Centre for Internet and Society

Quarter Life Crisis: The World Wide Web turns 25 this year

nishant — 2016-09-16T13:25:38Z

With the unexplained ban on websites, the state seems to have stopped caring for the digital rights of its citizens.

The article was published in the Indian Express on September 3, 2016.

The World Wide Web turned 25 this year. A quarter of a century ago, the first website went live, and since then, the world as we know it has changed. The internet is probably the fastest way a new technology has become old. There are generations who have never known the world without it being connected. And yet, it is safe to say that if put into a corner, most of us might have a tough time trying to exactly describe what the World Wide Web is, and how it operates. Like many massification technologies, the internet has quickly evolved from being the playground for geeks to tinker with and build digital networks, into a blackbox that we access through our seductively designed interfaces.

At a technological level, the internet was a standardisation protocol that allowed for distributed databases on remote computers to interact with each other using digital connections. At the heart of the internet was the impulse to share, and to share safely, new information that would lead to collaborative knowledge production and stronger network communities. The World Wide Web saw this potential of sharing information quickly as one of the most promising aspects of human futures. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in his first vision of the WWW, had proposed that the capacity to share information, without loss of quality, would create new societies of equality and equity. In this vision, the website was a way of sharing information, expression, political desire, personal longing and social ideas, thus creating connected societies that would be able to consolidate the sum total of all human experience.

That historical moment of the technological architecture and the ideological articulation of the internet and the WWW are critical because as the internet has become increasingly privatised, with intermediaries, Internet Service Providers, and content producers claiming more and more of the digital turf, we have seen continued attack on the principles of sharing. We have, in the last few years, seen draconian crackdowns on people sharing their political views on social media, arresting young people for their political dissent online. We have witnessed the emergence of paywalls that close down content, criminalising students trying to access new knowledge towards their education. We have seen the policing of online creative spaces, monitoring users who engage in cultural production, forcing them into repressive intellectual property regimes that they do not necessarily want.

Most of these attacks on sharing have been fuelled by private companies who see the economic benefits of creating media monopolies out of the internet. These attacks have been particularly vicious because they also recognise the potentials of digital connectivity to completely disrupt the extraordinary powers of crowds who can co-create the biggest encyclopaedia in the word and undermine the corporatisation of cultural objects. And yet, in the interest of profits, there has been persistent lobbying from the private owners of the public goods of the internet, to crack down on sharing and access through legal punishment.

Like many developing countries, India has been resisting the enforcing of Intellectual Property Rights promoted by private lobbyists. In doing so, it recognises that emerging geographies need more open, universal and affordable access to information and that the true potential of digitisation lies in the capacity of the web to enable unfettered access to knowledge and cultural artefacts. Despite pressure from global lobbies, the Indian state has continued to emphasise that access for public good overrides the interest of private right holders, and has favoured the digital user’s right to access material which they might not always have the economic rights for. Some scholars say that this is where the state emphasises that the moral rights of access to information supersede the legal rights that close the possibilities of access.

Or at least, the Indian state recognised the need of its still-being-connected population to have free access till recently. With the new law that enforces a block on torrent and file sharing sites, warnings of punitive action, and an unexplained ban on websites that most users have been using for knowledge and cultural products, the state seems to have buckled under private lobbying and also stopped caring for the rights of its citizens. There will always be a split vote when it comes to figuring out the pros and cons of piracy, and it is important to recognise the right of the cultural and knowledge producer to protect their economic interests. The debates have been interesting because it was difficult to take sides and required a balancing act of negotiation between different parties.

However, with this new intervention, the Indian government seems to have taken sides, and made up its mind, that for the future of Digital India, it is going to favour the corporation, the company, the private profit making entity over the individual, the collective, and the public that sought to access information through the fundamental principle of the digital web — sharing.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-september-3-2016-nishant-shah-quarter-life-crisis-the-world-wide-web-turns-25-this-year

Q&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)

subbiah — 2023-11-01T12:41:47Z

Amrit Dhir, a 1L at Harvard Law School, has been working with the Harvard Law School Library on open access activities. He recently had an opportunity to interview Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The interview was published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on May 5, 2011.

Thanks to the HLS Library for permitting us to share this Q&A!

Amrit Dhir: What is your association with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)?

Subbiah Arunachalam: I am one of the founding members of the Board of the Centre for Internet and Society. Mr Sunil Abraham invited me to join and I agreed as I found the group to be a talented bunch of people much younger to me and interested in questions, the answers to which would be of interest to me.

AD: What has been your involvement with the Open Access (OA) movement for the past ten years?

SA: For the past ten years, I have been literally breathing OA! I always believed that knowledge should be free and open, but my formal engagement with OA began in 2000. That was the year when Eugene Garfield, the well-known information scientist, turned 75. He has been a great influence in my life and so I wanted to celebrate his 75th birthday with a conference. Gene had written hundreds of essays and he had put all of them together in fifteen volumes (Essays of an Information Scientist). What is more, long before the formal movement for OA began, Gene had put all his essays - in fact, all his writings - up on the University of Pennsylvania website.

For the conference, I invited another friend of mine, Alan Gilchrist, Editor of Journal of Information Science, and a world leader in advancing knowledge about thesauri. For the second speaker I invited Stevan Harnad, as I had read his article on scholarly skywriting (which was included in Garfield's Essays). I was working as a volunteer at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation whose main thrust was development, but my chairman Prof. M. S. Swaminathan helped me raise some funds. From then on I started dividing my time between development and promoting OA in India and the developing world. My prior experience as editor and publisher of science journals (at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Academy of Sciences) was a great help. For one thing, I knew a large number of scientists and academics. For another, as I had no big official position I was free to make statements freely. And I took advantage of both.

In 2001, I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to convene a meeting of editors of Indian S&T journals and convince them of the advantage of their journals going electronic. About 50 editors were trained in two three-day workshops. One of them, Dr. D. K. Sahu is today the world's leading OA publisher who neither charges the authors nor the readers [http://www.medknow.com].

