Centre for Internet and Society

2015 USTR Report: Old Wine in New Bottle

sinha — 2015-06-16T10:24:49Z

Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) undertakes an elaborate exercise to castigate countries' domestic intellectual property (IP) law and policy. The criticisms and recommendations are presented in a document called the Special 301 Report. This year's edition puts India on the Priority Watch List for the twenty-sixth time in a row. Below, I rebut the report's prejudicial claims and demands, and argue that the report puts free speech, innovation and public interest in jeopardy.

Keeping in tradition , the 2015 report yet again exposes US' hypocrisy by faithfully serving Hollywood and Big Pharma. In the past, countries such as Israel and Canada have publicly rejected the USTR's findings and derided the US for unwarranted interference with domestic law and policy. Last year, India too had refused to cooperate with a USTR initiated unilateral investigation (Out of Cycle review) of its IP regime because the investigation violated international law.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a hard-hitting response to the report. It draws case studies of countries where overbroad IP law has affected public interest, free speech and innovation. For instance, it mentions how Colombia's 'reformed' copyright law has become a travesty. Colombia introduced extreme enforcement and harsh criminal sanctions for unauthorised sharing of works at the behest of the US. Last year, news surfaced that a Colombian biodiversity researcher faced upto eight years in prison for sharing an academic article on Scribd. Any balanced IP regime (including India) permits such use of copyrighted works under the fair use principle, however, Colombia's narrow fair use provision has led to a situation where citizens now face prison for ordinary use of academic works.

This year the Special 301 Report in its section on India approves the Prime Minister's statements to align IP law with international standards, which is a cause for concern. Firstly, what are these “international standards” that both US and India refer to exactly? The most comprehensive international agreement on IP that binds 160 member nations is the WTO Agreement on Trade related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement). Ergo, this agreement would qualify as the most accepted “international standard”, which India already complies with. Secondly, the TRIPS Agreement sets down certain global minimum standards for protecting and enforcing IP, simultaneously providing countries a certain degree of flexibility. However, the US has consistently pushed India to enact tougher provisions known as TRIPS Plus provisions. This is reflected in the report as well. Legally speaking, under international law India is not obligated to accede to such demands, and it should not if it wants a balanced IP regime to protect and serve the interests both of rights holders and its citizens.

The report shamelessly aligns its concerns with the financial interests of foreign rights holders and American companies. It erroneously projects IP as a tool to only maximise revenues, agnostic to public interest. While IP rights are temporary monopolies, they also are a tool to ensure innovation, social, scientific and cultural progress and further access to knowledge. It is well established that flexible IP laws enable access to knowledge and promote innovation. Such a flexible regime is critical to developing countries like India. The USTR conveniently forgets that lax IP law and enforcement for a large part of the 19th century helped the US to accelerate into an economic powerhouse and a front-runner in innovation. It also brazenly threatens to impose unilateral sanctions against a country designated as a Priority Foreign Country on the list. This treatment is usually reserved for the worst offender on the list. Such unilateral threats and sanctions are again a direct violation of international law.

Unsurprisingly, the report is critical of India's under-enforcement of copyright laws and the impact of patent law on pharmaceuticals. It demands a specific legislation to counter camcording and video piracy. The prospective legislation is unnecessary because all movie theatres in India prohibit camcorders and the prevailing Copyright Act, 1957 contains penalties to punish offenders. Instead of creating new offences, we should re-evaluate the need of existing offences. For instance, copyright infringement on non-commercial scales should not be a criminal offence at all . Instead, the law should provide convenient and affordable access to such works to counter petty infringement.

India is home to the world's largest apothecary. The Indian pharmaceutical and medical device industry provides affordable healthcare to the citizens, and also exports drugs to countries in need. In fact, the compulsory licensing mechanism has ensured affordable access to life saving liver and kidney drugs in India. The report comments on the undesirability of section 3(d) and the compulsory licensing mechanism in Indian patent law. With respect to section 3(d), the US wishes India to to change its patent law to enable large pharma companies to patent new forms of known substances that aren't even better. This alarmist outlook smacks of hypocrisy because the US, in fact, has a higher rate of patent invalidation and compulsory license grants! It also demands data exclusivity – which would extend proprietary rights to patentees over government mandated drug data, and would be detrimental to the local pharma industry. Further, the report states that the Indian system is biased against enforcement of foreign patent rights holders - which is mere speculation. There is no evidence to draw such a conclusion. The claims relating to localisation trends in pharma are half- baked and speculative again.

The report observes that at the UNFCCC negotiations, India recognised patents as an obstacle to dissemination of climate change technologies. It wishes India understood the critical role of patent protection and competitiveness to ensure innovation, which is a flawed co-relation. While strong IP rights may protect inventors against infringement and provide return on investment, however, stronger IP rights also raise the cost of innovation by raising the price of technological inputs into innovation and lower the frequency of innovation.

As far as the issue of counterfeit medicines is concerned, a better remedy lies in health safety laws and consumer laws, than the trademark law. The report also approves of state legislatures' version of the Goondas Act. These Acts provide for detainment of criminals and lumpen elements in society, and with recent amendments have expanded to include video pirates and digital offenders. Karnataka's Goonda Act enabling preventive detention violates constitutional rights. While the Sixth Amendment to the United States Bill of rights protects offenders against preventive detention, the US has no qualms about approving such unconstitutional procedures in India.

The arguments above underscore the irrelevance of the report. The Prime Minister may have made appeasing statements to the USA, however, in a welcome development Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sithraman in response to the report stated “India is fully aligned with international intellectual property rights standards and "there is no need for anyone to question us."” Our IP regime with its inherent flexibilities should be preserved and not sacrificed at the altar of US' business interests. Using compulsory licensing across sectors would indeed accelerate technology transfer and diminish initial capex for manufacturers, a move promoted by the National Manufacturing Policy. The ambitious Make in India and Digital India campaigns are set to suffer if India incorporates TRIPS plus standards into its IP regime. The government supports opennes s and has implemented policies mandating use of open standards and open source software as a part of the Digital India campaign. India should not let foreign hands dictate its IPR Policy, and proceed to develop a policy which is informed by broader principles of fairness and equity, balancing intellectual property protections with limitations and exceptions/user rights such as those for research, education and access to medicines.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2015-ustr-report-old-wine-in-new-bottle

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

praskrishna — 2012-05-02T05:05:57Z

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

Application and Cost

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

Deadlines

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

Background and Explanation of the Theme

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

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

Presentation Opportunities

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

Draft Workshop Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global Congress Planning Committee

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

Click to read the original published in infojustice.org

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

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

praskrishna — 2012-05-02T05:04:57Z

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

Application and Cost Information

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

Deadline

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

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

Global Congress Planning Committee

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

Read the original published on infojustice.org

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

2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics

rebecca — 2012-07-18T10:47:44Z

The 2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics convened a panel on Open Access. There was consensus amongst the panelist that the “big question” facing the open access movement no longer remains "if" or "why" open access, but rather "how" open access. The panel proved instructive for shifting the discussion away from ideology towards concrete questions facing the open access agenda and its implementation.

This year’s International Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics held in Bangalore brought together a panel of speakers who discussed the accomplishments of and future challenges facing the open access movement. There was an air of consensus amongst the panelists that the “big question” facing the OA movement today no longer remains if or why open access, but rather how open access[1]. The speakers did a good job of moving the discussion beyond ideology or proof of principle and used the panel to discuss some of the challenges facing the OA agenda and its implementation.

More than ten years after the launch of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the benefits of open access have been demonstrated through countless studies. Studies have demonstrated an increased impact factor for authors who self archive, for those who self-archive early, those who publish in OA journals, as well as for journals that have gone OA. Other studies have shown the benefits of open models for facilitating scientific collaboration and stimulating the knowledge economy; creating new opportunities for both big business and start-ups alike. Further, open models of publishing—both green and gold—are well recognized today as attractive alternatives for research institutions and universities seeking local and sustainable solutions for internal intellectual property management. In light of this mounting body of evidence, policy makers and administration can no longer overlook the benefits of OA for the visibility and impact of their institution, faculty and research publications.

Fortunately, the wealth of studies demonstrating the benefits of OA for both the STM and HSS disciplines have grabbed the attention of national and international policy makers. On the international stage, models of scholarly research and communication that privilege the open sharing of knowledge are proving more favorable to closed models which remained (relatively) unresponsive to shifting scholarly needs and practices. The presentations given by Alma Swan from Key Perspectives Ltd and of Dr. Carlos Morais Pires of the European Commission reminded us that OA is no longer an fringe matter confined to the esoteric concerns of tech-savvy physicists. Both the unsustainable increase in journal licensing fees and the opportunities presented through digital publishing methods has allowed OA to emerge as a mainstream public policy issue. Leading inter-governmental institutions such as the World Bank, UNESCO and the European Commission have all committed themselves to the OA agenda through a range of initiatives.

The World Bank, for example, now releases all of their publications under the CC-BY license and deposits them within their Open Knowledge Repository. UNESCO continues to support the movement through capacity building initiatives such as policy guidelines and through the Global Open Access Portal. The European Unions’ recent “Digital Agenda” report has firmly recognized the importance of the OA movement to the European economy. Additionally, the Commission’s launch of the “OpenAIRE” repository has set an important valuable precedent and it is hoped that this move will encourage more organizations from the EU to maintain their own institutional repositories. With the support of big players like UNESCO and the European Commission, it remains probable that OA will continue to find its way into the policy agendas of more universities and funding agencies. This high level policy support has certainly reinforced the legitimacy of the OA movement and has proven valuable for the “open” shift in scholarly communication.

As support for OA continues to gain momentum at the international level, an environmental scan reveals a conducive—if not promising—environment for the future growth of open access in India. Indeed, the success the OA movement has seen to date is a cause for optimism in itself. However, these accomplishments must not obviate the real need for continued advocacy in India at all levels. At the national level, the Knowledge Commission of India has shown support for the OA agenda. The agenda has also been taken up by the Council on Scientific and Industrial Research in the form of a council recommendation and a growing network of institutional repositories. At the university level, the National Institute of Oceanography Goa and the National Institute of Technology Rourkela remain the only two institutions which have demonstrated a thorough and long-term commitment to OA in a policy-based capacity. Consequently, both institutions continue to witness growth of their repositories thanks to the support of administrative and library staff. However, it must be recognized that other institutional repositories in India continue to grow at impressive rates, even in the absence of a strong policy base.

Recognizing that most OA enthusiasts agree both upon the need for and benefits of OA, Dr. Norbert Lossau of the Geottingen State Library, Germany, reminded us of the need to focus less on reconfirming the known and taking advantage of opportunities to address concrete questions around implementation. Lossau’s presentation provided a concise and action-oriented framework for moving the OA agenda forward. In particular, he emphasized the need for resource reallocation within library units in order to provide the required institutional support for OA and also underlined importance of capacity and network building among actors who might be working in isolation.

