Centre for Internet and Society

Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Annamacharya library to preserve rare Telugu literature text

rahim — 2016-06-18T18:12:24Z

Telugu Wikipedia Community and the Centre for Internet & Society are conducting the Annamaya Library edit-a-thon on August 6, 2015 at Andhra Loyola College, Vijaywada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/rare-telugu-religious-and-historical-work-preserved-at-annamacharya-library-to-come-on-wikisource

Competition Commission of India chairman's participation in Assocham conference raises conflict of interests

praskrishna — 2015-09-19T15:33:11Z

The chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and three of the six commission members are participating in a conference organised by Assocham and sponsored by private companies like Ericsson, trade associations and two legal firms specialising in intellectual property cases.

The article by Rema Nagarajan was published in the Times of India on August 6, 2015.

This, civil society organisations argue, raises issues of conflict of interest in a quasi-judicial body like CCI participating in a conference organised by private parties that have cases before the commission.

For instance, the event partner Ericsson is facing CCI investigations on matters related to standard essential patents (SEPs), one of the conference topics, and issues related to licensing of technologies on fair and equitable terms. The vice president and head of the legal section of Ericsson also has a speaking slot in the inaugural event. The brochure clearly states that the event partner on payment of Rs 5 lakh gets several privileges including a speaker's slot in the inaugural and business sections.

Several civil society organisations including Alternative Law Forum, Centre for Internet and Society and IT for Change from Bangalore, Knowledge Commons Collective, National Working Group on Patent Laws, and Software Freedom Law Centre from Delhi have written to the CCI protesting against its participation in the conference.

In their letter to CCI chairperson Ashok Chawla, they pointed out that the day-long conference titled Interface between Intellectual property (IP) and Competition Law, being held in a five star hotel on August 7, was focusing on issues being adjudicated by CCI. While Chawla is listed in the brochure as giving the inaugural address, CCI members GP Mittal and MS Sahoo are chairing two technical sessions and a third member SL Bunker is giving a special address at the valedictory function.

Other speakers include Rajiv Aggarwal, Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, representatives of Google, Intel, Microsoft, the UK IP Office, senior advocates from three Indian law firms specialising in IP and representatives of international law firms and consultancy firms.

"It is a well-set precedent that judicial and quasi-judicial bodies never directly or indirectly discuss matters pending before them. The conference is centred on discussing issues that are currently under the investigation of CCI along with commercial entities, including one which is facing the investigation," stated the letter adding that all the judicial or quasi-judicial bodies were expected to avoid not only actual conflict of interest but also perceived conflict of interest.

The civil society signatories pointed out that the event was not an academic event but a commercial one organised by a chamber of commerce along with the industry with clear commercial objectives. "The participation of CCI in the event would compromise the credibility and independence of CCI. Therefore, CCI as a guardian of public interest should not be subject to the lobbying efforts of IP owners. Providing privileged access to lobbying efforts of private enterprises like Ericsson, Qualcomm, Microsoft and Intel would cast a dark shadow on the neutrality of CCI," stated the letter requesting Chawla not to participate in the conference and to direct CCI members and CCI staff involved in investigations to avoid participation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-rema-nagarajan-august-6-2015-competition-commission-of-india-chairman-participation-in-assocham-conference-raises-conflict-of-interests

Telugu Wiki Edit-a-thon in ALC

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T18:12:06Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team along with Telugu Wikipedia had conducted an edit-a-thon at Andhra Loyola College on August 6, 2015. Eenadu published a report on the edit-a-thon.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/telugu-wiki-editathon-alc

Assocham event sparks row over conflict of interest by CCI

praskrishna — 2015-09-19T16:34:07Z

CCI Chairman Ashok Chawla is the key speaker of the conference, organised by industry chamber Assocham with Ericsson being the event partner.

The article by Dilasha Seth and Deepak Patel was published in Business Standard on August 6, 2015.

An upcoming conference on intellectual property has triggered a controversy, as a section of the civil society has urged the Competition Commission of India (CCI) not to participate in the event, sponsored by Swedish multinational Ericsson, alleging it would be a conflict of interest since the watchdog is investigating cases against the telecom company on the very same issues that will be discussed in the function.

CCI Chairman Ashok Chawla is the key speaker of the conference, organised by industry chamber Assocham with Ericsson being the event partner. The conference scheduled for Friday also has three CCI members as participants, according to the event brochure.

In a letter, signed by six civil society organisations, argued that the participation of CCI in any form in a conference organised with the financial support of Ericsson would question the integrity and independence of CCI.

On the issue, Chawla said, "I am not aware of the point raised. (I) will see and take a position."

"The participation of CCI at this conference raises serious concerns of conflict of interest. Further, CCI's sharing of platforms with private actors would compromise the credibility and independence of CCI," said the letter sent to Chawla and also marked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief Justice of India and several other ministries.

Ericsson is currently facing three CCI investigations on matters related to Standard Essential Patents and licensing of technologies on fair and equitable terms.

"Ericsson is not only an event partner but also giving a speech at the inaugural session," says the content of the letter. "We understand that the focus of the event is on two issues viz. Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and the competition aspects of licensing agreements," the group has argued.

A CCI member on the condition of anonymity said, "As per the competition Act, 2002, it is our responsibility to raise awareness regarding competition issues. At such forums, the discussions which happen are of conceptual level only. No specific cases are ever discussed." "We have not got the letter as yet. We will take a decision as soon as we receive it," he added.

Unless there is an interaction, how can there be awareness about these issues faced by the country, asked Assocham.

D S Rawat, the chamber secretary general, said, "This is not the first time that Assocham is organising a function on the very same subject. It has in the past organised six-seven such functions, where CCI had participated."

CCI will give its view points and others including Ericsson will also give their view points, which will not have an impact on the watchdog's decisions on specific cases, he said.

"There will always be these disgruntled people who instead of contributing positively to the society, take negative stance," he added.

When contacted, an Ericsson spokesperson declined to comment on the issue.

Alternative Law Forum (Bengaluru), Centre for Internet and Society (Bengaluru), IT for Change (Bengaluru), Knowledge Commons Collective (New Delhi), National Working Group on Patent Laws (New Delhi) and Software Freedom Law Centre (New Delhi) are the six non-governmental organisations who have collectively raised the issue.

The letter argued that all the judicial or quasi judicial bodies are expected to avoid not only actual conflict of interest but also the perceived conflict of interest.

"As you know, the conflict of interest arises when there is an actual or perceived threat of the primary interest of the organisation (CCI) being influenced by the interest of another organisation/s (Ericsson)," it said.

It also pointed out that the issue of SEPs and licensing practices was an important public interest issue and the restrictive conditions and barriers to access SEPs would affect the technological and industrial development of India. Further, it would affect the consumers by creating economic barriers to access the benefits of communication technology equipment such as mobile phones.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/business-standard-august-6-2015-dilasha-seth-and-deepak-patel-assocham-event-sparks-row-over-conflict-of-interest-by-cci

Telugu Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at ALC

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T18:11:50Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team conducted an edit-a-thon at Andhra Loyola College on August 6, 2015. Eenadu published a report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/telugu-wiki-edit-a-thon-at-alc

CCI Participation at the Upcoming 3rd International Conference on IPR and Competition

Amulya Purushothama — 2015-09-13T09:31:24Z

The Centre for Internet & Society wrote to the Competition Commission of India Chairman on August 5, 2015 about participation at a conference organised by Ericsson and concerns regarding conflict of interest. We also had several other NGOs sign on to the letter.

Dear Mr. Chawla,
We the undersigned organisations are writing to you convey our concerns on the upcoming International Conference on IPR and Competition, which is organised by the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

We understand that the focus of the event is focusing on two issues viz. Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and the competition aspects of licensing agreements. The conference brochure (Annex 1) carries CCI logo and it gives an impression that CCI is a co-organiser of the conference in partnership with such as Ericsson (Event Partner), Khaitan & Co (Knowledge Partner), Singh, Singh and Lall & Sethi ( SSL&C) ( Legal Partner), International Trademark Association and Patent Agent Association. From the brochure it is clear that the partnership/sponsorship is based against payment of money.

According to the program (Annex 2) your name is listed to give the inaugural address at the conference. Apart from you, two other members of the CCI viz. Mr. G P Mittal and Mr. M S Sahoo are chairing the two technical sessions and another CCI member Mr. S L Bunker is giving a special address at the valedictory function.

The participation of CCI at this conference raises serious concerns of conflict of interest. Further CCI’s sharing of platforms with private actors would compromise the credibility and independence of CCI. As you know the event partner i.e. Ericsson is currently facing three CCI investigations on matters related to SEPs and issues related to licensing of technologies on fair and equitable terms. Ericsson is not only an event partner but also giving a speech at the inaugural session.

The themes of the conference clearly fall under the on-going investigations of CCI against Ericsson. Participation of CCI in any form in a conference organised by the financial support of Ericsson, which is facing three CCI investigations, would clearly send out a very wrong message regarding the integrity and independence of CCI.

As you know it is well set precedent that judicial and quasi-judicial bodies never directly or indirectly discuss matters pending before them. The conference is centred on discussing issues that are currently under the investigation of CCI along with commercial entities including the one, which is facing the investigation. CCI’s participation in any form in this conference would be a departure from their above mentioned practice.

Further, all the judicial or quasi judicial bodies are expected to avoid not only actual conflict of interest but also the perceived conflict of interest. As you know the conflict of interest arises when there is an actual or perceived threat of the primary interest of the organisation (CCI) being influenced by the interest of another organisation/s (Ericsson). The participation of CCI in the International Conference on IPR and Competition Law along with set of private actors including Ericsson creates a situation where there is an actual or perceived threat of CCI getting influenced by the interest of commercial entities including Ericsson. Thus the participation of CCI in an event organised by a commercial entity especially the one which is facing a CCI investigation involves conflict of interest.

We would also take this opportunity to point out that this event is not an academic event and organised by a chamber of commerce and industry with clear commercial objectives in mind. The agenda is also very obvious; all the people who are making presentations in the technical sessions are approaching the issue from the perspective of IP owners. Further, we would like to remind you that industry never spends money without looking at the return. Therefore it is very clear the primary objective of the conference is regulatory capture through reaching out to CCI. Any direct or indirect participation of CCI in the conference would convey the signal with regard to the vulnerability of CCI to lobbying and corporate capture.

The issue of SEPs and licensing practices is of great importance of public interest. Restrictive conditions and barriers to access SEPs would affect the technological and industrial development of India. Further, it would affect the consumers by creating economic barriers to access the benefits of communication technology equipments such as mobile phones.

We question the ethics and propriety of participation of CCI in a conference sponsored and organized by private entities having economic interest in the issue. The participation of CCI in the event would compromise the credibility and independence of CCI. Therefore, CCI as a guardian of public interest should not be subject to the lobbying efforts of IP owners. Providing privileged access to lobbying efforts of private enterprises like Ericsson, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Intel would cast a dark shadow on the neutrality of CCI.

Therefore we request you to not to participate in the conference. Further, we also request you to direct all the CCI members to avoid participation at the conference. And also, a similar direction of non-participation in the conference should be given to the CCI staffs involved in the investigation.

