Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Loves Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T09:56:20Z

Odia is a 2,500 year old language native to the area of Odisha (formerly known as Orissa). The language has recently gained the status of an Indian classical language.

The article by Laura Morris was published in Rising Voices on April 10, 2014. Subhashish's article on Odia Wikipedia is mentioned.

Recently, the Odia Wikimedia community met to celebrate the language's new status in Bhubaneswar.

The following is an excerpt from a recent article on the Wikimedia Foundation blog, by Subhashish Panigrahi, sharing information about the Odia WIki community:

14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) [...] KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

An OpenType Odia Unicode font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from Odialanguage.com was released under the OFL license. This is the first Odia OpenType font that the community actively tested.

A new Odia offline input tool called “TypeOdia” by Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar was also released for public distribution. DVDs containing the font, the input tool, Odia language dictionaries, offline Odia Wikipedia in Kiwix, Wikipedia editing guide, ISCII to Unicode font converter, various free and open source software packages and Ubuntu operating system [...]

A large majority of Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easy accessibility. [Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak] discussed the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts [...]

The Odia fonts can be downloaded for free. The developers of the font say:

We advocate for the use of Odia language in true spirit, in the domain of day-to-day administration, justice delivery, apart from the field of teaching. Besides, we have undertaken the project for developing Odia lexicon,with inclusion of typical odia version of technical words ,so as to avoid dependence on English language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/rising-voices-april-10-2014-odia-loves-wikipedia

Odia Littérateur Ramakrushna Nanda's 4 Books Now Available Under a Creative Commons License

subha — 2014-11-06T13:41:49Z

Children literature in Odia language went through an ennoblement after the intervention of Ramakrushna Nanda's writings.

His poetry “Ahe Dayamaya Biswa Bihari” has been sung in every school in Odisha. His work around Odia poetry, language and grammar, essays and encyclopaedia have been greatest resources for children for quite a few decades. CIS-A2K is honored to now bring four of his books under Creative Commons Share Alike (CC-by-SA 4.0) license:

Biswa Parihay (Encyclopaedia)
Lekhanira Pathasala (Grammar)
Bhabi Dekhantu (Compilation of essays)
Pausa Sandhyara Gapa (Compilation of stories)

The larger plans after this is to bring these books online on Odia Wikisource by scanning and digitizing them.

Video

Ramakrushna Nanda's son Prabhat Kumar Nanda and daughter-in-law Anasuya Nanda, speak about the journey of the children's magazine the “Sansar” and way forward for Odia Wikisource for today's generation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ramakrushna-nanda-four-books-under-cc-license

Odia Language's Presence in Digital Media and Wikipedia's Role

subha — 2014-03-05T11:36:46Z

କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା (Odia language in computer) is an essay published in Odia newspaper "The Samaja's Sunday supplement" on March 2. It is about the journey of Odia language in the digital era and the challenges faced during digitization of books and manuscripts.

It also focusses on the new technological advancements that allow users to interact and share knowledge on the internet in Odia language. It briefly explains about Odia Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is written by voluntary editors and the massive knowledge production by opening up platforms like these that allows real-time collaboration for editorship in regional languages.

A scanned version of the article is reproduced below. A higher resolution of this article could be read in The Samaja e-Paper.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-samaja-subhashish-panigrahi-march-2-2014-odia-language-presence-in-digital-media

Odia Language Wikipedia Page Grows to 800K Page Views A Month

subha — 2016-06-18T18:20:05Z

Odia Wikipedia is one of the first few Indian language Wikipedia projects celebrating such an old age. The Wikimedia community will gather in Odisha's capital of Bhubaneswar on June 3 to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 13th anniversary.

Get more event details. Click to read the post originally published in Opensource.com on May 31.

The Odia language is spoken by more than 40 million people in the Indian state of Odisha (the 9th largest Indian state by area) and its neighboring states, as well as, the Odia diaspora living outside India. With over 5000 years of literary heritage, the Odia language has been recognized as one of the oldest South Asian languages and has been given the status of a "classical language" by the Indian government.

Odia Wikipedia was launched in 2002—a year after the world's largest online encyclopedia, the English Wikipedia—and has grown to be the largest online content repository for the Odia language in Unicode, and is also the largest online Odia encyclopedia. Odia Wikipedia has 17 active editors (known as uikiali) spread across various parts of India and abroad, and over 8,800 articles. The Odia Wikipedia community is driving progressive digital activities by converting content created with non-standard proprietary encoding systems into Unicode, optimizing the system for search engines, and relicensing copyrighted content into Creative Commons (CC) licenses.

Almost all the newspapers written in the Odia language are available in non-Unicode or other proprietary encoding systems, or as images, making it impossible to account for them in search. The same is the case for state government portals that lack Odia-language content or have content in legacy encoding systems. Today, character encoding converters are hosted on Odia Wikipedia so that the editors can convert other encoding to Unicode; making newspapers and magazines that were unaccessible because of inability to search non-Unicode content available.

Odia Wikipedia has been available in Unicode since 2002, but for nine years it was dormant. Content creation and editor activity began to pick up in 2011 and since has increased at a dramatic rate. Content now covers diverse topics, from medical science to Odia cuisine. Since, it has grown to over 808,834 page views as of March 2015.

Original photo by Subhashish Panigrahi. CC BY-SA 4.0

The Odia Wikimedia community has also organized Wikipedia workshops and Wikipedia Education Programs to relicense copyright encyclopedia content to CC licensed content by negotiating with authors and copyright holders, and by gathering resources from various sources that are were easily accessible.

Going forward we hope to make an impact on the areas slow to change, like the media for the Odia language who have resisted adopting Unicode.

The Odia Wikipedia community hopes to improve and increase the use of the Odia languague online so that users can read and communicate on the Internet in that language. An open and collaborative tool like Odia Wikipedia is a promising avenue for this challenge because it allows anyone to contribute to writing, editing and enriching articles.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-subhashish-panigrahi-may-31-2015-odia-language-wikipedia-page-grows-to-800k-page-views-a-month

Odia Language gets a new Unicode Font Converter

subha — 2014-07-02T09:59:31Z

Recently, I worked on designing a font encoding converter with a fellow Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar. We worked by taking the code of a converter that was made three years back and made it work for two fonts AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala that are used by the media industry for printing and publishing.

