research and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung; Bangalore; April 2-3, 2019). Shweta Mohandas participated in the event.

Free Speech and Expression

Submission

CIS Response to ICANN's proposed renewal of .org Registry (Akriti Bopanna; April 28, 2019).

Event Organized

Internet Speech: Perspectives on Regulation and Policy ( Organized by CIS; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; April 5, 2019).

Blog Entry

DIDP #33 On ICANN's 2012 gTLD round auction fund (Akriti Bopanna; April 4, 2019).

Researchers at Work (RAW)

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Announcement

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 6, 2019).

Blog Entries

The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination (Divij Joshi; April 21, 2019).
#ObjectsOfDigitalGovernance (Khetrimayum Monish Singh, Rajiv K. Mishra, and Vidya Subramanian; April 21, 2019).

Telecom

Article

Delayed Cash Flows and NPAs (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 3, 2019 and Organizing India Blogspot; April 4, 2019).

Participation in Event

BIF conference on “Substitutability of OTT Services with Telecom Services & Regulation of OTT Services (Organized by Broadband India Forum; Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road, New Delhi; April 5, 2019). Anubha Sinha was a panellist at a BIF conference on “Substitutability of OTT Services with Telecom Services & Regulation of OTT Services”.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

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Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2019-newsletter

Wikimedia Education SAARC conference

Admin — 2019-06-22T09:30:46Z

Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) happy to announce that, Wikimedia Education SAARC conference 2019 programme submissions (proposals) are open from today, 25 April 2019. Deadline for applying for scholarship is 20 May 2019. The conference organized by Christ University in association with CIS-A2K will be held from 20 - 22 June 2019 at Christ University in Bengaluru. The event is being co-organized by Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia & Education User Group.

Education is a core function of the Wikipedia project. Many Wiki chapters, the Wikimedia movement, user groups and affiliates are developing education programs across the globe. Wiki has been used as a teaching resource by many teachers. Students are doing assignments on Wiki and adopting modern technologies. The Wikimedia and Education movements have the same goal - to ensure that knowledge is made accessible to every person across the world.

The CIS-A2K team, for instance, is working with the language department of Christ University and other educational institutions to enrich the content of Indic Wikimedia projects with the help of students. Globally many students and educators are involved in the Wikimedia movement and the Education movement working towards democratising education and increasing accessibility of education materials. We believe that students should not only consume knowledge available on the internet but also be a part of the larger Open Internet movement, and help in creating open knowledge resources. The Wikimedia Education SAARC conference will be the first of its kind conference involving SAARC countries, engaging students, education program leaders, educators and researchers working with the Open Education and free knowledge movement.

This conference will allow us to understand the different efforts made by the communities involved in the Wikimedia Education movement. This will help us to create models, templates and documents that can be replicated in by other institutions or programs. We at CIS A2K were inspired to host such a conference through the course of our work with Christ University. This will be one of the many projects that will be able to use the conference as a platform to showcase their work among the global Wikimedia movement.

Conference Goals

To generate awareness of Wikipedian Education programs and activities happening in Asia by different community members/languages.
Sharing the knowledge and best practices of how to build "trust relationship" with new partners/teachers and how to improve trust in Wikipedia.
Challenges on student retention and how to engage students in the broader Wikimedia movement.
The best method to evaluate and measure the quality of the work done by students.
To introduce tools like the dashboard, across diverse languages, and other tools which will be useful for tracking, assessment, allocation of the topics and others.
Integration of Wiki activities with academic assignments, regular course syllabus.
To bridge the gap and develop a mutually beneficial liaison between Wiki communities and Wikimedia Education stakeholders.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/wikimedia-education-saarc-conference

Reddit, Telegram among websites blocked in India, say internet groups

Sai Sachin Ravikumar — 2019-04-15T10:32:54Z

Discussion board Reddit, messaging service Telegram and comedy site College Humor have been blocked for intermittent periods, say internet groups.

The article by Sai Sachin Ravikumar was published in Business Standard on April 3, 2019. Gurshabad Grover was quoted.

Websites like Reddit and Telegram are being blocked in India by internet service providers, throwing into question the enforcement of net neutrality rules, advocacy groups said on Wednesday.

Restrictions on "torrent sites" that offer free movie and music downloads are routine in India to prevent copyright infringement. Pornography websites are also blocked by court orders seeking to protect children.

But in recent months, websites such as the discussion board Reddit, messaging service Telegram and comedy site College Humor have been blocked for intermittent periods, often for days and only in some regions, baffling internet users.

"It's not making any sense, what's happening," said Apar Gupta, executive director at the non-profit Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). "A lot of these blocks are also happening in such a way that no notices are displayed." Since January, there have been at least 250 reports of websites blocked on networks operated by Jio, a unit of Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel and Hathway, the IFF said in a letter to the telecoms department.

Jio and Airtel are among India's top telecom providers.

Some internet users have posted on social media screenshots of pages displaying messages saying a website was blocked to comply with government orders.

When Reuters tried to access CollegeHumor.com on Wednesday a message read: "Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India."

An official at the telecoms department, which last year approved rules on net neutrality--the concept that all websites and data on the Internet be treated equally--declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Complaints by Indian internet users have covered "most forms of net neutrality violations," IFF's Gupta said.

Nearly 60 per cent of the user reports compiled by the foundation since January involved Jio networks, the IFF's data showed.

A Jio representative did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Hathway did not reply to phone and email requests for comment.

Bharti Airtel said in a statement it "supports an open internet" and does not block content unless directed by authorities. It did not say if it was currently blocking any websites.

Reddit did not respond to an emailed request for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

Telegram, which has been blocked previously in Russia and Iran, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

If websites are blocked based on government or court orders, or internet firms have legal grounds to restrict web pages, they might not violate net neutrality rules, said Gurshabad Grover, a researcher at the non-profit Centre for Internet and Society.

"But in this case we're not entirely sure," he said.

Other sites blocked this year include tax portal Taxscan and legal database Indian Kanoon.

After complaints from Jio's internet users, Indian Kanoon founder Sushant Sharma said he had been told by Jio the portal was blocked for one day last week due to a government order.

"By evening, apparently, that order was taken back," said Sharma, whose website has some 150,000 daily visitors.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-sai-sachin-ravikumar-april-3-2019-reddit-telegram-among-websites-blocked-in-india

Programme Officer - Privacy

amber — 2019-04-15T06:53:44Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is seeking applications for the position of Programme Officer, to undertake public policy research on privacy and related themes. For this position, we will hire one full time researcher, to be based in the Delhi office of CIS, for the duration of one year.

To apply for this position please write to amber@cis-india.org along with a CV, two writing samples and contact details of two references, Interested candidates are invited to send their applications at the earliest — latest by April 30th.

Organisation Profile

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and practices around internet, technology and society in India, and elsewhere.

Privacy Research at CIS

While privacy has been a key subject of study for digital rights and development organisations in India for the last decade, recent and ongoing legal and policy developments have placed this issue at the forefront of human rights and regulatory research. CIS has conducted extensive research into the areas of privacy, data protection, data security, and was also a member of the Committee of Experts constituted under Justice A P Shah. CIS has also been cited multiple times in the Report of the Committee of Experts led by Justice Srikrishna. CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development and strongly advocates the right to privacy.

Over the next year, CIS intends to look at several research questions on data protection which may include the global experience with privacy enforcement, need for effective redressal mechanisms, documenting the design of business models and data flows, regulation of social media big data, how data of disadvantaged groups including children may be protected. Additionally, while we now have the Supreme Court’s unanimous and emphatic recognition of the fundamental right to privacy, there is a need for research enquiry into several issues such as a clarification of the scope of the Puttaswamy judgment, unpacking the different dimensions of privacy, how state actions interact with privacy.