In 2005, the Open Society Institute (OSI) invited me to Toronto to plan a conference. I had proposed to bring scientists from India, Brazil and China and to promote OA in these three countries. I believed then, and continue to believe now, that if OA takes roots in these three countries then it would be easy to promote it in the rest of the developing world. The conference itself was held at the Indian Institute of Science in November 2006, with support from OSI and the Indian Academy of Sciences. It was at this conference, with the help of Barbara Kirsop and Alma Swan, that we produced the Bangalore Declaration, which could be used by governments and funding agencies in developing countries to mandate OA.

In January 2006, I organized a full session on OA as part of the Annual Science Congress held at Hyderabad. In 2008, I spoke to Prof. Samir Brahmachari, Director General of CSIR and convinced him of the need to adopt OA. He accepted the idea immediately and opened up all the sixteen journals published by CSIR's publishing arm, NISCAIR. I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to set up a repository for all papers by all Fellows and currently the repository is getting ready and I expect it to be available online in July or August. The Academy took nearly four years, but I am glad it is finally happening.

I have groomed a number of young people to take up OA advocacy and implementation. In particular, Muthu Madhan (now at ICRISAT) has done well. He has helped six institutions set up their repositories. I took him along with me (CIS funded his trip) to the International Conference on Repositories in Amsterdam jointly organized by JISC, SURF and UKOLN in 2009.

I have written about OA both on my own and in coauthorship with Peter Suber, Barbara Kirsop and Leslie Chan. I have given interviews to key outlets and spoken at many national and international conferences including two A2K conferences organized by Yale University, several Berlin conferences, and the ICSU-UNESCO conference where I was one of two keynote speakers.

AD: What is the potential of OA, and what makes it unique to India?

SA: OA has tremendous potential not only to India, but to the world as a whole. But its value to developing countries is much greater than to advanced countries, because the serials crisis and the access to knowledge problems are felt far more acutely in developing countries. Currently higher education and R&D (Research and Development) are in an unprecedented expansion phase and therefore we would need huge investments to meet information needs if only traditional methods of access were available to us. As large publishing corporations are raising subscription costs year after year at an unacceptably high rate, Indian researchers and students would benefit if more and more scientists in the West were to make their work OA.

There is nothing unique about OA in India. Whatever applies to India applies to the larger developing countries (China and Brazil, South Africa). That is why I believe these four countries should work together in promoting OA.

AD: What do you see as the future of the OA movement in India?

SA: As far as India is concerned, currently, a higher proportion of Indian work (12.5%) appears in OA journals than the world average (estimated to be between 8.5 and 10%). The two major Academies and CSIR in favor of OA. I and others are trying to persuade other funding agencies and research councils to adopt OA. It is a question of time before OA becomes accepted by at least some of the leading institutions. There are about 40 active repositories, but the number has started increasing.

AD: What are the impediments to realizing that future? Are there any legal concerns or legal obstacles that you anticipate approaching?

SA: There are no impediments. At least I do not see any. You may then ask why the progress is slow. It is largely because of author inertia and general ignorance. Yes, ignorance. Not many scientists really know about what is possible and what is not possible with regard to depositing their papers in a repository. They are needlessly afraid of copyright infringements. Thus all the 'impediments' are imaginary!

When it comes to journals, it is easy. We publish the journals and we decide if we want to be closed or open. MedKnow publishes 150 journals, of which 148 are open. All 11 journals of the Indian Academy are open. Even when they entered into an agreement with Springer [Publishing], they retained the right to keep all of them open on their site!

AD: How would you compare the institutional openness of India and the US to the potential and needs of OA?

SA: I have already explained why I believe OA is far more important to developing countries. But even in the West, the serials crisis is forcing librarians to adopt OA. In the West, prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, NIH, Wellcome Trust, RCUK (Research Councils UK), have adopted OA and that has made a big difference. Now the US Congress is considering the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act). Eventually, all institutions will have to adopt OA.

There is one advantage of institutions in the developing countries adopting OA that may be missed by many. Often research done in the South in problems like SARS, tsunami, HIV/AIDS, climate change will be of global relevance. These issues do not know any national boundaries.

AD: You have spoken of a social mission and a human-rights-based justification for supporting greater OA, particularly with regard to the hard sciences and scientific research. What is the relationship between justice and OA, both on an international scale and as it relates to India more specifically?

SA: A very good question. When Kofi Annan was heading the United Nations, it came up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). On top of the list was poverty alleviation. What use is all the science that we do if fellow human beings are unable to even buy food and keep dying of hunger and malnutrition? This is the basis for the argument on opening up of scientific knowledge as an issue of justice. In India, the government has invested millions on R&D in atomic energy, space science, new biology and biotechnology and so on, and yet more than 60 years after we had became a Republic, poverty is rampant, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing and both the number of billionaires and the number of people below the poverty line are increasing every year. All our science and technology have not ensured basic necessities for the poor. We do not use what we know, and what we know is not known widely.

In an excellent article “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector” in 22 Quarterly Journal of Economics 879 (2007), Robert Jensen of Harvard's Kennedy School used the example of how the introduction of mobile phones in coastal areas of Kerala opened up information and brought many benefits to the community as a whole and not just to fishing families.

There is another angle to the urgent need to reduce poverty, viz. the security angle. Two years ago, I was invited to write a short essay on information and livelihood and I began my essay with these words: "We live in a divided world where far too many people live in abject poverty. To help these people get out of poverty is good for the world as a whole, for great disparities in wealth will lead to violence and terrorism and no one can live in peace and harmony."

There is yet another issue. This is related to drugs and pharmaceuticals. Many pharma companies do not want to bring to market products from their latest research because the previous products are still doing well. Profit is the motive, and it trumps public good. Also, Western pharma companies send out scouts to the old world and learn from local wisdom the medicinal value of plants and herbs and take advantage but without sharing the profits with the local people. A clear case of the North exploiting the knowledge of the South. And yet their own drugs are all under patent protection!

AD: Some see Indian civil society and even Indian government insisting on greater transparency and access to information, with such movements as the one behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act as an example. Are you optimistic about such efforts at governmental and legal reform? And, how does it relate to your work and the broader objectives you advocate?