This converter can now convert text typed using a modified ISCII based encoding and help generating Unicode text. Based on this learning from this I created another such converter for one such popular font Shreelipi that is used by Government of Odisha's official documentation including a magazine. The following is a summary of the usability of the converters:

It’s been over a decade since Unicode standard was made available for Odia script. Odia is a language spoken by roughly 33 million people in Eastern India, and is one of the many official languages of India. Since its release, it has been challenging to get more content on Unicode, the reason being many who are used to other non-Unicode standards are not willing to make the move to Unicode. This created the need for a simple converter that could convert text once typed in various non-Unicode fonts to Unicode. This could enrich Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by converting previously typed content and making it more widely available on the internet. The Odia language recently got such a converter, making it possible to convert two of the most popular fonts among media professionals (AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala) into Unicode.

All of the non-Latin scripts came under one umbrella after the rollout of Unicode. Since then, many Unicode compliant fonts have been designed and the open source community has put forth effort to produce good quality fonts. Though contribution to Unicode compliant portals like Wikipedia increased, the publication and printing industries in India were still stuck with the pre-existing ASCII and ISCII standards (Indian font encoding standard based on ASCII). Modified ASCII fonts that were used as typesets for newspapers, books, magazines and other printed documents still exist in these industries. This created a massive amount of content that is not searchable or reproducible because it is not Unicode compliant. The difference in Unicode font is the existence of separate glyphs for the Indic script characters along with the Latin glyphs that are actually replaced by the Indic characters. So, when someone does not have a particular ASCII standard font installed, the typed text looks absurd (see Mojibake), however text typed using one Unicode font could be read using another Unicode font in a different operating system. Most of the ASCII fonts that are used for typing Indic languages are proprietary and many individuals/organizations even use pirated software and fonts. Having massive amounts of content available in multiple standards and little content in Unicode created a large gap for many languages including Odia. Until all of this content gets converted to Unicode to make it searchable, sharable and reusable, then the knowledge base created will remain inaccessible. Some of the Indic languages fortunately have more and more contributors creating Unicode content. There is a need to work on technological development to convert non-Unicode content to Unicode and open it up for people to use.

There are a few different kinds of fonts used by media and publication houses, the most popular one is Akruti. Two other popular standards are LeapOffice and Shreelipi. Akruti software comes bundled with a variety of typefaces and an encoding engine that works well in Adobe Acrobat Creator, the most popular DTP software package. Industry professionals are comfortable using it for its reputation and seamless printing. The problem of migrating content from other standards to Unicode arose when the Odia Wikimedia community started reaching out to these industry professionals. Apparently authors, government employees and other professional were more comfortable using one of the standards mentioned above. All of these people type using either a generic popular standard, Modular, or a universal standard, Inscript. Fortunately, the former is now incorporated into Mediawiki‘s Universal Language Selector (ULS) and the latter is in the process of getting added to ULS. Once this is done, many folks could start contributing to Wikipedia easily. Content that has been typed in various modified ASCII fonts include encyclopedias that could help grow content on Wikisource and Wikiquote. All of these need to be converted to Unicode. The non-profit group Srujanika first initiated a project to build a converter for conversion of two different Akruti fonts: AkrutiOriSarala99 and OR-TT Sarala. The former being outdated and the other being less popular. The Rebati 1 converter which was built by the Srujanika team was not being maintained and was more of an orphan project.
Above: Akruti Sarala - Unicode Odia converter user manual. Image credit: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-3.0

There are a few different kinds of fonts used by media and publication houses, the most popular one is Akruti. Two other popular standards are LeapOffice and Shreelipi. Akruti software comes bundled with a variety of typefaces and an encoding engine that works well in Adobe Acrobat Creator, the most popular DTP software package. Industry professionals are comfortable using it for its reputation and seamless printing. The problem of migrating content from other standards to Unicode arose when the Odia Wikimedia community started reaching out to these industry professionals. Apparently authors, government employees and other professional were more comfortable using one of the standards mentioned above. All of these people type using either a generic popular standard, Modular, or a universal standard, Inscript. Fortunately, the former is now incorporated into Mediawiki‘s Universal Language Selector (ULS) and the latter is in the process of getting added to ULS. Once this is done, many folks could start contributing to Wikipedia easily.

Content that has been typed in various modified ASCII fonts include encyclopedias that could help grow content on Wikisource and Wikiquote. All of these need to be converted to Unicode. The non-profit group Srujanika first initiated a project to build a converter for conversion of two different Akruti fonts: AkrutiOriSarala99 and OR-TT Sarala. The former being outdated and the other being less popular. The Rebati 1 converter which was built by the Srujanika team was not being maintained and was more of an orphan project.

Above: Akruti Sarala - Unicode Odia converter user manual. Image credit: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-3.0

Fellow Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar and myself used parts of the “Rebati 1 converter” code and worked on building another converter. The new “Akruti Sarala – Unicode Odia converter” can convert the more popular AkrutiOriSarala font and its predecessor AkrutiOriSarala99, which is still used by some. Odia Wikimedian Mrutyunjaya Kar and journalist Subhransu Panda have helped by reporting broken conjuncts which helps in fixing all problems before publishing. Odia authors and journalists have already started using the font and many of them have regular posts in Odia. We are waiting for more authors to contribute to Wikipedia by converting their work and wikifying it.

Recently a beta version of another Unicode font converter for Shreelipi fonts based on Odia Wikipedian Shitikantha Dash‘s initial code is released. It works with at least 85 % accuracy.

"Even after getting the classical status, Odia language is not being used actively on the internet like some other Indian languages. The main reason behind this is our writing system has not been web-friendly. Most of those in Odisha having typing skills, use modular keyboard and Akruti fonts. Akruti is not web-compatible as we know. There are thousands of articles, literary works, news stories typed in Akruti fonts lying unused (on the internet). Thanks to Subhashish Panigrahi and his associates, they have developed this new font converter that can convert your Akruti text into Unicode. I have checked it. It’s error-free. Now it’s easy for us to write articles online (for Wikipedia and other sites). Yes, we are late entrants as far as use of vernacular languages on the internet is concerned. But this converter will help us to go godspeed. Lets make Odia our language of communication and expression."

The above was originally posted on Wikimedia blog.

Quick Links

Copyright notes: "Akruti Sarala - Unicode converter screenshot mock-up.svg", "Akruti converter user manual (white).svg" by Subhashish Panigrahi , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-language-gets-new-unicode-font-converter

Odia Language Classics could Now be Read from Phones, Tablets and of course from Computers!