The Role

Research and analysis: Literature review, policy design, detailed analysis of research topics
Knowledge management: Staying up-to-date on developments of interest to the project, and sharing/debating these with the team. Contributing to documentary and knowledge management processes
Policy outreach and stakeholder engagement: Supporting the project manager in the dissemination of research findings in innovative formats. Attending, planning and executing events
Writing op-eds, short notes, policy briefs and longer form academic writing for a range of audiences
Presentations and formal discussions: Preparing and delivering presentations to various audiences
Helping manage communications with stakeholders including international experts, regulators and policy makers
Managing interns and team: Managing work outputs with our interns; coordinating research with team members and the project manager

Qualifications and Skills

We are looking for professionals from law, regulatory theory and public policy backgrounds.

We are looking for candidates who are interested in studying the regulatory challenges of notice and consent, state capacity, how business models thwart privacy and the future of privacy post Puttaswamy.

This is a full-time position based out of Delhi. The position is for a duration of one year. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/jobs/programme-officer-privacy-2019

E-commerce_submission_by_CIS.pdf

karan — 2019-04-10T11:34:32Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/e-commerce_submission_by_cis.pdf-2

Content Donation Sessions with Authors

subodh — 2019-04-10T01:28:21Z

CIS-A2K has adopted an integrated approach towards knowledge generation in Marathi language. With the involvement of various stakeholders in different programmes, CIS-A2K facilitated a comprehensive workshop for publishers, printers, designers and writers on 7 September 2018.

The State Govt. Language department, All India Marathi Literary Body & All India Marathi Publishers Consortium took the lead to organize this workshop. In this workshop, noted authors Sunilkumar Lawate and Laxmikant Deshmukh expressed their willingness to donate their books to Wikimedia projects. The awareness about content donation was spread among the writers' community through this workshop.

Objectives

To promote the concept of content donation in Wikimedia projects
To develop repository of reference books on Commons & Wikisource
To facilitate organizations working in developmental sector for developing open knowledge on internet

Report

To promote Marathi language, Marathi language fortnight (1-15 January) and Marathi Day (27 February) was celebrated in Maharashtra. CIS-A2K organized various events on this occasion with state government, publishers, writers and other stakeholders in knowledge business. Some of the authors responded to the appeal to donate their literature in public domain. The following content donations were received in February and March 2019.

Book on Home Composting

Kaustubh Tamhankar, an active citizen from Thane is promoting innovative home composting methods for zero garbage. He has produced some manuals and videos on the process. As the awareness about environment friendly lifestyle is increasing, the author thought of releasing the first manual on Commons. CIS-A2K community advocate (CA) trained him in basics of Wikipedia and Commons. He completed the OTRS process and uploaded the book on zero garbage. He has planned to upload some more manuals and videos in future.

Books by Sunilkumar Lawate

Pictured above: Cover page of the book 'V. S. Khandekar Biography' by Sunilkumar Lawate

Prof. Sunilkumar Lawate is an educationist, social activist and writer in Maharashtra. He participated in the FOSS & Wikimedia workshop conducted in September 2018. He approached CIS-A2K for release of his books in CC-BY-SA on the occasion of Marathi Day on 27 February. CA trained the author in copyrights, Commons upload process and OTRS process in the session held at Kolhapur on 27 February. Prof. Lawate uploaded his 21 books on Commons. These are reference value books on education, child rights, literature, autobiographies, social issues and classic literature. The newspapers covered this event as feature of Marathi day. Because of good media coverage, many responses from other authors in Maharashtra have been received for content donation.

Books by Lek Ladaki Abhiyan

We all know that vast amount of training materials and case studies are produced in development sector. But it is not available to society at large. It is restricted to NGOs, funding agencies, etc. for project period. If it is brought in Wikimedia, it will be searchable for all and will be linked to various articles also as reference resource. CIS-A2K is approaching several such organizations for content donations. CIS-A2K received positive response from Adv. Varsha Deshpande, President of Lek Ladaki Abhiyan, Satara about bridging gender gap activities on Wikimedia projects. Lek Ladaki Abhiyan (LLA) is one of the most active organizations working on Women's issues in Maharashtra. The activities cover wide range of issues viz. stopping child marriages, counselling workshops for adolescents, pre-marriage counselling, child labour issues, legal aid to women facing violence, sting operations for exposing cases of female foeticide, hostel for girls etc.

LLA organization is involved in content generation on women's issues for the last two years with the support of CIS-A2K. The process proved useful for the members and other participants. On the occasion of Women's day on 9th March, LLA re-licensed 8 books and uploaded on Commons. The convener Adv. Varsha Deshpande has authored 6 books. She has taken this noble initiative. The content is spreading across beneficiaries and getting good feedback also. The books cover all the issues mentioned above. The articles created in women's day workshop and books donated by this organization have contributed to reduction in gender gap. LLA would like to lead the movement with other like-minded organizations in urban, rural, tribal areas to facilitate the open knowledge generation on women's issues.

Books by Laxmikant Deshmukh

Laxmikant Deshmukh is former IAS and writer in Maharashtra. He was president of All India Marathi Literary Festival in 2017 at Badoda. He was co-organizer for the FOSS & Wikimedia workshop conducted in September 2018. From that event, he has been promoting open knowledge concept and Wikimedia projects. The training session at Pune was held on 16 March for re-licensing his 4 works. The books are on socio-economic issues of Maharashtra.

Link to the Wikipedia page report here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/content-donation-sessions-with-authors

Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program/Report

Gopala Krishna A — 2019-05-01T05:04:24Z

CIS-A2K team submitted Project Tiger final report.

Background

In 2017–2018, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and Google collaborated to start a pilot project in India, working closely with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Wikimedia India chapter (WMIN). This project, titled Project Tiger was aimed at encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. The name Project Tiger was chosen to reflect the Indian metaphor of a tiger representing a strong, or brave person (Baagh in Hindi, Puli in Tamil, etc).

Through this project, support was provided to active and experienced Wikipedia editors in the form of Chromebook donations, and stipends for Internet access. Additionally, a three-month-long editathon was conducted, as well as a language-based contest on Indic Wikipedia that aimed at addressing existing Wikipedia content gaps.

Needs Assessment

As a part of Project Tiger, CIS-A2K facilitated a needs assessment process in the month of December 2017, prompting a large number of responses between December 2017 and March 2018. Among these, the highest percentage of responses came from Wikimedians who were associated with Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. A notable percentage of responses came from students. Among 190 responses, it was found that 16% of users edit Wikimedia projects on mobile phones. Additionally, out of 189 users, 51.85% said they use laptops for editing. 73 users reported that they share their devices with others to make contributions.

Our learnings from this process are:

150 users who contribute to Wikipedia belong to the age groups of 20-35 and 35-50. Younger community members can consistently bring in more contributions and have a sustainable presence within the community. Supporting these young Wikimedians is very important.

Users with personal devices can make more contributions to Wikipedia than those without them. Sharing devices between users is a barrier to maximising contributions.

Most users are genuinely interested in contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
There is a requirement for skill development activities (Writing skills, tools, gadgets) within the Indian Wikimedia community. Skills development will directly result in increased contribution to Wikimedia projects. Additionally, Wikimedians also showed interest in obtaining easier access to books, journals, etc.

Chromebook Distribution

CIS-A2K received a large number of requests for Chromebooks and access to the Internet from community members CIS-A2K observed 271 requests for laptop and internet access (including draft requests, requests from IP address, and withdrawn requests by applicants).