Given the inertia of many faculty and researchers in Indian universities and research institutions, more needs to be done at the policy level before OA can be said to enjoy mainstream success. Given the scope of the task ahead, Dr K Kanikaram Satyanarayana, Deputy Director General of ICMR reminds us that the changing landscape of scholarly communication may not lend indefinite and central importance to the scholarly journal and consequently, the OA movement. Recent internet-based innovations in scholarly publishing—such as the “PLOS Currents” project—reveals how the instantaneity of the digital research environment is inciting greater demand for raw data. Researchers no longer appear willing to wait for the publication of peer-reviewed articles in order to test and build upon the work of their peers. With related issues like open data moving center stage in the “openness” debate, it remains unclear if access to scholarly literature as a finished product and medium of scholarly communication—will remain a priority for policy makers in the long term.

Given the challenges ahead, champions of OA—in any context—need not, nor should not, do it alone. While recognizing the challenges related to maintaining global networks, the panel discussion served as an important reminder that the long-term success of any OA initiative rests in its’ ability to plug into regional, sub-regional and global networks. Global network building does not, however, imply that India need only integrate themselves into established networks (which are more often than not grounded in the Western experience). While greater representation and participation of advocates from the South would certainly be of benefit, it is also important that the distinct needs and conditions of scholarly communication in the Global South are not left unaddressed. Facilitating a truly global exchange of knowledge and building long-lasting south-south collaborations remains an important task ahead. This is particularly important if the Global South is to be recognized as more than mere “beneficiaries” of the OA and also receive visibility as knowledge producers.

[1] Phrase popularized by Neelie Kroes of the EC, in support of OA

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/2012-conference-on-trends-in-knowledge-information-dynamics

“OTTs Eating Into Our Revenue”: Telcos in India

geetha — 2014-09-10T05:36:37Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

130 Million Aadhaar Numbers Were Made Public, Says New Report

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T06:32:32Z

The research report looks at four major government portals whose poor information security practices have exposed personal data including bank account details.

The article was published in the Wire on May 1, 2017. This was also mirrored on MensXP.com on May 5, 2017.

Irresponsible information security practices by a major central government ministry and a state government may have exposed up to 135 million Aadhaar numbers, according to a new research report released on Monday.

The last two months have seen a wave of data leaks, mostly due improper information security practices, from various central government and state government departments.

This new report, released by the Centre for Internet and Society, studied four government databases. The first two belong to the rural development ministry: the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP)’s dashboard and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)’s portal.

The second two databases deal with the state of Andhra Pradesh: namely, the state government’s own NREGA portal and the online dashboard of a state government scheme called “Chandranna Bima”.

“Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these 4 portals could be around 130-135 million and the number of bank accounts numbers leaked at around 100 million from the specific portals we looked at,” the report’s authors, Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali, state.

The data leaks come, in part, from the government’s decision to provide online dashboards that were likely meant for general transparency and easy administration. However, as the report notes, while open data portals are a laudable goal, if there aren’t any proper safeguards, the results can be downright disastrous.

“While availability of aggregate information on the dashboard may play a role in making government functioning more transparent, the fact that granular details about individuals including sensitive PII such as Aadhaar number, caste, religion, address, photographs and financial information are only a few clicks away suggest how poorly conceived these initiatives are,” the report says.

Consider the NSAP portal for instance. The dashboard allows users to explore a list of pensioners, whose personally identifiable information include bank account number, name and Aadhaar number. While these details are “masked for public view”, the CIS report points out that if “one of the URL query parameters of the website… was modified from ‘nologin’ to ‘login'”, it became easy to gain access to the unmasked details without a password.

“It is entirely unclear to us what the the purpose behind making available a data download pption on the NSAP website is. This feature allows download of beneficiary details mentioned above such as Beneficiary No., Name, Father’s/Husband’s Name, Age, Gender, Bank or Post Office Account No. for beneficiaries receiving disbursement via bank transfer and Aadhaar Numbers for each area, district and state,” the report states.

UIDAI role?

Kodali and Sinha also prominently finger the role of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government agency that manages the Aadhaar initiative, in the data leaks.

“While the UIDAI has been involved in proactively pushing for other databases to get seeded with Aadhaar numbers, they take little responsibility in ensuring the security and privacy of such data.With countless databases seeded with Aadhaar numbers, we would argue that it is extremely irresponsible on the part of the UIDAI, the sole governing body for this massive project, to turn a blind eye to the lack of standards prescribed for how other bodies shall deal with such data, such cases of massive public disclosures of this data, and the myriad ways in which it may used for mischief,” the report states.

Still public?

A crucial question that arises is whether these government databases are still leaking data. Over the last two months, some of information has been masked.

“It must be stated that since we began reviewing and documenting these portals, we have noticed that some of the pages with sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) have now been masked, presumably in response to growing reports about Aadhaar leaks,” the report notes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wire-may-1-2015-130-million-aadhaar-numbers-were-made-public-says-new-report

101 Ways of Starting an ISP:* No. 53 - Conversation, Content and Weird Fiction

Surfatial — 2016-08-03T12:47:31Z

This essay by Surfatial is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. It argues that the internet has created a space for philosophical questioning among contemporary Indian participants which can develop further, despite common assertions that online spaces are largely uncivil and abusive. It actively explores how anonymous and pseudonymous content production may offer a method for exploring and expressing the internet in India, with a certain degree of freedom, and how spam-like methods may prove effective in puncturing filter bubbles.

* ISP stands for Internal Surface Provider.

Mainstream institutions for learning, as we see them, are not concerned with the substance and gravity of the present moment [B1]. The professing of experience to aid learning or skill development is largely a perverted claim. There is no actual intention of enabling, nor is there even a desire to personally experience any immersion or penetration [B2]. Added to this is the spectre of commodification of experience and learning today, where education has turned into a consumer product. The ivory tower of aloofness is too comfortable to deviate from. The institutionalisation of aloof posturing and the masks of professorships are too smugly fitting the exhausted bodies of those running the ship.

Academics are like fruit on an inaccessible tree. It is there, but we cannot eat it. The moon is spoken of by poets and lovers because it is so far away and experientially inaccessible. Love is a stream and will never be in a state of harmony forever. It will remain tumultuous and rocky like the sea into which an asteroid has just fallen.

We observe that disinterest in engaging in the immediacy of our continuing experience invariably leads us to holding on to selective bits while the rest passes. These selections then get shaped into some semblance of narratives. But how do we talk about the experience of the moment or even acknowledge the presence of what has not been selected? How does an individual’s perception and response direct to a better understanding of experiences that can harbour empathy?

When telephones get cross-connected, we hear voices that do not belong to the conversation. What if these voices were to become a part of the conversation? We can talk to strangers. We don’t really need to talk about anything in particular - we can just get used to each other’s voice.

Surfatial is concerned with knowledge production and has been exploring the format of conversations both online and offline as a space to perform personally experienced sequences of knowledge, and talk about these to others. Somewhere in this process learning emerges. We are currently seeding a platform for the sharing and dissemination of alternate pedagogies and self-woven visions of the world. This desire responds to academia's hangover with the past and its inability to instil processes and incubate practices that can help students in a continual production of content.

Narrative is processed from raw experience and so it is more easy to deal with than the complex mass of experience.

Harnessing Anonymity

The internet offers you a morphing cloak - you can be selective about your identity, you can be online with selective vision and selective speech [B3]. What do you choose to see online? What do you choose to reveal? And how much? [B4] If you wear the cloak that covers you altogether, are you truly anonymous, or could it be that your true self leaks out as you put your hands against your eyes in an attempt to hide yourself?

Think about a day when you want to say something and you feel that the Internet feels like too distant a medium. The Internet is so close to us, so intertwined in our lives that the perception of distance feels like a make-believe construct.

Anonymity has potential to offer a voice to the invisible identity, the silenced perspective, the overlooked persona, the taboo desire. Could it also be harnessed for accessing and expressing that which is experienced in the present? Could anonymity be that filter which stands with the least amount of obstruction to experiencing the present as it unfolds, does it offer that means to experience more freely?

Why are you online? What are you looking for online? What do you see? How does a visually impaired person experience the internet? What does that feel like? And then, what do you say online?

From awkwardness and discomfort as the minimum level of experience, we are moving to anger, disinterest and boredom [B5]. This social reality is being exacerbated by the manifestation of our realities on the internet. Anger is a mode of communication that rejects existing content in the pipeline and allows a relentless push mode of transmission. Disinterest is a lack of empathy that we are privileged to employ, while, at the same time, displacing and dismantling existing systems of falsehood and decay that are populating the system. Boredom is disengagement that comes from an immunity to words that don't mean anything - floating in the air, timed to music or masquerading as knowledge.

If we keep an open mic near a flock of passionate birds, will the flapping and other sounds become a cacophony to form an interesting soundscape? Do birds become conscious of an open mic?

Surfatial works for the frustrated seeker, seeking nourishing clarifying content on the internet. The internet has become a shopping mall, but this doesn't mean that we can't walk around and talk to people.

What to do? How to act? What to produce? What should the lost and wandering tribes of the world do to express with diversity? Is there some secret pathway to knowing what to do that is only accessible to deviants?

Production means to render an output, from the flux that we encounter in our experience. We can also choose not to produce but then we end up with a mass of material and no narrative.

Does deviation from the norm guarantee some kind of clarity? Why can't ordinary people know? Why do they have to be inspired and awakened and creative to know? Is there nothing that flows in the narrow channels of propriety?

Deviation does guarantee a unique pool of content being made for us to access. But the question is how this access is setup for a kind of secondary process - one that is possible only after the ordinary has been dealt with and has led to something. Deviant content leads us further away from the sugar-coated annals of the plain world that is meant for mass-consumption.

We live in echo chambers online and off. An infrastructure needs to be in place for the flow of a lubricant [B6] within echo chambers so that the conversation in the closed loop becomes smooth enough, and when a disassociation from the self or a disparate viewpoint happens, it is less painful. The echo-chamber becomes the social space when multiple levels of echoes are able to inter-mingle in ambiguous contexts and containers.

If we were not productive beings we would not be able to deal with ourselves. We would be strangers to our own legacies.

Spaces for Speculative Content Production

Surfatial offers an online stage for self-enactment, where there can be friction without producing sparks. As a producer of assembly line infrastructure around access to knowledge, we find denial very useful. Denial of identity, denial of social constructions, denial of expected modes of speaking in conversations. We find that we create even the room for conversation around the need for alternatives after allegiances have stopped being in existence.