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T08:12:54Z

Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia and a free online Odia-language library is celebrating its first anniversary in Bhubaneswar tomorrow. Available online at or.wikisource.org, the project finally went live in last year on October 20 after being incubated over two years. In a nutshell, it not just provides free and open access to readers to access text that are out of copyright or available under free license, but also allows them to contribute in either digitizing copyright-free text or correcting mistakes made by others.

The article published by Orissadairy on October 25, 2015 quotes Subhashish Panigrahi.

All the contributors to the project are volunteers and are fondly called “uikiali” in Odia. These volunteers follow certain guidelines to check through the content digitized by others to make sure there is no copyrighted text posing copyright violation, correct typos and other grammatical mistakes and incorrect attribution.

Authors and copyright holders are also encouraged to provide permission in re-licensing their work under free licenses like CC-BY/CC-by-SA licenses so that some of their content becomes available online and fill the large gap of the Odia books online to some extent. “Last year, the Wikimedia community in Odisha did a remarkable job in bringing as many as 141 books from multiple authors relicensed under the above mentioned licenses” said the Centre for Internet and Society's Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi. “Where we, as an institution, could play a role in reaching out to many authors and convincing them for a small contribution to the society” added Panigrahi.

Pankajmala Sarangi, the most active contributor to the project elaborated saying, there is a great dearth of Odia books online. I try to buy some time from personal and office time to continue my contribution. Afterall, I started from an all time Odia classic “Cha'mana Athaguntha” by Fakir Mohan Senapati”. Many important books that are out of copyright are making their appearance on the Odia Wikisource. “Wikisource is different than Wikipedia as the former is published writing reublished online where on Wikipedia it is more of aggregating information published elsewhere in an encyclopaedic manner”, says Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, a long time Wikimedian.

Odia Wikisource's administrator Mrutyunjaya Kar welcomes everyone taking interest in Odia library movement in particular and Odia language in general to join this event that is being held at the Institute on Management of Agricultural Extension (IMAGE), Siripura, Bhubaneswar at 5 pm tomorrow.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/orissadiary-october-25-2015-odia-language-classics-could-now-be-read-from-phones-tablets-and-computers

Odia gets more space in e-world

praskrishna — 2016-04-24T14:57:56Z

A survey conducted by the Odia Wikipedia community and the Centre for Internet and Society reveals that the online presence of Odia language is gradually increasing.

The article by Anwesha Ambaly was published in the Telegraph on April 7, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

The survey, conducted last month, found nearly 61 per cent online users active on social media to be using the universal web-compatible Unicode font for Odia. Using the Unicode ensures it is searchable, sharable and reusable on the Internet, thus making its presence bigger.

"The survey results show that more people are typing in the native script. And the use is increasing at a fast pace," said Subhashish Panigrahi, the programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, adding that there had been a 20 per cent rise in the number of Unicode users for Odia over the past two years.

Most people share quotes, personal opinions and news on social media in Unicode. In the first phase, the survey was conducted among 500 active social media users. More such surveys will be conducted within six months. The survey was conducted on Facebook, Twitter and some other popular social networking sites.

The survey results are particularly significant since the two other fonts used for writing Odia in the computer - Akruti and Sreelipi - are not compatible for use on the Internet.

"Based on these survey responses, we will customise several projects so that more people join in this free and collaborative knowledge sharing movement," said Mrutyunjaya Kar, an administrator of the Odia Wikipedia Community.

The Unicode font for Odia was introduced in 1991. Earlier, many people were not even aware of its existence in their personal and office computers. Unicode-compliant fonts now come preloaded in all computers across Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems. And many mobile companies also have Unicode fonts installed, especially in systems such as Android 5.0 and later versions."

Medical student Nasim Ali said: "Apple iOS devices have Odia support to the display level where one needs to download apps to type in Odia."

The survey also mentions that around 30.4 per cent use the Latin script to write Odia.

However, while explaining why there was not much Odia content on the Internet, Kar said: "There is no government initiative to promote Unicode in Odia. There is a need for more initiative to implement Unicode at all levels, such as government websites, web versions of school textbooks, government circulars and other publications."

"We have written several letters to the state government requesting them to start using Unicode while uploading documents in government websites. But, there has been no response or action from the government's side," Kar added.

Culture secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi, however, said: "We are taking a lot of initiatives to promote Odia language at the international level. We are trying to make use of technology to make sure that its presence increase on the web platform."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-telegraph-april-7-2016-anwesha-ambaly-odia-gets-more-space-in-e-world

Odia books now available online

praskrishna — 2014-12-27T02:16:19Z

Book lovers can now read Odia books online with the launching of the Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia, here on Friday.

The article was published in the Pioneer on November 30, 2014

The Odia Wikimedia community, a volunteer community that contributes to Odia Wikipedia and its sister projects, in collaboration with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) formally launched the facility.

Odia Wikisource houses scores of Odia language books online and is available for free at https://or.wikisource.org. It is not just an online library but it focuses on bringing rare and old books that are out of copyright. Notably, the CIS-A2K, a domain of the CIS, has been instrumental in encouraging many notable authors in the State to change their license terms to Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-by-SA) license, a license that allows public access and ability to reuse the content to expand the knowledge base in Odia language on internet.

Besides, a discussion on setting of a roadmap for Odia book digitization was held on the occasion. Later, a documentary on ‘Odia: Silalekharu Mobile’ was screened followed by an award ceremony.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-pioneer-november-30-2014-odia-books-now-available-online

Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0

subha — 2014-12-06T02:49:12Z

Twenty one books of renowned Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra will now be available under the Creative Commons License.