Thanking you,
Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
IT for Change, Bangalore
Knowledge Commons Collective, New Delhi
National Working Group on Patent Laws, New Delhi
Software Freedom Law Centre, New Delhi

CC
The Prime Minister of India
Chief Justice of India
Minister of Corporate Affairs
Minister Communications
Minister of Commerce and Industry
Minister of Law and Justice
Secretary, Department of Corporate Affairs
Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion
Secretary, Department of Law and Justice

Annexure 1(Brochure)

Annexure 2 (Programme Agenda)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cci-participation-at-the-upcoming-3rd-international-conference-on-ipr-and-competition

July 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-11-21T16:23:52Z

Our newsletter for the month of July is below:

We are happy to share with you the seventh issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (July 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

NVDA team conducted a training at SIES College, Sion, Mumbai. Thirty-four delegates attended the training programme. A training workshop was held at Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli by NVDA team. Sixteen delegates participated in this. Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Subhashish Panigrahi has blogged on this highlighting the three Konkani Wikimedians. The 30^th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights was held in Geneva from June 29 to July 3. Nehaa Chaudhari prepared a statement about the negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organisations. Sumandro Chattapadhyay wrote an article in the Hindustan Times about India’s “Digital India” initiative to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India. CIS published the first draft of its analysis on technology business incubators ("TBI") in India. The report prepared by Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak looks at operating procedures, success stories and lessons that can be learnt from TBIs in India. Pranesh Prakash did a brief analysis about the Department of Telecommunications Panel Report on Net Neutrality. CIS has participated in the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling constituted by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012 for the purpose of deliberating on and finalizing the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill and appreciates this opportunity. CIS has prepared a dissent note to the Expert Committee on DNA Profiling. In the last few decades, all major common law jurisdictions have decriminalised non-procreative sex – oral and anal sex (sodomy) – to allow private, consensual, and non-commercial homosexual intercourse. Bhairav Acharya brought out the developments from across the world in a blog entry. As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted interviews with a Tibetan security researcher and information activist and Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India. CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania had organized a conference in April in New Delhi. The findings have been condensed in a report titled “Effective research, policy formulation, and the development of regulatory frameworks in South Asia”. Pranesh Prakash in a research paper titled Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality gives an overview on why India needs to put in place net neutrality regulations, and the form that those regulations must take to avoid being over-regulation. Rakshanda Deka undertook an analysis on the anti-spam laws in different jurisdictions. This analysis is a part of a larger attempt at formulating a model anti-spam law for India by analysing the existing spam laws across the world. As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW has published blog entries on WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality; Users and the Internet; Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi; Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights; and 'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube. The National Optic Fibre Network, a part of the Government's Digital India Initiative, has been in the news since the recent Expert Committee Report. Aditya Garg in a blog entry examined the accountability of the funding of the project.

Accessibility and Inclusion

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

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

July 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).

Event Reports

The training programmes were held in June and the reports were published in July:

Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop (Organized by NVDA team: Anne Jane Ask with Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 – 7, 2015).
Training in eSpeak Marathi (Organized by NVDA team; SIES College, Sion, Mumbai; June 28, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

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

Submission / Comment

Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; July 2, 2015).

Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

Reading Devanagari Script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; July 13, 2015).
Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation (Subhashish Panigrahi; July 18, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Christ University Undergraduate Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; July 1 - 8, 2015). Students were initiated into the Wikimedia activities with hands on sessions of typing on Wikisource. Faculty of the Christ University helped the A2K team in deciding on the texts that were to be typed. These texts will provide much needed impetus for Wikisource related activities in Indian Languages. Wikipedia Education Programme at Christ University received support from Ravishankar.A of the Tamil Wikimedia community and Sayant Mahato from Sanskrit Wikimedia community.
Aloysius College (Organized by CIS-A2K; Mangalore; July 1 – 4, 2015). Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia workshops were conducted in St. Aloysis College, Mangalore. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator and a small community is growing in Mangalore. Pavanaja U.B. and Rahmanuddin Shaik participated in this events.
Media Wiki Train the Trainer Program (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; June 24 – 27, 2015): A four-day long train-the-trainer program aimed at building leadership among technical contributors to Indic language Wikimedians in the areas of bugs, bots--Pywikipedia and Auto Wiki Browser, various MediaWiki tools, and translations. Ravishankar A. from Wikimedia India, MediaWiki developers Pavithra H., Yogesh Omshivaprakash H.L. and Harsh Kothari, and Tamil Wikimedian Dineshkumar Ponnusamy provided support for the event.

Participation in Events

Wikimania 2015 (Organized by Wikimedia Foundation; Mexico City; July 15 - 19, 2015): A whole day was dedicated for evaluation of strategies and activities by various major stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement. Community members who lead major activities, Wikimedia chapters, affiliate organizations and Wikimedia Foundation itself took part in the discussions. There were several group activities, exchange of ideas focused on project and community level outreach and other activities, tools and techniques, and best practices. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event and gave a talk on How to do Guerrilla GLAM. Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist along with Rohini Lakshané in the session “Edit-a-thons for Bridging the Gender Gap on Wikimedia: A Panel Discussion”. An Indic Meet-up was also organized. Wikimedians from India, Bangladesh and Nepal representing various language communities, Wikimedia India, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Nepal, and Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) gathered to discuss about various challenges, cross-community collaborative projects, organizing larger events, and strategies to grow the Wikimedia movement in South Asia.
Classical Languages in the Digital Era Conference (Organized by Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore; July 17, 2015) Tanveer Hasan participated in this conference aimed at discussing about the future of Indian classical languages in the digital era.

Media Coverage

Not many contributors for Kannada-centric Wiki page (The Times of India, July 5, 2015)
Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia (Indian Express, July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Udayavani; July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Prajavani; July 5, 2015)

Staff Movement

Tito Dutta, Luis Gomes and Abhinav Garule have joined the CIS-A2K team as Programme Associates from March this year. Tito is working for internal documentation and resource building, and Luis and Abhinav are implementing the Konkani and Marathi work plan respectively along with community liaison.

Internet Governance

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

Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality (Pranesh Prakash; July 8, 2015). Vidushi Marda and Tarun Krishnakumar assisted Pranesh Prakash in this.
Free Speech Policy in India: Community, Custom, Censorship, and the Future of Internet Regulation (Bhairav Acharya; July 13, 2015).
Net Neutrality and the Law of Common Carriage (Bhairav Acharya; July 14, 2015).
Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age (Geetha Hariharan and Jyoti Panday; July 14, 2015). CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania organized this conference on April 21, 2015 in New Delhi. Elonnai Hickok edited the report.
Clearing Misconceptions: What the DoT Panel Report on Net Neutrality Says (and Doesn't) (Pranesh Prakash; July 21, 2015).
Role of Intermediaries in Countering Online Abuse (Jyoti Panday; July 31, 2015). This got published as two blog entries in the NALSAR Law Tech Blog. Part 1 can be accessed here and Part 2 here.

Event Co-organized

A Public Discussion on Criminal Defamation in India (Organized by CIS, the Network of Women in Media, India; and Media Watch; Bangalore; July 29, 2015). The event was a public discussion about the continued criminalisation of defamation in India.

Participation in Event

Roundtable discussion on WHOIS (Organized by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India; July 28, 2015; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda participated in the discussion remotely. Aditya Garg attended in person.

Privacy

Blog Entries

Anti-Spam Laws in Different Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis (Rakshanda Deka; July 2, 2015).
A Dissent Note to the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling (Elonnai Hickok; July 17, 2015). Click for DNA Bill Functions, DNA List of Offences, and CIS Note on DNA Bill. A modified version was published by Citizen Matters Bangalore on July 28.
Privacy, Autonomy, and Sexual Choice: The Common Law Recognition of Homosexuality (Bhairav Acharya; July 18, 2015).
Aadhaar Number vs the Social Security Number (Elonnai Hickok; July 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

7th Best Practices Meet 2015 (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; July 9 – 10, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Architecting Security for transformation to Digital India". Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session "Steering privacy in the age of extreme innovation technology & business models."

Cyber Security

Videos

Cyber Security Series Part 23 (Purba Sarkar; July 13, 2015). CIS interviews a Tibetan security researcher and information activist.
Cyber Security Series Part 24 (Purba Sarkar; July 15, 2015). CIS interviews Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India, as part of the Cybersecurity Series.

Miscellaneous

Article

Iron out contradictions in the Digital India programme (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Hindustan Times; July 28, 2015).

Research Paper

First draft of Technology Business Incubators: An Indian Perspective and Implementation Guidance Report (Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak; July 25, 2015).

Telecom

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

Op-ed

The Centrality of Cash Flows (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 1, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 2, 2015).

Blog Entry

Funding of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) - Who's Accountable? (Aditya Garg; July 17, 2015).

Researchers at Work

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

Blog Entries

WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality (Maitrayee Deka; July 1, 2015).
Users and the Internet (Purbasha Auddy; July 10, 2015).
Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi (Sarah McKeever; July 16, 2015).
Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights (Deva Prasad M.; July 22, 2015).
'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube) (Ipsita Sengupta; July 27, 2015).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'IRCTC’s Aadhaar play can violate SC order and derail National Security' (Shubhra Rishi; CIO.IN; July 1, 2015).
The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative (Suhas Munshi; July 2, 2015).
Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream (Rakesh Kumar; The Statesman; July 13, 2015).
Criminal Defamation: The Urgent Cause That has United Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Subramanian Swamy (Betwa Sharma; Huffington Post; July 15, 2015).
Five Nations, One Future? (Bjorn Ludtke, Ellen Lee, Jaideep Sen, Gwendolyn Ledger, David Nicholson, and Jesko Johannsen; Voestalpine; July 18, 2015).
The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it (Nayantara Narayanan; Scroll.in; July 24, 2015)
Regulation, misuse concerns still dog DNA profiling bill (Nikita Mehta; Livemint; July 29, 2015)

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, 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 mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

CIS - Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Access to Knowledge - Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Access to Knowledge - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Access to Knowledge - E-Mail: a2k@cis-india.org
Researchers at Work - E-Mail: raw@cis-india.org
Researchers at Work - Mailing List: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2015-bulletin

Comparative Transparency Review of Collective Management Organisations in India, United Kingdom and the United States

maggie — 2015-08-21T17:12:10Z

This Transparency Review seeks to compare the publicly available information on the websites of music collective management organizations (“CMOs”) operating within India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A total of 10 CMOs were selected, which included a range of non-profit, government registered organizations to for-profit, private organizations, managing works on behalf of record labels, publishers, composers, lyricists, and music performers. This exercise intends to contribute to the growing body of research on the relationship between transparency and effectiveness of CMOs. It concludes with recommendations and learnings which may lead to more transparent and effective functioning of copyright societies in India, and management of music copyright overall.

The research paper was co-authored by Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta, Paavni Anand.

Taking into account the needs of users and members of CMOs, the following pieces of information was determined to be useful to report on the websites: : membership lists, governing directors, user types, tariff rates, royalty distribution schemes, and annual revenue reports. Collectively, the presence of these became rough parameters for transparency. The authors then reviewed each website to determine whether this information was made publicly available, and whether such disclosure was voluntary or mandated by law. As a proxy for effectiveness, percentage of revenue distributed as royalties was calculated for those who made their annual revenue report available.

Broadly, the review found that India's 2012 Copyright Amendment Act and 2013 Copyright Rules were by far the most stringent regarding registration, operations, rate setting, and reporting. Despite India's strict laws, it appears there is little compliance, particularly by PPL which failed to report the mandated tariff rates, royalty distribution policy, and its annual revenue report. ISRA had all the information sought on their website except for the crucial annual revenue report. IPRS however clearly made an effort to comply, with all information sought, provided.

Relative to India, CMOs in the United Kingdom were regulated less strictly, with U.K.'s 2014 Copyright Regulations allowing self regulation provided CMOs follow guidelines to comply with the operating code of conduct. All six indicators were available on websites of both UK PPL and PRS for Music, although the latter required user authorization to access membership/repertoire data.