SA: About two years ago, the Department of Biotechnology entered into a partnership with the Wellcome Trust. The was born with a view to providing generous fellowships to scientists at three stages of their careers. One of the features was that all papers published by these Fellows have to be OA. The Minister for science and technology (Mr Kapil Sibal at that time) announced this proudly. I wrote him that he should also make OA all papers by scientists receiving grants from DBT, but he did not bother to reply. There is a lot of political doublespeak. I also wrote to Members of Parliament belonging to all the major parties suggesting that they consider legislation similar to the one which brought OA to all NIH-funded research in the US. No one replied. The RTI Act and the recent happenings on the corruption front (the government yielding to the request of Gandhian Anna Hazare) are indeed very good. And I believe one day the need for OA will be recognized as important and worthy of legal status. But one may also achieve a lot through bottom-up approaches by talking to individual institutions, universities and scientists.

I am not losing hope. I will keep making my requests until OA is accepted as the norm.

AD: How would you call upon American universities and institutes to act or reform in light of the OA measures you advocate?

SA: The larger the number of American universities, research institutions and funding agencies adopting OA, the better it would be for us, as we would have more papers in the open domain. More than that, we could cite their example and convince Indian institutions to adopt OA.

Read the original interview published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T11:16:06Z

Sunil Abraham is quoted. He said that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

This post originally appeared on the Open Data Research Network and has been republished with permission from the author. For the republished post on OGP website, see here.

The plenary room of Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center was jam-packed at 845 in the morning, with representatives from different countries in the Asia-Pacific region and all over the globe joining the first regional conference on open data hosted by the Government of Indonesia. The conference stage backdrop depicts a million colourful cranes moving in one direction towards the OGP logo, perhaps signalling an unprecedented wave of aspirations, commitments, plans, and actions towards a more ‘open’ governance within the region. Then a few minutes later, President Yudhoyono arrived and the two-day gathering (6-7 May 2014) of roughly 500 people started.

The program was impressive. It tried to cater to the different voices of what ideally should make an open government community – government leaders, journalists, right-to-information activists, business representatives, academia, researchers, civil-society groups, funding agencies, programmers, among others. The over-arching theme of the conference “Unlocking Innovative Openness: Impetus to Greater Citizen Engagement” speaks to both the supply side and the demand side of open data where governments can make openness more innovative to which citizens can proactively engage. The people in attendance reflected this multi-dimensionality and the kind of discussions on open governance that happened in Day 1 reflects the several, differentiated, yet somehow united view and interests of the many people that were there.

The first day of the conference brings me to four main realisations, prompted by the excellent presentations of the speakers and the lively discussion at the break-out session that I attended.

Openness is not an option but an imperative. Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathanaof India, and considered one of the most influential thinkers of this decade put it more vividly using her organization’s slogan – “right to know, right to live”. While bureaucrats, like Minister Francis Maude of the UK argued that openness improve transparency, enhance public service, and stimulate growth, civil society groups claimed that openness is not something the government can do, but must do, to benefit right holders by ensuring that they are not only aware of what the government is doing but by ensuring that government leaders, to whom citizens entrust sovereignty, execute the will of the governed.
Open governance is about relations, about people, not just about technology, transparency, or data provision. Ms. Nwe Zin Win, of Myanmar National NGOs Network emphasized that as Myanmar moves towards Open Government Partnership (OGP) membership, the process should create a space for civil society groups to proactively participate. In his remarks, Director General Yoon Soon-Gu of the Republic of Korea emphasized that when his government embarked on the process of crafting Gov 3.0 as a development agenda, with the end-goal of making Koreans live a happy life, citizen consultations were conducted all across government to ensure that this plan is responsive and relevant and reflects the people’s aspirations. Anne Jellema, CEO of World Wide Web Foundation highlighted the fact that open governance is not only good for vertical accountability (government-governed) but also about horizontal accountability (agencies within the same government) and ensures that systems are working with government – judiciary, legislative, audit, executing agencies – for the common good. Open governance then, is about building that relationship of trust between government and citizens, between business and government, and between agencies in the government.
Open government has many challenges, but these are not insurmountable. Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism emphasized five “I”s in her plenary speech that she said are the main challenges to the open government story in the Philippines and in the region – implementation, inclusiveness, information, institutionalisation, and interconnectedness. In the area of inclusiveness, one of the challenges is on how to ensure that people can participate in a context when there is a large digital divide, where internet penetration is low, and broadband speed is slow to a crawl. Mr. Samadhi of the Government of Indonesia emphasized that there are many examples in his country where government information is translated to accessible formats by infomediaries so that citizens without internet connection became aware, informed, and knowledgeable. In one of the coffee breaks, Redempto Parafina of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific shared to me that non-government organizations, concerned individuals, and universities translate information in the CheckmySchool portal to information materials for distribution and use by communities without internet.
Open governance narrative should focus on making governments more responsive and accountable. President Yudhoyono uses Facebook and Twitter, apart from the traditional media as text and snail mail, to listen to the demands of his constituents. The Government of New Zealand, according to Minister Peter Dunne, sets goals on basic public services as health, education, and employment and demands regular public reporting on these goals; reports that can be accessed and challenged by the people to whom the services are intended. Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society argued that open governance should not veer away from this narrative. He made an example regarding India’s Unique Identification System, where the implementation is couched within the open data narrative. He believed that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

It was a productive day. I am thankful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend the conference. One message that profoundly affected me was Aruna Roy’s exhortation at the end of her presentation – that we should make truth powerful, and that we should make power truthful.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-government-partnership-michael-canares-may-6-2014-pushing-the-boundaries-in-open-governance

Publishing Next

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T07:50:28Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at Publishing Next organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing, a Margao (Goa)-based publishing house that provides publishing services to authors and publishers. The event was held in Goa on September 19 and 20.

For speakers click here. Read the full description on Publishing Next website.

Schedule | publishing next

Schedule

For descriptions of each session, please view this page.