Taking into consideration the request from the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K), Odia researcher, teacher and author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra has signed a note to release 21 of her books under CC-by-SA 4.0 license. She came and attended the "Odisha Dibasa 2014" organized by Odia Wikimedia Community and CIS-A2K on March 29 in Bhubaneswar where we got 11 books of Dr. Jagannath Mohanty. Expressing her motivation for kindheartedly donating 21 out of her 35 books she tells us, "If Jagannath Mohanty's writings could go to millions of readers online why not I also open up my work. My life as a teacher has spent on researching on simplifying education. One of the 21 books she donated "Chandaka-Damapada Hasti Abhayaranya", is one of the rarest books that has ever been written on wildlife sanctuary. It is full of many observations about the elephants that reside in the Chandaka-Damapada wildlife sanctuary. Many interesting incidents from Odisha's history like a female barber shaving Gandhi during his Padayatra that are captured in her books would add to the richness of Odia Wikipedia. These books will soon be available on Odia Wikisource for digitization.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-author-nirmala-kumari-mohapatra-21-books-under-cc

October 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-12-06T04:53:41Z

CIS newsletter for October 2019:

Highlights for October 2019
Gurshabad Grover has been nominated through the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to be a member of the Advisory Group on Open Source Software for ISO/IEC JTC 1. In the wake of the Christchurch terror attacks, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron co-chaired the Christchurch Call to Action in May 2018 to “bring together countries and tech companies in an attempt to bring to an end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism.” CIS sent its comments to the Call. Over the past decade, a few private online intermediaries, by rapid innovation and integration, have turned into regulators of a substantial amount of online speech. Such concentrated power calls for a high level of responsibility on them to ensure that the rights of the users online, including their rights to free speech and privacy, are maintained. CIS has analyzed the companies' transparency reports for government requests for user data and content removal. The Department of Labour convened an interaction program of sorts at Vikas Soudha in Bangalore on 21st October, 2019 to hear the issues plaguing the emergent gig economy. Bharath Gururagavendran has thrown more light on this in a blog post. CIS presented a response to the ‘Gender issues arising in the digital era and their impacts on women, men and individuals of diverse sexual orientations gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics. CIS made a submission to the draft Code on Social Security, 2019 prepared by the Government of India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment. On October 17, 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, released his thematic report on digital technology, social protection and human rights. Understanding the impact of technology on the provision of social protection – and, by extent, its impact on people in vulnerable situations – has been part of the work CIS has been doing. A case study titled Farming the Future: Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in the agricultural sector in India was published as a chapter in the joint UNESCAP-Google publication titled Artificial Intelligence in Public Service Delivery. In response to our call for contributions and reflections on ‘Decolonising the Internet’s Languages’ in August, we are delighted to announce that we received 50 submissions, in over 38 languages! From all these extraordinary offerings, we have selected nine that we will invite and support the contributors to expand further. In a case study undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development (BD4D) network, Ambika Tandon evaluates the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) as data-driven initiative in reproductive health at the national level in India.

CIS and the News

The following articles and research papers were authored by CIS secretariat during the month:

Setting International Norms of Cyber Conflict is Hard, But that Doesn't Mean that We Should Stop Trying (Arindrajit Basu and Karan Saini; Modern War Institute; September 30, 2019).
Digital mediation of domestic and care work in India: Project Announcement (Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi; Feminist Internet Research Network, APC; October 1, 2019).
Doing Standpoint Theory (Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi; Gender IT; October 10, 2019).
We need a better AI vision (Arindrajit Basu; Fountainink; October 12, 2019).
Farming the Future: Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in the agricultural sector in India (Elonnai Hickok, Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar and Pranav M B; UNESCAP-Google publication titled Artificial Intelligence in Public Service Delivery; October 16, 2019).
The Mother and Child Tracking System - understanding data trail in the Indian healthcare systems (Ambika Tandon; Privacy International; October 17, 2019).
Facial recognition at airports promises convenience in exchange for surveillance (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; October 20, 2019).
“Politics by other means”: Fostering positive contestation and charting ‘red lines’ through global governance in cyberspace (Arindrajit Basu; Global Policy and ORF; October 21, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS secretariat was consulted for the following articles published during the month in various publications:

Why conviction rate for cyber crime cases in Karnataka is abysmally low (Theja Ram; News Minute; October 1, 2019).
Will FASTag raise privacy concerns? (Shreya Nandi and Prathma Sharma; Livemint; October 15, 2019).
India's HIV-positive trans people find 'new strength' in technology (Annie Banerji; Reuters; October 17, 2019). Also mirrored in Jakarta Post and ETHealthworld.com.
Dystopia vs development: The Kashmir paradox (Asmita Bakshi; Livemint; October 19, 2019).
Trending Hate Against Muslims: Is Twitter Complicit? (Puja Bhattacharjee; News Central; October 21, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.

Wikipedia

Under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation we are doing a project 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.

Blog Entry

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects (Bhuvana Meenakshi; October 3, 2019).

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. As part of internet governance work we work on policy issues relating to freedom of expression primarily focusing on the Information Technology Act and issues of liability of intermediaries for unlawful speech and simultaneously ensuring that the right to privacy is safeguarded as well.

Freedom of Speech & Expression

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Research Paper

Designing a Human Rights Impact Assessment for ICANN’s Policy Development Processes (Collin Kure, Akriti Bopanna and Austin Ruckstuhl; October 3, 2019).

Submissions / Analysis

Through the looking glass: Analysing transparency reports (Torsha Sarkar, Suhan S and Gurshabad Grover; October 30, 2019).
CIS’ Comments to the Christchurch Call (Tanaya Rajwade, Elonnai Hickok, and Raouf Kundil Peedikayil; October 31, 2019).

Blog Entry

Department of Labour Interaction Program: Online Business Platforms (Bharath Gururagavendran; edited by Ambika Tandon; October 29, 2019).

Participation in Events

Roundtable Discussion on Intermediary Liability (Organized by SFLC and the Dialogue; New Delhi; October 17, 2019). Tanaya Rajwade participated in a roundtable discussion on intermediary liability.

Gender

Participation in Event

Due Diligence Project FGD by UN Women (Organized by UN; UN House, New Delhi; October 11, 2019). Radhika Radhakrishnan attended a focussed group discussion.

Privacy

Under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC we are doing a project on surveillance. CIS is researching the history of privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhar. As part of our ongoing research, we bring you the following outputs:

Submissions

Comments to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report on Gender and Privacy (Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Pallavi Bedi; October 24, 2019).
Comments to the Code on Social Security, 2019 (Aayush Rathi , Amruta Mahuli and Ambika Tandon; October 27, 2019).

Participation in Events

BSides Delhi 2019 Security Conference (Organized by Bsides Delhi; New Delhi; October 11, 2019).
ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 27 meetings (Organized by ISO/IEC JTC; Paris; October 14 - 18, 2019). Gurshabad Grover participated in the meetings.
UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy Consultation on 'Privacy and Gender' (Organized by UN Special Rapporteur; New York University, New York; October 30 - 31, 2019).