In comparison, the U.S. seems to have the most lax reporting standards of the three, really only mandating basic reporting for CMOs administering statutory licenses. However, similar to India, rate-setting in the U.S. for certain digital broadcasts are subject to significant government control, in addition to anticompetetive measures which prevent partial withdrawal of rights from certain CMOs’ blanket licenses. Availability of information varied, with BMI and Sound Exchange complying with the more demanding parts of US legislation and disclosing all information sought, while ASCAP and HFA were missing tariff rates and user types respectively. SESAC was the least informative, with governing directors absent, and more crucially, their annual revenue report.

To determine relative efficiency, the authors calculated the percentage of royalties distributed per total revenue for those CMOs which published their revenue reports. All distributed royalties ranged between 80%-90%. Though not necessarily the most accurate measure, there appeared no significant correlation between the percentage of distributed royalties, and amount of information found; therefore a correlation between effectiveness and information transparency remain unknown.

However, throughout the exercise, the limitations of the research design became clear, leading to its own learnings for future research. Methodologically, the more attention should have been paid to spanning a wider spectrum of legal control, drawing clear lines of which types of CMOs to include in the study, being careful not to equate presence of information with usability or effectiveness, deeper assessment of the legal provisions, and the inclusion of membership exclusive data as part of the exercise.

Nevertheless, the comparative review process did produce several learnings that Indian CMOs could adopt for enhanced transparency and potentially improved effectiveness as well. These recommendations are as follows:

Publish the full repertoire of works the CMO is authorized to license, and its corresponding rights holder information in a searchable format;
Provide a platform for collectively identifying the rights-holder of orphan works (works which are registered whose royalties are collected, but ownership information is unknown);
Guide new users and potential members through a more user-friendly designed page with simplified, accessible introduction to music licensing;
Increase clarity surrounding royalty distribution policies;
Publish updated annual revenue reports; and
Clarify the dispute resolution processes.

This review concludes by suggesting future research through stronger methodological design, further exploring membership exclusive data, assessing effectiveness outcomes between multiple, competing licensing bodies versus a single, state-granted monopoly society, and the possibility of alternative compensation schemes for music financing and production.

MOTIVATIONS FOR RESEARCH: MUSIC COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT IN THE MOBILE MUSIC AGE for the PERVASIVE TECHNOLOGIES PROJECT

Managing copyright in the digital age is one of the most contentious issues today amongst music industries globally. Innovation in digital technologies has opened up formerly restricted production and distribution channels, resulting in a proliferation of music like never before.

The mobile phone is one of these innovations, particularly since becoming the most preferred music listening device in India. [1] The overarching utility of the mobile phone has made it the object of study for the Centre for Internet and Society's Pervasive Technologies project[2], which seeks to identify intellectual property levers which can enhance access to affordable mobile devices' hardware, software, and content within India and China.

Access to music content[3] via the mobile phone is one of the chapter's primary focus, with a research objective of balancing access to music for internet and mobile consumers, while ensuring the protection of rights and remuneration for artists and creators.

The initial phases of this research found that new stakeholders such as device manufacturers, telecom operators, and streaming services were developing business models based on a free, ad-supported service with a paid premium tier, ultimately resulting in high royalty payouts and low profit margins. However, artists in India and worldwide are raising grievances due to decreasing royalty revenue, putting to question whether these business models are sustainable in the long term.

We had hoped to answer these questions within the Indian context, but the findings were ultimately inconclusive. This was primarily due to two reasons: 1) lack of data transparency at multiple levels of the music distribution chain, and 2) a copyright management system heavily in flux due to poor enforcement of the ambiguous 2012 Copyright Amendment Act. The copyright societies in India embodied both these issues in India, resulting in a need to study these institutions further as one of the main objects of research.

INTRODUCTION to COLLECTIVE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS and the NEED FOR TRANSPARENCY

Music copyright societies, commonly referred to as collecting agencies or collective management organizations ("CMOs") provides music rights holders (authors, owners, and performers of lyrics, compositions, and sound recordings) the ability to authorize the licensing of their copyrighted works to another body (the CMO) who can collect royalties from the numerous sources of usage on behalf of its members. If the law allows, these CMOs are also able to collectively negotiate for rates as well. Royalties derived from these licenses are often collected and distributed by CMOs as a source of income for the creators of musical works, after administrative costs are deducted.

CMOs and their rights-holder members represent a principle-agent relationship as agent-CMOs collects royalties from users on behalf of its principle rightsholder-members. However, if a conflict of interest arises, the inherent information asymmetry may give rise to abuse. In the case of CMOs, this standard principle-agent problem has manifested in forms ranging from inefficient administration overhead, to more dubious acts of corruption and collusion.

Economic theory tells us that the key to a free and fair market is "perfect information", or when stakeholders are equipped with the relevant information needed to make market decisions. Information enforces accountability, an idea that sparked the Right to Information movement in India. This is why transparency is especially critical in the music industry, characterized by complex revenue and consumption patterns, an intricate copyright law framework and stakeholders with varying levels of bargaining power.

Given many CMOs operate as state-granted monopolies which exclusively administer specific class of works, it is important that the collection and distribution of royalties occur in a transparent manner so members and regulators can scrutinize its functioning to ensure greatest effectiveness. For countries which allow competition between CMOs, transparency in operations and revenue data can provide users and members the ability to make an informed choice, and the opportunity for other competing players to enter the market.

Within India, transparency has been a recurring issue due to allegations of mismanagement and corruption[4] of the copyright societies. This was one of the motivations for the 2012 Copyright Amendment and subsequent2013 Copyright Rules which attempted to address, amongst other issues, regulations around transparency for registered copyright societies in India.

Thus, in light of new transparency and operations regulations for India, and inconclusive research findings due to sparse data, the authors sought to review the transparency of various CMO websites and their corresponding regulatory measures in the hopes of answering the following questions:

1. How does India's level of CMO transparency compare to other countries?

2. Is disclosure of information a result of regulatory pressures or voluntary?

3. What kind of learnings and recommendations can be made from the voluntary information disclosure and/or legal regulatory environments of other countries?

METHODOLOGY

Selecting countries for comparison

Since one of the broader goals of this review was to identify legal and/or industry led proposals for increased CMO effectiveness in India, the authors wanted to select case study country samples which were relevant and useful for the Indian context, while also considering differing legal and regulatory regimes.

The United States was chosen due to its competitive CMO structure where multiple CMOs administering the same class of musical works, and representing similar kinds of rights-holders can co-exist as private entities. Aside from statutory rate-setting of sound recording broadcasts, and anticompetitive consent decrees for ASCAP and BMI, the United States seem to have little to no regulation overall surrounding CMO operations and management.

The United Kingdom was selected due to its recent growing interests in the Indian music industry. This was demonstrated by the high volume of British attendants at recent Indian music industry conferences , several of which were directly sponsored by UK Trade & Investment as a music trade export mission.[5] In addition, U.K.'s CMO structure seemed to be more streamlined, with class of works separately managed under two main music CMOs.

Indian research participants of ongoing research also expressed interest in registering their musical works with CMOs in the U.S. and U.K. given increasing market demand, higher currency exchange, and increased reliability of royalty receipts. This was further indication of relevant country case studies for a comparison with India.

Identifying the Relevant CMOs

Due to challenges enforcing India's 2012 Copyright Amendment Act, and subsequent ambiguity of copyright societies' registration statuses, the selection criteria for CMOs consisted of those organizations which generally issued music licenses and collected royalty revenue on behalf of other rights-holder members.

In India, the following three CMOs were identified for this review: the Indian Performing Right Society ("IPRS") which collects on behalf of composers, lyricists, and publisher-members[6]; the Phonographic Performance Limited ("PPL") which exclusively controls public performance and broadcasting rights for its music label members[7]; and the Indian Singers Rights Association ("ISRA") which is currently the sole officially registered copyright society collecting on behalf of singers for their Performer's Rights. [8]

The status of IPRS and PPL as registered societies are ambiguous due to recent reports of registration withdrawal [9]; therefore compliance to Section 33 of the Copyright Act is uncertain. However, the authors chose to uphold the same standards in this review due to similarity in purpose and functioning.

In the U.S., the identified CMOs included the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers ("ASCAP"), Broadcast Music, Inc, ("BMI") and SESAC (originally the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers) which are all competing Performing Rights Organizations collecting on behalf of songwriters and music publishers for public performance rights. SoundExchange is responsible for managing digital sound recordings for copyright owners (mostly music labels) and performing artists; while Harry Fox Agency ("HFA") collects mechanical royalties on behalf of publishers and songwriters when their compositions are reproduced.

In the U.K., two CMOs were identified: PRS for Music which manages public performance rights on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers; and Phonographic Performance Limited ("PPL-UK"), which manages the rights of performers and record producers. Unlike the United States and India, each society exclusively manages separate categories of works. Although technically a compulsory collective licensing scheme is mandated under Indian copyright law for musical works incorporated in cinematograph films or sound recordings, ambiguity in India remains due to the unregistered/deregistered yet still functioning licensing bodies.

Identifying the comparative parameters

To compare CMOs transparency, the authors sought to develop a feasible proxy to determine their website's degree of disclosure. This was done considering two main stakeholders who most often access CMO websites: rights-holders, and users. The rights holders are owners and/or authors of a copyright or related right (i.e. performer's right) who is a member, has sought membership, or is a potential member of the CMO. The user is any person or organization who seeks to use the copyrighted work and is hence made to pay a fee for such use. This fee is generally based on the licensing agreement, struck between the CMO and the user on behalf of their collective rights holders.

Thus, the following information was identified to be useful for comparative assessment: list of members, governing directors, usage types, tariff rates, royalty distribution policy, annual revenue report, and percentage of distributed royalties. The justifications, and comparative findings are outlined below.

FINDINGS

List of members

Publishing members lists is useful for potential users since it can collectively reduce search costs for ownership information, making the process of licensing and royalty collection more efficient overall. In addition, users approached for licensing payment can also verify that the CMO is indeed authorized to administer those works. This has been a recurring issue in recent history for CMOs in both the United States [10] and India[11], which have reported extortion-like licensing demands for songs which may not have been even owned by their member rights-holders. Some have been alleged to demand licenses for broad, undefined catalogs like entire genres of music.[12] Having members lists published can prevent these discrepancies.

In India, all identified CMOs published their membership lists in accordance with Rule 66, section 1(c) of the Copyright Rules, which mandates the disclosure of members lists explicitly on the website.

In the U.S., all CMOs have published their membership data either as full lists or in the form of a searchable repertoire database corresponding with the specific work. This presentation format was similar in the U.K. although PRS for Music restricted access to authorized users. Nevertheless, this disclosure went beyond U.K.'s Copyright Regulations which only require the number of rights holders represented, whether as members or non-member rights holders to be published in the annual report. To the authors' knowledge, the U.S. does not seem to have an equivalent law as such.

Several CMO websites in the U.S. and U.K. also feature a search for owners of orphan works - copyrighted songs within their catalog in which the due rights-holders are unable to be contacted, or simply unknown due to a multitude of reasons, including lack of data collection, transfer of rights, unknown inheritance from deceased rights holders, amongst others. Many of these CMOs hold undistributed royalties for these works, bringing to question whether rights-holder members truly give genuine authorization for their continued licensing.

India's CMOs could enhance their transparency by adopting the repertoire format of membership disclosure which corresponds with each copyrighted work. It could also provide a platform to collectively identify orphan works' due rights-holders.