19th September 2014			20th September 2014
	Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)		Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)
09:00 – 10:00	Registration of attendees		09:30 – 10:00	Insight Talk by Klaus Willberg
10:00 – 10:20	Inauguration / Address		10:00 – 11:30	A Pulse on Publishing
10:20 – 11:00	Keynote Address		11:30 – 12:00	Tea
11:00 – 11:20	Tea		12:00 – 13:15	Worse Off Without Verse?	Physical Distribution in a Global World: 12.00-12.45
11:20 – 11:45	Presentation by Netex Knowledge Factory		13:15 – 14:00	Lunch
11:45 – 13:15	Publishing in Indian languages		14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by HP India
13:15 – 14:00	Lunch		14:20 – 15:20	The Art of the Book	Fiction/History/Research : 14:20 – 15:00
14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by NewsHunt		15:20 – 15:45	Q&A on ISBN Issues
14:20 – 15:45	Open Publishing, Copyright and Copyleft	Face to Face: Printers and Publishers: 14:20 – 16:15	15:45 – 16:15	Tea
15:45 – 16:15	Tea		16:15 – 16:30	Presentation by IppStar	Publishing Environments in Brazil and Sri Lanka: 16:15 – 17:00
16:15 – 17:30	The Business of Graphic Books	Publishing Translated Literature: 16:15-17:00	16:30 – 18:00	e-Publishing in India
17:30 – 19:00	Are There Enough Good Books for Children?	eBook Development and Distribution: 17.30-18.30	18.00 – Publishing Next Industry Awards Presentation Ceremony
20:30 – Networking Dinner at Hotel Sandalwood

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/publishing-next

Publication

praskrishna — 2016-11-05T12:30:14Z

Our major research outputs on Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, Telecom and Digital Natives can be downloaded by clicking on the links below.

Accessibility

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective

Published by G3ict and CIS in cooperation with the Hans Foundation
Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict
Download Web Accessibility Policy Making [PDF, 335 Kb]
Download the Daisy File

Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices

Published by G3ict and CIS in cooperation with the Hans Foundation
Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict
Download Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities
Download Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities [Daisy Format]

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities

Published in collaboration with G3ict and ITU and sponsored by the Hans Foundation

Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict

Download e-Accessibility Policy Handbook [PDF, 953 Kb]. Also available in Daisy Format and Braille
Download e-Accessibility Policy Handbook (Russian)

Access to Knowledge

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011 — India Report

IP Watchlist was published by Consumers International in response to the US Special 301 Report. India Report was prepared by Pranesh Prakash
Originally published on the A2K Network website
Download the India Report [PDF, 150 Kb]

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2009 — India Report

Openness

	Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Good Practices Handbook Published by LexUM (University of Montréal), SAFLII (The South African Legal Information Institute) and the Centre for Internet and Society with funding from IDRC as part of the “Free Access to Law – Is it Here to Stay?” research project launched in 2009. Download the Good Practices Handbook [PDF, 425 Kb]
	Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Environmental Scan Report Published by LexUM (University of Montréal), SAFLII (The South African Legal Information Institute) and the Centre for Internet and Society with funding from IDRC as part of the “Free Access to Law – Is it Here to Stay?” research project launched in 2009. Download the Environmental Scan Report [PDF, 860 Kb]
	Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Local Researcher's Methodology Guide Published by LexUM (University of Montréal), SAFLII (The South African Legal Information Institute) and the Centre for Internet and Society with funding from IDRC as part of the “Free Access to Law – Is it Here to Stay?” research project launched in 2009. Download the Local Researcher's Methodology Guide [PDF, 1.19 Mb]
	Open Government Data Study Published by CIS and the Transparency and Accountability Initiative Authored by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah Download Open Government Data Study [PDF, 1.03 Mb]
	The Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report Published by CIS, iCommons and the Open Video Alliance Authored by Siddharth Chadha, Benjamin Moskowitz and Pranesh Prakash Download Online Video Environment in India [PDF, 1.22 Mb]
	Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader Published by CIS and the Institute of Network Cultures Edited by Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz Download Critical Point of View [PDF,

Internet Governance

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet

Researched by Rishabh Dara
Published by CIS and Google India as part of the Google Policy Fellowship 2011 (Conducted for the first time in India and Asia Pacific).
Download Intermediary Liability in India [PDF, 406 Kb]

Telecom

	Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India Published by CIS and the Ford Foundation Authored by Satya N Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena Gyulkhandanyan Download the Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India [PDF, 519 Kb]
	Open Spectrum for Development India Case Study Authored by Shyam Ponappa as part of the APC’s project work on Spectrum for development Download the Open Spectrum for Development India Case Study [PDF, 280 Kb]

Digital Natives

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

A four-book collective (To Be, To Think, To Act, To Connect), published by Hivos and CIS
Edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen
Download the Four-volume Collective [PDF Files]

Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers

Published by Hivos and CIS
Edited by Nishant Shah, Josine Stremmelaar and Fieke Jansen
Download the Position Papers [PDF, 1173 Kb]

Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report

Published by Hivos and CIS
Authored by Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham
Download the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report [PDF, 647 Kb]

Researchers at Work

	Re:Wiring Bodies Monograph authored by Asha Achuthan Series Edited by Nishant Shah Section I (Attitudes to Technology) & Section II (Mapping Transitions) Download the Monograph [PDF, 2.58 Mb]
	Archive and Access Monograph authored by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto Series Edited by Nishant Shah Chapter I (Introduction), Chapter II (Land and the Unstable Document), Chapter III (History and the Region) and Chapter IV (In the Capital) Download the Monograph [PDF, 3.11 Mb]
	Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities Monograph authored by Pratyush Shankar Series Edited by Nishant Shah Chapter I (City, Technology & Cyber Space), Chapter II (The Idea of Space), Chapter III (The Imagination) and Chapter IV (The Transformation) Download the Monograph [PDF, 9.80 Mb]
	The Last Cultural Mile Monograph authored by Ashish Rajadhyaksha Series Edited by Nishant Shah Chapter I (Naming the Problem), Chapter II (Will-M-Miracle), Chapter III (The Television Revolution and the Bullet Theory), Chapter IV (The Education Miracle and the Device), Chapter V (The Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India Project) Download the Monograph [PDF, 4.8 MB]
	Porn, Law and Video Technology Monograph authored by Namita A Malhotra Introduction by Maya Ganesh Series Edited by Nishant Shah Chapter I (For They Know Not What They Do), Chapter II (Pornography: The Trials and Tribulations of the Indian Courts), Chapter III (Family Jewels and Public Secrets), Chapter IV (Film, Video and Body), Chapter V (Amateur Video Pornography), Chapter VI (Downloading the State), Chapter VII (Technology Beast) and Chapter VIII (Vignettes for the 'Next') Download the Monograph [PDF, 6.62 Mb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publication/publication

Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced

sinha — 2016-06-30T09:41:07Z

The first public draft of the open data license to be used by Government of India was released by the Department of Legal Affairs earlier this week. Comments are invited from general public and stakeholders. These are to be submitted via the MyGov portal by July 25, 2016. CIS was a member of the committee constituted to develop the license concerned, and we contributed substantially to the drafting process.