In the first round of responding to these requests, 26 requests were answered with support. 11 of these 26 Chromebook recipients are female Wikipedians. In the second round of responses, CIS-A2K supported 24 requests. In just two rounds all Chromebooks were distributed among the users. Total Chromebooks are delivered are 50. The first stage of distribution involved delivery of Chromebooks to Odia Wikimedian Ssgapu22. Subsequently, we prepared a help document intended to make the Chromebooks convenient to use for Indian Wikipedians. Then the Chromebooks were transported to the recipients, either by courier (35–40 Chromebooks), or in person by community advocates at events. CIS-A2K has successfully shipped Chromebooks even to rural areas in India including the border areas of West Bengal. CIS-A2K has made a final third list which serves as a waiting list, with 25 pending requests that are open for support. Support via Chromebooks has created a noticeable increase in all forms of contributions by Wikimedians to the Wikimedia projects.

Read the complete report published on Wikipedia page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/supporting-indian-language-wikipedias-program-report

The Phantom Public: The Role of Social Media in Democracy

Admin — 2019-05-01T05:09:19Z

Amber Sinha delivered an open lecture at Ambedkar University, New Delhi on 3 April 2019.

India has over 500 million internet users — over a third of its total population — making it the country with the second largest number of Internet users after China. For the world’s largest democracy, the Internet should be a boon. After all, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, had envisioned the Internet to as an “open platform that allows anyone to share information, access opportunities and collaborate across geographical boundaries.” The democratization of information it facilitated should have led to a more informed citizenry, but instead what we have is the complete opposite. The average digital citizen in India maintains a near perpetual information illiteracy about where they receive news and information from, whether or not it is true and how it is intended to manipulate them. This is, in large part, because social media has become the primary source of information.

The problems of the public, how it may get access to meaningful information, how it organises itself, and how public opinion is shaped are now deeply impacted by the rise of social media and messaging platforms as political tools of targeting, gathering and organising. How this new media thwarts and enables the goals of the public in India at present is the primary subject matter of this talk. We will cover a range of issues such as fake news and hate speech on social media, the use Facebook by Cambridge Analytica in elections, and how online platforms are governed, particularly with a view towards elections.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-phantom-public-the-role-of-social-media-in-democracy

E-Commerce Submission

karan — 2019-04-01T11:54:45Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/e-commerce-submission

Design and the Open Knowledge Movement

saumyaa — 2019-04-01T12:13:00Z

With the objective of connecting the open knowledge movement with design, the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society co-organised the Wikigraphists Bootcamp India 2018 with the Wikimedia Foundation during September 28-30, 2018 in New Delhi. The event was held at the School of Design at Ambedkar University Delhi. As part of the bootcamp, a panel discussion was held in order to bring together design practitioners, educators, open knowledge contributors, and design students to explore how design and open knowledge communities can engage with each other. In this post, Saumyaa Naidu shares the learnings from the panel discussion aimed at exploring the potential collaborations between design and the open knowledge movement.

Introduction

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

Conclusion

Introduction

Design has historically been functioning in a closed paradigm, both with regard to practice and education. The design process, resources, and products are largely proprietary and limit who can access them. On the other hand, increased use of digital technology offers the potential for greater access and knowledge sharing. In this setting, a dialogue on design and openness becomes essential. There is a need to build sensitivity among designers towards open knowledge and open access practices. Such an exchange can not only allow for design resources and products to be available in the open domain, but also help designers build an extensive shared knowledge base.

With the objective of connecting the open knowledge movement with design, the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society co-organised the Wikigraphists Bootcamp India 2018 with the Wikimedia Foundation from 28th to 30th September, 2018 in New Delhi. The event was held at the School of Design at Ambedkar University Delhi. As part of the bootcamp, a panel discussion was held in order to bring together design practitioners, educators, open knowledge contributors, and design students to explore how design and open knowledge communities can engage with each other.

The discussion was preceded by an introduction to the open knowledge movement and its potential in creating access and inclusion, by Satdeep Gill. Satdeep is a community outreach coordinator for India at the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also one of the founding members of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group. Satdeep was the programme leader for the Wikiconference India in 2016. The introduction provided a brief history of copyrights and the beginning of the copyleft movement. It discussed creative commons licensing and the role of Wikipedia in the open knowledge movement.

The panel included Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, Pooja Saxena, and Shyamal. Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan is the dean at the School of Design in Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her research has been on multiple areas such as history of craft and design, and design education in India. Her practice focuses on social communication design. Pooja Saxena is a typeface and graphic designer whose work centres on multi-script design. She has designed an Ol Chiki typeface for Santali language which is available for free and open use. Pooja also teaches typography at several design schools including Pearl Academy, National Institute of Design, and Srishti school of Art, Design, and Technology. Shyamal is an independent researcher and an ornithologist. He has been contributing to Wikipedia for over fifteen years now. In addition to his contributions about the biodiversity of birds, he has also created several illustrations relating to the same. The panel was moderated by Saumyaa Naidu, a designer and researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The discussion was aimed at addressing three primary questions around design and the open knowledge movement; how academic materials in design inform unstructured or open knowledge spaces and in what ways do these unstructured spaces come back into design education?, what are the potential means of engagement with open knowledge in design practice?, and in what ways can it be applied in design education?

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

The discussion began with an enquiry into the challenges faced in the design of knowledge production and the knowledge production of design. It was directed at understanding the various ways in which design education and academia interact with open knowledge. Prof. Suchitra responded by saying that it is still early days for such an interaction to take place as the discipline of design itself is very proprietary in its approach. The work created in different areas of design is often guarded. Locating the discussion at the School of Design in AUD, she suggested that the Social Design course, which looks at the social application of design, believes in socially produced knowledge and contributing to it. However, the university is constrained by the academic environment which does not facilitate the open exchange of knowledge. There is a culture of copyright and protection of work in academia, and heavy funding is required for journal subscriptions. There is an imbalanced gatekeeping of knowledge as countries like India, which have weaker currencies, cannot access this knowledge or contribute to it. The social design community, a small community yet, is interested in making this knowledge freely accessible, in community participation, in co-designing, and in challenge the idea of one ‘super-designer’ who gets all the credit.

Open knowledge spaces such as Wikipedia often make their way into classrooms when students use these resources for assignments. It was pointed out by Prof. Suchitra that there is a lack of regard among students for giving due attribution to material taken from such platforms. Social Sciences universities also consider Wikipedia as an unreliable source, and discourage its use. There is a need to build the culture of knowledge sharing, borrowing, and contribution. She believes that this should be initiated at the level of school education, and not just design schools, so it is internalised at an early stage. She also shared an epistemological concern regarding such a cultural shift in design as it is commonly believed that the knowledge designers produce belongs to them and their livelihoods are connected to it. Hence, open knowledge and open source are antithetical to the profession. This means that the profession itself has to be imagined differently. The social design programme, in this regard, is trying to ensure that when students create work based on interactions with a community, also go back and present it to the community. This is to say that the work produced cannot be exclusively owned by the designers.

The open knowledge movement in India is closely tied to accessibility of information in Indian languages. The availability of a design knowledge base in Indian languages was discussed in this context. Prof. Suchitra explained that most design education in India is in English and is borrowed from another cultural and geographical setting. Design is a discipline of making, and making has its own language. In that sense, the act and content of design transcends language. But, it is the pedagogy which is held by language. The act of making, which is ubiquitous, and is done naturally by everybody, gets held back when it comes to the transmission in different languages. There can be sanskritised words for design terminology, but the vocabulary of everyday use should be applied to represent this knowledge. The School of Design is looking for ways in which important and more provocative texts in design can be made available in other Indian languages. When students are exploring a career in design and they want to learn about it, the information about courses, programmes, and universities should also be available in their language.