Artificial Intelligence / Digital Technology

With origins dating back to the 1950s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not necessarily new. However, interest in AI has been rekindled over the recent years due to advancements of technology and its applications to real-world scenarios. We conduct research on the existing legal and regulatory parameters:

Blog Entry

AI for Good (Shweta Mohandas and Saumyaa Naidu; edited by Elonnai Hickok; October 9, 2019).

Participation in Events

NIPFP Seminar on Exploring Policy Issues in the Digital Technology Arena (Organized by Indian Institute of Advanced Study; Shimla; October 10 - 11, 2019). Anubha Sinha participated in this seminar as a discussant.
AI Opera- AI as a total work of art (Organized by Goethe; Bangalore; October 11, 2019). Shweta Mohandas and Mira were panelists.
Launch of Google-UNESCAP AI Report (Organized by Google; United Nations Convention Centre; Bangkok; October 16, 2019). Arindrajit Basu was a speaker.
Discussion at CyFy on Technology, Policy and National Security: Building 21st Century Curricula in India’s Law Schools (Organized by Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi and Observer Research Foundation; Villa Medici, Taja Mahal Hotel, Man Singh Road, New Delhi; October 20, 2019).

Researchers@Work

The researchers@work programme at CIS produces and supports pioneering and sustained trans-disciplinary research on key thematics at the intersections of internet and society; organise and incubate networks of and fora for researchers and practitioners studying and making internet in India; and contribute to development of critical digital pedagogy, research methodology, and creative practice.

Announcement

State of the Internet's Languages 2020: Announcing selected contributions! (P.P. Sneha; November 1, 2019).

Case Study

Big Data and Reproductive Health in India: A Case Study of the Mother and Child Tracking System (Ambika Tandon; October 17, 2019).

Participation in Event

Decolonizing the Internet’s Languages 2019 - From Conversations to Actions (Organized by Whose Knowledge; London; October 23 - 24, 2019). P.P. Sneha participated in this meeting.

Blog Entries

Mobilizing Online Consensus: Net Neutrality and the India Subreddit (Sujeet George; October 1, 2019).
How Green is the Internet? The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Aishwarya Panicker; October 11, 2019).

About CIS

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

Follow CIS on:

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

Support CIS:

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

Collaborate with CIS:

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

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

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

October 2018 Newsletter

Admin — 2018-11-15T02:44:58Z

Highlights

Published an article titled "Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study" in International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities. The authors of the article were Hindi faculty members of Christ University. Ananth Subray from Centre for Internet & Society provided research assistance.
Ananth Subray wrote an article "History of Wikipedia Education programme at Christ University" which has given an insight of Christ Wikipedia Education Program, how students are involved in different capacities in the program and shares the best practices of the Education Program.
CIS-A2K has collaborated with Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI) to facilitate development of Open knowledge resources on Community Forest Resource and content development in Wikimedia projects with community participation. These contents will become a part of "Van Bodh Knowledge repository".
Elonnai Hickok and Arindrajit Basu co-authored a research paper that was published as part of the Briefings from the Research and Advisory Group (RAG) of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) for the Full Commission Meeting held at Bratislava in 2018.
Arindrajit Basu in an article published by Oxford Human Rights Hub has argued that artificial Intelligence offers the potential to augment many existing bureaucratic processes and improve human capacity, if implemented in accordance with principles of the rule of law and international human rights norms.
Agnidipto Tarafder and Arindrajit Basu in an article published in Socio-Legal Review has traced the journey of the recent 377 (Navtej Johar v Union of India) and assessed its societal implications.
CIS invites applications for *three Research Fellow positions* to undertake field studies of platform-work in two cities, including Bangalore and another city (to be decided). The project seeks to produce a comparative understanding of at least two different kinds of platform-work as unfolding across Indian cities. Each fellow will be responsible for one field study (one form of work in one city) based on their language fluency and research experience.

Articles

377 Bites the Dust: Unpacking the long and winding road to the judicial decriminalization of homosexuality in India (Agnidipto Tarafder and Arindrajit Basu; Socio Legal Review; October 11, 2018).
Digital Native: Time to Walk the Talk (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; October 14, 2018).
Why Data Localisation Might Lead To Unchecked Surveillance (Pranesh Prakash; Bloomberg Quint; October 15, 2018).
Discrimination in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Arindrajit Basu; Oxford Human Rights Hub; October 23, 2018).
Digital Native: Hashtag Fatigue (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; October 28, 2018).
Lessons from US response to cyber attacks (Arindrajit Basu; Hindu Businessline; October 30, 2018). The article was edited by Elonnai Hickok.

Media Coverage

Gmail users beware while giving access (Surupasree Sarmmah; Deccan Herald; October 4, 2018).
Are online shows obscene? (Anila Kurian; Deccan Herald; October 10, 2018).
Internet services not to be affected as DNS servers undergo update (Hindustan Times; October 12, 2018).
Spending too much time on social media? Tech abuse may lead to mental health issues (Divya Shekhar; Economic Times; October 13, 2018).
Sales of surveillance cameras are soaring, raising questions about privacy (Rahul Sachitanand; Economic Times; October 14, 2018).
Not Surprised by Indian govt's data localisation directives: Michael Dell (Anand J.; VC Circle; October 17, 2018).
Factcheck: No, phones of users who provided only Aadhaar as proof of identity won’t be disconnected (Kanishk Karan; Scroll.in; October 18, 2018).
Rural Indians don’t trust messages on WhatsApp blindly: Survey (Vidhi Choudhary; Hindustan Times; October 19, 2018).
Brazil’s experience a red flag for WhatsApp in Indian polls, say experts (Vidhi Choudhary; Hindustan Times; October 21, 2018).
Reliance-Jio Users Complain Of Porn Websites Being Blocked; Company Yet To Issue Official Statement (Logical Indian; October 27, 2018).

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

►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).

Peer Reviewed Article

Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study (Dr. George Joseph,Dr. Sebastian K.A, and Kavitha A with research assistance from Ananth Subray; International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2018).
.

Blog Entries

South India Copyright Workshop (Subodh Kulkarni; October 21, 2018).
History of Wikipedia Education programme at Christ (Deemed to be University) (Ananth Subray; Wikimedia Blog; October 29, 2018).

Event Organized

Van Bodh Workshop for content development on Forest Resources at Gadchiroli (Co-organized by TRTI and CIS-A2K; Gadchiroli; October 2 - 5, 2018).