Please read the call for comments here.

The PDF version of the draft license document can be accessed here.

Comments are to be submitted by July 25, 2016.

Government Open Data Use License - India

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Government of India

1. Preamble

Structured data available in open format and open license for public access and use, usually termed as “Open Data,” is of prime importance in the contemporary world. Data also is one of the most valuable resources of modern governance, sharing of which enables various and non-exclusive usages for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Licenses, however, are crucial to ensure that such data is not misused or misinterpreted (for example, by insisting on proper attribution), and that all users have the same and permanent right to use the data.

The open government data initiative started in India with the notification of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), submitted to the Union Cabinet by the Department of Science and Technology, on 17th March 2012 [1]. The NDSAP identified the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) as the nodal department for the implementation of the policy through National Informatics Centre, while the Department of Science and Technology continues to be the nodal department on policy matters. In pursuance of the Policy, the Open Government Data Platform India [2] was launched in 2012.

While, the appropriate open formats and related aspects for implementation of the Policy has been defined in the “NDSAP Implementation Guidelines” prepared by an inter- ministerial Task Force constituted by the National Informatics Centre [3], the open license for data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD Platform remained unspecified till now.

2. Definitions

a. “Data” means a representation of Information, numerical compilations and observations, documents, facts, maps, images, charts, tables and figures, concepts in digital and/or analog form, and includes metadata [4], that is all information about data, and/or clarificatory notes provided by data provider(s), without which the data concerned cannot be interpreted or used [5].

b. “Information” means processed data [6].

c. “Data Provider(s)” means person(s) publishing and providing the data under this license.

d. “License” means this document.

e. “Licensor”means any data provider(s) that has the authority to offer the data concerned under the terms of this licence.

f. “User” means natural or legal persons, or body of persons corporate or incorporate, acquiring rights in the data (whether the data is obtained directly from the licensor or otherwise) under this licence.

g. “Use” includes lawful distribution, making copies, adaptation, and all modification and representation of the data, subject to the provisions of this License.

h. “Adapt” means to transform, build upon, or to make any use of the data by itsre-arrangement or alteration [7].

i. “Redistribute” means sharing of the data by the user, either in original or in adapted form (including a subset of the original data), accompanied by appropriate attribute statement, under the same or other suitable license.

j. “Attribution Statement” means a standard notice to be published by all users of data published under this license, that contains the details of the provider, source, and license of the data concerned [8].

k. “Personal Information” means any Information that relates to a natural person,which, either directly or indirectly, in combination with other Information available or likely to be available with a body corporate, is capable of identifying such person [9].

3. Permissible Use of Data

Subject to the conditions listed under section 7, the user may:

a. Access, use, adapt, and redistribute data published under this license for all lawful and non-exclusive purposes, without payment of any royalty or fee;

b. Apply this license worldwide, and in perpetuity;

c. Access, study, copy, share, adapt, publish, redistribute and transmit the data in any medium or format; and

d. Use, adapt, and redistribute the data, either in itself, or by combining it with other data, or by including it within a product/application/service, for all commercial and/or non-commercial purposes.

4. Terms and Conditions of Use of Data

a. Attribution: The user must acknowledge the provider, source, and license of data by explicitly publishing the attribution statement, including the DOI (Digital Object Identifier), or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) of the data concerned.

b. Attribution of Multiple Data: If the user is using multiple data together and/or listing of sources of multiple data is not possible, the user may provide a link to a separate page/list that includes the attribution statements and specific URL/URI of all data used.

c. Non-endorsement: The User must not indicate or suggest in any manner that the data provider(s) endorses their use and/or the user.

d. No Warranty: The data provider(s) are not liable for any errors or omissions, and will not under any circumstances be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or other loss, injury or damage caused by its use or otherwise arising in connection with this license or the data, even if specifically advised of the possibility of such loss, injury or damage. Under any circumstances, the user may not hold the data provider(s) responsible for: i) any error, omission or loss of data, and/or ii) any undesirable consequences due to the use of the data as part of an application/product/service (including violation of any prevalent law).

e. Permanent Disclosure and Versioning: The data provider(s) will ensure that a data package once published under this license will always remain publicly available for reference and use. If an already published data is updated by the provider, then the earlier appropriate version(s) must also be kept publicly available with accordance with the archival policy of the National Informatics Centre.

f. Continuity of Provision:The data provider(s) will strive for continuously updating the data concerned, as new data regarding the same becomes available. However, the data provider(s) do not guarantee the continued supply of updated or up-to-date versions of the data, and will not be held liable in case the continued supply of updated data is not provided.

5. Template for Attribution Statement

Unless the user is citing the data using an internationally accepted data citation format [10], an attribution notice in the following format must be explicitly included:

“Data has been published by [Name of Data Provider] and sourced from Open Government Data (OGD) Platform of India: [Name of Data]. ([date of Publication: dd/mm/yyyy]) .[DOI / URL / URI]. Published under Open Government Data License - India: [URL of Open Data License – India].”

For example, “Data has been published by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and sourced from Open Government Data (OGD) Platform of India: Overall Balance of Payments. (08/09/2015). https://data.gov.in/catalog/overall-balance-payments. Published under Open Government Data License - India: [URL of Open Data License - India].”