The students at AUD recently demanded that education at the university be provided in multiple languages. Since AUD is funded by the Delhi state government, the students want the medium of instruction to include languages of the state (Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi) apart from English. However, in order to accomplish this, the university would require multilingual teachers. At a personal level, Prof. Suchitra feels that the medium of instruction cannot be monolingual, and that it is good to be multilingual. There is also the conflict that it doesn’t do justice to either languages, and there is no neat answer yet. She believes that technology provides some answers in the sense that students can access the material through translations in whichever language they prefer. Being located in Delhi, the university attracts students from all parts of the country, so it needs to be multilingual in different ways. Technology can intervene and provide a layer by which access can be given in the language of one’s choice. She inferred that this is not a question of one or two languages, but of languages everywhere.

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Presently, there is limited participation from design practitioners on open knowledge platforms. From the perspective of a design practitioner and educator, Pooja Saxena explained that apart from Wikipedia, designers use The Noun Project, which offers both free and paid ways to use icons. She mentioned how students also use this platform but it appears that they are not as interested in contributing to it. They are guarded about the work they create but are fine with using someone else’s work that is available for free. Pooja suggested a much needed change in the understanding that open knowledge simply means that it is open for use. It must be seen as a community which one needs to engage with in whichever capacity and give back to. Agreeing with Prof. Suchitra, Pooja also observed that students fail to give fair attribution when any work is available for free. There is a lack of training and communication around attribution among designers. Regarding open source softwares meant for image making and creating illustrations, Pooja said that despite her several attempts of using them, she has always gone back to proprietary softwares. She believes that there are not enough people contributing to making these open source applications better to work with. A middle path she recommended for designers is creating work in formats which can be edited across applications, so that the work created can be built upon in any application, and is not bound by a proprietary software.

As an experienced Wikipedian, Shyamal also stressed upon the idea of finding ways to productively give back to the open knowledge community. He talked about the opportunities that design students have in terms of creating quality images and graphics, and making them available for public use. An example of such an opportunity could be creating clipart or icons that can be used for roadside signages or other such public resources. Another possibility he proposed was publishing rough drafts or discarded work on platforms like Wikipedia, so it can be refined and used by others. It is not well known that aside from the textual part of Wikipedia, there exists a larger environment which includes projects like Wikidata, which is a semantic database, and Wikimedia Commons, which is meant for a variety of media such as images, video, audio, and even 3D models now. This offers a variety of options to designers to make their work available for open use. Another aspect that Shyamal brought attention to in this regard is to make the work available in a way that it can be easily found by others, by effectively using metadata and writing appropriate descriptions.

A relevant example of engagement of design with the open knowledge community was shared by Pooja through her type design project. This included designing a typeface family for the Ol Chiki script, which is used to write in the Santhali language. The project was initiated by Subhashish Panigrahi at CIS in order to set up the Santhali Wikipedia. But, at the time there were no unicode compliant fonts available for Ol Chiki. This was a clear example of how a design intervention in the form of a typeface could lead to knowledge being shared and possibly even created in the future. The project was then funded by the Access to Knowledge programme at CIS. Pooja described the process of designing the typeface. She mentioned that even though the Santhali language is spoken by over 6 million people, Ol Chiki is not a commonly used script. The script itself was invented less than a hundred years ago, which meant that there is little documentation available of the script to look at. The team then engaged with the community to understand how they would like the letters to look like, and whether the letters in the font were correct. This was done through comprehensive feedback forms to test the letters and ask specific questions around their form and placement. The exercise was repeated a number of times to get accurate letters.

Through this process, Pooja made a key observation on perfection. Designers are often trained to share or show their work only when they think it is perfect. But, in the case of the typeface, it was impossible to achieve something even close to being finished without showing it and seeking help from the community. The project also led to inspiring a design student from the National Institute of Design, who belongs to the Santhal community, to create letters in Ol Chiki script as part of the ‘36 days of type’ challenge on Instagram. The typeface thus, can contribute towards such projects as well. Pooja concluded that the typeface being available for free can also lead to students making a version of it that serves their purpose better.

Further on open typefaces for Indian languages, Shyamal spoke about the several issues regarding the use of Indian languages, specific to Wikipedia and in general as well. He correlated the lack of academic disciplines in Indian languages with the lack of vocabulary of technical terms. Several people also oppose borrowing words from other languages. In an example of needing to translate the labels of an illustration of a four-stroke engine into an Indian language, the engineer would not know the terms in that language, and the language expert will not know enough about engineering. Shyamal suggested transliterating English words as a first step, so that somebody who doesn’t know English can understand what the word sounds like. Another technical concern is the use of open source fonts of Indian languages for better compatibility on Wikimedia Commons. The platform replaces proprietary fonts with equivalent open source ones during the process of uploading. This changes the typesetting in the illustration in terms of spacing between the letters and sentences, and the resulting design can end up looking different from the intended one. Hence, it is important to include identification and use of open source fonts as part of the learning process in design.

Shyamal further talked about the need to create more awareness about copyright. He explained that the fact that anything we create is automatically copyrighted is not really understood by most people. People posting images on Facebook and Instagram would allow others to use their work when asked, but would hesitate to give a written permission. It would be useful to license out the work. This lack of copyright awareness hinders the creation of a vast visual database on Wikimedia Commons. There is little visual information available online about objects, monuments, maps, places, etc. in India. The advantage of using systems like Wikipedia is that you can geotag places, you can semantically describe them so that people who speak other languages can find that content. The value of availability of such content online for an outsider is not well understood yet. As a practice, when learning something new, Shyamal himself tries to add it on Wikipedia or on related projects, so that it can be of use to anyone else looking for it as well.

On encouraging designers to contribute to open knowledge, Pooja advised that designers can contribute through side projects or self-initiated projects as they are not looking to make any money from them to begin with, and would be able to share the work for free. These side projects can take the form of resources or tools that other people can use to build something else. She also pointed out that it is not necessary that designers cannot get paid to do open work, and shared the example of the Ol Chiki typeface, which was paid for by a patron. There are also organisations that commission projects which are supposed to be available for free use because those organisations need that product to be available for free. Google fonts for example, commissions the typefaces to designers which are eventually available as free and open fonts. It is important for designers to be aware that such opportunities exist, and that they need to be sought.

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

The discussion led to several suggestions on involving design students in the open knowledge movement. Pooja recommended that students can be encouraged to make their assignments available on Wikimedia Commons. Design students are often expected to work on projects that address problems that exist in the real world. In most cases, these projects remain with the students and not get implemented in the real world. If such projects were available on open platforms like Wikimedia Commons, they can be taken forward by others who are tackling the same concerns. It is also something that design students would benefit from because their work will be publicly available.

In order to address the disregard for attributions pointed out earlier, Prof. Suchitra stressed upon the need to build a culture among design students to attribute fairly. This would allow for acceptable acknowledgement to someone who has produced work and contributed it to the open domain. She added that this is being initiated in other design spaces such as the Decolonise Design group, which some design faculties are a part of. The group looks at ways of finding different cultural anchors for design. One such project is where design faculties have gotten together to share design assignments, in order to see what kind of assignments we set in the classroom for teaching various kinds of concepts in design. The faculties are trying to form an international platform where teaching methods can be shared and a bank of design assignments can be created. These methods and assignments are otherwise considered proprietary.