Country	CMO	List of Members Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes	Copyright Rules, 2013, Rule 66 Code of Conduct for Copyright Societies. Section (1): Every society shall make available on its website... c) List of all members in the general body
	PPL	Yes
	ISRA	Yes
United States	ASCAP	Yes, members can be searched through a database[13]	N/A
	BMI	Yes, members can be searched through a database.[14]
	SESAC	Yes, member list available through repertoire search and as downloadable full list.[15]
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Yes, artists can be individually searched via HFA's 'Songfile' database[16] but not available as a whole
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes, repertoire search database including member/label search exists.[17]	The Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies )Regulations , 2014 Reporting Requirements 6. The code of practice shall require the relevant licensing body to publish an annual report which includes: a) the number of right holders represented, whether as members or through representative arrangements including, where possible and if applicable, an estimate of the number of non-member right holders represented by any Extended Collective Licensing Scheme
	PRS for Music	A database exists but restricted to authorized users

Governing directors

For rights holder members, knowledge of the governing members directing the functioning of the CMO can help ensure decision making occurs in a representative, accountable manner. In 2011, it was found that IPRS and PPL of India were governed by the same Board of Directors [18], despite theoretically managing distinct sets of rights and representing different rights-holder members. Stopps (2013) in WIPO's 'How to Make a Living from Music' states that democratic governance is highly desirable if not essential, since the board structure should ideally reflect the rights they administer.[19]

In India, all CMOs comply with the 2013 Copyright Rules which mandates the publishing of Governing Council members on its website. All CMOs in the United States, with the exception of SESAC have published information on their governing or executive board. SESAC does highlight the appointment of the CEO within its 'news' section, but not in an easily accessible location.

In the UK, the governing directors are disclosed, though not explicitly mandated for disclosure on the website. Copyright Regulations does require the appointment procedure of the Directors and their remuneration be included in the Annual Report. India's 2014 Copyright Rules appears relatively stringent in comparison given the process is specified in detail rather than a self-regulated process.

Country	CMO	Governing Directors Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes	Copyright Rules, 2013, Rule 66 Code of Conduct for Copyright Societies. Section (1): Every society shall make available on its website… d) Names and address of chairman, other members of the Governing Council and other officers in the society Copyright Rules 59 Management of Copyright Society (1) Every copyright society shall have… a) General body…b) Governing Council with Chairman… c) a CEO… (3) The Chairman shall be elected by two third of the majority….
	PPL	Yes
	ISRA	Yes
United States	ASCAP	Yes	N/A
	BMI	Yes, management
	SESAC	Appointment of CEO announced under 'News' section.[20] No other members found
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Yes
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes	Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations, 2014 requires the procedure for appointment of Directors, and the list of remuneration of the Directors to be included in the Annual Report.
	PRS for Music	Yes

User Categories

The categorization of users simply allow potential licensees to understand when they would be legally required to purchase a music license given the scope and scale of their business/usage. User categories can range from restaurants, internet streaming, radio broadcasting, and live performance; to the physical reproduction of a musical composition or sound recording (for example through photocopying of sheet music or burning of CDs).

All CMOs identified had user categories displayed on the websites, with some presenting the distinctions through search options while others outlined usage types as a general list. Only India's Copyright Rules mandated the publishing of different categories of users as part of their tariff scheme.
U.S.'s HFA did not not distinguish licensing requirements by user type, but did communicate when a license would be needed through simple questions regarding usage.

Country	CMO	User categories Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes	According to Rule 56 of the Copyright Rules, 2013, it is mandatory for Indian CMOs to publish on their website the different categories of users in their Tariff Scheme
	PPL	Yes
	ISRA	Yes
United States	ASCAP	Yes	N/A
	BMI	Yes, Search bar for user types available
	SESAC	Yes
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Not specifically, but section on 'What kind of license do I need' delineates user types
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes	N/A
	PRS for Music	Yes

Tariff Rates

Tariff rates are the costs of licenses issued by the CMOs. The calculation of these rates are done in a myriad of ways, ranging from being fixed by statutory provisions, set collectively by CMOs, or negotiated privately in a willing buyer-willing seller market. Some rate-setting considerations have included anticipated number of listeners, physical size of establishment, time of music use, number of loudspeakers, etc. Due to similarities in mode and scale of usage, most fixed tariff rates such as blanket licenses offered by CMOs are distinguished by different categories of users, most fixed tariff rates are divided accordingly.

In a market like the U.S. where CMOs compete to sublicense similar kinds of rights, publishing tariff rates can enable comparison of licensing fees for the most cost effective choice.[21] It can also allow users to forecast licensing expenses and adjust their business models or anticipated usage accordingly. Lastly, transparent cost calculations as opposed to hidden negotiated rates can prevent price and user discrimination, since licensees can verify the accuracy of their license charge.

In India, IPRS and ISRA complies to Rule 56 (2) of the Copyright Rules 2014 which mandates the publication of rates distinguished by categories of users, mode of exploitation, user group, durations of use, and territory. In U.K., both CMOs comply with Section 5(c) of their Copyright Regulations 2014 which mandates the publication of 'tariff rates in a uniform format' on the website as part of the monitoring and reporting requirements. In the U.S., all CMOs with the exception of ASCAP publish their tariff rates.

Although the U.S. does not seem to mandate the explicit disclosure of rates, both U.S. and India set statutory rates for certain uses of sound recordings. In the U.S. for example, the rates for ephemeral sound recordings akin to non-interactive, radio-like services are set by the Copyright Royalty Board under S17 USC 112 and 114. Similarly, in India, a statutory rate is also fixed by the Copyright Board for radio broadcasting.

As an anticompetitive measure, music consent decrees in the U.S. also mandate that ASCAP and BMI provide licenses on equivalent, non exclusive terms. This means that while its members can still individually refrain from joining a CMO in its entirety, partial withdrawing of their works from blanket licenses are not allowed.[22]

Despite fairly affordable statutory rates for use in non-interactive services, interactive streaming which seeks to host popular content often still requires direct licensing agreements from major record label conglomerates. Due to the importance of acquiring that content, these labels are often able to negotiate exclusive deals with hidden terms. Evolving music consumption patterns and an inconsistent rate-setting landscape have raised grievances, particularly amongst songwriters. In the U.S., this has led to the Copyright Office's review and reconsideration of the music licensing landscape in recent months, while in India, the cost of content acquisition remain a source of debate by the services.

Country	CMO	Tariff Rates Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes, listed as per usage types	Section 33A of the Copyright Act, 1957 and Rule 56 of the Copyright Rules, 2013: ...must indicate separate for categories of users, media of exploitation, user group, durations of use and territory, etc.
	PPL	No
	ISRA	Yes
United States	ASCAP	No, must request	No regulation mandating the disclosure of tariff rates. Consent decrees for BMI/ASCAP as an anticompetitive measure mandates offering of licenses to services on equivalent, non exclusive terms. Statutory rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board under 17 U.S.C. 112 and 114.
	BMI	Yes
	SESAC	Yes
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Yes, rate charts published[23]
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes	The Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations 2014 Section 5 of its Specified Criteria mandates 'provide details of tariffs in a uniform format on its website.
	PRS for Music	Yes

Royalty distribution policy

The royalty distribution policy typically outlines the process and manner of royalty distribution, specifying how royalty is split between member-rights holders and the CMO. It usually notes the frequency of payments as well. Since one of the main reasons a rights-holder seeks membership within a CMO is to ensure their royalties are received on a consistent basis without themselves having to track down all users of their work, a transparent distribution policy is of utmost importance.

In India, IPRS and ISRA published the distribution policy on their website in compliance with Rule 58 of the Copyright Rules. Upon review of both, it was interesting to note the lack of detail in India's policies. Although it is specified in the Act, ISRA does not convey on its website clearly the distribution of percentages, nor the administrative cut it seeks to take. IPRS was very unclear about their frequency of payments, noting that "The distribution of Royalties shall be carried out promptly from time to time", despite the Copyright rules stipulating that the frequency be set at every quarter.

In the U.S., S . 370.5 (c )of the Code of Federal Regulations for statutorily set sound recordings do state that online-published Annual Reports must have information on how royalties are collected, distributed, and spent as administrative expenses. All CMOs seem to comply.

In the UK, Section 6 of the 2014 Copyright Regulations Specified Criteria mandates reporting of the distribution policy in its annual report. Both identified CMOs comply.

Country	CMO	Royalty Distribution Policy Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes, although quite vague, unclear frequency of payments[24]	Rule 58 of the Copyright Rules 2013 outline the terms of the Royalty Distribution Policy
	PPL	No
	ISRA	Yes, but vague, unclear re: distribution of percentages and administrative deduction.
United States	ASCAP	Yes, it outlines exactly how it is calculated	For designated collection and distribution companies for use of sound recordings under statutory licenses: S . 370.5 ( c ) of the Code of Federal Regulations , as part of the annual Report, Collectives must indicate how royalties are collected and distributed.
	BMI	Yes, in the Royalty Policy Manual
	SESAC	Yes
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Yes, rate charts[25] and commission rates revealed.
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes	The Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations 2014 Section 6 Reporting Requirements of its Specified Criteria mandates the publishing of the distribution policy in its annual report.
	PRS for Music	Yes

Annual revenue report

The annual revenue report provides an overview of total income, which is particularly important for a CMO acting as a non-profit organization. Rightsholders can assess what the rest of the revenue is being used for, and cross-verify whether the self-reported data is true. For market and policy researchers, the annual revenue report can also provide the breakdown of which licensing services or catalogs are being used. An externally audited revenue report also enhances trust in the organization and ensures reliable financial transparency. Thus, the publication of the annual revenue report forms one of the most important benchmarks of transparency.

In India, only IPRS has published their 2013-14 annual revenue report in compliance with Rule 66 of the Copyright Rules which mandates the publishing of an annual report and audited accounts on their website. None of the other CMOs seem to have done this.

In the United States,S . 370.5 (c ) of the Code of Federal Regulations mandates that CMOs collecting and distributing for statutorily licensed sound recordings must publish their annual revenue report. CMO SoundExchange complies, while HFA does so voluntarily. ASCAP and BMI also post their reports on occasion with a few years missing, but SESAC's report seems to be absent, possibly due to private incorporated company status.

In the UK, both CMOs comply with the 2014 Copyright Regulations under Rule 6 mandating the publication of an annual report.

Country	CMO	Annual Revenue Report Available on Website?	Regulation?
India	IPRS	Yes, for year '13-'14	Rule 66 of the Copyright Rules, 2013, CMOs mandate the publishing of an annual report and audited accounts on their website.
	PPL	No
	ISRA	No
United States	ASCAP	Yes, until 2013	For designated collection and distribution companies for use of sound recordings under statutory licenses: S . 370.5 ( c ) of the Code of Federal Regulations .
	BMI	Sporadically posted
	SESAC	No (possibly because privately held company?)
	SoundExchange	Yes
	HFA	Yes
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Yes, until 2013	In UK, the Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations, 2014 under Rule 6 requires that every CMO publish an annual report containing the annual financial statements, collections from the different licenses and the distribution of royalties.
	PRS for Music	Yes, until 2014

Percentage of Revenue as Distributed Royalties

Given the main function of CMOs are to secure royalties for rights-holders, the percentage of revenue as distributed royalties was calculated using numbers from the latest published annual revenue reports. Although there are differences in CMO mandates and subsequently their investment on litigation and advocacy for example, the proportion of revenue as distributed royalties was used as a simplified proxy of effectiveness for this review. [26]

For those CMOs who published their annual revenue reports, it was found that the percentage of revenue as distributed royalties seemed to range between 80-90%. Given the controversies surrounding collecting societies in India, it was admittedly surprising that IPRS' distributed royalty percentage averaged almost 1% higher than comparable societies in the UK. It is also interesting that the United States seem to have the most efficient CMOs, with two rounding to 90%.