6. Exemptions

The license does not grant the right to access, use, adapt, and redistribute the following kinds of data:

a. Personal information;

b. Data that the data provider(s) is not authorised to licence;

c. Names, crests, logos and other official symbols of the data provider(s);

d. Data subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade-marks and official marks;

e. Military insignia;

f. Identity documents; and

g. Any data publication of which may violate section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 11.

7. Termination

a. Failure to comply with stipulated terms and conditions will cause the user’s rights under this license to end automatically.

b. Where the user’s rights to use data have terminated under the aforementioned clauses or any other Indian law, it reinstates:

i. automatically, as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of the discovery of the violation; or

ii. upon express reinstatement by the Licensor.

c. For avoidance of doubt, this section does not affect any rights the licensor may have to seek remedies for violation of this license.

8. Dispute Redressal Mechanism

This license is governed by Indian law, and the copyright of any data shared under this license vests with the licensor, under the Indian Copyright Act.

9. Endnotes

[1] Ministry of Science and Technology. 2012. National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) 2012. Gazette of India. March 17. http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP.pdf.

[2] See: https://data.gov.in/.

[3] See section 3.2 of the Implementation Guidelines for National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) Version 2.2. https://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP_Implementation_Guidelines_2.2.pdf.

[4] See section 2.1 of NDSAP 2012.

[5] See section 2.6 of NDSAP 2012.

[6] See section 2.7 of NDSAP 2012.

[7] See section 2 (a) of Indian Copyright Act 1957. http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1957.pdf.

[8] The template of the attribution statement is given in section 5 of the license.

[9] See section 2 (i) of Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011. http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511%281%29.pdf.

[10]For example, those listed in the DOI Citation Formatter tool developed by DataCite, CrossRef and others: http://crosscite.org/citeproc/.

[11] See: http://rti.gov.in/webactrti.htm.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/public-consultation-for-the-first-draft-of-government-open-data-use-license-india-announced

Public Access to the Internet

admin — 2008-10-11T10:25:41Z

Paper by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam. The advent of the Internet brought with it hitherto unheard of possibilities for human creativity, information access, and global communication. When did these possibilities actually translate into widespread public access to the Internet? It is difficult to specify a date, but possible to identify a few key developments and the key actors behind those developments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Public-access-to-the-internet.pdf

Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps

Hitabhilash Mohanty and Edited by Leilah Elmokadem — 2016-12-15T14:18:43Z

The term “Fintech” refers to technology-based businesses that compete against, enable and/or collaborate with financial institutions. The year 2015 was a critical year for the Indian fintech industry, which saw the rise of numerous fintech start-ups, incubators and investments from the public and private sector.

According to NASSCOM, the Indian fintech market is worth an estimated USD 1.2 billion, and is predicted to reach USD 2.4 billion by 2020.[1] The services brought forth by Fintech, such as digital wallets, lending, and insurance, have transformed the ways in which businesses and institutions execute dayto-day transactions. The rise of fintech in India has rendered the nation’s market a point of attraction for global investment.[2] Fintech in India is perceived both as a catalyst for economic growth and innovation, as well as a means of financial inclusion for the millions of unbanked individuals and businesses. The government of India, along with regulators such as SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) and RBI (Reserve Bank India), has consistently supported the digitalization of the nation’s economy and the formation of a strong fintech ecosystem through funding and promotional initiatives.[3]

The RBI has been pivotal in enabling the development of India’s fintech sector and adopting a cautious approach in addressing concerns around consumer protection and law enforcement. Its key objective as a regulator has been to create an environment for unimpeded innovations by fintech, expanding the reach of banking services for unbanked populations, regulating an efficient electronic payment system and providing alternative options for consumers. The RBI’s prime focus areas for enabling fintech have been around payment, lending, security/biometrics and wealth management. For example, the RBI has introduced “Unified Payment Interface” with the NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India), which has been critical in revolutionizing digital payments and pushing India closer to the objective of a cash-less society. It has also released a consultation paper on regulating Peer 2 Peer (P2P) lending market in India, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of regulating the sector.[4]

The consultation paper offers a definition of P2P lending as well as a general explanation of the activity and the digital platforms that facilitate transactions between lenders and borrowers. It also provides a set of arguments for and against regulating P2P lending. The arguments against regulating the sector mainly pertain to the risk of stifling the growth of an innovative, efficient and accessible avenue for borrowers who either lack access to formal financial channels or are denied loans by them.[5]

This is the general consensus around the positive impact of the Fintech sector in India: its facilitation of financial inclusion and economic opportunity. However, the paper lists many more arguments for regulation than against. One of the main points made is with regards to P2P lending’s potential to disrupt the financial sector by challenging traditional banking channels. There is also the argument that, if properly regulated, the P2P lending platforms can more efficiently and effectively exercise their potential of promoting alternative forms of finance.[6]

The paper concludes that the balance of advantage would lie in developing an appropriate regulatory and supervisory toolkit that facilitates the orderly growth of the P2P lending sector in order to harness its ability to provide an alternative avenue for credit for the right borrowers[7]

The RBI’s regulatory framework for P2P lending platforms encompasses the permitted activity, prudential regulations on capital, governance, business continuity plan (BCP) and customer interface, apart from regulatory reporting.[8]

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is also a prominent regulator of the Indian fintech sector. They issued a consultation paper on “crowdfunding”, which is defined as the solicitation of funds (small amounts) from multiple investors through a web-based platform or social networking site for a specific project, business venture or social cause. P2P lending is then a form of crowdfunding, which can be understood as an umbrella term that covers fintech lending practices. SEBI’s paper aimed to provide a brief overview of the global scenario of crowdfunding including the various prevalent models under it, the associated benefits and risks, the regulatory approaches in different jurisdictions, etc. It also discusses the legal and regulatory challenges in implementing the framework for crowdfunding. The paper proposes a framework for ushering in crowdfunding by giving access to capital markets to provide an additional channel of early stage funding to Start-ups and SME’s and seeks to balance the same with investor protection.[9] Unlike RBI’s consultation paper on P2P lending, SEBI’s paper on crowdfunding was intended mainly to invite discussion and not necessarily to implement a framework for regulation.