Prof. Suchitra also talked about the onus on public funded educational institutions to make their work available on open platforms, at least in projects which have a larger use. The Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Powai already has a portal on which design related educational material is available for anyone who is interested. They offer an online course in design which anyone can register for and attend. It is only for the certification at the end of the course, that one needs to pay to take an exam. Design courses otherwise tend to be quite expensive. She mentioned that the School of Design at AUD has been contemplating sharing the thesis work that students produce on Academia, a platform for academics to share research papers, where it can be downloaded for free. This allows for the work to be viewed by people outside the school, which is a significant step for young designers. Design as a profession fundamentally does not allow sharing, and this certainly needs to change. She gave the example of textiles, where the traditional artworks and motifs are picked up from different sources and placed on fabrics. Such reuse borders on unethical practice. Therefore, we need to identify the boundaries of open source. The ethical aspects of it need to be opened up and discussed, otherwise it can lead to asymmetrical knowledge practices. The attribution or acknowledgement that the work individually or culturally belongs to somebody, needs to be recognised.

On the learning by doing approach in design education, Pooja raised the concern that there is a lack of attention towards ‘learning by reading’. Design related reading materials are not available on open platforms and in different languages. She suggested that even if the readings are available in English, it is also useful for them to be available in a vocabulary that is more acceptable for someone for whom it is not their first language. Further, the ‘doing’ is also framed by a certain perspective, and often that perspective is quite closed. It does not take into account where the students is coming from. For example, a branding assignment for a product for new mothers does not consider how eighteen year old students would understand the product without any interaction with the users. It doesn’t ask why does it have to be branding to begin with. It also limits the objective to ‘selling something’ while there are other ways in which design can intervene. In the assignments where students engage with a community, there is often a clear asymmetry between the students and the people they are designing for. There is a vast gap in the knowledge and experience shared by the two. Consequently, students are forced to either assert themselves in this community or misrepresent themselves. This also takes away from students wanting to share their work on open platforms. Pooja recommended that they would be more willing to put the work out in the open when they are working with their own community because they can then see how it affects people in a much more direct way.

Conclusion

The discussion brought forward various intersections in design and open knowledge, and the possible ways in which the two can lend to each other. Broader interventions such as a cultural shift in design around sharing work and discussing its ethical aspects, availability of academic material in design on open platforms and in different Indian languages, sensitivity around fair attribution and copyrights among designers, and designers seeking out or self initiating projects that contribute to the open domain were discussed. In terms of specific steps, ideas including design practitioners creating works in formats which are editable on open applications, adding more visual content on platforms like Wikimedia Commons, creating and using more open typefaces in Indian languages, and students sharing their assignments on open platforms were considered. Other ways of engagement with design education could be through internships and workshops that demonstrate the need for open knowledge systems.

During the interaction with the audience, another key concern was brought up by Govind Sivan, a student at the School of Design at AUD. He spoke about the prevalent approach in design schools of giving primary importance to originality. Students work towards thinking of unique ideas and any similarity between their own and a classmate’s assignment is seen as a failure of creativity. Such an approach goes on to curb shared knowledge and collaborative working, and needs to be changed in order to make way for openness in design. Prof. Suchitra also advised that there is more value to design in thinking of it as a collaborative project.

Design is also gradually opening up its process to include the people being designed for through open research methods such as co-design and participatory design. All aspects of a design process such as need identification, data gathering, and the end product can be conceptualised for openness. These directions can be explored by both designers and the open knowledge community for the creation of a greater and more accessible knowledge base.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/saumyaa-naidu-design-and-the-open-knowledge-movement

March 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-07-18T02:14:11Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for the month of March 2019.

Highlights for March 2019

The Indian Patent Office (IPO) on 1 March 2019, published a draft of the “Manual of Patent Office Practice and Procedure, Version 3.0”. CIS provided comments on patenting of computer related inventions.
The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team has submitted its proposal for the year 2019-2020 to the Wikimedia Foundation. CIS-A2K has proposed to undertake content enrichment, skill development initiatives, cement partnership with existing partners and build relationships with new ones, and activities like Train-the-Trainer, Wikisource Conference, Wikimedia Summit India, Intensive Personal Wiki Training, supporting Indic Wikimedians through request page, etc.
Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organisation working on rejuvenation of rivers in India, has began documentation of rivers on Wiki, especially to draw attention to and mitigate the crisis of toxic deposits facing more than 40 rivers in India. The work was started by Jal Biradari, TBS’s Maharashtra based group, in Sangli district with the help of the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team of CIS. A report from the first pilot workshop conducted by CIS-A2K during 22-25 December 2018 at Tarun Bharat Sangh Ashram, in Alwar, Rajasthan has been published.
With the objective of connecting the open knowledge movement with design, the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society co-organised the Wikigraphists Bootcamp India 2018 with the Wikimedia Foundation during September 28-30, 2018 in New Delhi. Saumyaa Naidu in a report has shared the learningsfrom the panel discussion aimed at exploring the potential collaborations between design and the open knowledge movement.
Karan Saini, Pranesh Prakash and Elonnai Hickok co-authored a policy brief titled Improving the Processes for Disclosing Security Vulnerabilities to Government Entities in India. The policy brief has recommended changes pertaining to current legislation, policy and practice to the Government of India regarding external vulnerability reporting and disclosure.
Arindrajit Basu, Elonnai Hickok and Aditya Singh Chawla co-authored a White Paper titled 'The Localisation Gambit'. The paper was edited by Pranav M.B., Vipul Kharbanda and Amber Sinha. Anjanaa Aravindan provided research assistance. Government of India has drafted multiple policy instruments which dictate that certain types of data must be stored in servers located physically within the territory of India. The White Paper serves as a resource for stakeholders attempting to intervene in this debate and arrive at a workable solution where the objectives of data localisation are met through measures that have the least negative impact on India’s economic, political, and legal interests.
The Technology Law Forum at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) has published the Report on Data Privacy and Citizen's Rights' Symposium.This report is a compilation of all the speakers' speeches during the panel discussion. Shweta Mohandas was one of the eight speakers at the panel and the excerpts from her presentation has also been covered in this report.
CIS in its r@w blog featured an essay titled 'Users and the Internet' by Purbasha Auddy, part of a series on Studying Internet in India (2015); and audio recording of a session titled #SelfiesFromtheField which was part of the Internet Researchers Conference, 2017.

Jobs

CIS is hiring:

CIS-A2K Finance Officer: Call for application (Only women candidates).
Internship - applications accepted throughout the year.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in January:

Recapturing the Commons (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 7, 2019).
Digital Native: How an information overload affects what you forward (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; March 10, 2019).
Digital Native: Lessons from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp going down (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; March 24, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Why entrepreneurs are wary of the new draft e-commerce policy (Rahul Sachitanand; Economic Times; March 3, 2019).
'Website not found' pop-ups leave net activists fuming (Tushar Kaushik; Economic Times; March 6, 2019).
More urban Indian women are acting against offensive calls and text messages (Aria Thaker; Quartz India; March 8, 2019).
Unlike Facebook, Twitter is a ghost town for political ads in India so far (Aria Thaker; Quartz India; March 12, 2019).

Wie die chinesische Mega-App TikTok Indiens Wahlkampf beeinflussen könnte (Handelsblatt; March 13, 2019).
When laugh lines turn worry lines (K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj; Hindu; March 15, 2019).

Proposed Intermediary Liability Rules threat to privacy and free speech, global coalition tells MeitY (Zaheer Merchant; Medianama; March 18, 2019).
Now, police use apps to catch a criminal (Ketaki Desai with inputs from Sanjeev Verma; Times of India; March 31, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Copyright and Patent

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. We prepared the India report for the Consumers International IP Watchlist, made submission to the HRD Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty, questioned the demonisation of pirates, and advocated against laws (such as PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public funded knowledge.