Country	CMO	Data reported on Website	Percentage of Revenue as Distributed Royalties
India	IPRS	From 2013/14 annual revenue report: Net royalties payable: Rs 396743413 / License fees total revenue Rs 470934348:	0.84246013204 = 84.25%
	PPL	N/A	N/A
	ISRA	N/A	N/A
United States	ASCAP	Self reported 88cents/dollar goes back to artists. 2014 Revenue Report: Total receipts: 945 385 Total distribution to members: 850 984	850 984/945 385 = 0.90014544339 90.01%
	BMI	Self reported numbers from press release: "For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, BMI reported revenues of $898.7 million and royalty distributions to our affiliates totaling $749.8 million."	749.8 / 898.7 = 0.83431623456 83.43%
	SESAC	N/A
	SoundExchange	Self reported from pre-audit 2013 fiscal report[27]: Total Royalties Collected $656 Total gross distributions $590	590 / 656 = 0.8993902439 89.94%
	HFA	N/A but self reported 11.5% commission[28]	N/A
United Kingdom	PPL UK	Self reported from 2013 financial statement:[29] Total license fee income: £176.9 m Net distributable revenue: £148.4m	0.83889202939 83.89%
	PRS for Music	Self-reported from 2014 annual revenue report[30]: Our royalty revenues for the year were £664.3m, of which we distributed £565.6m to members.	565.6/664.3 = 0.85142255005 85.14%

LIMITATIONS & LEARNINGS

The major limitation of this review is rooted in its various methodological weaknesses, ranging from the sampling of countries, inclusion of ambiguous CMOs, possible bias towards Indian copyright law during the parameter design, limitations of distributed royalties percentage as an effectiveness proxy, lack of measurable factors when attempting to evaluate 'ease of website use', and somewhat shallow legal research. Nevertheless, these were part and parcel of the learnings which stemmed from this review.

Limitations in Country Selection Process

The selection of countries to be assessed was not very methodologically sound. After further literature review, it seems a more representative sample could have been selected. Dr. Fabrice Rochelandet in his 1996 conference paper ' Are Collecting Societies Efficient? An evaluation of collective administration of copyright in Europe' categorized legal supervision systems in the following spectrum: lack of control, control at request, setting up control, permanent control, and extreme control. [31]

Rochelandet (1996) identifies UK as having 'control at request' since decisions surrounding operations are generally left up to the CMO themselves, exemplified by the freedom to develop their own functioning and code of practices, which then must be approved. Control at request is also demonstrated by rights-holder members ability to procure certain documentation upon request, and call upon the tribunals for dispute resolution if desired.

Using this taxonomy, India would likely span across 'setting up control', 'control at request', and possibly 'permanent control'. Setting up control is fitting since the 2012 Copyright Amendment mandates the registration of any organization in the business of issuing and granting licenses for underlying musical works (composition and lyrics) as a 'copyright society'. Typically this requires extensive documentation on procedural and governance matters, most of which is predetermined in detail in the 2012 Copyright Act and 2014 Rules. Permanent control may also apply since the Central Government has powers to cancel the registration of any copyright society and legally cease its functioning. Additionally, quite substantial regulations determine rate setting process and even calculation, as well as distribution of royalties. Lastly, control at request may also be fitting since similar to the UK system, an internal dispute resolution is legally mandated. However, any dispute can also be brought to the quasi-judicial Copyright Board if unable to settle matters internally.

The United States appears as if it would deviate from former examples of more involved legal supervision since it would likely be characterized by 'lack of control'. Few requirements exist regarding specific operations of licensing bodies, with the exception of rate setting for ephemereal sound recordings and anticompetitive consent decrees, the U.S. does provide a contrasting comparative system.

Although these examples do span across part of the spectrum of legal control, a future case study country could include one which mandates complete control such as in the case of Italy with a single state granted monopolist or New Zealand in which a single clearance license is offered to reduce complexity and transaction costs for music users.[32]

Limitations of CMO Identification

Throughout the methodology design, one of the main challenges was deciding which CMOs to include in the review. Due to lack of in-depth knowledge of U.S. and U.K.'s music licensing space, the initial survey and selection included bodies irrelevant to music licensing specifically. Due to the ambiguity in India, all organizations who were involved in some form collective licensing were initially included, including private entities like Novex Communications, and the South Indian Music Companies Association, due to their seeming similarities in functioning. However, they were eventually excluded in the final review to include only those which have received registered society status, or are currently registered as such.

There was also a lack of distinction made between licensing bodies specifically managing underlying works like music composition and lyrics, sound recording (phonographic rights), and performance rights. Although interesting insights may have been able to be drawn between similarly managed members and rights, the disaggregated rights management in the U.S. made these categorizations and comparisons challenging.

Part of the confusion stemmed from the vast variety of CMO systems and characteristics. Ficsor (2003) distinguishes these differences from four varying viewpoints: the level of collectivization, rights' owners freedom of choice, scope of rights and rights-owners covered, and the freedom of CMOs to set rates and other licensing terms.[33] The level of collectivization range in terms of representation, authorization, and even distribution of royalties/returns. The freedom of rights owners' have range in the ability to choose joint management of rights, or even which CMO to manage their rights -- assuming the option is not restricted by their respective copyright laws. The scope of rights and rights owners covered by a CMO varies from exclusively managing its own members rights, occasionally managing other members rights, and occasionally managing all similar members rights with no ability to opt out. Lastly, the freedom of CMOs to set rates and licensing terms range from free negotiations with the possibility of an arbitration body, to legally fixed predetermined rates and conditions.

The tremendous variety of CMO characteristics and the lack of bright lines in defining control factors for this review's selection meant that major music publishers, music services who directly issue payment, and even content aggregators who collate and distribute works for a certain fee could have been included. However, the decision to include only those officially recognized and legally registered as CMOs enhanced the feasibility of this review.

Limitations of Parameter Selection

While reviewing the parameters for transparency, it soon became clear that there were several limitations to the information identified. These include heavy influence in its development from India's context and legal provisions, an assumed value in transparency for transparency's sake, lack of specificity when surveying 'ease of website use', overly simplified proxy for efficiency measurement, a relatively shallow review of the law, and lack of assessment of membership data.

While selecting the comparative parameters, the process of developing a feasible transparency proxy may have been tilted towards the context and legal developments of India. This appeared to be the case when the first round of data collection was inconsistent with further reviews due to what appeared to be differences in the terms being sought - terms used in the Indian Copyright Act - rather than the substance of the content. This is indicative of how India's laws heavily influenced the development of the parameters.

Exposure to mistrust and lack of data in the Indian context may have also led authors to a somewhat presumed ideal of transparency for transparency's sake, implying in a weak correlation between publicly available information, the more effective the website and possibly the CMO . However, Schroff (2014) noted that information overload could occur if a potential licensee is uncertain what they are looking for.[34] From an efficiency point of view, search costs may actually decrease if less information is provided upfront, but better presented in more accessible language and format to guide the user to the relevant information.

Following review of the websites for a list of members, it appears that a more fruitful parameter may have been the publication of actual works and affiliated creators, rather than only the rights-holder members themselves. A grievance occasionally raised is the lack of recognition of composers and producers within a song, since it is typically the singer (or in the case of Indian film music, the actor and the film) who the audience associates with the work. Thus, a full repertoire list could be a useful addition for Indian websites to consider.

The selection of governing directors as a marker of transparency may have also been influenced by India's recent concerns surrounding copyright societies' leadership. Although it is a useful indicator, private, for-profit CMOs which have exclusive membership does not necessarily have the same burdens of a compulsory collective licensing scheme in which representation is necessary. What may be more useful for members is ensuring a dispute resolution process is easily accessible so that any grievances can be taken up through proper channels.

Identifying a relatively simple proxy for effectiveness and efficiency was also challenging. Many CMOs in their annual reports highlighted figures such as 'administrative costs', 'operation costs', 'cost to income ratios', and other similar indicators to report expenses outside of royalty licensing, collection, and distribution. However, due to differences in calculations, a simplified proxy was developed to assess the effectiveness of their core purpose of royalty distribution. However, this calculation does not account for absolute sums, year on year growth, taxation, and other non-monetary benefits. In addition, the differing years, geographies, and class of works makes comparison not very methodologically sound.

The authors had initially included 'ease of website use' as part of the review. However, this parameter was not very clearly developed and defined, and thus reviewed subjectively by different research assistants with varying assessments. Nevertheless, closer attention was paid to web design and user interface to enable greater efficiency in searching for relevant information. Future assessments could measure the number of clicks or amount of time it takes to find a certain piece of oft-sought information.

The assessment of each country's relevant laws was based on whether reporting the information online was mandated by law. However, throughout the exercise it soon became clear that beyond reporting standards, more interesting distinctions such as the level of control and specificity to which the law sought to determine functioning and operations of the CMOs. Although this was briefly touched upon throughout the review, further research should be explored in this area.

Lastly, data the authors did not seek due to logistical limitations were membership-exclusive information. Recent complaints about royalties of streaming services have resulted in the publishing of
numerous HFA and SoundExchange royalty reports by their rights-owners. These reports outline the services and songs from which they have received their royalties, allowing for more informed debate and discussion of royalty payouts and business models of the various digital services. Ongoing research surrounding copyright management in India have found that detailed reports on how royalty was calculated, or from which works/services they were generated are often absent upon receipt of their royalty cheques.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite India's strict legal provisions and control regarding registration, operations, rate setting, and reporting, it appears there is little enforcement and even less compliance, particularly by Phonographic Performance Limited which failed to report tariff rates, royalty distribution policy, and its annual revenue report. The Indian Singers Rights Association published all parameters sought with the exception of their annual revenue report, leaving authors without data needed to calculate the percentage of distributed royalty. The Indian Performing Rights Association provided all information sought in this review, with an 84.25% of revenue as distributed royalties as calculated from its 2013/14 annual revenue report.

Relative to India, CMOs in United Kingdom were regulated less strictly, allowing self-developed codes of conduct providing adherence to certain broad guidelines on operations and reporting. It appears the government only imposes rules in the absence of adequate self-regulation. U.K.'s Phonographic Performance Limited displayed all six indicators sought, with 83.9% as distributed revenues from its 2013 financial statement. PRS for Music did not make its members list and repertoire open to the general public, but did publish all other parameters with 85.1% of distributed revenues as calculated from its 2014 annual revenue report.

To the authors' knowledge, the U.S. has the least operations regulation for CMOs with the exception of reporting laws for those issuing statutory licenses. Anticompetitive consent decrees also prevent partial withdrawal from blanket licenses to ensure non-discrimination towards select services. Despite relaxed regulation, BMI and SoundExchange reported all identified parameters, while ASCAP and HFA reported five, with SESAC only having four. ASCAP, Sound Exchange, and BMI were the only ones to have published their annual revenue report, with percentage of revenue royalty calculated to 90.0%, 89.9%, and 83.4% respectively.

It is important to reiterate however that information transparency demonstrated by CMOs website does not necessarily indicate effectiveness. Though not necessarily the most accurate indicator, there appeared no significant correlation between the percentage of distributed royalties, and amount of information found. All three countries have recently, or are currently undergoing regulatory reviews and reform to enhance copyright management. India's Copyright Amendment Act and Copyright Rules was a response to allegations of corruption and collusion of copyright societies. The legal status of certain CMOs and other private authorized agents not included here are ambiguous. Though they seem to function similarly to private CMOs in the US, whether they will be obliged to comply with copyright societies regulation is uncertain. The United States' Copyright Office has recently undergone a major study of the music licensing landscape. One of the major grievances highlighted was the disparity between negotiated sound recording rates and statutory rates of licenses for works of composers and publishers for the rapidly growing use of internet radio streaming. This disparity is furthered by the aforementioned Consent Decrees. In early 2014, the European Commission had also adopted the Collective Rights Management Directive with the main objectives of increasing transparency and efficiency of CMOs, and to facilitate cross-border licensing for music online. Thus, transparency and increased effectiveness of CMOs particularly in light of the digital age are being made a priority within legislation; and hopefully, in execution as well.