Some of the benefits cited in SEBI’s crowdfunding paper pertain to the commonly mentioned advantages of fintech: economic opportunity for the SME sector and start-ups, alternative lending systems to keep SMEs alive when traditional banks crash, new investment avenues for the local economy and increased competition in the financial sector.[10]

The paper also lists a set of risks that suggest the need for a regulatory framework for crowdfunding. For example, it mentions the “substitution of institutional risk by retail risk”, meaning that individual lenders, who’s risk tolerance may be low, bear the risk of low/no return investors when they lend to SMEs without adequate assessment of credit worthiness. Also, there is the risk that the digital platform that facilitates lending and issues all the transactions, may not conduct proper due diligence. If the platform is temporarily shut down or closed permanently, no recourse is available to the investors.[11]

The SEBI paper mentions a long list of other risks associated with crowdfunding, mostly associated with systemic failures, loan defaults, fraud practices, and information asymmetry. Information asymmetry refers partially to the chance that lending decisions are made based on incomplete data sets that are based on social networking platforms. There is a lack of transparency and reporting obligations in issuers including with respect to the use of funds raised.[12]

Similar to the RBI consultation paper, SEBI makes a decent effort to weigh the costs and benefits of crowdfunding practices but only does this from an economic/financial perspective. Most of the cited risks, benefits and concerns tend to overlook information security and risks of privacy breaches of the implicated borrowers.

India Stack is a paperless and cashless service delivery system that has been supported by the Indian government as part of the fintech sector. It is a new technology paradigm that is designed to handle massive data inflows, and is poised to enable entrepreneurs, citizens and governments to interact with one another transparently. It is intended to be an open system to electronically verify businesses, people and services. It allows the smartphone to become the delivery platform for services such as digital payments, identification and digital lockers. The vision of India Stack is to shift India towards a paperless economy.[13]

The central government, based on its experience with the Aadhaar project, decided to launch the opendata initiative in 2012 supported by an open API policy, which would pave the way for private technology solutions to build services on top of Aadhaar and to make India a digital cash economy. Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which will make mobile payments card-less and completely digital, allows consumers to transact directly through their bank account with a unique UPI identity that syncs to Aadhaar’s verification and connects to the merchant, the settlement and the issuing bank to close transactions.[14]

It is suspected that India Stack will shift in business models in banking from low-volume, high-value, high-cost and high fees to high-volume, low-value, low cost and no fees. This well lead to a drastic increase in accessibility and affordability, and the market force of consumer acquisition and the social purpose of mass inclusion will converge.[15]

India Stack serves as an example of how the Government of India has supported initiatives that would promote the fintech sector while facilitating economic growth and financial opportunity for unbanked individuals. However, there is continuous discussion around India Stack’s attachment to the Aadhaar system, which can lead to the exclusion of unregistered individuals from the benefits that would otherwise be reaped from the open-data initiative. It can also result in many privacy and security breaches when records of individuals’ daily transactions are attached to their Aadhaar numbers, which carry their biometric information and is linked to other personal data that is held by the government such as health records.

Download the Full Report

[1]. KPMG: https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2016/06/FinTech-new.pdf

[2]. Id.

[3]. Id.

[4]. Id.

[5]. RBI 2P2 Consultation Paper, https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/CPERR280416.pdf

[6]. Id.

[7]. Id.

[8]. Id.

[9]. SEBI Crowdfunding consultation paper, http://www.sebi.gov.in/cms/sebi_data/attachdocs/1403005615257.pdf

[10]. Id.

[11]. Id.

[12]. Id.

[13]. Krishna, https://yourstory.com/2016/07/india-stack/

[14]. Id.

[15]. Nilekani, http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-coming-revolution-in-indian-banking-2924534/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/protection-of-privacy-in-mobile-phone-apps

Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps

praskrishna — 2016-12-15T14:17:20Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/protection-of-privacy-in-mobile-phones.pdf

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

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

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

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

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

1. Traceability would undermine security, lead to surveillance

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

2. Data retention antithetical to privacy, must go

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

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

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

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

The proposed amendments to Intermediary Liability Rules

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

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

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

Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

gopala — 2019-06-10T15:29:58Z

To contribute to support, and coordinate of the work of the Project Tiger, we are looking for a creative, dedicated individual to join the team as a coordinator. Please note that women, especially those from socioeconomically marginalized communities, and women who are returning to work after a hiatus will be given preference.

Project Background

In India, Wikipedia exists in 23 Indian languages. All of these Wikipedias are in the early growth phase having a range of articles from few thousands to 100,000+ articles. The typical size of an Indian language community is only to have around or less than 100 people making 5+ edits every month. While there are many social economic and technical reasons for the size and activity of the Indian language communities, learnings from successful projects in the past have demonstrated that we can provide specific interventions to support these communities.

Many active Indian language Wikipedia editors tend to contribute more actively when they are provided support for contributing equipment and internet expenses. This was evident from the success of the pilot program initiated by the Wikimedia India chapter. The recently launched hardware donation program also had a lot of interest from the Indian region.

Wikipedia communities usually show interest participating in contests and edit-a-thons. Well known examples are Wikipedia Asian Month, Punjab edit-a-thon, Women’s history month.

More than 80% edits of all Wikipedias are made by around 2% editors of the community. While many editing promotion activities aspire to attract new editors who are hard to retain, we can sustain more editing activity by empowering existing active editors.

Combining these insights, we propose to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages by launching this pilot program which will (a) support active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and (b) sponsor a language-based contest that aims to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

Responsibilities

The CIS-A2K team is primarily based in the Bangalore office of CIS, and the Project Tiger coordinator, henceforth PTC, will be expected to work out of the same office.

To support and drive outreach of the work being done by the CIS-A2K team, the PTC will be responsible includes but not limited to:

Supporting Project tiger related communication, documentation and coordination
Supporting Project Tiger Chromebook disbursal.
Supporting internet stipend distribution and reimbursement.
Supporting creation and updation of statistics.
Feedback collection and surveys.
Logistics coordination of offline events.