The internet is not a pool, it is a cesspool. Everyone who is trying to navigate the space feels stuck and lost. So we avoid navigation and jump from node to node in order to escape from the boiling cesspool that gets too hot if we remain in the same place for a long time.

When the shadows of dependencies on systemic corruptions have disappeared the real possibility of ‘being’ arises. We care about this possibility. We are making access to knowledge universal, since access based on the question of privilege and capacity sets a very low bar for conversations in terms of what is allowed to be spoken, which directions of verbal exploration are politically acceptable, and who gets to abuse whom with which epithets. We are concerned with formats that are open to every participant’s perspective equally and their individual approach to contributing to the collective voice.

The play never ends. Laugh at yourself
Seek a new denial... the shift of power is a natural process.

Anonymous and pseudonymous forms of content production offer a method for exploring and expressing with a certain degree of freedom. How free we feel depends partly on how free we are allowed to feel [B7], and depends in equal parts on the level of our own disinhibition. Through degrees in the opening up, passionate potentialities are demonstrated.

Who are you? And who are we? We do not know, we are nobody at all sometimes and then we wake from our slumber and feel like doing something again.

Anonymity is a double edged sword. Can virtual freedom of expression lead to any insight that can transfer into real life interaction? How difficult is this jump from virtual to real life? Virtuality has evolved beyond the world of simulation, where it is now possible to experience multiple mechanisms of meaningful relationships with people. We believe there is a level of balance between virtual and physical engagements that can be struck in order for bringing one closer to a semblance of self-realisation.

Why do players choose anonymity, if they do? Fake profiles sometimes are an expression of a desire to play. Those who play can succumb to joy. Joy becomes a tempting emotional state. The more joyful you are, the more comfortable you feel in any garb. This could be a liberating experience, when the blurring of identities occur.

“Putting aside the baggage of ego and identity has a freeing effect on which part of our persona we express.”
— Mithya J., a fake profile on Facebook.

Harnessing pseudonimity

Being playful becomes possible if role-play and make-believe are accepted as valid forms of narrative ploy with a functional purpose in the everyday. The role assumed during play sometimes becomes more enjoyable than the dry person of absolute dimensions. As the rules of play are adopted, disassociation and immersion happen. The player has a choice to deny their outside-play persona and remain fully entrenched in the dynamics of play. This denial helps in the player’s engagement with our system of accessing knowledge. If the gravity and consciousness of your plain existence is lost, then communicating with you becomes easier. In short, your shadow becomes what you could never become. The being and presence of your playtime persona are much stronger than what you can ordinarily muster. In our space, you get to deny the world outside play and conversely render your world as play.

“being fictional is you without your physical being. If we take away the physical beings from this world, we are left with imagination, ideas and their interpretations.”
— Raavi Georgian, a Facebook user.

The garb of comedy allows you to listen with a certain distance. The Indian internet landscape is no stranger to this choice of presentation. Several personas dot the scene, there is Norinder Mudi, there is Gabbar Singh or the Cows of Benaras. In an era of cathartic sharing, where all manner of mental chatter finds channels of expression, comedy can be a balm for controlled experiments in taking potshots at sociopolitical power structures. Some platforms incentivise identity in order to legitimise the online experience, for instance, Facebook seems to place a premium on profile pictures by giving them a default public setting, and the user-base is advised by sundry guidelines about the “perfect profile pic” to adopt clear frontal images for maximum effect. Others have a policy of anonymity, like Reddit.

Forget who you are. Just be someone else.
And then you can be the one,
Holding the mic in your hand.

The existing mechanism of algorithms make it seem like there is free and open access to information, even customised for the user’s convenience. But this customisation in fact filters information based on working out the user’s bubble. One way to beat the bubble is to role-play. This would require receivers to adopt pseudonymous/ alternate roles to have access to content outside of their own filters. A loosening of the self can expand the algorithm.

Loosening of the self is a safe idea. The ideal is to have no cognisance of one’s identity. The network converts you into an IP - an anonymous VPN blurs your IP, nobody knows who you are. Behaviours found in the online community show that there are several aspects of blurring in identity and the presentation of information.

Harnessing disinhibition

Disinhibition is not necessarily rendered as a condition of the external ecosystem (physical and virtual ecosystems). It has more to do with the actor’s persona and how she has framed and declared her persona. What is the pitch of the actor’s voice? What does it say? What kind of response becomes necessary?

The opportunity for denial emerges from the confidence gained from play. If random social play does not cause huge rescissions of norms and contracts already in place, its extension to become a fundamental behavioural pattern changes nothing.

We will convince you that when we step on your toes and snap back at you in response to your idiotic and subservient social conduct, we are just playing. And if you accept it, then we can tell you the harshest and most unpleasant truth about you on your face and get away with it.

Surfatial designed a conversation game called flip & blip [A2] which has the objective of enhancing empathy and sociability, via role play and assuming personas. The purpose of role-play is to help people step put of themselves and play out situations through alternate lenses. In any situation, how does another feel? [B8] We are either intuitive, or we are clueless. This game opens up the space between. It uses question cards and persona cards as triggers to present scenarios to the players. The goal was to have a conversation while wearing a persona, and then to have the same conversation while being oneself. The players then reflected on the occurrence of any shifts in perspective during this process [B9].

A game is a format for play that has rules [B10]. Even while these rules are very important, sometimes it becomes possible to play with them. The extent to which we enjoy the game depends on our interpretation of these rules. Now, socially acceptable rules of conduct are considered to be good behaviour. And if our physical social lives are viewed as some kind of a game with rulesets and interpersonal protocols of engagement (a game with heavy consequences for not playing by the rules), perhaps our online lives offer that outlet for exercising freedom from this oppressive structure, and perhaps the freeing online experience can translate into incorporating playfulness into strict routine interactions?

“Human social structures built upon transactional attitudes don't have space for free expression, since free expression means disregarding façades and notions of "propriety" as well as hierarchy"
— Mithya J., a fake profile on Facebook.

Access might supposedly require a filtration system. But we are opposed to the construction and use of filters. We are of the opinion that we need to be able to access the core content directly - no envelopes, no braces, and no reduced-sets. People fear dealing with the naked world because they fear engagement, immersion and getting overwhelmed, while at the same time craving first hand knowledge, craving a removal of gatekeepers who shield them from the naked truth using agenda-coloured filters.

Surfatial has been working with several formats for harnessing anonymous content production and for playful engagement, via our structured study groups that actively discourage the elaboration of direct personal identification. The emergence of individual identities occurs only through the exchange of perspectives during conversation [B11].

The study group derives itself from a group of individuals who are interested in remaining sharp as a group. The group’s concern will always be to aid others as well as itself by challenging every perspective that seems superfluous.

Our study groups

Our study groups [A1] are webinars hosted on Google Hangouts on Air, with a framework of philosophical questioning and a self-reflective exchange of individual experiences. These are structured conversations that are completely open to participation and listening, with one to three anchors. Each study group is centred around a topic, and three pre-determined questions relating to that topic are posed to the participants. The tone is detached, with not much encouragement for sharing of personal information. The conversation is fluid and anyone who has anything to say is able to start speaking. We do not follow the common conventional etiquette of introducing the guests or apologising for intrusion. Due to this it becomes rather freeing and divorced from any mode of social behaviour. The illusion we often chase is of the study group being just a set of “voices in the head”.

When an idea oversteps the terrain that it has been assigned to, it acquires the garb of being a trespasser. Ideas trespass when they uncover surprising connections. which they might otherwise not be related to in any direct way. Such connections cannot be predicted. They emerge out of the process of exploring something else. Trespass happens at perspective boundaries—one never meant to hear another’s perspective, but now that they are in a space together, one must; encroachment will invariably happen.

Study groups have anchors who stand with markers for conversation transition points. Anchors could be Surfatial members or guests. Guest anchors are invited with the intent of extending Surfatial’s sphere of engagement and to alter the threads that connect the conversations.

Anchors are not moderators. They are literally anchors for the discussion. They make sure that the discussion deals with the issues that it raises before moving onto other issues. Anchors seek out questions and figure if they have been answered. They are like accountants of a currency of ideas.

The archive of all these study group conversations [A8] is treated as a dynamic space for re-engagement in order to consistently pursue alternate methods of presenting it—through text, posters, books, soundtracks, videos and conversation games.

How messages are presented

When we start seeding a message, we feel the pull of invisible attractors. The vestiges of messages are either offered at their face value or they are so thin, light and loosely packed that they do not offer sufficient flesh to sink teeth into [B12]. The least we demand from the producers of noise and meaninglessness in our environment is that they give us sufficient depth of material to bite into and suck the juice out. Density is the key.

In compression lies our only hope. If you have to speak, speak less and mean more. If you have to produce material of any kind, make sure it is densely packed with fissile material which can all combust together to yield a message.

By packaging our formats in diverse forms they become appealing to people in different ways.

But there is a danger of package and content being divorced in the process of design. Design facilitates skimming of content by packaging its appearance as eye-candy; packaging runs the danger of dissuading immersion into content. We look to destabilise this tendency, and offer value in the packaging itself. We are interested in packages with embedded content, to save the viewer the trouble of unwrapping any external cover.

Access to free exchange is sometimes denied. Free exchange ensures that ideas get modified and challenged. They grow and so it is an essential process that is needed in order for them to be change and offer strength garnered from this free exchange.

Then what is the way? How do you get past institutional filters? If limits have been drawn, if the surfaces of knowledge are guarded, how do messages get out of the perimeter of control? Spam—unsolicited communication, yielding messages where none are requested or expected—is the answer. Spam and spam-like methods are the only tools that can get past the filters. There are no constraints which are fine enough for the fine specks of spam to be swatted out.

We are going to populate compressed messages of the whole world's knowledge onto surfaces of mass display and then circulate them like spam.

Posters [A9] are posts that linger [B13]. Posters are not just lozenges of information, they are pieces and fragments of a song that gets completed in the reader’s mind. The poster is already present on social media as a format. But not all designers use the poster in the same way. For some it is just a clever punch-line. We believe in the punch but not in the merit of clever punch-lines. We attempt a sharp contrast between the text that we write and the general experience offered by the environment for consumption of media. This sharp contrast is conveyed through our choice of the posters’ visual format as well as through the auditory means of a soundscape.

What is a song? Who is singing? A song speaks when words are weak, when humming gets through, when drumming has no beat.

Our tracks [A7] emerge out of our words and texts. We put together sounds and speech sometimes post-fact, sometimes in the moment with everyone there in the room. We believe that fragments of words and speech can be agents of perspective shifts if placed within altered contexts and rhythms. We think of our sounds as soundscapes more than music.