Participation in Event

Community Toolkit for Greater Diversity (Organized by Wikipedia Community; Mandrem, Goa; October 5 - 7, 2018). P.P. Sneha participated in the event.

►Copyright and Patent

Media Coverage

5th Global Congress On IP And The Public Interest: Successes, Strategies Highlighted (David Branigan; Intellectual Property Watch; October 3, 2018).

Participation in Events

KEI Seminar on "Appraising the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and its Implications on Access to Culture" (Organized by KEI; Geneva; October 3 - 4, 2018). Anubha Sinha spoke on the panel titled "Rationale, Beneficiaries and Scope (of the Treaty)".
Stakeholders Consultation on draft WIPO Treaty to Protect Broadcasting Organization (Organized by Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India; Copyright Office, New Delhi; October 23, 2018). Anubha Sinha participated in the meeting.

►Openness

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

Participation in Event

Panel Discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge (Organized by DST Centre for Policy Research (IISc); Bangalore; October 23, 2018). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist and moderator at the event.

Media Coverage

Sting job by Hyderabad scientist exposes fake journals (Business Standard; October 11, 2018).

-----------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

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

►Privacy

Participation in Events

Confidentiality of Communications and Privacy of Data in the Digital Age (Organized by INCLO and Privacy International; Human Rights Council 39th ordinary session; September 25, 2018). Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.
Meetings of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 'IT Security techniques' (Organized by Standards Norway with support from NTNU, Microsoft, Telenor, et.al.; Gjøvik, Norway; September 30 - October 4, 2018). Gurshabad Grover participated in the meetings.
State of Work in India (Organized by Bangalore International Centre, TERI and Azim Premji University; Bangalore; October 3, 2018).
Technology Foresight Group Tandem Research's AI policy lab on the theme AI and Environment (Organized by Tandem Research; Goa; October 5, 2018). Shweta Mohandas attended a roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence and environment.
Indian Feminist Judgment Project Workshop (Organized by Jindal Industries; New Delhi; October 6 - 7, 2018). Swaraj Paul Barooah participated in the discussions.
Community Standards Roundtable Conversations (Organized by Facebook, School of Media & Cultural Studies, and Tata Institute of Social Sciences; Bangalore; October 7, 2018). Ambika Tandon participated in the roundtable discussions.
Surveillance Stories: Optimizing rights and governance (Organized by National Centre for Biological Sciences; Bangalore; October 16, 2018). Sunil Abraham gave a talk.
Debating Ethics: Dignity and Respect in Data Driven Life (Organized by International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners; Brussels; October 24 - 25, 2018). Elonnai Hickok was a speaker in the panel "Move Slower and Fix Things".

►Cyber Security

Research Paper

Conceptualizing an International Security Regime for Cyberspace (Elonnai Hickok and Arindrajit Basu; October 26, 2018).

Event Organized

Roundtable on Cyber-security and the Private Sector (Omidyar Network Office; Bangalore; October 17, 2018).

Participation in Event

CyFy 2018 (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; New Delhi; October 3 - 5, 2018).

-----------------------------------

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:

Article

Policies & the Public Interest (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; October 4, 2018 and Organizing India Blogspot; October 4, 2018).

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

Job

Call for Research Fellows - Field Studies of Platform-Work: The Research Fellows will be associated with CIS from December 2018 to June 2019, undertake fieldwork, participate in two research workshops, and prepare an Ethnographic Report based on the fieldwork.

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2018-newsletter

October 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-01-10T00:53:03Z

October 2017 Newsletter

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS submitted its comments on mobile accessibility guidelines to the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India. Between 1 to 16 September, an online discussion took place on the creation of social media guidelines and strategy for Telugu Wikimedia handles online. Manasa Rao captured the developments in a blog post. Padma Venkataraman in a blog entry chronologically mapped CIS’ efforts at enhancing financial transparency and accountability at ICANN, while providing an outline of what remains to be done. Shyam Ponappa's article on NPAs and structural issues was published in the Business Standard on October 5, 2017.

Highlights

CIS submitted its comments on mobile accessibility guidelines to the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India.
Between 1 to 16 September, an online discussion took place on the creation of social media guidelines and strategy for Telugu Wikimedia handles online. Manasa Rao captured the developments in a blog post.
Padma Venkataraman in a blog entry chronologically mapped CIS’ efforts at enhancing financial transparency and accountability at ICANN, while providing an outline of what remains to be done.
Shyam Ponappa's article on NPAs and structural issues was published in the Business Standard on October 5, 2017.

CIS in the News:

Attempted data breach of UIDAI, RBI, ISRO and Flipkart is worrisome (DailyO, October 4, 2017).
Sex, drugs and the dark web (Hindu; October 7, 2017).
Ahead of data protection law roll out, experts caution that it shouldn't limit collection and use of data (First Post; October 12, 2017).
#NAMAprivacy: The economics and business models of IoT and other issues (Medianama; October 18, 2017).
#NAMAprivacy: Data standards for IoT and home automation systems (Medianama; October 18, 2017).
Majority of top politicians' Twitter followers fake: audit (Furquan Moharkan; Deccan Herald; October 24, 2017).
Awards for those working on employment opportunities for disabled (Eastern Mirror; October 24, 2017).
Nibbling away into your bank account, salami attackers cart away a fortune (New Indian Express; October 25, 2017).
Nirmita Narasimhan wins the 18th NCPEDP-Mindtree Helen Keller Award 2017! (National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People; October 31, 2017).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Odia Wikisource Turns 3 (Manasa Rao; October 22, 2017).
Wikimedia Workshop at Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at MGM Trust's College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aurangabad (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Orientation Program at Kannada University, Hampi (A. Gopalakrishna; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Solapur University (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Discussion on Creation of Social Media Guidelines & Strategy for Telugu Wikimedia (Manasa Rao; October 24, 2017).

►Openness

-----------------------------------

Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Freedom of Expression

ICANN’s Problems with Accountability and the .WEB Controversy (Padma Venkataraman; October 24, 2017).
Why Presumption of Renewal is Unsuitable for the Current Registry Market Structure (Padma Venkataraman; October 29, 2017).
CIS’ Efforts Towards Greater Financial Disclosure by ICANN (Padma Venkataraman; October 29, 2017).