Submission

Comments and Suggestions to the Draft Patent Manual March 2019 (Achal Prabhala, Feroz Ali, Ramya Sheshadri, Roshan John and Anubha Sinha; March 21, 2019).

Wikipdedia

Blog Entries

Train the Trainer program 2018 (Sailesh Patnaik; March 6, 2019).
The city of Bhubaneswar is going Open (Sailesh Patnaik; March 7, 2019).
Rejuvenating India’s Rivers the Wiki Way (Subodh Kulkarni; March 7, 2019).
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಶಿಕ್ಷಣ ಯೋಜನೆ ಸಮಾವೇಶ ಮತ್ತು ತರಬೇತಿಯ ವರದಿ (Ananth Subray; March 7, 2019).
Design and the Open Knowledge Movement (Saumyaa Naidu; March 31, 2019).

Event Organized

Wikimedia Summit India 2019 (Organized by CIS-A2K; New Delhi; March 16 - 17, 2019). CIS-A2K team organized a two-day Wikimedia Summit event for the participants taking part in the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin.

Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Event Organized

Talks by Richard Abisla and Kaliya Young (Organized by CIS; Bangalore; March 4, 2019).

Internet Governance

Cyber Security

Research Paper

Improving the Processes for Disclosing Security Vulnerabilities to Government Entities in India (Karan Saini, Pranesh Prakash and Elonnai Hickok; March 20, 2019). This is an update to our previously released paper titled "Leveraging the Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process to Improve the State of Information Security in India". The full document can be accessed here.

Privacy

Research Paper

The Localisation Gambit: Unpacking policy moves for the sovereign control of data in India (Arindrajit Basu, Elonnai Hickok and Aditya Singh Chawla; March 19, 2019).

Participation in Events

Nullcon Security Conference (Organized by Nullcon; March 1 - 2, 2019; Goa). Karan Saini attended the event.
Seminar on “Evolution of communication: Social Media & Beyond” (Organized by TRAI; Hotel Radisson Blu GRT, Near Airport, Chennaii; March 15, 2019).
DSCI-Infosys Roundtable (Organized by Infosys; Bangalore; March 25, 2019). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

Free Speech and Expression

Event

Internet Speech: Perspectives on Regulation and Policy (Organized by CIS; India Habitat Centre; New Delhi; April 5, 2019).

Participation in Event

Just Net Coalition Workshop on Equity and Social Justice in a Digital World (Organized by Just Net Coalition Workshop on Equity and Social Justice in a Digital World and its partners; Bangkok; March 25 - 27, 2019). Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Artificial Intelligence, ICT and IoT

Participation in Events

RFCs We Love: Transport & Apps Edition (Organized by India Internet Engineering Society; March 2, 2019; Go-Jek; Domlur, Bangalore). Gurshabad Grover was a speaker at this event.
Consultation on Draft E-commerce Policy (Organized by Alternative Law Forum and IT for Change; March 14, 2019; Tony Hall, Ashirwad , Off St.Marks Road; Bangalore). Arindrajit Basu attended the event.
International Conference on Justice Education:Legal Implications of Artificial Intelligence (Organized by Nirma University; Ahmedabad; March 15 - 16, 2019). Arindrajit Basu attended the conference.
AI for India Summit (Organized by Facebook; Leela Palace, Bengaluru; March 26, 2019). Shweta Mohandas participated in the event.
Roundtable on Consumer Experiences with New Technologies in APAC (Singapore) (Organized by Consumers International; Google, Singapore; March 26, 2019). Arindrajit Basu participated in the event.

Researchers at Work (RAW)

Blog Entries

#CollectionAndIdentity (Ravi Shukla, Rajiv K. Mishra, and Mrutyunjay Mishra; March 2, 2019).
The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar (Sailen Routray; March 2, 2019).
Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi (Sarah McKeever; March 12, 2019).
#CampusCampaigns: User Perceptions in Pre-digital and Digital Eras (Arjun Ghosh; March 12, 2019).
Taking Open Science Offline (Shreyashi Ray; March 21, 2019).

Participation in Event

Presentation at Global Digital Humanities Symposium (Organized by Michigan State University; March 21 - 22, 2019). P.P. Sneha gave a virtual presentation of her work on digital cultural archives.

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

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E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2019-newsletter

Programme Officer - Digital Identity

amber — 2019-03-29T11:02:42Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is seeking applications for the position of Programme Officer, to be associated with a two year long research project on digital identity. We may hire up to three Programme Officers as part of this project. The position is full time and will be based in the Delhi office of CIS.

To apply for this position please write to amber@cis-india.org along with a CV, two writing samples and contact details of two references. Interested candidates are invited to send their applications at the earliest - latest by April 15th.

Organisation Profile

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and practices around internet, technology and society in India, and elsewhere.

About Digital Identity Project

We are embarking on a two year research project on digital identity. As governments across the globe are implementing new, digital foundational identification systems or modernizing existing ID programs, there is a dire need for greater research and discussion about appropriate design choices for a digital identity framework. There is significant momentum on digital ID, especially after the adoption of UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, which calls for legal identity for all by 2030. Instances of emerging new digital identity schemes include national projects in Algeria, Belgium (mobile ID), Cameroon, Ecuador, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Italy, Iran, Japan, Senegal, Thailand, Turkey, major announcements in Afghanistan, Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, the Maldives, Norway, Liberia, Poland, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Zambia and a pilot scheme in Myanmar.

The nature of choices made towards the creation of a digital identity system have significant consequences for privacy, security, inclusivity, scalability, fraud-detection capabilities and implementation costs of the framework. These choices exist in the context of a complex set of political, legal, technological, economic, and societal factors. In this project we will be looking at technical policy options and appropriate uses of a digital identity ecosystem.

The Role

Your role will require you to work closely with our team on research and policy analysis, and to engage with external researchers from whom we will commission research. Doing so will involve the following activities.

Interdisciplinary research and analysis: Literature review, policy design, detailed analysis on topics including technology design options and appropriate uses of digital identity systems;
Policy dissemination and stakeholder engagement: Supporting the Project Manager in the dissemination of research findings in innovative formats, as well as attending, planning, and executing events;
Writing op-eds, short notes, policy briefs and longer form academic writing for a range of audiences;
Presentations and formal discussions: Preparing and delivering presentations to various audiences;
Helping manage communications with stakeholders including international experts, regulators and policy makers;
Knowledge management: Staying up-to-date on developments of interest to the Initiative, and sharing and debating these with the team;
Contributing to documentary and knowledge management processes; and
Managing interns and team: Managing work outputs with our interns, and coordinating research with team members and the Project Manager.

Qualifications and Skills

We are looking for up to three professionals who may come from the following backgrounds: law, regulatory theory, public policy, economics, ethics, technology and development studies.

We are looking for candidates who can exhibit constructive problem-solving skills, sound analytical and critical thinking skills, with the ability to analyse issues from first principles and develop solutions.

This is a full-time position based out of Delhi. The position is for a duration of two years. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/jobs/programme-officer-digital-identity-2019

Presentation at Global Digital Humanities Symposium

sneha-pp — 2019-05-03T09:41:53Z

P.P. Sneha gave a virtual presentation of her work on digital cultural archives at the Global Digital Humanities Symposium organised by Michigan State University on March 21-22, 2019.

Puthiya Purayil Sneha (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India)

The archive has been an important context for conversations around digital humanities (DH) in India, as it has been globally. The last few decades have seen several large-scale efforts in digitalization across various sectors, including state institutions (National Museum, National Cultural Audio-Visual Archive (IGNCA)) universities (Jadavpur University, Ambedkar University,) and individual and collaborative efforts (Indian Memory Project, Indiancine.ma ) to name a few. The emergence of new fields like DH, digital cultures and cultural analytics also indicate several shifts in scholarship, pedagogy and practice, on the one hand alluding to the potential offered by democratizing technologies, but also reflecting persistent challenges related to the digital divide, and more specifically politics around the growth and sustenance of the humanities disciplines.