Conversation as Currency

To sell, one needs to be invisible. No business survives on recurrent sales to family and friends. Businesses survive and grow because they create markets within which strangers can transact with confidence. For strangers to transact with confidence, value needs to be stable and fixed into the form of the product. And for that, products need to develop an intensely tangible form. Value of the product starts and finishes with the form. The form cannot be soft or intangible. It needs to be concrete.

To fix the value for a thing, one needs to have a conversation. The price of a commodity can be arrived at through conversation. But we do not care about the price. Because once we sell, our conversation is over. We do not want to end it. Besides, we will all keep having more to say and would like others to have access to it too. These are things of value for all of us. This is what we want to exchange and so, conversation is our currency. We will only transact through conversations.

To buy, one must be desirous. There must be a desire for change, for a perturbation of the status quo. A desire that drives motivation for the mouth to open and the hand to move towards a device that dispenses currency. All this takes a lot of effort. The seller and the buyer both have desires and motivations, but the anxiety of the approach to the final push off of the cliff-face of the mountain of the transaction must be overcome. This is the difficult part. It involves a leap of faith. Can a push be made as effortlessly as possible? Sure. We only need to find a way. Efficiency is a way. We introduce efficiency into the system by reducing steps. If we take away the step of the hand moving, we have already reduced effort. Now only the mouth has to open.

We have made the determination of value into a game, which is in the form of a Book of Conversation Triggers [A3]. In this game, we will read each sentence in our book to you and we will ask you if you agree. After we have performed all the sentences to you, we will ask you if you feel like holding on to any sentence, or if any sentence led you to experience a new kind of thought. If you think so, we will offer those sentences to you. You may if you like, in turn play this game with whomever you choose to play it with, in order to have another conversation. You owe yourself that much at least. If conversation is a currency, it wants to grow and spread like a virus. So, why not go forth and multiply?

What will you, the player, win? You win a sentence you can post on your fridge door or your Facebook wall, you win an insight you can talk about further. You win the memory of a delightful conversation you had with us, which we guarantee you will have again with whomever you choose to play with. This game will give you victory again and again. Are you game?

A poster can also be a person who posts. A post-writer is often one who reaches the point of saturation, which pushes them to producing compressed text. This act places them in a new period in the timeline of history, of being post-writers.

Publishing sans credits

We work with the idea of credit-less production. post_writer [A5] is a twitter-based monthly journal. Each issue consists of six tweets. Four by humans, one by a bot and one by a sponsor. There are only issue-wide credits but no individual credits. Which tweet is by whom is an ambiguity.

As an actor, you can choose to disengage from every story you assume you are a part of, then you deal with the anxiety of performing for free in an under-documented and under-credited fashion. When this anxiety subsides, awakening might happen.

We look to expand the study group format to have anchors interested in exploring their own questions in a nondescript manner. We are also looking at shorter capsules of study groups which will be podcast, with a question dedicated for an individual’s consideration, to capture their particular perspective of experience sharing.

We would rather model the world as a space swarming with individuals who actively produce content, rather than as a space with an abundance of consumers and a scarcity of commercially viable producers enveloped in the gloss of the culture of page-hits and celebrity [B14] [B15]. Today we have a competitive marketplace of market-validated content that goes into profiling our consumption. Our profiles are then further recycled as fodder by the market, to be fed back to us [B16]. We are not valued as producers; we are valued as consumers of products, and vessels for marketing those very products.

The current state of the world has many different sources of validation but does not have a space for the self-validated. If we choose to be blind to the sociality of the content we see, then we have nothing at all. Every package of content is socialised, everything is floating in mediated space [B17]. The isolated, untouched (by mind or hand) content has no place in the world. We are surrounded by content which has no fidelity, coils through minds at will, and yields their message to anyone who enquires. There is no knowledge personally reserved for you in this pool of content. Reading is supposed to lead to synthesis and this synthesis is meant to culminate into a development of personal perspectives and opinions. However, in a pool of commonly read content there is more likelihood for the development of cliques and clouds of common belief and little space for individualised synthesis. Some get hit more directly by some threads of content and identify the hit as a personal facet of discovery.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
— Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

To hit upon a truly personal facet of content that doesn’t belong to a popular cesspool, a flow of production has to be initiated and self-validated. Entire knowledge-systems need be constructed without any building blocks but with content generated from the knowledge of the moment [B18]. Insights gleaned from here and there come together as a granular pool of content that is personal, special and hitherto unseen in our context. A unique association between the individual and message gets formed. And this association is incoherent and unfamiliar in ways, because it doesn't belong to the popularly socialised frameworks of knowledge. This weird fiction gets overlooked and thereby remains safe from being intruded upon or being misconstrued. The obscure and the hidden breed mysteries waiting to be tapped.

Time to break [B19] from packaged commodified sound byte capsules.

A) Index of Surfatial Projects

1. Study groups on Google Hangouts on Air

Study groups with Surfatial anchors
Study groups with guest anchors

2. Conversation based games: flip & blip

3. Book of Conversation Triggers: PDF

4. Online Residency on Surfatial’s Facebook page

5. Post-writer: https://twitter.com/post_writer.

Each issue is based on public contributions

6. Interactive performances and exhibitions

7. Tracks based on our archives of text and audio: Soundcloud

8. Digital archives of games, performance and study-groups: YouTube

9. Poster: Facebook

B) References [B20]

1. Pulp - “Glory Days” - This is Hardcore (1998)

2. Pink Floyd - “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” - The Wall (1979)

3. Weezer - “The Futurescope Trilogy” - Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014)

4. Radiohead - “How to Disappear Completely” - Kid A (2000)

5. Nirvana - “Smells Like Teen Spirit” - Nevermind (1991)

6. Pink Floyd - “Empty Spaces” - The Wall (1979)

7. Metallica - “The Unforgiven” - Metallica (The Black Album) (1991)

8. Backstreet Boys - “Quit Playing Games with My Heart” - Backstreet Boys (1995)

9. Sting - “Shape of My Heart” - Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993)

10. Kenny Rogers - “Rules of the Game” - The Gambler (1978)

11. Boyzone - “If We Try” - BZ20 (2013)

12. Bangles - “Mixed Messages” - Doll Revolution (2003)

13. Cranberries - “Linger” - Everybody Else's Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993)

14. Lady Gaga - “Paparazzi” - The Fame (2008)

15. Eminem - “The Real Slim Shady” - The Marshal Mathers LP (2000)

16. Kraftwerk - “Hall of Mirrors” - Trans-Europe Express (1977)

17. Marshall McLuhan - “The Medium is the Message” - The Medium is the Message (1967)

18. Chicks on Speed - “Utopia” - UTOPIA (2014)

19. Queen - I Want to Break Free - The Works (1984)

20. DJ Shadow - “Right Thing / GDMFSOB” - The Private Press (2002)

C) Game - 101 Ways of starting an ISP: No. 54

Instructions for playing:

Click here to access the game.
On every left-click, you will receive a new poster.
If you like what you see, right-click and save as an image. (This works on the Google Chrome and Firefox browsers).
You can then choose to share the image on your Facebook or Twitter pages and tag #Surfatial. We use conversation as currency, so we will contact you and converse with you to complete the transaction process.

Authors' Profile

Surfatial is a trans-local collective that operates through the internet. We use conversations to aid learning outside established structures. We are concerned with enabling disinhibition through the internet, for expressing what may not be feasible in physical reality. We organise internet-based audio conferences called study-groups where we deal with philosophical questions and a self-reflective exchange of individual experiences. We have previously presented our work at Soundphile 2016, Delhi; play_book (in collaboration with Thukral & Tagra), Gurgaon; CONA, Mumbai, and Mumbai Art Room. Our upcoming engagement is with ZK/U, Berlin.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/surfatial

Website - http://www.museumofvestigialdesire.net/offices/surfatial

Twitter - https://twitter.com/surfatial

Surfatial is Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav, Satya Gummuluri, and No.55, a bot.

Prayas Abhinav

Prayas is an artist and teacher. He works on his capacity to learn through performance. He has worked in the last few years on numerous pieces of speculative fiction, software, games, interactive installations, public interventions and curatorial projects. He is the initiator of the Museum of Vestigial Desire. He has developed his practice with the support of fellowships by Sarai, Openspace, the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA), TED and Lucid. He has been in residencies at Khoj (India), Coded Cultures (Austria) and dis-locate (Japan). He has shared his work at festivals including Transmediale, 48c, Futuresonic, ISEA and Wintercamp.

Satya Gummuluri

Satya is an artist originally from Bombay currently based in Germany. She works with music, writing and photography as well as doing freelance translation, editorial and research work. She has lived in Chicago for several years, collaborating, recording, performing and traveling with musicians and dancers in Chicago, NYC and Lisbon, and has appeared with them at the Chicago Jazz and World Music Festivals, and Austin’s SXSW. As a writer and translator, her work has appeared in online and print journals such as Almost Island and SAADA’s Tides magazine. She also works with activist groups engaged with feminism and urban issues in India and the US.

Malavika Rajnarayan

Malavika is an artist based in India. Her paintings use the human figure to explore larger issues of collective consciousness. Her works have also been exhibited in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Ahmedabad in India and at the 2007 Sosabeol Art Expo in South Korea. She has presented lectures at EWHA University in Seoul, South Korea, College of Fine Arts, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, SITE art space, Baroda and conducted short workshops at NID, Ahmedabad and at non-profit organisations for women and children. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Collective Studio Baroda, The Contemporary Artists Centre, Troy, New York and at CAMAC Centre for Art in Marnay sur-Seine, France, supported by the K. K. Hebbar Art foundation and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_101-ways-of-starting-an-isp-no-53-conversation-content-weird-fiction

55 Works of Iconic Indian writer released under Free Licence to benefit Wikisource

vishnu — 2014-11-14T13:29:48Z

Kannada is a language spoken by 40 million people in Karnataka – one of the four southern states of India.The Kannada Wikimedia community, in collaboration with CIS-A2K, are enthusiastic about having almost all of the works of Niranjana re-licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava.

The original post was published on Wikimedia Blog.

Niranjana was a prolific Indian author and activist, and wrote more than 60 books over the course of his career. These works will be digitized and made available on Kannada Wikisource, allowing Kannada speakers to freely access the diverse set of works. Niranjana’s works give a rich glimpse into social, political, and cultural history of Karnataka from the 1940s to 1990s; they can be used as a potential resource for creating and improving articles on Kannada Wikipedia.

Niranjana (1924-1992) was the pseudonym of Kulkund Shivarao, a prominent Kannada writer of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Kannada. His prolific output, across nearly five decades, included novels, short stories, plays, biographies, political commentary, and translations. He was a regular columnist in the Kannada newspapers and magazines. Among his achievements as an editor are Jnana Gangotri, a 7-volume encyclopedia for young people, and a 25-volume compilation of the world’s greatest short stories.