Recommendations

Through reviewing other CMO websites, a few learnings were found which could be adopted by Indian CMOs for enhanced transparency and effectiveness:

Publish a full repertoire of works the CMO is authorized to license with corresponding rights holder information. This recommendation stems from other CMO websites which present their administrable works in a searchable database, allowing users the ability to efficiently identify whether the work they seek to use are covered by the license.
Provide a platform for collectively identifying the due rights-holder of orphan works. This recommendation was a feature found in several other websites which lost contact with the rights holder through failure to update ownership information in the case of rights transfer, changes in contact details ,passing of the original author, unknown inheritance, and more.
Guide new users and potential members through a more user-friendly designed page with simplified, accessible introduction to music licensing. As exemplified by the layout of other websites, the webpage could be subdivided between information useful for prospective or current licensees, and prospective or current member rights-holders. Basic questions framed in accessible language can guide the website user to the correct information.
Increase clarity surrounding royalty distribution policies. During the review, IPRS and ISRA's royalty distribution scheme were noticeably vague. Although ISRA noted the most crucial elements, certain details like how "reliable statistical data" were to be procured and calculated in the case of missing log sheets was absent. IPRS was even more obscure, noting their frequency of royalty distribution would occur "promptly, from time to time."
Publish updated annual revenue reports. This document is probably one of the key indicators of how a CMO is doing financially, and it is important that these are made available so CMOs remain transparent and accountable to its rights-holder members and users.
Clarify dispute resolution processes. This is important particularly for those jurisdictions which do not allow much choice, if at all, between various institutions and rate-setting processes. Membership and representation would ideally provide and promote proper channels for raising and addressing grievances prior to seeking legal remedies.

Further Questions

Although a few insights were found through this review, the numerous limitations indicate a better designed exercise asking different, more nuanced questions may uncover some more fruitful conclusions. Future research could explore membership-exclusive data, and how reporting is presented across CMOs. From a legal standpoint, a more detailed analysis of regulations across different jurisdictions may shed light on different international standards of transparency and reporting. Additionally, given that the highest percentage of distributed royalties were from CMOs based in the U.S., the correlation leads to the question of whether more relaxed reporting requirements, or perhaps a competitive CMO structure can actually contribute to increased effectiveness? Lastly, given the increasingly complex licensing environment and continued creation of rights due to technological innovations, the feasibility of this system to monitor and finance music should be questioned as well. Further research on alternative compensation schemes considering tax-based, or patron-based financing will increasingly become more feasible and important systems to explore.

WORKS CITED

Agarwal, Devika. "After IPRS, PPL next to Claim It Is Not a 'Copyright Society.'" SpicyIP, n.d. http://spicyip.com/2015/03/after-iprs-ppl-next-to-claim-that-it-is-not-a-copyright-society.html.
Andrew. "Transparency and the Collective Management Organisations." CREATe, October 1, 2014. http://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2014/10/01/transparency-and-the-collective-management-organisations.
ASCAP. "Ascap Clearance Express (ACE) Search." ASCAP We Create Music, n.d. https://www.ascap.com/Home/ace-title-search/index.aspx.
Basheer, Shamnad. "Indian Copyright Collecting Societies and Foreign Royalties: Whither Transparency?," November 18, 2008. http://spicyip.com/2008/11/indian-copyright-collecting-societies.html.
BMI. "BMI Search." BMI, n.d. http://www.bmi.com/search.
Centre for Internet and Society. "Research Proposal: Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace.," n.d. http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fcis-india.org%2Fa2k%2Fpervasive-technologies-research-proposal.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNF4hnAUXGIRMcUozZfs5QOFwvO55A.
FICCI & KPMG. "The Stage Is Set: FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2014." Industry Report. FICCI-KPMG, 2014. https://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/Topics/FICCI-Frames/Documents/FICCI-Frames-2014-The-stage-is-set-Report-2014.pdf.
Ficsor, Mihali. Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights. Geneva: WIPO, 2002. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/copyright/855/wipo_pub_855.pdf.
Future of Music Coalition. "ASCAP - BMI Consent Decrees." Future of Music Coalition, October 3, 2014. https://futureofmusic.org/article/fact-sheet/ascap-bmi-consent-decrees.
Harry Fox. "Songfile Search." Songfile, n.d. https://secure.harryfox.com/songfile/termsofuse/publictermsofuse.do.
HFA. "HFA Commission Rates." HFA, n.d. https://www.harryfox.com/publishers/commission_rate.html.
---. "Rate Charts," 2014. https://www.harryfox.com/find_out/rate_charts.html.
Huang, Maggie. "Copyright Management in the Age of Mobile Music," December 26, 2014. http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-management-in-age-of-mobile-music.
IPRS. "Distribution Scheme As Per 17-5-2013." Indian Performing Right Association, 2012. http://www.iprs.org/cms/IPRS/DistributionScheme.aspx.
---. "The Indian Performing Right Society Limited.," n.d. http://www.iprs.org/cms/.
ISRA. "About ISRA." ISRA Copyright, n.d. http://isracopyright.com/about_isra.php.
Philipes, Richard Hayes. "How One Independent Musician Defeated BMI." Woodpecker.com, 2003. http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/phillips.html.
PPL. "About Us." Phonographic Performance LImited, n.d. http://www.pplindia.org/aboutus.aspx.
---. "PPL Member/Label Search," n.d. http://repsearch.ppluk.com/ars/faces/pages/licenseSearch.jspx?_afrWindowMode=0&_afrLoop=6609527708771000&_adf.ctrl-state=17ajb42h7o_4.
PPL UK. "Annual Review 2014." Annual Revenue Report, 2014. http://www.ppluk.com/Documents/Annual%20reviews/PPL_Annual_Report_2014.pdf.
PRS for Music. "PRS for Music 2014 Review." Annual Review, 2014. https://www.prsformusic.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/About%20MCPS-PRS/financial-results/prs-for-music-financial-review-2014.pdf.
Reddy, Prashant. "Did the Big Music Companies on IPRS & PPL Collude to Deny Lyricists and Composers Crores of Rupees in 'Ringtone Royalties? - An Investigation." Http://spicyipindia.blogspot.in/2011/02/did-big-music-companies-on-iprs-ppl.html. Spicy IP, February 14, 2011. http://spicyipindia.blogspot.in/2011/02/did-big-music-companies-on-iprs-ppl.html.
Reid, Harvey. "ASCAP & BMI - Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?" Wooedpecker.com, 1993. http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html.
SESAC. "Repertory Seearch." SESAC, n.d. https://www.sesac.com/repertory/RepertorySearch.aspx?x=100&y=22.
---. "SESAC Announces the Appointment of John Josephson as Chairman and CEO of SESAC," July 31, 2014. http://www.sesac.com/News/News_Details.aspx?id=2109.
Smirke, Richard. "U.K. Music Industry Sets Trade Mission to India." Billboard, September 4, 2014. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6243633/ukti-aim-bpi-trade-mission-india-mumbai.
Sound Exchange. "Sound Exchange Draft Annual Report 2013." Annual Report. Sound Exchange, 2013. http://www.soundexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2013-Fiscal-Report-PRE-AUDIT.pdf.
Stopps, David. "How to Make a Living from Music." Creative Industries. WIPO, 2013. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/copyright/939/wipo_pub_939.pdf.

[1] FICCI & KPMG. "The Stage Is Set: FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2014." https://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/Topics/FICCI-Frames/Documents/FICCI-Frames-2014-The-stage-is-set-Report-2014.pdf

[2] Centre for Internet and Society. "Research Proposal: Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace.," http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fcis-india.org%2Fa2k%2Fpervasive-technologies-research-proposal.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNF4hnAUXGIRMcUozZfs5QOFwvO55A.

[3] Huang, Maggie. "Copyright Management in the Age of Mobile Music," December 26, 2014. http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-management-in-age-of-mobile-music.

[4] Reddy, Prashant. "The Background Score to the Copyright (Amendment) Act." NUJS Review 5, no. 4 (2012). http://nujslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/01_prashant.pdf.

[5] Smirke, Richard. "U.K. Music Industry Sets Trade Mission to India." Billboard, Sept 4, 2014. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6243633/ukti-aim-bpi-trade-mission-india-mumbai.

[6] IPRS. "The Indian Performing Right Society Limited.," http://www.iprs.org/cms/.

[7] PPL. "About Us." Phonographic Performance LImited, n.d. http://www.pplindia.org/aboutus.aspx.

[8] ISRA. "About ISRA." ISRA Copyright, n.d. http://isracopyright.com/about_isra.php.

[9] Agarwal, Devika. "After IPRS, PPL next to Claim It Is Not a 'Copyright Society.'" SpicyIP, Mar 30 2015. http://spicyip.com/2015/03/after-iprs-ppl-next-to-claim-that-it-is-not-a-copyright-society.html.

[10] Reid, Harvey. "ASCAP & BMI - Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?" Wooedpecker.com, 1993. http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html.

[11] Basheer, Shamnad. "Indian Copyright Collecting Societies and Foreign Royalties: Whither Transparency?," November 18, 2008. http://spicyip.com/2008/11/indian-copyright-collecting-societies.html.

[12] Philipes, Richard Hayes. "How One Independent Musician Defeated BMI." Woodpecker.com, 2003. http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/phillips.html.

[13] ASCAP. "Ascap Clearance Express (ACE) Search." ASCAP We Create Music, https://www.ascap.com/Home/ace-title-search/index.aspx.

[14] BMI. "BMI Search." BMI http://www.bmi.com/search.

[15] SESAC. "Repertory Seearch." SESAC, https://www.sesac.com/repertory/RepertorySearch.aspx?x=100&y=22.

[16] Harry Fox. "Songfile Search." Songfile,

https://secure.harryfox.com/songfile/termsofuse/publictermsofuse.do.

[17] PPL. "PPL Member/Label Search," http://repsearch.ppluk.com/ars/faces/pages/licenseSearch.jspx?_afrWindowMode=0&_afrLoop=6609527708771000&_adf.ctrl-state=17ajb42h7o_4.

[18] Reddy, Prashant. "Did the Big Music Companies on IPRS & PPL Collude to Deny Lyricists and Composers Crores of Rupees in 'Ringtone Royalties? - An Investigation." http://spicyipindia.blogspot.in/2011/02/did-big-music-companies-on-iprs-ppl.html. Spicy IP, Feb 14 2011.

[19] Stopps, David. "How to Make a Living from Music." Creative Industries. WIPO, 2013. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/copyright/939/wipo_pub_939.pdf.

[20] SESAC. "SESAC Announces the Appointment of John Josephson as Chairman and CEO of SESAC," July 31, 2014. http://www.sesac.com/News/News_Details.aspx?id=2109.

[21] Although it is important to note that each work can only be registered exclusively to one society, so the catalogs won't be identical.

[22] Future of Music Coalition. "ASCAP - BMI Consent Decrees." Future of Music Coalition, October 3, 2014. https://futureofmusic.org/article/fact-sheet/ascap-bmi-consent-decrees.

[23] HFA. "Rate Charts," 2014. https://www.harryfox.com/find_out/rate_charts.html.

[24] IPRS. "Distribution Scheme As Per 17-5-2013." Indian Performing Right Association, 2012. http://www.iprs.org/cms/IPRS/DistributionScheme.aspx.

[25] HFA. "Rate Charts," 2014. https://www.harryfox.com/find_out/rate_charts.html.

[26] However, it is important to note the major limitations of these numbers in making any sort of conclusions due to data acquired from different years, varying geographies, without accounting for differing mandates and non-royalty collection activities. More reflections on this in the Limitations and Learnings Section

[27] "Sound Exchange Draft Annual Report 2013." Annual Report. Sound Exchange, 2013. http://www.soundexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2013-Fiscal-Report-PRE-AUDIT.pdf.