Characteristics of a coordinator

Accountability
Awareness and sensitivity regarding issues of gender and sexuality
Critical appreciation of open knowledge initiatives
Effective communication
Inclusive collaboration
Intellectual curiosity and openness
Respect for diversity
Strong cross-cultural competency

Ability to learn-at-work, especially about the Wikimedia ecosystem

Eligibility criteria

These are the eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

Graduate in any discipline
Fluent in English and excellent communication skills in English and working knowledge (or better) of at least one other Indian language

Technical

Basic understanding of functioning of Wikipedia, and ideally of other Wikimedia projects too

Location and Remuneration

The position is based out of the Bangalore office of CIS.

Monthly remuneration will be decided after selection. Expected monthly remuneration is around INR 28,000. As this is a consultant position, no other benefit is available

Application Process

We invite interested (and eligible) candidates to apply for the position before 10 June 2019 sending us the following documents to tito+ptc2019@cis-india.org (do not miss +ptc2019 part from the email id, it is a filter for us) with “Application for Project Tiger (Coordinator)” as the subject:

Cover letter (2 pages): This should introduce your relevant academic, professional, and other experiences, and describe the kind of work you look forward to do as part of the CIS-A2K team. We strongly recommend reading the Supporting Indian Language Wikipedia Project page[1] on Meta while writing this cover letter, as well as for preparation for the interview to follow (if you are shortlisted for interview).
CV: This should provide details of your academic, professional, and other achievements

Footnotes:

[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/project-tiger-2019-coordinator-position-open

Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

gopala — 2019-05-27T06:28:38Z

Project Background

Many active Indian language Wikipedia editors tend to contribute more actively when they are provided support for contributing equipment and internet expenses. This was evident from the success of the pilot program initiated by the Wikimedia India chapter. The recently launched hardware donation program also had a lot of interest from the Indian region.

Wikipedia communities usually show interest participating in contests and edit-a-thons. Well known examples are Wikipedia Asian Month, Punjab edit-a-thon, Women’s history month.

More than 80% edits of all Wikipedias are made by around 2% editors of the community. While many editing promotion activities aspire to attract new editors who are hard to retain, we can sustain more editing activity by empowering existing active editors.

Responsibilities

The CIS-A2K team is primarily based in the Bangalore office of CIS, and the Project Tiger coordinator, henceforth PTC, will be expected to work out of the same office.

To support and drive outreach of the work being done by the CIS-A2K team, the PTC will be responsible includes but not limited to:

Supporting Project tiger related communication, documentation and coordination
Supporting Project Tiger Chromebook disbursal.
Supporting internet stipend distribution and reimbursement.
Supporting creation and updation of statistics.
Feedback collection and surveys.
Logistics coordination of offline events.

Characteristics of a coordinator

Accountability
Awareness and sensitivity regarding issues of gender and sexuality
Critical appreciation of open knowledge initiatives
Effective communication
Inclusive collaboration
Intellectual curiosity and openness
Respect for diversity
Strong cross-cultural competency

Ability to learn-at-work, especially about the Wikimedia ecosystem

Eligibility criteria

These are the eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

Graduate in any discipline
Fluent in English and excellent communication skills in English and working knowledge (or better) of at least one other Indian language

Technical

Basic understanding of functioning of Wikipedia, and ideally of other Wikimedia projects too

Location and Remuneration

The position is based out of the Bangalore office of CIS.

Monthly remuneration will be decided after selection. Expected monthly remuneration is around INR 28,000. As this is a consultant position, no other benefit is available

Application Process

We invite interested (and eligible) candidates to apply for the position before 7 June 2019 sending us the following documents to tito+ptc2019@cis-india.org (do not miss +ptc2019 part from the email id, it is a filter for us) with “Application for Project Tiger (Coordinator)” as the subject:

Cover letter (2 pages): This should introduce your relevant academic, professional, and other experiences, and describe the kind of work you look forward to do as part of the CIS-A2K team. We strongly recommend reading the Supporting Indian Language Wikipedia Project page[1] on Meta while writing this cover letter, as well as for preparation for the interview to follow (if you are shortlisted for interview).
CV: This should provide details of your academic, professional, and other achievements

Footnotes:

[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/jobs/project-tiger-2019-co-ordinator-position-open

Programme Officer - Privacy

amber — 2019-04-15T06:53:44Z

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

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

Organisation Profile

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

Privacy Research at CIS

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

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

The Role

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

Qualifications and Skills

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

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

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

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

Programme Officer - Digital Identity

amber — 2019-03-29T11:02:42Z

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

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

Organisation Profile

About Digital Identity Project

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

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

The Role

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

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

Qualifications and Skills

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

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

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

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

Programme for Competition Law and Policy

Admin — 2019-07-04T16:20:52Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/programme-for-competition-law-and-policy

Centre for Internet and Society

Quarter Life Crisis: The World Wide Web turns 25 this year

Q&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

Publishing Next

Schedule

Publication

Accessibility

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective

Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities

Published in collaboration with G3ict and ITU and sponsored by the Hans Foundation

Access to Knowledge

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011 — India Report

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2009 — India Report

Openness

Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Good Practices Handbook

Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Environmental Scan Report

Free Access to Law Is it Here to Stay? Local Researcher's Methodology Guide

Open Government Data Study

The Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report

Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader

Internet Governance

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet

Telecom

Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India

Open Spectrum for Development India Case Study

Digital Natives

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers

Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report

Researchers at Work

Re:Wiring Bodies

Archive and Access

Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities

The Last Cultural Mile

Porn, Law and Video Technology

Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced

Please read the call for comments here.

The PDF version of the draft license document can be accessed here.

Comments are to be submitted by July 25, 2016.

Government Open Data Use License - India

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Government of India

1. Preamble

2. Definitions

3. Permissible Use of Data

4. Terms and Conditions of Use of Data

5. Template for Attribution Statement

6. Exemptions

7. Termination

8. Dispute Redressal Mechanism

9. Endnotes

Public Access to the Internet

Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps

Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps

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

The proposed amendments to Intermediary Liability Rules

Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

Project Background

Responsibilities

Characteristics of a coordinator

Eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

Technical

Location and Remuneration

Application Process

Footnotes:

Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

Project Background

Responsibilities

Characteristics of a coordinator

Eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

Technical

Location and Remuneration

Application Process

Footnotes:

Programme Officer - Privacy

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