A total of 55 Kannada books by Niranjana are re-licensed. “This is the single largest and most comprehensive individual collection of a writer to be released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 in any of the Indian languages so far,” says Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash. Kannada Wikimedians and CIS-A2K have organized a formal event to celebrate Creative Commons efforts to cultivate free and open knowledge online in Kannada; specifically, Kannada Wikisource. It is important to also acknowledge the great initiative shown by Niranjana’s daughter, Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (also CIS-A2K Advisor), in getting these works released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 licensing.

Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana says, “[Kannada] Wikisource is an excellent free and open knowledge platform for books in Indian languages and I am happy that my father’s works can now be accessed by [all] Kannadigas across the world. Let these writings have innumerable readers. What more could any author want?”

She is determined to release more work under CC licensing, and says, “[I] will be more than glad to get as many Indian works as possible under a free license as this will ensure that a lot of knowledge produced over the past many decades in India can easily be made accessible to the next generation of seekers of knowledge, who are digital natives.”

“This is the the single largest and most comprehensive individual collection of a writer to be released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 in any of the Indian languages so far,” says Omshivaprakash.

“KannadaWikipediaWorkshop 010″ by Pavanaja, under CC-BY-SA-3.0

Tejas Jain, another Kannada Wikimedian, was quick to co-write a blog in Kannada about this content donation. Jain says, “this is a bold step…and will act as motivation for other Kannada writers to release more content under CC-BY-SA 4.0.” He hopes to see “Kannda Wikisource grow as the comprehensive single digital resource for free Kannada books” and address “the fear of loosing the rich print heritage of Kannada to time.”

Omshivaprakash was surprised to realize that there is no article on such a prominent Kannada writer like Niranjana on English Wikipedia.This led to a Facebook discussion, and User Tito Dutta responded swiftly, but needed help with verifiable resources. Omshivaprakash chipped in with resources and a page on Niranjana (needs your Wiki Love) has now been started on English Wikipedia. While this is not a big achievement, it is a simple example of how the (Indian) English Wikipedians could collaborate with Indic Wikimedians in creating India focused content on English Wikipeida and how social media could be used for off-wiki collaboration by Wikimedians. Incidentally Tito and Omshivaprakash became friends on FB during the WMF’s India Community Consultation 2014 which was held recently in Bangalore.

Tejas Jain “This is a bold step[...]and will act as motivation for other Kannada writers to release more content under CC-BY-SA 4.0″

“Tejas Jain” by Visdaviva , under CC-BY-SA-4.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/55-works-of-iconic-indian-writer-released-under-free-licence-to-benefit-wikisource

36th SCCR: CIS Statement on Limitations and Exceptions Agenda

sinha — 2018-05-31T09:43:08Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 36th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from May 28, 2018 to June 1, 2018, made this statement on the Limitations and Exceptions agenda on behalf of CIS on Day 3, May 30.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I’m speaking on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, India.

As we move forward on this agenda, we believe that for a true balance to be realised, the rights of all users of copyrighted works will have to be treated on par with those of the rightholders for purposes of access to knowledge. We are disappointed with the state of the limitations and exceptions in the broadcast treaty, that made some progress yesterday (in terms of increasing rights).

Further, as we have submitted earlier, it is our belief that the present international legal framework does not sufficiently address the opportunities presented by new information and communication technologies. We reiterate the need for open ended exceptions and limitations in this area - which should also facilitate smooth cross border exchange of knowledge.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/36th-sccr-cis-statement-on-limitations-and-exceptions-agenda

36th SCCR: CIS Statement on Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities

sinha — 2018-05-31T09:46:45Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 36th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from May 28, 2018 to June 1, 2018, made this statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations on behalf of CIS on Day 4, May 31.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I’m speaking on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, India.

We have concerns about the plan’s focus on MOOCs and distance learning initiatives. Although they are related to increasing access to education, these initiatives are hardly a substitute for classroom learning – and the primary objective of the treaty should be to improve such classroom teaching, especially for developing countries where ICT penetration remains quite low. Unless the plan also chooses to develop Open Educational Resources as a priority in connection with MOOCs and distance learning initiatives, we suggest that this item in the plan be re-examined in light of other more beneficial action items.

Thank you.

Note: Please find the Draft Action Plan here (SCCR/36/3).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/36th-sccr-cis-statement-on-draft-action-plan-for-educational-and-research-institutions-and-persons-with-other-disabilities

35th SCCR: CIS' Question to Dr. Rostama on her Study on the Impact of the Digital Environment on Copyright Legislation

sinha — 2017-11-19T07:50:49Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017, posed this question on the agenda 'Other Matters' on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 17 November, 2017.

Thank you for the presentation, Dr. Rostamma.

My question relates to provisions allowing reverse engineering of computer programmes. You mentioned that 81% of member states (with the scope of your study) have exceptions for compilation and interoperability of computer programmes.

Can you comment, qualitatively, on how open/ strict you have found the limitations and exceptions to be in your study? Is there a member state that stands out in its treatment of limitations and exceptions for computer programmers, and/or users of such digital objects?

Answer: I would not like to make any qualitative comments.

Read Dr. Rostamma's study here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/35th-sccr-cis-question-to-dr-rostama-on-her-study-on-the-impact-of-the-digital-environment-on-copyright-legislation

34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Proposal for Analysis of Copyright related to the Digital Environment

sinha — 2017-05-30T05:39:22Z

Observers made the following statements on GRULAC's proposal on analysis of copyright related to the digital environment on 5th May 2017. CISAC:

Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to thank the WIPO Secretariat for this initiative because I think it can contribute to a constructive discussion in this committee on a number of issues raised in the document proposed by GRULAC. CISAC would like to thank the two professors on their presentations on the work done in April, and we look forward in great interest to the presentation of the conclusions at the next meeting of SCCR in November. (CISAC) we have a number of -- I'd like to refer to the need to the transfer of values. The greatest challenge -- which is the greatest challenge facing creators, and then there's the changing role of Internet service providers. As very often the authors are marginalized by the digital economy and the value chain. And then the comments about the need to interpret WIPO treaties in the most faithful way possible to the original spirit and also prudence in implementing exceptions and limitations using other alternatives where possible, such as licenses. Thank you.

FILE:
Thank you, Chairman, and I congratulate you and your vice chairs on your guidance at this meeting, and I associate myself with these statements made by -- the statements made by states such as the USA, E.U.. I'd also like to congratulate GRULAC on this proposal and recommend the committee, in the face of all these studies, which are very interesting, that we performers believe there are priorities, including, for example, the very low or zero remuneration being paid to authors for our works and our performances on Internet in the digital environment, and so we would, therefore, recommend that mainly this study should focus on that and the GRULAC proposal should be a permanent item on the agenda, and as regards the discussion of the legal systems used -- so this should be included and also the three conclusions reached by the professor should be included on the agenda of this committee. And in all this, the market is developing so rapidly, so we should invent our norms as quickly as possible so that we can compete on an equal footing, on a level playing field in this market. Thank you.

Knowledge Ecology International:
Thank you very much. I was -- like others, we'd like to take a harder look at the study. One observation I would make is in the original GRULAC proposal, looming large were issues about economics, concentration of ownership in the area of distributing works, questions about the fairness of the distribution of revenue between creative people and distributors of works. I think in some ways that what was described as the study, although it looked very competent and a great cast of characters in terms of the researchers, I would -- I think you may want to examine whether there's more economics or economists that can be brought in to shed more light on the issues raised in the initial paper. And the last thing I wanted to say is we're -- and we've talked to some Delegates about this, or actually, I should say they've talked to us about it and we agree, that the issue of metadata as it relates to digital works is really a new topic that has come about because of the digitalization of works and the development of the Internet. We often feel that the metadata's managed on behalf of right owners but not necessarily on behalf of either the creative individuals or the audiences or the readers or the listeners, and so I think this is a -- related to the GRULAC proposal. It may be a subset, but I also think it's a topic that we would like to see explored more. Thank you very much.

PAAIG:
Thank you, Chair. I would like to focus on the role of limitations and exceptions in the digital environment for the priority of the committee at this time. There's things called non expressive uses, uses that are necessary for technological processes but do not compete with the copyright owner necessary to offer the services and Internet offer over it. We have been doing research on this topic and have been doing studies that suggest the presence of such exceptions is related to investment in growth of local digital technologies. We cannot have streaming without buffering, we can't have artificial intelligence, machine learning, text and data mining, Internet-based translation services without the right to use whole works for purposes that do not compete with the original, but only a small number of countries around the world provide these clear limitations and exceptions, and the lack of those limitations and exceptions is reducing local investment and local innovation in this area. As the experts note, the E.U. has taken a step in the right direction in this regard, creating a mandatory exception for certain technological processes in the directive. That model's not perfect. Many of these digital innovations that I mention actually require permanent copies. Nonetheless, the concept that we need a mandatory exception in this regard that can facilitate cross-border digital trade and local production and innovation should guide this committee. Thank you.

Corporacion Innovarte:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We're grateful for the work done by the Secretariat on this topic, as also the explanations from the professors that gave us their opinions. We think that the issue of guaranteeing fair remuneration for creators is extremely important. This item should be considered as a standing item on the committee's agenda. However, we also wanted to hearken back to what El Salvador said; in other words, there should be more participation and transparency in the work done in the group of experts in order to guarantee that all of the concerns and issues are covered that are related to this work. Finally, as to the checklists on contracts, this should include not just intermediary platforms such as YouTube, but also contracts between authors and producers or collective entities which also should be a subject of interest for this committee. Thank you.

Latin Artists:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Latin artists represents associations of actors and other performers in the audiovisual field. We are grateful for looking at the precarious situation of artists and other creators in connection with the use of their performances in the digital era. This was described, effectively, by GRULAC in its proposal. This affects not only musical work but audiovisual works as clarified by the Delegation of Brazil at the last session of this committee, and despite the fact that the same Delegation has referred exclusively today to music. In this situation, we think that the solution is not just exploratory studies, as we heard this morning. We also need to bear in mind that this scope exceeds the specific problems indicated in the GRULAC proposal, more particularly in the need to find appropriate formulas to guarantee that artists and other creators can benefit from the economic content of their performances in the digital era; in other words, formulas that guarantee that artists and authors can have fair remuneration in online use of their interpretation and performance and works. From this viewpoint, we think in the framework of the study we have to look not just at computers or databases. This can simply distract us from the questions we have before us, something that seems to be of concern to certain Delegations, as was expressed this very morning. In fact, ultimately, sir, if the debate that took place at the last session of this committee focused on the proposal of GRULAC, the study should focus exclusively on the problems identified in that proposal. That is all. At any rate, we are attentive to the conclusions which we hope will be reached and presented at the next session of this committee, and we hope that they will foster a debate that can no longer be delayed. Artists and authors need solutions. With all due respect, we cannot allow this time wastage to take place. We need an equitable sharing and the economic benefits derived from the digital use of their interpretations and works. Lastly, Latin artists understands that this question should be a standing independent item on the agenda of the committee. Thank you very much.