[28] "HFA Commission Rates." HFA, https://www.harryfox.com/publishers/commission_rate.html.

[29] PPL UK. "Annual Review 2014." Annual Revenue Report, 2014. http://www.ppluk.com/Documents/Annual%20reviews/PPL_Annual_Report_2014.pdf.

[30] PRS for Music. "PRS for Music 2014 Review." Annual Review, 2014. https://www.prsformusic.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/About%20MCPS-PRS/financial-results/prs-for-music-financial-review-2014.pdf.

[31] Rochelandet, Fabrice. "Are Copyright Collecting Societies Efficient? An Evaluation of Collective Administration of Copyright in Europe." Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2002.

[32] Resnikoff, Paul. "New Zealand Invents the 'Single Music License' for ALL Performances…." Digital Music News, September 30, 2013. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/09/30/newzealand.

[33] Ficsor, Mihali. Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights. Geneva: WIPO, 2002. http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/copyright/855/wipo_pub_855.pdf.

[34] Andrew. "Transparency and the Collective Management Organisations." CREATe, October 1, 2014. http://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2014/10/01/transparency-and-the-collective-management-organisations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comparative-transparency-review-of-collective-management-organisations-in-india-uk-usa

Civic BRICS Forum 2015

sinha — 2015-08-10T14:27:35Z

I attended the Civil BRICS Forum in Moscow last month. My session fell under the Economics and Trade category; and I spoke on the importance of maintaining a balanced IP regime, strengthening access to knowledge and medicines, and ensuring free speech and innovation. The event was held in Moscow from June 29 to July 1, 2015.

The working group also invited comments to the Zero draft recommendations and I drafted a quick response to the problematic aspects of the draft. See the Civic BRICS Forum Statement.

BRICS is a unique interactive format of the five largest and most dynamically developing countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS member states in total occupied about a quarter of the land on the world map. The total population of the BRICS countries is about 40%. The cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) is about 26% of the global one. However, BRICS is not only a club intended to strengthen the economic impact of the rapidly developing countries, but as well a fundamentally new form of international or rather an inter-civilizational dialogue based on the principles of polycentricity, non-hierarchy and networking. Therefore it seems that BRICS is able to propose a new concept of equal interaction over all vectors of interstate cooperation: in the monetary sphere, allocation of resources, trade, political and human relations.

Our Internet resource will help not only to get acquainted closer with history and activity of the BRICS club, to trace news and analytical articles on the agenda both the international process of BRICS, and Civil BRICS, but also to participate directly in Civil BRICS activity by means of forums of the Dialogues Internet platform.

List of Panels

Culture of BRICS countries 2015-2040: challenges for public administration (2 parts, longer session)
D K Hari, Bharath Gyan
Building racial, ethnic and religious tolerance and nondiscrimination, regulation of migration and integration of migrants (2 parts, longer session)
Anasua Basu Rau Choudhary, ORF Kolkata
System of intellectual property protection and promotion of innovations
Anubha Sinha, Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge
BRICS and construction of a multipolar world
Anchal Vohra, CNN-IBN
MDGs Implementation, SDGs and role of the BRICS countries
Gautam Kirtane, ORF Mumbai
Social role ofintellectual property protection in healthcare
Nilanjana Bose, GHS
Modern global challenges and the role of the BRICS in ensuring peace and security
Rajeswari Rajagopalan, ORF Delhi
Sustainable Energy and Climate Change
Sonali Mitra, ORF Delhi
The role of education and science in the development of human capital
Aparna Sundaresan, ORF Mumbai
Public healthcare development and access to medical services as priority of BRICS international development
Anjali Nayyar, GHS
Socially responsible trade as a tool for further economic development of the BRICS countries
Nilanjan Ghosh, ORF Kolkata
Economics in the finite world
Rajrishi Singhal, Gateway House
Non-Western view on the World's future
Varun Sahni, JNU
BRICS and global South societies in addressing growing inequality
Ashok Malik, ORF Delhi
Involvement of civil society in global governance and shaping the world’s future (open discussion)
TCA Rangachari
BRICS New Development Bank: acting for the common good (open discussion)
Samir Saran, ORF Delhi
Food security and civil society
Rahul Goswami, Centre for Social Markets
Challenges and threats of the modern world: "color revolutions" and use of "soft power"
Mihir Sharma, Business Standard
Money as a Weapon (open discussion)
Pranay Kothasthane, Takshashila Institution
Green economy and innovative development (open discussion)
Kanika Chawla, CEEW
Sustainable development of local administration: municipal and private innovative entrepreneurship projects
Rumi Aijaz, ORF Delhi
BRICS educational space: ways to strengthen scientific and academic ties. Aiming at high quality education (open discussion)
Dhaval Desai, ORF Mumbai
Disease prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyles among children and youth from BRICS-countries (open discussion)
Sarah Farooqui, Takshashila Institution

Download the schedule

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/civic-brics-forum

Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community!

subha — 2015-08-21T17:40:56Z

Prateek Pattanaik (User:Shrijagannatha on Odia Wikisource) is a young researcher of Odia literature and Odissi music. He has not just digitized as many as 54 Odia-language poetry dating early 18th century but has also annotated, both poetic and prosaic translation in his blogs “Sri Jagannatha” and “Utkal Sangeet”. He has also brought a complete book “Kisora chandranana champu” on Odia Wikisource. A recent entrant into the Odia Wikimedia community, Prateek is also the youngest Odia Wikimedian. He has also digitized 18-19th century 54 poem written by various poets.

Right after Prateek finished his first digitization of an entire book “Kishorachandranana Champu” by Baladeba Ratha (1779-1845 AD) on the Odia Wikisource (or.wikisource.org), Subhashish Panigrahi caught up with Prateek asking him about his passion for Odia literature and Odissi music.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Hi Prateek, please tell little bit about yourself?
Prateek Pattanaik (PP): I live among the pristine hills of Damanjodi, in the district of Koraput, Odisha, with my parents. My mother, Mrs.Pallabi Mohapatra, is a teacher in Delhi Public School, Damanjodi, where I study. My father, Mr. Dipak Kumar Pattanaik, is lecturer in Botany in the Government College, Koraput. Currently I'm studying in 11^th standard in the Science Stream.

SP: What influenced you to take so much interest in Odia literature and Odissi music?
PP: When I was young, my grandfather, Dr. P. C. Mohapatra, would tell me bedtime stories that recounted the exploits of Lord Jagannatha – tales about King Indradyumna, Chodaganga Deva, Jayadeva, the Panchasakha; those of Dasia Bauri, Salabega; about how Lord Jagannatha would wander hopelessly in hunger, banished by Lakshmi; how he would chase the eggplant-plucking lady, enchanted by her rendition of the Gita Govinda. Those tales fascinated my imagination, and attracted me towards the Lord. And thus it began, my endless journey of discovering the infinite cult that surrounded the smiling Gods at Puri.

As a kid I brought a triad made of neem wood from Puri. I would worship them, and dress them in the Beshas, costumes of Lord Jagannatha, using thermocole and paints- I smeared sandalwood paste on them and covered them with tiny blankets during winter. My mother inspired me – she was the typical Odia homemaker – from making “Pana” on the “Makara Sankranti” to making 'pithas', a large variety of traditional delicacies. And I would offer all of them to my Lords. She made herbal oils for my Lords when they were ill with fever. She would never say no to me no matter how unrealistic my demands. She tried her hand even at making the traditional “patta chitra” canvases for me to draw.

During my summer vacations, I would unconditionally rush to Koraput to my grandparents, and I still do. My Grandmother, Mrs. Kanak Lata Sabat, who is an Odia-language teacher, taught me the Odia alphabet when I was very young. My father would bring me pictures of Lord Jagannatha from the Temple stall outside the Puri Temple. I became famous in my entire family for my ability to tell them apart without seeing their name. I was stubborn – I told him to buy those Odia books even when I did not know how to read. And those were the first books I read in Odia- filled with vivid descriptions of the Beshas of the Lord; with simple lines from the Odia Bhagabata to complex lines from medieval poets. When I asked my grandmother to tell me who was this man called Upendra Bhanja, whom the books praised no end, she revealed to me the master he was, and told me about his unbeatable command over the words he spoke.

I grew up to being automatically attracted to Odissi Music – which I would hear amidst songs of the Gita Govinda in local Temples, and Patachitras- filled in the soaring structures of the Puri Temple. I myself figured out how to do those paintings, and began by singing songs of Bhajan Samrat Bhikari Bal. Later, I heard of age-old classics from my grandma again – songs which she had learnt while in the third standard- “Ki Shobha go Kunje”, “Galani ta Gala Katha” and so on. I learnt them myself, and began going to my sir who would explain to me the nuances of Odissi Classical Music.

When I was in ninth standard, the Jagannatha temple of Koraput came forward to use my PowerPoint presentations on the Jagannatha cult that I had made them for my pleasure, during my leisure time. They took them and printed them, and made a public exhibition. It was praised no end. I became somewhat of a child-size know-it-all of the Jagannatha cult, but I saw there was still more to discover.

SP: How you started learning about “Champu”?
PP: The word “Champu” itself attracted me. It had a distinct ring to it, an alien-sounding word that was never used in real life. My father told me it was a song in which each line started with the same letter. I asked him to show it to me. He could not. He himself had not seen more than a single song. And when the truth dawned on me that it was not 'a' song- it was a collection of 34 songs, after the 34 letters of the Odia alphabet, I had to get my hands on it. Fortunately, the “Open Access to Oriya Books” (OAOB) project by Srujanika had tons of Odia books digitized and hosted on the website http://oaob.nitrkl.ac.in, and I could finally behold what it was. I was amazed – I ran my eyes down the 'Ka' song,and read “Ka-Ka-Ka-Ka”. What talent! My god, who wrote this? Kabisurya. Kabisurya who? Kabisurya Baladeba Ratha. I discovered the man and was similarly amazed by folktales of his talent.

When I saw the 'Ga' song was the same song my Grandma loved – I was again amused. I knew that all the while! Above each song, it was written 'Raga so and so'. So all of these could be sung. But how could I learn how to sing them? A single recorded CD, from the busstand taught me. In a year, I could sing it entirely. I understood the depth of the lines from the simple commentary below them, and was disappointed by how less known they were in this day and age. I thought what I could do – I sung them at the temple during the Ratha Jatra, and they were an instant hit! People longed to hum those ancient tunes. But they could not. These songs were outdated, no one sung them except a few maestros of Odissi Classical Music, and no one could comprehend them. But people loved them. They did not know what they meant, exactly but they sure did get the feeling. And that was what mattered.

SP: From spending your entire childhood to creating two blogs with so much annotation on these early writings, and using social media to popularize them, to bringing them on Wikisource, what made this leap?
PP: One fine day, it struck me that the same way I made PowerPoint slides, I could make something digital. Why not a website which anyone can see? Wouldn't that breathe new life into the traditional melodies? Good. And so over a span of two long years, I typed out the entire Champu and created two websites; Shri Jagannatha (shrijagannatha.wordpress.com) for the Jagannatha cult, and later, Utkal Sangeet (utkalsangeet.wordpress.com) for the classical songs. The Utkal Sangeet project was a great learning experience, I used tags, so that you could find any song, view it on any device, sort songs by Raga, Tala, Poet, Book, etc. I translated songs, and uploaded their recordings as well.