►Cyber Security

Participation in Event

CyFy 2017 (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; New Delhi; October 2 - 4, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

►Privacy

Blog Entry

GDPR and India: A Comparative Analysis (Aditi Chaturvedi; October 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

Securing The Digital Payments Ecosystem (Organized by NITI Aayog; October 9, 2017).

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Revisiting Per Se vs Rule of Reason in Light of the Intel Conditional Rebate Case (Shruthi Anand; October 4, 2017).

Event Organized

Emerging Issues in the Internet of Things (CIS, Bengaluru; October 23, 2017). Andrew Rens gave a talk.

-----------------------------------

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:

Article

NPAs & Structural Issues (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; October 4, 2017).

Articles

Digital Native: There is no spoon, There is no privacy (Nishant Shah; October 9, 2017).
Digital Native: Finger on the buzzer (Nishant Shah; October 22, 2017).

-----------------------------------
About CIS
-----------------------------------

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2017-newsletter

October 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-11-23T16:40:23Z

Welcome to the tenth issue of the newsletter (October 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the tenth issue of the newsletter (October 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

CIS sent its comments and recommendations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014. It was submitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee in October 2014.
CIS has published the Central Guidelines and Schemes.
CIS was one of the signatories of a letter sent to the Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi sharing its concerns on India's position on intellectual property, particularly in the context of bilateral relations between the United States of America and India. The letter was sent on October 22, 2014.

In 2013, the Indian Patent Office released Draft Guidelines for the Examination of Computer Related Inventions, in an effort to clarify some of the ambiguity. Shashank Singh analyses the various responses by the stakeholders to these Guidelines and highlights the various issues put forth in the responses.

Subhashish Panigrahi wrote an op-ed in the Samaja (Odia daily) on the hurdles that the Odia language has been facing and the potential aspects of the language including it being used massively on the Internet, Wikipedia and other media platforms.

International Telecommunications Union is hosting its Plenipotentiary Conference this year in South Korea. India introduced a new draft resolution on ITU's Role in Realising Secure Information Society. The Draft Resolution has grave implications for human rights and Internet governance. Geetha Hariharan analyses this.

Vipul Kharbanda analyses the possible implications of the public interest litigation that has been placed before the Supreme Court petitioning for the establishment of a DNA database in respect to unidentified bodies in his latest blog entry.
In a blog post published in Lila Interactions P.P.Sneha explores the possibilities of redefining the idea of access through the channels of education and learning.

►Job

Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge - Institutional Partnerships): CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme. The position will be based in its Bangalore office. Programme Officer will collaboratively work with the A2K Team and would report to the Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at CIS.

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 updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. 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 Update

October 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; October 31, 2014).

►Other

Submission

Comments to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill , 2014 (Nirmita Narasimhan and Anandhi Viswanathan; October 30, 2014).

Blog Entries

Central Guidelines and Schemes (Anandhi Viswanathan, October 14, 2014).
The Legal Framework for Enforcement of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CLPR; October 14, 2014).

Media Coverage

Communication technology opens 'doors' for everyone, not only people with disabilities (John D. Kemp and Brandon M. Macsata, The Hill, October 13, 2014).

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.

Blog Entries

Letter to the Prime Minister on Indo-US Bilateral Relations on Intellectual Property (Nehaa Chaudhari; October 22, 2014).
Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions: Mapping the Stakeholders' Response (Shashank Singh; October 29, 2014).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶରେ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ଓ ସମ୍ଭାବନା (Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja; October 13, 2014).
Bharat Majhi Writings Now Available Under a Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 14, 2014).
More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource (Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices and Wikimedia Blog; October 21, 2014).
Odia Littérateur Ramakrushna Nanda's 4 Books Now Available Under a Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 22, 2014).
Open Access Platform to Save the Odia Indian Language (Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com; October 22, 2014).
Odia Wikisource Goes Live! (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 26, 2014).
Samskrita Vaibhavam (Sanskrit Wiki Outreach Program) (Shubha and Sayant Mahato; October 30, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia Workshop cum Editathon at Udupi (Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, October 31, 2014). The event was covered by V4News.com and Mangalore Today.
Converting from nonUnicode (Nudi, Baraha, ...) font encoding to Unicode Kannada (Dr. U.B.Pavanaja; October 31, 2014).

Events Co-organized

Sangeet Baithak: A Hindustani Music Resource Donation Event in Mumbai (Organized by CIS-A2K and Khayal Trust; Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai; October 7, 2014).
Indian Women in Science Wiki edit-a-thon (Organized by IndoBioScience and CIS-A2K; Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; October 11, 2014).
Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 (Organized by IndoBioScience and CIS-A2K; Urban Solace; October 14, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Enliven the Tulu Viki Fidia first and then add Tulu to the 8th Schedule : Dr.UG Pavanaja, Bangalore Rep. in Udupi (V4News.com; October 15, 2014).
Wikipedia can establish Tulu in a wider way (Mangalore Today; October 17, 2014).
Pushing women scientists (Renuka Phadnis; Hindu; October 19, 2014).
Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia (Nisar Ahmed Syed; October 22, 2014).
Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia (Siasat Daily; October 24, 2014).

Participation in Event

Barcamp Bangalore (Organized by SAP Labs; Bangalore; October 12, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja and Rahmanuddin Shaik took part in the event.

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month although these may not be part of the SAFEGUARD project:

Blog Entries

The Gujarat High Court Judgment on the Snoopgate Issue (Vipul Kharbanda; October 27, 2014).
DNA Database for Missing Persons and Unidentified Dead Bodies (Vipul Kharbanda; October 31, 2014).

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Participation in Events

Training for Internet Governance Activists (Organized by Global Partners Digital, UK; Cambridge; September 23 - 24, 2014). Geetha Hariharan attended the event. The event was held in September and the details published in October.
The India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance (Organized by FICCI and CYFY; October 15 - 17, 2014; New Delhi). CIS was a knowledge partner. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Privacy is Dead".
Expert Consultation on Cyber Security, Justice and Governance (Organized by Hague Institute for Global Justice, Observer Research Foundation and STIMSON; October 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session "Internet Access, Freedom Online, and Development in the Global South".