LCA:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to echo the statement of El Salvador and the United States that it will be very helpful to have written conclusions of the experts in advance so that we can react to them intelligently. Also, I would like to agree with the United States that the committee should focus on copyright issues and not more abstract market issues. If we start focusing on issues like the value gap, we also need to consider the value to authors of the free global distribution provided by Internet platforms. Thank you.

AADI:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the general association of performers and collective management of related rights of musical performers in the Republic of Argentina, I should like to congratulate you on your appointment as Chairman of this committee as also your new vice chairs. We wish them every success in their work with the cooperation of the Secretariat and the Delegations of the countries making up this committee. I have no doubt that you will have a successful outcome. Also, I'd like to congratulate professors to thank them for both of their presentations and also the Secretariat for its necessary and positive work to bring information to us. Since the first time that the GRULAC brought a document forward has welcomed this discussion. This was an informed document made available in December 2015 by the Delegation of Brazil. At that time and today, apart from a legal solution for each country, that has found four questions on this item, the document is 31/4, which plays a major role placing on the agenda the issue of performers' rights in a digital era to make the possible damage visible to them that are suffered by performers and artists as also to make it obvious who has caused this damage; in other words, major musical production companies. We have made this public and we have fought for obligatory reflective remuneration for artists and performers in my country. I would like to point out today we are not the only ones to have this stance. We have the extraordinary of Filia, which is a Latin America company of artists and performers, which stated at its annual meeting in October 2016, it is important for document SCCR/31/4, which proposes an analysis of copyright in the digital age to be made visible and to make obvious the various difficulties encountered as also to enable our artists to consolidate their work. I do not wish to dwell on these matters further, but I must say that on a daily basis, I see how major corporations make huge profits at the expense of performers. Is this some kind of a joke? But what we need is actions from whatever quarter can prevent their action and promote our action as performers in the digital era. Thank you.

Centre for Internet and Society:
Thank you Mr. Chair. On behalf of CIS, it is my submission that the study can additionally focus on all the key actors along the entire supply and value chain involved in content dissemination in the digital environment, complementing the study of the legal environments. This would shed considerable light on national legal frameworks and also provide us evidence of transparency, or the lack thereof in the businesses involved and the extent of low proportions of copyright and related rights payment to the creators and their unfair treatment. Thank you.

Electronic Information for Libraries:

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There were very many proposals on the interest of libraries, including the management of copyright limitations and exceptions in the digital environment, digital exhaustion, licenses, territoriality, and the interpretation of the three-step test. I'd like to thank the two professors for their presentations. We'd be very interested in the findings with regard to the review of copyright laws for digital uses that was dealt with at the start of the presentation. When we looked at data from the Crews study on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives, we found that in countries that have amended their copyright laws in the last five years, digital copying is expressly barred in over 1/3 of them, even for preservation reasons. My question is are you also considering in the work the evidence and examples of problems experienced by beneficiaries of certain exceptions, such as the library and archive community, when working in the digital environment, as presented to this committee by the community over the last number of years? That would help to further inform the discussion and the possible conclusions. Thank you.

Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property:
I would like to support that aspect of the GRUAC proposal that focuses on the role of limitations and exceptions in the digital environment as a top priority for this committee.
There is an increasing recognition that so-called non-expressive uses – uses necessary for technological processes that do not compete with the copyright owner – are necessary to enable the internet and the services that are offered over it.
We at American university have been doing studies that suggest that the presence of open exceptions for technological processes isrelated to investment and growth of local digital technologies. Countries with more open exceptions do better at attracting investments in fields such as software engineering. We cannot have local streaming services without local buffering rights. We cannot have local search, artificial intelligence, machine learning, text and data mining, and internet based translation services without local rights to use whole works for purposes that do not compete with the original.
Only a small number of countries around the world provide the clear limitations and exceptions in these areas. And only a small number of countries have robust industries in related fields. But all these services are international by nature, and therefore the lack of harmonization of enabling rights is increasingly perceived as a barrier to trade.
As the experts note, the EU has taken a step in the right direction that can serve as a model in this regard – creating a mandatory exception for certain technological uses in the INFOSOC directive.
That model is not perfect. Many digital innovations I have mentioned use entire works on a basis that might not be viewed as temporary. Nonetheless, the concept that we need a mandatory exception in this regard to facilitate cross border digital trade is salient, and should guide this committee.
Thank you.

Note: Source of the statement texts are WIPO's realtime transcription service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-observer-statements-on-proposal-for-analysis-of-copyright-related-to-the-digital-environment

34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

sinha — 2017-05-30T05:55:43Z

Observers made the following statements on the agenda of limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives on 3rd May 2017.

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA):
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We congratulate you as leaders of body and looks forward to working with you to achieve the goals of the in the interests of the national copyright system. We thank the Secretariat for their hard work and IFLA is proud to have attended sessions of the SCCR for many years and gratified that Member States understand and support the role of libraries, archives and museums in promoting knowledge and the understanding of diverse cultures.

As the U.S. states and its principles document SCCR/26/8, exceptions and limitations facilitate the public service role of libraries and are executives maintaining the balance between the rights of authors and larger public interest, particularly education, research, and access to information that is essential in today's society. But that balance has eroded over time as rights holders have promoted fell ashes notion that copyright is primarily or only about protection of rights not the public good. In a world where information is increasingly borderless, as borderless as broadcast signals, the idea that issues related to access to information are local as one delegate astonishingly stated earlier this week is really incomprehensible and misguided. This is not to say, however, that local or national action is not needed as one element in the equation of access to information. In this limited sense, we agree that the exchange of national experiences in this body over the past several years has been helpful as have been the studies commissioned by WIPO from Professor Kenneth Crews which demonstrated the wide variation in exceptions and limitations existing in SCCR's Member States, including their absence in numerous countries. We applaud WIPO for commissioning these studies and urge that the Secretariat build on the studies produced by professor cruise to develop a regularly updated searchable database of exceptions and limitations for libraries, archives and museums to be accessible across borders so that legislators and citizens who do not attend these sessions can easily learn from other's experience on an ongoing basis. We further recommend that SCCR capitalize on the past sharing of Member States' national experiences and the suggested approaches in the Chair's chart of SCCR/33 by creating a draft law on exceptions and limitations for libraries, archives and museums in collaboration with all stakeholders so that there will be practical outcomes for recent discussions in this body. Such a draft law would draw on the committee's past discussions on the subject but not be binding or prejudice in any way the outcome of the committee's own work. IFLA stands ready to work with its colleagues in the archival and museum communities as well as with rights holders delegates to SCCR and the Secretariat to achieve this objective. As for our recommendations or reactions to the Chair's final chart from SCCR/33, IFLA supports this and we urge the Chair's chart be upped as a working document and certainly to the qua as an outcome of SCCR35. Finally in response to the proposal by the Delegation of Argentina, SCCR/33/4, we hope that the committee will request the Secretariat to prepare a study on issues related to limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives and museums and a cross-border context including digital uses. We are grateful to the Member States that have placed and maintained limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives on the SCCR agenda and look forward to continuing these discussions. These outcomes will affect access to information and knowledge for people throughout the world. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Society of American Archivists:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, I will try to be brief. The Society of American Archivists, North America's largest professional archival organisation looks forward to working with you and your Vice Chairs. Our members manage billions of primary source works from across the global. SAA believes in the importance of WIPO's work because copyright is central to the mission of archivists. Archivists collect and preserve all types of creative works for one reason only, use. Most archived works, however, have never been in commerce, but people globally need them to maintain their culture, identity, protect Human Rights and support innovation through new creative works. If such works cannot be made available digitally, however, and across borders, they might as well not exist. Archivists and librarians are conscientious about copyright, but sometimes strict adherence to the law conflicts with our collections and our mission. For example, a 1970's collection of over 120 interviews of legendary jazz musicians are available for on site study in the archives of the U.S. research library, but, their general usefulness has been hobbled by unbalanced copyright law because the original copyright assignment mentioned neither derivative works nor the yet to be invented Internet. As a result, risk averse librarians and lawyers were unwilling to allow zing tall accessibility of the interviews. Although jazz cannot thrive without taking risks, an archivist's obligation to the future requires that we minimize risk. That's why we need reasonable exceptions to deal with the streams ambiguity inherent in our collections. Copyright is already perceived to be under attack. Can WIPO afford to torn away allies such as archivists? We have a very positive public approval rating from the very people that you need to reach. To keep archivists on board the development of exceptions for archives must remain on SCCR's agenda. To this end the committee's work should continue based on the previous Chair's chart and that chart should become a working document for the committee. Thank you.

Centre for Internet and Society:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. CIS works on issues of access to knowledge and other digital rights in India. I would like to share with you my experience which highlights the difficulty of building digital archives in India. Mr. Chair, earlier last year the government of India embarked upon the important project of digitizing the cultural audiovisual material stored in government and private collections to store material for preservation purposes, and set up a virtual network of these repositories to offer online access. My organization has been assisting them in this crucial public service mission. These works are oral traditions, dance, music, theatrical practices, cultural practices – all of which lie largely inaccessible and languishing in several small and large collections in India. Since, the Indian copyright Act does not contain an exception for the purposes of preservation by an archive; the entire project has suffered high costs in terms of money and time. Money, because the project had to get expensive legal assistance to set up processes to obtain rights clearance from all the performers who were a part of the works and copyright holders- some of which are orphan works, thereby compounding the problem. Further, partnering organizations also expressed legitimate fears of supplying their works, in case of a potential copyright and related rights violation that could implicate them with civil/criminal liability.

In such a scenario, for the benefit of other states to update their standards corresponding to this international legal instrument as well, it would indeed be useful to adopt the proposals mentioned in the document SCCR/26/3 that address these issues, and others. Thank you.