The growth of new areas of study and creative practice like DH has brought about a renewed focus on the creation of digital corpora, and the need for new technologies and methods of research, more specifically through the development of digital pedagogies. The contexts of these questions are however much wider, located in long-spanning efforts in digitization and digital literacy more broadly, which are still fraught with challenges of access, usage and context. Even as the colonial imagination of state archives remains prevalent in India, digital archival initiatives facilitated by infrastructure such as open source content management systems and tools like web annotation have opened up spaces for alternate narratives. Drawing upon excerpts from a report on mapping the field of DH in India, and ongoing conversations on the digital transition in archival practices, this presentation seeks to understand the politics of digital archiving in a postcolonial context, and how it informs larger trajectories of digitalisation, and the growth of fields like DH in India today.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/presentation-at-global-digital-humanities-symposium

Comments and Suggestions to the Draft Patent Manual March 2019

Achal Prabhala, Feroz Ali, Ramya Sheshadri, Roshan John and Anubha Sinha — 2019-04-05T02:15:07Z

A coordinated civil society response to the consultation on the Patent Manual. CIS provided comments on patenting of computer related inventions.

On behalf of the accessibsa project (www.accessibsa.org), the Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign (https://msfaccess.org/) and the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) , as well as numerous endorsing organisations and individuals across Indian Civil Society, we are pleased to present our comments, feedback and suggestions on the draft Manual of Patent Office Practice and Procedure, Version 3, published on 1 March 2019, to which your office invited comment from all stakeholders.

The Indian Patent Office (IPO) on 1 March 2019, published a draft of the “Manual of Patent Office Practice and Procedure, Version 3.0” (hereafter, the “Manual”). This draft extends upon the previous Manual, Version 01.11, dated 22 March 2011, which is currently the Manual in force.

At the outset, we should note that the current draft Manual does not differ substantially from the version in force. Aside from a few updations (for instance, noting the Indian Supreme Court decision in the Novartis case of 2013, as regarding Section 3(d) of Indian patent law), the current Manual under consideration is similar in most aspects to the Manual in force. However, given that several provisions in the current Manual in force were insufficient to implement Indian patent law as it was intended even in 2011, as well as the fact that there have been numerous developments in law, scholarship and practice since the time the Manual was last updated in 2011, we urge the IPO to take this opportunity to reflect upon the developments in patent law and practice, as well as the extensive scholarship now available to us.

Preamble: Indian patent law was substantially amended in 2005, and we began the process of implementing this law a few years later. Today, in 2019, we have data and evidence from almost 14 years of practice, and we suggest that the IPO fully incorporate all learnings available to us, to bring the full force of Indian patent

law into effect, as originally intended. The Manual of the Patent Office has the potential to be a comprehensive handbook on implementing patent law for all stakeholders including patent agents, applicants and the courts. The current version, in the manner proposed, is not. Our suggestions, if adopted in entirety, would make this so: furthermore, our suggestions provide a much-needed opportunity to correct course, by understanding and correcting the failures of the system to implement the original and far-sighted provisions in the Indian patent law amendment of 2005.

Overarching themes: Several of our suggestions for the current Manual under consideration are systemic, and, as such, require broad and serious attention to completely overhaul.

Structure: The Manual under consideration is badly composed and incomplete. Tabular columns are an inappropriate format for a patent manual. Furthermore and separately, the IPO makes use of several instances of “Guidelines” when examining patents. The IPO currently consults, among others, Guidelines for pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and computer related inventions. These guidelines are randomly categorized, badly deployed, hard to locate and amended haphazardly, without notice or any attention. There is no excuse for the IPO Guidelines to not form a part of the Patent Office Manual, thus giving them stability, and subjecting them to a transparent and participative process, like the rest of the Manual. Lastly, the Guidelines should evolve to covering the examination of Biologics as a distinct category, as we should with other frontier technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Biology.

Coherence: We have three inter-locking layers in the patent system in India: the patents act, the patent rules and the patent manual (which should incorporate the patent examination guidelines). The IPO is currently soliciting suggestions for the draft Patent Office Manual, while it has an ongoing amendment to the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2018. We expect the final Rules to be published shortly; however, we are also being asked to provide suggestions on the Manual, without any knowledge of what the IPO’s final version of the Rules will look like. (For instance, the Patent Rules have suggested a procedural change in how pre-grant patent oppositions will be conducted in India; however, since the Rules are not final, it is unclear how they integrate with the Manual, and how we can comment on the process, since the status of the Patent Rules remains unclear). Furthermore, the Manual makes no reference to the Rules. As such, the IPO should decide and publish a final version of the Rules, and only then solicit feedback on the Manual (which it could do in the current time by extending the date of feedback on the Manual). Regardless, the IPO must achieve coherence and cohesion between its many layers, including the patents act, the patent rules, and the patent manual. This coherence, if achieved, would allow the Manual to serve as a handbook for all stakeholders involved in the patent system, including serving as a basis for open-book exams for patent agents.

Updation: Patent law and practice are fast evolving fields. The IPO necessarily needs to keep up with the pace of technology, as well as evolving interpretations of existing patent law provisions. For instance, the Indian Supreme judgment in the Novartis case was announced in 2013; however, it has taken over 6 years for this important judgment to formally reflect in the work of the Patent Office Manual, despite being Indian law for these 6 years. The IPO, therefore, needs to update the Manual and the examination guidelines, frequently – at least as frequently as major events in technology and the law require.

Transparency & Accountability: In the current time, stakeholders in the Indian patent system, be they multinational corporations or ordinary members of Indian society, are faced with considerable challenges when attempting to view patent information. Despite the IPO having made information

available online for some years, the information on Indian patents is needlessly limited, often inaccurate, often incomplete, and frequently unavailable. On occasion, this is due to insufficient disclosure on the part of the applicant, but overwhelmingly, it is because the IPO is not well organized and insufficiently invested in transparency or accountability. For instance, mandating pharmaceutical patent applicants to provide an INN (International non-proprietary name) on all applications where the information is available, would invaluably assist in extending the transparency and utility of the IPO’s functioning with the Indian public. Patent information in India is the right of every Indian citizen to have, and we have made several suggestions by which the IPO can move towards complying with our constitutional right to information.

Specific themes: Drawing from law, scholarship and practice over the last 14 years of Indian patent law, we strongly urge the IPO to consider these very specific suggestions on having their work comply with the spirit and letter of Indian patent law.

Focus on Biologics: Biologics are a relatively new category of therapy that have quickly become the world’s most expensive medicines emerging as critical therapies in areas like cancer. 7 out of 10 of the world’s best-selling medicines are biologics, and they will play only an increasingly important part in public health in India. Therefore, identifying, understanding and examining patent applications on biologics is of crucial importance to Indian citizens. The IPO would benefit from identifying biologics as a critical category; providing them their distinct field of invention; as well as developing guidelines and practices for evaluating biologics, along with other frontier technology that emerges.

Expedited examination: Since 2016, expedited examination of patents has been the law. More recently, there are reports that the IPO is considering PPH partnerships with some rich country economies such as Japan. This is unwise, especially since even in the extended examination currently underway, the IPO has faced several challenges. We strongly suggest that the IPO needs to evidence the ability to manage the ordinary processes in place with accuracy and compliance with Indian law, before attempting to expedite the said processes, especially since the non-functioning of the patents side of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) has meant that India has not had a corrective mechanism for any incorrect grants that may have been made at the IPO since May 2016.