SP: Did you ever share your work with other fellow researchers? You must have struggled to find these resources, isn't it?
PP: U.S. Researcher in Ethnomusicology at U.C. Davis, Dr. David Dennen AKA 'David Uncle',was the first and only person who helped me. He himself has submitted his PhD Thesis on the Kishora Chandrananda Champu, from villages to research centers. He sent me tons of research books in digital form, painfully scanning them himself only for me, from locations like Australia and America. None from Odisha even assisted; the people at the Odisha state museum refused to let a child like me to see their manuscripts, and none of the research institutions even responded in an email. David uncle constantly inspired me to carry on further, not being swayed away. He encouraged me constantly, and he is as important to this project, on the Champu, as my very own parents.

Then in February 2015, it struck me that I could use social networking to propagate the richness of the Cult at Puri – the grandeur in literature, dance, music, art, sculpture, food and all. I started a new Twitter handle @shrijagannatha, and linked it with my site. Now the handle has 820 followers within 6 months. Many Twitter users have been very appreciative, and they became family now. From the Grandfather @nidhi_budha to the 'untimely gourd' @akala_kushmanda, they post random tweets about Odisha to digitization of the Odia script, with which I struggled greatly at the beginning. This soul, devoted to a similar cause as me, was @subhapa, Subhasish Panigrahi, an active volunteer in the Odia Wikipedia, one of the founding fathers. After months, Persuaded by the Wikimedians, I too contributed the entire text of the Kishorachandrananda Champu to the Odia Wikisource by using my Utkal Sangeet project. It is a collaborative project, which will blossom healthily. Since so many people visit the Wikimedia projects, my small contribution to this free online library could probably quench their literary thirst.

SP: What are your plans to expand your work on Wikisource?
PP: In the future, I plan to make my site even more accessible for the layman. I have a few ideas as of now, to make the ideas reach out to everyone, even someone as young as me. I want to be an active, useful member of this online digital movement for Odia language, and go on with my task forever.

SP: Thanks Prateek for taking time to share such an inspiring and insightful story. Would you like to add more about expanding project for digitizing such valuable literature?
PP: As for my future plans, I would like to type out other such works of Kabisurjya Baladeba Ratha, like his “Ratnakara Champu”, “Premodaya Champu” and even the satirical “Hasyakallola”. I would definitely contribute the same to Wikisource. The books being rare, they may be lost if not saved. I would like to translate the Kishora Chandrananda Champu, the main one, into English in its entirety – word by word, retaining its true essence so that the Western Audience and even people of their states can understand the marvel it is. Now, I'm researching on various commentaries and references so that I can write my own. The form itself is rare, and more so, such an intricately interwoven part of the typical 'Odia' identity that it cannot be ignored. Let the world glance upon the talents of (Upendra) Bhanja and Kabisurya (Baladeba Ratha) and identify that a small, peaceful state in the East has been the birthplace for such great art.
Thanks!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kisorachandrananachampu-on-odia-wikisource

Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation

subha — 2016-06-18T18:15:05Z

Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Here is a blog highlighting three Konkani Wikimedians and an advocate of the Wikipedia movement whose efforts finally paid off.

Read the original blog entry published on Wikimedia Blog on July 15, 2015 here.

The Goan Konkani Wikipedia (available at gom.wikipedia.org) has gone live after spending nine long years in incubation.

An Indo-Aryan language, of the Indo-European family of languages, Konkani is the official language of Goa. It is a minority language in other Indian states, such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, northern Kerala, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu. It is spoken by about 7.4 million people.

Konkani can be written in five different scripts: Devanagari—officially used by the Government of Goa—as well as Latin (locally known as Romi Konkani), Kannada, Malayalam, and Persian. Of these, the Goan Antruz dialect of the language, in the Devanagari script, is considered standard by the Indian constitution.

The Konkani Wikipedia has many heroes, as we see them. Melissa Simoes and Darshan Kandolkar are two of the many long-term contributors who joined during the Konkani Wikipedia @ Goa University program and are still active even after the program formally concluded. Darshan is an assistant professor at the Government College Pernem in Goa. His professor at Goa University, Dr. Madhavi Sardesai—who passed away last year—played a vital role in inspiring him to go for higher studies in Konkani. Darshan realized that there is a lot to be written in Konkani when he was introduced to Wikipedia, and after that, he became dedicated to contributing to the project.

“I would like to bring more students as contributors to our Konkani Wikipedia,” Darshan says. “My aim is to start with my students at Government College Pernem. Being an alumnus of Goa University, I also want my juniors there to join our community and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.”

“I have a dream to start a project for the freedom fighters of Goa and involve a diverse set of people, from students to journalists and columnists. I also want to build partnership with educational institutions so we could engage with the students for a longer run and the existing Konkani community could mentor them,” he continues.

“Being a new Wikipedia project, Konkani Wikipedia needs more quality measures and the articles have to grow to good quality articles with more images and templates, I want to take it to the level of English Wikipedia with both quantitative and qualitative growth in articles!”

The Konkani Wikimedia community has been using social media actively to promote the Konkani Wikipedia project, and to celebrate the successes of its contributors. After Melissa became the top contributor to the project, her fellow editor Luis Gomes congratulated her. That brought Melissa into the spotlight, gaining the attention of editors from the global Wikimedia community. The community is continuing a tradition to rewarding the most prolific contributor of each month as the “Wikipedian of the Month”.

Melissa was introduced to the Wikipedia program at her university where the target for each participating student was to write one article each about a village in Goa. “I wrote my article just for the sake of the marks, but never bothered to think about why I am writing it. After the program was over, I became inactive on Wikipedia.

“After some time, I met Father [Luis Gomes] in parish and then Darshan and Father inspired me to resume editing. Then, it became an addiction and I never stopped even for a day. I would come back from work and sit in front of my computer.

“Now, I am a teacher, and my fellow teachers are mostly women. I would like to introduce the Goan Konkani Wikipedia to them so they could also contribute to Wikipedia,” Melissa says.

As Konkani Wikipedia went live, long term Wikimedian Fredrick Noronha, an early advocate of Konkani Wikipedia, said, “It is a wonderful feeling to see the Goan Konkani Wikipedia live. I would like to congratulate all who have been involved in some or the other way with the making of Konkani Wikipedia live from the days of its inception and incubation.

“I am not a great contributor or even a language expert. I come from a content background and found my interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons long ago. But this helped me to associate myself in some way with the Konkani Wikipedia incubator. I am happy that CIS-A2K chipped in to help build a community and help it grow in collaboration with the Goa University.

“Students of the Konkani department in the university are the real heroes to take this effort forward by filling the Wikipedia incubator with more editing activity to which the institutional backing acted as catalyst,” he added.

Fredrick feels there are major challenges that the community now has to start taking measures for: “The macrolanguage is written in multiple scripts. Out of five of the scripts three—Devanagari, Romi/Latin and Kannada—are actively used in printing and publication currently. People using all the scripts should be equally participating in a movement like Wikipedia to take their languages to other native speakers using Wikipedia as a digital tool.

“The second challenge is with the contributors. Goa, being home to majority of the Konkani language speakers, has English education from the primary level. This means many have a great level of technical ability. The technical contributor community here would be of great use to Konkani Wikipedia if tapped,” he adds.

“The technical contributors are eager to contribute but have not been approached in a manner that would interest them. Similarly the Konkani authors who are helping propagate the language to masses have sadly no or very little clue about Wikipedia’s existence in Konkani. This disparity is stopping a massive flow of local encyclopedic content to the Konkani Wikipedia. Unless we tap into the technological and the linguistic groups it will be only a tip of the iceberg.”

Fredrick explains that the the current Konkani Wikipedia community is primarily made up of students of Goa University. “This is both good and bad,” he says. “Having young and enthusiastic students as Wikipedia editors is helping the project to leap forward, which might not have happened if the faculty were targeted instead. There is, however, a great need for diversification.

“The approach to bring in authors in the 60–70 years age group will vary from the approach to bring in, for example, technical people. Our outreach strategies should ultimately fulfill both the literary and technological contributors, so that their work can help us to both grow content and to solve the problem of the multiple scripts, respectively,” Fredrick adds.

The Konkani Wikipedia community is organizing a public seminar on July 18 at Goa University to celebrate the launch of the Konkani Wikipedia and to pay tribute to Dr. Madhavi Sardesai, who always dreamed of the Konkani Wikipedia getting out of incubation.

Video


Wikimedian Darshan Kandolkar shares his experience of contributing to Konkani Wikipedia. Video in Konkani. Video by Wikimedia India, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live

Reading Devanagari script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script

pavanaja — 2016-06-18T18:14:43Z

This is a small hack to read websites with Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili and a few more languages) based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada script.

Konkani Wikipedia finally went live in this June after being in Incubator for nine years. Konkani language is written using five different scripts; Devanagari (official script for Konkani in Goa), Kannada, Latin, Malayalam and Persian. The current Konkani Wikipedia is available at https://gom.wikipedia.org where “gom” is for the Goan variation of Konkani.

There is a significant Konkani population in coastal Karnataka and to a small extent in northern Kerala that use Kannada script for writing Konkani. Many of these people might be facing issues with reading the Konkani articles in Devanagari script in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia which brings the need for making the Wikipedia available in Kannada and other scripts that Konkani uses.

There are various ways to go about it. Some of the Wikimedia projects like the Serbian and Chinese Wikipedia already had this issue and had multi-script transliteration as a solution. Transliteration between Devanagari and Kannada scripts could be transliterated in multiple ways and below is one of them.

Noted typographer K. P. Rao who is known for creating fonts for almost all the Indian scripts has recently come up with a solution for Devanagari⟷Kannada transliteration by creating a new font “Devama” that has Devanagari Unicode encodings with Kannada glyphs. The font has the rendering logic as per Kannada rules which means if we set this fonts for any text typed using Devanagari script, it will display it in Kannada script. This will help anyone who can read Kannada script to read something written in Devanagari. Mr. Rao has generously released “Devama” under Open Font License (OFL) ver. 1.1. The source file for the font is currently available at https://github.com/pavanaja/DevamaNew for anyone to use and modify with attribution.

How to use the font:

Download and install the font as a .zip file.
Unzip the file and find the “Devama.otf” file. Install it. (the installation will vary based on your operating system, check a how-to guide to learn).
Now inorder to make the font working you need to change the browser settings. (check here for Firefox and Chrome browser settings). You need to set “Devama” as the display font for Devanagari script.
In Mozilla Firefox:

Select “Options” from Tools menu. It will open a new tab. Select the “Content” tab. Click on the button “Advanced...”. Select Devanagari from the drop-down list from “Fonts for” and set “Devama” as the font for all options. Click on “Ok” and close the dialog box. Now reload the Konkani Wikipedia to check if it is working or not.

Not just Konkani Wikipedia, any other site in Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili, Bihari and a few other Indian languages) could also be read in Kannada. This might be useful for those who could read in Kannada and have problems reading in Devanagari.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Coverage in Prajavani)

pavanaja — 2016-06-18T18:14:22Z

As part of its ongoing partnership with St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru, CIS-A2K along with the Wikipedia community in Karnataka organized a workshop on Kannada Wikipedia. Prajavani reported this in their edition published on July 5, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-5-2015-coverage-in-prajavani

Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2015-09-13T06:09:34Z

Uploading information in Wikipedia helps to develop language, said Indian Languages Programme Manager U B Pavanaja here on Saturday. The article was published in Indian Express (Mangaluru edition) on July 5, 2015.


Above: A scanned version of the article that appeared in Indian Express on July 5, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Coverage in Udayavani)

pavanaja — 2015-09-13T06:17:49Z

As part of its ongoing partnership with St Aloysius College Mangaluru, CIS-A2K co-organized a workshop with the Kannada wikipedia community on Kannada Wikipedia. Udayavani covered this in their edition on July 5.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-4-2015-coverage-in-udayavani