International Council of Archives:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And the ICA congratulates you on your election and that of your Vice Chairs and we look forward to working with you. Archival institutions exist throughout the world. Governments, organisations and individuals create records to provide evidence of their actions to document their rights and obligations and to preserve their heritage. Archives acquire and preserve these documents and make them available for all to use as the raw materials for cultural, academic, social and scientific research. The nature of archival material presents a particular problem. Archives hold billions of copyright works that were not created or intended for commercial purposes. Because they were never published, the rights holders for such works cannot be located. For these reasons, collective licensing is not a workable solution. The archival mission to make their holdings available for research is ham strung by a web of inconsistent copyright laws that have failed to keep up with social and technological development. In this body systemic discussion of the eleven topics, archivists provided a rich array of real life examples that clearly demonstrate the need for exceptions, for mutual recognition by Member States of exceptions and limitations to copyright that would permit archives everywhere to serve an international audience. The results of that excellent work was summarized in the Chair's informal chart on limitations, exceptions for libraries and archives. Every creator benefits from the work of his or her predecessors. Knowledge of that earlier work comes largely from libraries and archives. Many of the rights holders represented in this room could not have created their works without us. Why would creators not wholeheartedly support exceptions for archives and libraries that would only benefit their work. Regrettably, we continue to hear assertions from some groups that national solutions are suffer. It should be abundantly clear by now that national solutions are far from sufficient. We need solutions that apply in a global network environment. And in that regard, Mr. Chair, the Chair's informal chart on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives prepared at the end of SCCR33 refined and clarified the topics to be addressed and provides a practical approach to continue to move this initiative forward. We would support our IFLA colleagues called to have it adopted as a working document of the committee, and we would also support IFLA's call for a study of cross-border issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

German Library Association:
I congratulate you on your election as a Chair and I speak on behalf of German Library Association representing 10,000 libraries in Germany. Libraries and archives face a problem. There is a high level of the international copyright protection, on the other hand, there is no such uniformity in limitations. Limitations like the ones fixed in the already mentioned Chair's informal chart, for example, for preservation, lending, document delivery, are the basis of library services. But limitations and exceptions are like a patchwork of different national legislations. For every library service crossing borders that means to act legally library staff has to know about the limitations and exceptions not only in their own country, country of origin but also in the country of destination of that service. Respective to the German library index and university libraries in 2016 around 60% of the acquisitions were electronic in technical universities the portion of electronic acquisitions is even much higher. These numbers in international comparison are even low. We can assert that research libraries are digital more than they are paper based. In the electronic world, the problem is resources usually are only available after agreement on license stipulations formulated by the rights holders mostly. That means contracts are concluded. Contracts eventually can override the limitations and exceptions. This committee might agree on in one form or the other. The objective of facilitating cross-border library teaching and research services could be achieved by introducing an international mandatory instrument on limitations and exceptions. Another track to facilitate cross-border use could be the introduction of principles of harmonizations combined with a rule of mutual recognitions like proposed in the document of the Delegation of Argentina. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

International Federation of Journalists:
The International Federation of Journalists congratulates, again, the Chair and Vice Chairs on their election and the members of the Secretariat for their diligent work. We represent about 600,000 journalists in 140 countries worldwide north and south. The International Federation of Journalists, of course, understands ts essential role of libraries and archives specifically we fully support them having the freedom to have copies for preservation. The International Federation of Journalists has repeatedly called for libraries and archives to have proper direct funding to do this themselves and not to be forced to subcontract digital archiving to commercial operations. The honorable representative of Brazil referred earlier this morning to the potential to extend the outreach of libraries and archives in unprecedents ways.. Of course, this, the making of works available on the Internet, for example, and on its successes is an important supplement to the vital role of libraries and archives in the education and training of many including journalists. But when it comes to libraries and are executives making copies of works available off the premises, that is is it not, a publishing operation? The International Federation of Journalists believes that the solution to this issue is collective licensing and necessarily capacity building to insure that efficient Democratically controlled collective licensing is available in all Member States and can deal with cross-border issues as the collective licenses that already exist already do. Many of those 600,000 journalists particularly those who focus on international reporting are poorly paid. Where there is such collective licensing it makes important contribution to their economic survival as independent professionals with their own essential contribution to make to the recording and preservation of our culture from within our cultures and not relying on foreign reporting. Thank you.

Knowledge Ecology International:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and congratulations for your election. And for your Co-Chairs'. One thing I just wanted to mention as related to libraries is in addition to the excellent studies that have been done by Kenneth Crews and other people that have looked at library exceptions, I thought it might be interesting to have the chief economist or other people involved, but certainly the chief economist to look at the economics of the library industry. I think that we look at libraries as part of the research and development infrastructure for a country, not only as places people go to read novels, but an essential part of the competitiveness and ability for a country to have a strong high tech sector but also play an important role in the development. And it would be interesting to know what the assessment is because we hear it from other industries all of the time. They talk about the number of jobs in the film industry or the number of jobs. It would be interesting to know how many people are employed in different countries in the library sector, but also what contributions the library sector makes to the economic development of the country, and what challenges they face on pricing. The last point I wanted to make is that clearly there is a set of issues that it's really hard to reach on census on, and there is other areas where it's easier, I would think, to reach consensus on. This discussion of the archiving and the preservation of documents is a pretty good case. Certainly the making available of what's put into, what's archived and preserved in terms of documents, it's more challenging to reach consensus on that than it is to insure that people have adequate exceptions to merely do archiving and preservations. And I think that it would be unfortunate if in looking at their wide range of issues that are facing libraries, recognizing that there is a very inadequate set of exceptions in many countries according to the studies that have already been done, that people don't move forward in areas where consensus could be reached such as preservation and archiving because there are other areas that are more controversial. Thank you.

Electronic Information for Libraries:
Thank you, Chairman. I'm speaking on behalf of the Electronic Information for Libraries and I would like to thank you for giving me the floor and congratulate you upon your election to Chair this committee. I would also like to congratulate your Vice Chairs. We would like to thank the African Group, GRULAC, Asia-Pacific Group and the other delegates for having spoken of the interrelationship between the Sustainable Development Goals and the establishment of access to libraries and archives because emphasis is placed on access to information. Ladies and gentlemen, the Internet is global, but legislation on copyright stops at borders and that is why we are here today. Digital technology has changed the world, which people have access to information. Today the way we study and learn in fact means that people do not have full access. We believe that copyright is important, and that limitations and exceptions are crucial for a modern information infrastructure as well as for open access and other licensin wills. We are very pleased that other countries have modified proposals on copyright.. We are pleased that some countries have expanded their exceptions or introduced new ones. However, some countries who are updating their law are not enough to resolve a broader problem, the demand for cross-border access to information for research and culture. And the need to insure that nobody is left behind in access to knowledge means that there is say need for this aspect to be taken into account. There are specific issues which were compiled in a document and submitted to this committee and I would like to invite you to read it. There are printed copies available, but it can also be found on line. It begins with the Internet is global. We also support IFLA's and ICAS interventions and we hope that progress will be made swiftly in the SCCR in this issue. We thank you very much for your attention.

International Council of museums (ICOM):
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to address this important agenda item.. The international Council of museums represents important 36,000 museum professionals world wide. We are here, Mr. Chair, to give our voice to museum professionals for this important agenda item. After consultation with the international museum community and in keeping with the results of the WIPO study on exceptions and limitations on copyright for museums ICOM joined forces with our library and archive colleagues to pursue exceptions to copyright for the benefit of libraries, archives and museums as enumerated in the Chair's informal chart that provide for exceptions for all three. This pursuit is not intended to disrupt markets, but instead is targeted to instances where museums and indeed libraries and archives are unable to carry out their often shared mission. ICOM was very pleased that the Canadian delegation called for a museum study in 2013 while at the 26th session of the Standing Committee on copyright and related rights. The study on exceptions first draft was distributed and presented at the 30th session of the SCCR in 2015. The study distributed business WIPO provides a broad basis of understanding of the status of exceptions for museums within WIPO Member States and provides for the basis for ICOM's continued advocacy of exceptions for museums. The purpose of our intervention today is to signal that ICOM is committed to the belief that a harmonized approach towards libraries, archives and museums is both possible and necessary to achieve the overall objective of obtaining operational exceptions for materials and cultural heritage collections at the international level. [..] there are many instances where museums, libraries and archives cross mandates given the nature of distinctive collections. Libraries hold collections that include artifacts more traditionally aligned with museum collections or have accessioned collections that include unpublished materials often found in archives. Museums hold archival collections, have libraries within museums, and include study collections as part of their overall collections. Museums like archives nay oftentimes include a vast array of artifacts in their collections and include materials that have often been published and unpublished. At the same time, libraries, archives and museums face the same obstacles created by copyright law in trying to fulfill their respective missions being education, public interest, access to collections and communication of scholarship. This is particularly true when museums are examined not simply as stewards of art collections but as stewards of historic scientific and natural collections as well. The similarities are in fact magnified when we examine the collections we face with our 20th century collections. Museums, libraries and archives face similar challenges in preserving, exhibiting and providing access and communicating about art collections. Thank you, Mr. Chair for the opportunity to address this important issue.

European Bureau of library, information and documentation associations:
Mr. Chair, we congratulate you and the Vice Chairs on your elections to office, and thank you for inviting the European Bureau of library information and documentation associations which is the voice of libraries in Europe to take the floor. The consolidated libraries and archives studies in the SCCR30 and the museum study both from 2015 reveal that the national frontier-based approach to copyright with regard to libraries, archives and museums now in disarray, too disparate and stuck in the pre-Internet era. In the E.U. this has been the justification of proposal of mandatory cross-border exceptions to copyright. Yet in face of the ever expanding world wide web. National copyright laws are in need of constant modernization to allow institutions to function optimally in an international cross-border online environment. Now that the detailed discussion of the topic has been summarized by the previous Chair's SCCR/33 document. We offer practical suggestions for moving forward. First, we suggest that this committee establishes the principles to inclusion in the note for overarching international copyright framework for copyright exceptions and limitations affecting libraries, archives and museums. The proposals made by the US delegation in 26/8 offer useful guidance that can shape the content of the committee's work. A comprehensive and effective solution for libraries should set standard for and protect national copyright exceptions that impact on the functions of these institutions, including preservation of materials and content, copying for document delivery in any format including cross-borders. Lending of works including remotely. Protecting limitations and exceptions for override by contract terms and by holding partially inaccessible can due to legal protections of TPMs. Making orphan works available on line to the public, text and data mining of legally accessed coven tent. Acquiring work including by importation and protecting libraries, archives and museums and staff accounting for them in good faith for criminal or civil liability for unintended copyright infringement. There are various ways in which the committee can support work. And could be usefully adopted by this committee. Secondly, in line with the EU's call for guidance to Member States, we would welcome efforts from the Secretariat to further inform our discussions. In line with the Poe proposal from Argentina which correctly addresses the need for minimum set of exceptions and limitations nationally and the solution for cross-border issues this what the E.U. itself is seeking to do domestically. We would welcome a study on cross-border issue as a basis for further discussion. In order to provide further guidance to Member States, this committee could request the Secretariat to convene an expert group first and foremost of library archive and museum copyright experts as well as copyright academics, lawyers and relevant stakeholders to support the commissioning and tasking of an agreed expert to develop modern WIPO draft law for libraries, archives and museums. Finally this committee might wish to request that the Secretariat provides a useful tool to assist its work by creating online publicly accessible database of copyright exceptions and limitations. Additionally since the pace of change in copyright law affecting the library, archive and museum sector is to fast moving the committee might request an annual report from the Secretariat of changes to nationals and practices in copyright and related rights. Thank you for your attention.