Check exceptions to patentability first: The law, as has evolved in the Novartis Case in the Supreme Court, and the Roche vs Cipla case before the Delhi High Court, clearly points towards applying all exceptions to patentability under Sections 3 & 4 of the Indian Patents Act, first, before applying the test of patentability under Section 2 (1)(j). Such a procedure would make the work of the IPO more efficient, as well as fair.

Making anti-evergreening provisions work: The Manual currently does not capture the guidelines explicitly laid out in the Indian Supreme Court’s judgment in the Novartis case. Specific principles relating to how to apply Section 3(d) were laid out in the judgment which have no reflection in the Manual. Like with Section 3(d), applicants also routinely circumvent other anti-evergreening provisions in Indian law, such as Section 3(e) and 3(i). Sometimes, these provisions are circumvented alone; other times, when combined, applicants take advantage of the confusion and adduce evidence on one ground, and then use that as a basis to circumvent the other grounds. To apply anti-evergreening provisions in Indian patent law efficiently and fairly, we suggest an anti-

evergreening checklist that will facilitate this process, and which we recommend be an official part of the examiner’s report, both within the process and as a reported output.

Computer related inventions: The Manual currently does not adequately regulate Computer Related Inventions (CRIs). We suggest the introduction of a 3-step test to comprehensively regulate the patentability of mathematical methods, business methods, computer programmes and algorithms as laid down in the Indian Patents Act. Furthermore, we suggest ways in which the law can be applied more carefully within the Manual to detect camouflaging of claims, with an intent to confuse the IPO and Indian patent examiners, especially when conjoined to computer technology, by noting that (1) mathematical methods may sometimes be claimed as “technological development”, (2) that business methods must be evaluated as such, regardless of their application through computers, computer programmes, computer networks or other programmable apparatus, and that (3) that the scope of algorithms needs to be extended to any invention where the function claimed to be performed can only be carried out by means of a computer programme.

Finally, while the nature of our comments and suggestions are deep and extensive, we are aware that we have also asked for the system to be evaluated in full, rather than in parts. As such, the Indian Patent ecosystem is large and complex, and the IPO has been engaged with setting the Patent Rules (under finalization), the Patent Office Manual (the subject of our commentary in this communication) as well as the Examining Guidelines (which we recommend move from being arbitrarily categorized and extended to becoming a formal part of the Patent Office Manual).

In order to comprehensively react to changes to the Indian Patent ecosystem, we require the opportunity to comment comprehensively on a range of inter-linked proposals.

In this spirit, we hope you will allow us – as civil society – to react, once more, to the Patent Rules (as connected to the Patent Office Manual) as well as each of the Examining Guidelines (old and new, i.e. including those intended such as for biologics), in the interests of fairness and transparency. We look forward to assisting you at every step of this process.

Thank you for your time. We trust that, as civil society researchers, activists and academics, who have devoted a considerable number of years towards the research of intellectual property, and the protection of public interests and human rights in India, our submission will be considered seriously and acted upon. We remain, of course, at your disposal, should you or your office have any questions – which we will gladly answer.

Sincerely,

Achal Prabhala, Feroz Ali, Ramya Sheshadri, Roshan John and Anubha Sinha

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-and-suggestions-to-the-draft-patent-manual-march-2019

Proposed Intermediary Liability Rules threat to privacy and free speech, global coalition tells MeitY

Zaheer Merchant — 2019-03-20T15:56:51Z

“We respectfully call on you to withdraw the draft amendments proposed to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules in December. As published, the draft amendments would erode digital security and undermine the exercise of human rights globally.”

The blog post by Zaheer Merchant was published by Medianama on March 18, 2019.

A global coalition of 31 civil society organizations and technology experts has called on MeitY to reconsider the proposed amendments to the Intermediary Liability Rules, terming them a threat to privacy and free speech. In a letter to the ministry dated March 15, the coalition said that the proposed amendments “would harm fundamental rights and the space for a free internet, without necessarily addressing the problems that the ministry aims to resolve.” Some of the signatories are Centre for Internet and Society, SFLC.in, Internet Freedom Foundation, Government Accountability Project and Human Rights Watch, among others (A copy of the letter is attached at the bottom). The letter breaks down its reasons for opposing the proposed amendments:

1. Traceability would undermine security, lead to surveillance

Under the proposed guidelines, intermediaries would have to ensure ‘traceability’ of messages by providing information related to its originator and receivers. This, the letter argues, would force intermediaries to undermine the security of of their platforms and create a surveillance regime. “Undermining security features to ensure traceability would affect all users of that platform, not just those that are the subjects of the information request,” the letter reads. “… such wide and ambiguous powers… on interception of communications would directly harm the fundamental right to privacy of Indians and facilitate unchecked surveillance.”

2. Data retention antithetical to privacy, must go

The letter also states that the data retention mandate included in the draft guidelines is antithetical to privacy. The guidelines state that intermediaries must preserve content requested by law enforcement for 180 days or longer. This open-ended data retention, the letter argues, contradicts the principle of ‘Storage Limitation’ recommended by the Srikrishna Committee. “Provisions regarding storage limitation and data retention must not be included within the fold of the Intermediary Guidelines, and should be subject to parliamentary law-making,” the letter reads.

3. Proactive monitoring contradicts SC’s Shreya Singhal judgment, would result in censorship

The letter also criticizes the requirement that intermediaries proactively monitor and automatically delete ‘unlawful content’. “[This] would directly conflict with the legal standard laid down by the Supreme Court of India in the Shreya Singhal judgment, which holds that intermediaries should only be legally compelled to take down content on the basis of court orders or legally empowered government agencies,” the letter reads. It could also cause intermediaries to err in favor of takedowns, resulting in unnecessary censorship.

“With the upcoming General Elections in India and the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct on new policy decisions in place, we urge the government to not push through these amended regulations given their impact on fundamental rights and secure communications,” the letter concludes.

The proposed amendments to Intermediary Liability Rules

Released at the end of December 2018, the proposed amendments to the Intermediary Guidelines would modify guidelines under the Information Technology Act concerning intermediaries, ostensibly to prevent misuse of social media platforms and check the spread of fake news. Under India’s Information Technology Act, any entity, person or platform that receives, stores, processes, or transmits electronic information on behalf of another is considered an intermediary. These include social media platforms, cloud services, internet service providers, email service providers and more. For an intermediary to avoid liability for its users’ actions, it must comply with the proposed guidelines which are being amended to the following:

Traceability, and information within 72 hours: The new rules require platforms to introduce traceability to find where a piece of information originated. For this, platforms may have to break end-to-end encryption. The rules require the intermediary to hand over information or assistance to government bodies in 72 hours, including in matters of security or cybersecurity, and for investigative purposes. [Rule 3(5)]
Platforms with more than 50 lakh users are required to be registered under the Companies Act, have a physical address in the country, have a nodal officer who will cooperate with law enforcement agencies, etc. [Rule 3(7)]
Platforms have to pull down unlawful content within a shorter duration of 24 hours from the earlier 36 hours. They also have to keep records of the “unlawful activity” for 180 days – double the period of 90 days in the 2011 rules – as required by the court or government agencies [Rule 3(8)]
Platforms have to deploy tools to proactively identify, remove and disable public access to unlawful information or content. [Rule 3(9)]
The new rules insert a monthly requirement on platforms to inform users of the platforms’ right to terminate usage rights and to remove non-compliant information at their own discretion. [Rule 3(4)]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/medianama-march-18-2019-zaheer-merchant-proposed-intermediary-liability-rules-threat-privacy-and-free-speech