Innovarte Corporacion:
Thank you very much, Chairman. We would like to congratulate you upon your election. We would like to thank the excellent work on studies on libraries and archives. The proposal to work with the aim of a treaty on exceptions and limitations to copyright to protect the balance and legitimacy of the system for copyright and related rights with regard to libraries and people with disabilities is something we have been discussing in this committee since 2004 starting from a proposal which came from Chile. As discussions of the Marrakesh Treaty has shown that provisions on copyright to protect categories of people who are threatened or under mined by a lack of exceptions is not only possible but good and it shows a means to protect libraries, archives and possibly also museums. In this regard, we would like to request the members of the committee in good faith to consolidate all of the work done based on the text which has already been considered, the informal summary of the Chair of the committee as we have seen it's based on textual proposals either for treaty or another form of instrument which was proposed by various delegations including Brazil, India, the United States and many others. We propose that the committee would adopt this text without any prejudice to what form the work might take in the future. We believe on another point that the proposal from Argentina is particularly useful since it seeks to come up with a solution to the obstacle, namely, the lack of harmonization of rules on libraries and archives at international level. We believe it is a compliment to what has already been worked on by the committee with regard to principles and topics which are necessary for exceptions other than a national level. It should be subject to greater analysis by this committee, thank you very much.

Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Thank you Mr. Chair. The EFF work supports the work of libraries and archives which have become more relevant in the digital age and which are more challenging now. The updating of exceptions and limitations are an important way to insure that libraries and archives are equipped to meet these two challenges of fulfilling missions in the digital age. In an ideal world EFF sees norm setting as the only way to ensure that WIPO members provide a basic level of modernized limitations and exceptions for libraries, however, we recognize that members do not have the appetite for norm setting in this area at this point in time for various reasons. In that light, we do support the proposal IFLA has made for a draft law and searchable database on library limitations and exceptions. This strikes us as a workable compromise that does not commit members to hard norm setting but which would be a useful interim step towards the harmonization of limitations and exceptions for libraries worldwide. Finally and on a different topic, I would like to express EFF's hope that in the next SCCR session time will also be made available for NGOs to make statements about the broadcast treaty. Thank you very much.

Note: Source of the statement texts are WIPO's realtime transcription service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-observer-statements-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-libraries-and-archives

34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions

sinha — 2017-05-30T05:51:42Z

Observers made the following statements on discussion around limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions on 3rd May 2017.

Communia:

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address for the limitations and exceptions for educational purposes. I would like to give a brief statement that by saying Professor Seng's studies, national countries had exceptions narrowly in various ways the copyright works of educational activities. These narrow exceptions prevent certain educational practices such as the quotation of entire image in a school presentation. When it comes to modern educational practices, namely those that occur in digital and online teaching environments, the legal standing is even more problematic. Indeed, certain acts which teachers are allowed to perform in face-to-face teaching may not be permitted in digital and online contexts. For instance, in the Netherlands, the law is clear that a teacher can show a movie from a DVD in class, but if the same teacher wants to show a video from a free publicly accessible website, it seems that you'll need to be -- you will not be able to do it. This is due either to inappropriate legislative techniques or to domestic policy decisions. In any case, what is certain is cross-border educational uses are compromised at the outset due to the current national copyright laws, including within regions that enjoy a high level of harmonization, such as the European Union. Therefore, continue to discuss this issue in the forum which we will lead toward from an internationally binding instrument as mandated by the General Assembly 2017 seems essential. Thank you.

International Federation of Journalists:

Good afternoon. We've already introduced ourselves. All these works are and remain one of the key raw materials for education. The international federation of journalists deeply regrets the educational and research institutions underfunded. No one is proposing, however, as far as I'm aware, that schools and colleges should get free electricity or free phone calls. Here, most clearly of all, the solution is collective licensing through collective management organizations that are democratically controlled by the rights holders they represent. There is a wealth of misunderstanding of the issues. I take as one example the very first statement on a pro education site and the magic of Internet indexing may enable you to identify it, are which demonstrates how ill thought out the costs of education can be, not withstanding the previous. This is addressed to the European Union. It says, quotes, we want you to have the freedom to teach without breaking the law. Good. Quotes, before teaching her students about how representations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet have changed through the ages, a teacher may have to ask permission from the rights holders of every movie she wants to screen in class, unquote. It says, this is -- we want to relieve educators from this impossible task, but I'm aware of nowhere in the European Union and few countries in the -- what we're pleased to call the more advanced economies where this is an impossible task. The school just pays for a license from a collecting society and goes ahead with no further administration. In my home country, United Kingdom, the collecting societies are working successfully on streamlining the system of licensing and making it more efficient in time and cash. Personally, I do recognize that some categories of textbooks are overpriced...(Speaker went over time and was asked to stop).

International Authors Federation:

Thank you very much. As this is the first time the International Office Forum has taken the floor this session, we'd like to congratulate you, Chair, and your vice chairs on your election and thank the Secretariat on their work. The international authors forum represents authors from the text, screenwriting, and visual arts sectors and their interests in copyright, as members of 60 organizations representing well over 600,000 authors worldwide. In ran increasingly homogenized world, cultural diversity is important, authors maintain that in digital arts, literatures, language, and music. It is the authors works being considered in the proposals being discussed at WIPO. There are individual authors whose rights are involved in all countries. Those rights must be given primary consideration. They need fair remuneration if they are to continue the work everybody wants access to. Without payment, they will not be able to continue to create. The diversity and quality of content will suffer and the quantity of works produce produced will be limited. We believe that there are already international copyright provisions in place that work well to enable the development of licensing frameworks, which enable access, including cross-border access provision through educational institutions and ensure fair payment. Authors believe that these existing provisions contain sufficient flexibility for countries represented at WIPO to continue to work towards national solutions, such as licensing frameworks, which can be developed according to local needs. Thank you for your time.

Corporacion Innovarte:

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The study of exceptions for educational limitations in current legislation shows that there is a fragmentation, that it's not appropriate to the countries, and very often this is an insolvable problem for international and learning cooperation in the area of communication. In order to overcome these, we think it's ins dispensable to have an international agreement which will enable us to have a minimum of common exceptions and limitations which will make it possible to have compatible roles for cross-border use of educational resources. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Programme on Information Justice and IP:

Thank you, Chair. You and I are from countries that have educational exceptions that are open to the use of any work, for any education related activity or purpose, and by any user — subject to a fairness test that takes into account the rights of authors and rights holders. This openness in the exceptions environment enables innovations that promote access to learning materials, including through new technologies and over the internet. Tomorrow at a side meeting over lunch, Communia and American University will be presenting the outcomes of different research projects that examine the operation of user rights in practice. That research shows that wealthy countries are developing openness in these factors much more quickly and thoroughly than poorer countries currently. But the research also shows that this is not a developing country problem alone. Many wealthy countries as well lack exceptions that allow such basic practices as showing a movie, streaming a video or performing a play in a classroom setting. These problems are compounded when we deliver educational products across borders through distance learning. A lack of harmonization on these issues will produce a race to the bottom where teachers like myself are forced to not deliver the best materials possible for our students because of the lack of rights to do so in some countries.I would encourage the process going forward to focus on the value of educational exceptions that
cover all:

Works,
Apply to all users, and that
Extend to a full range of activities

Thank you.

Note: Source of the statement texts are WIPO's realtime transcription service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-observer-statements-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-educational-and-research-institutions-and-persons-with-other-disabilities

29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching, Research Institutions and Persons with Disabilities

nehaa — 2014-12-20T13:40:19Z

At the 29th session of WIPO's SCCR, the Chair, Martin Moscoso, requested NGOs to send in their statements on limitations and exceptions for education, teaching, research institutions and persons with disabilities in writing, to be placed on the record. Nehaa Chaudhari, on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) sent in this written statement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As we have always maintained in the past sessions of this Committee, the Centre for Internet and Society strongly believes that everyone, regardless of borders and barriers, either physical, or those created by time, distance and costs should have access to knowledge and education.

To that end, we strongly support the proposal made by India, earlier, on continuing constructive work in this area. We also welcome the suggestion by the Indian delegation on a synthesis of these issues (facilitated by an expert, through the Chair), so that we can have a constructive discussion on these issues.

Mr. Chair, we are very mindful of the fact that there exists a very real, very demonstrable need for limitations and exceptions for education, teaching and research institutions and also for the benefit of persons with disabilities. There is also an equally crucial need to ensure that these limitations and exceptions are open ended and are appropriate for the digital environment; a conversation we believe that is imperative for Member Nations to take forward, definitely more so than one around granting a 'para-copyright' for organizations that already enjoy a great deal of protection under existing treaties, and are far less vulnerable than beneficiaries of these limitations and exceptions.

We thank the United States of America for their document- SCCR/27/8 on the Objectives and Principles for Exceptions and Limitations for Educational, Teaching and Research Institutions. We appreciate the recognition of the copyright system in the dissemination of works of authorship as well as the critical role that it plays in the promotion of educational, teaching and research objectives. We also appreciate the acknowledgement of a balance of rights and exceptions and limitations sustaining the role and activities of educational, teaching and research institutions.

However, we do believe that for a true balance to be achieved between rights and limitations and exceptions, the rights of the users of copyrighted works for the purposes of access to knowledge will have to be treated on par with those of the rights holders themselves. We believe that for this to be possible, measures will have to be taken to ensure international interoperability of limitations and exceptions and international standards suitable to address emerging and present issues of the digital environment will have to be developed. As we have submitted before this Committee earlier, it is our belief that the present international legal framework does not sufficiently address the opportunities presented by these information and communication technologies. Mr. Chair, we reiterate the need for open ended exceptions and limitations in this area, that will facilitate a cross border exchange of books and other learning material.

As a first step towards this end, we urge Member States to collaborate on and engage in substantive discussions building on existing Working Documents presently before this Committee. We look forward to an engaging discussion and providing all our complete support as we move forward on this very important agenda item.

Thank you, Mister Chair.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-statement-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-education-teaching-research-institutions-and-persons-with-disabilities