►Free Speech

Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - I: Why India's Proposal at the ITU is Troubling for Internet Freedoms (Geeta Hariharan; October 28, 2014).
Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - II: What India's ITU Proposal May Mean for Internet Governance (Geeta Hariharan; November 1, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Is India the next frontier for Facebook? (Rama Lakshmi; Washington Post; October 9, 2014).
If MNCs make early inroads, they will keep market share: Sunil Abraham, CIS (J.Anand; Financial Express; October 23, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Blog Entry

Rethinking Conditions of Access (P.P.Sneha, Lilainteractions; October 15, 2014).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► 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, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2014-bulletin

October 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-01-04T04:31:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of October 2013 can be accessed below.

Highlights

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research for the states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Daman and Diu.
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.
The Access to Knowledge team in collaboration with the Goa University re-released the Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia from October 21 to 25. Overall CIS spoke in 7 panels.
In an article on Spy Files, Maria Xynou examines the legality of India’s surveillance technologies and their potential connection to India’s central monitoring system.
A clause-by-clause comments on the Working draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 was sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
CIS started the first Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country.

Accessibility

As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 24 states and 5 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the following chapters:

National Resource Kit

The Daman and Diu Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 28, 2013).
The Arunachal Pradesh Chapter (by CLPR, October 29, 2013).
The Madhya Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 30, 2013).
The Delhi Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 31, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Survey (Other Organisation)

Accessibility of Banks and Financial Services Institutions: A Global Survey (posted by Nilofar Ansher, October 20, 2013). G3ict and Scotiabank, requests senior managers, COO / CEOs, Managing Directors, IT Directors, HR Directors, and accessibility professionals from banks and financial services companies to participate.

Blog Entry

Bengali eSpeak Aids in Disaster Management (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 15, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We produced a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, submitted our feedback on Framework on Open Source Software Adoption in E-Governance Systems, and conducted 3 Wikipedia workshops:

Article

The Fight for Digital Sovereignty (by Sunil Abraham, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII No. 42, October 19, 2013).

Blog Entries

Mobile Phone Patents: Prior Art Survey (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 23, 2013).
Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP (by Samantha Cassar, October 24, 2013).

Submission

Feedback on the Framework on OSS Adoption in E-Governance Systems (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 26, 2013). In September, 2013, the DeitY invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.

Events Participated In

OSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data (organised by Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, October 7, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated as a panelist and gave a presentation on Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum.

National Conference on Opening up by Closing the Circle: Strengthening Open Access in India (co-organised by UNESCO, Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, October 21, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist in the discussion on "Why Open Access?". She gave a presentation on 'Pondering Copyright and Recasting Openness'.

Note: The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we held 3 Wikipedia workshops in October:

Event Co-organised

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (organised by Goa University and CIS-A2K, Goa University Conference Hall, September 26, 2013). Nitika Tandon has blogged about the event.

Events Organised

Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Programme (October 3 – 6, 2013, CEO Center, Gubbi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K Team conducted the workshop. Seventeen people participated in the event.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event.

Events Participated In

Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013).
Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013).
कोंकणी विश्‍वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh.

Internet Governance

CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012, and a map monitoring privacy in India. As part of its project (funded by Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the IDRC) on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia we did an interview with Anja Kovacs on cyber security. With this we have completed a total of 10 video interviews:

Internet Governance Forum

Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia in the month of October. Overall, CIS spoke in 7 panels:

Charting the Charter: Internet Rights and Principles Online (organised by IRP Coalition, October 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Fair process frameworks for cross-border online spaces (organised by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of France, Western Europe and Others Group and Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of Germany, Western Europe and Others Group, October 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Chinmayi Arun were panelists for this workshop.
Removing Barriers to Connectivity: Connecting the Unconnected (organised by Internet Society and ETNO, October 23, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
FOSS: Smart Choice for Developing Countries (organised by TechNation and Open Source Alliance of Central Asia, October 23, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke on FOSS and IT Growth Policies in South Asia.
Privacy: from regional regulations to global connections? (organised by Internet Society, Bali, October 24, 2013). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists.
Human rights, freedom of expression and free flow of information on the Internet (a Focus Session on Openness, October 24, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker at this event.
Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance (a session on Internet Surveillance, October 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.
Tweets from Bali IGF 2013: To enable research by those who didn't want to mess around with Twitter's APIs, CIS has made available tweets from the IGF as downloadable .CSV files.

Privacy

Magazine Article

What India can Learn from the Snowden Revelations (by Elonnai Hickok, Yahoo, October 23, 2013). The title of the article was changed in the version published by Yahoo.

Blog Entries

Concerns Regarding DNA Law (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aoxXM9.
Interview with Big Brother Watch on Privacy and Surveillance (by Maria Xynou, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cRDMbV.
Interview with Bruce Schneier (by Maria Xynou, October 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/GS6oDX.
An Interview with the Tactical Technology Collective (by Maria Xynou, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1i1lVNo.
Interview with Dr. Alexander Dix (by Maria Xynou, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/1a7dgtQ.
Open Letter to Members of the European Parliament of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (by Elonnai Hickok, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17eZntz.
An Interview with Jacob Kohnstamm (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/17NcQmD.
Spy Files 3: WikiLeaks Sheds More Light on the Global Surveillance Industry (by Maria Xynou, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/1d6EmjD.

Comments

Re: The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013). CIS provided clause-by-clause comments on the on the Working Draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill: http://bit.ly/17Jpp63.

Announcement

The India Privacy Monitor Map (by Maria Xynou with assistance from Srinivas Atreya, October 9, 2013). CIS has started a first of its kind Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, as well as on the installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country: http://bit.ly/19A5mCZ.

Event Organised

Privacy Round-table, New Delhi (organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/GAsStr.

Event Participated In

'Free Speech and Media in South Asia: Human Rights Concerns in a Globalizing World (organised by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Centre for Media and Governance, National Law University, Delhi, Oxford University, October 25, 2013). Chinmayi Arun spoke about “Privacy and Surveillance in India” in a panel discussion: http://bit.ly/18bRGi5.

Cyber Security

Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project:

Part 11: An Interview with Anja Kovacs (October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/15EAZOE.

Other IG Updates
Event Organised

Mapping Digital Media: Broadcasting, Journalism and Activism in India (co-organised by Alternative Law Forum, Maraa and CIS, Bangalore International Centre, October 27, 2013). Samantha Cassar has blogged about the event: http://bit.ly/17EVtdw. It was covered by the New Indian Express (http://bit.ly/1dGENE6) and Hindu (http://bit.ly/1bcVUIU) on October 28.

Events Participated In

Religious Pluralism and the Tensions between Freedom of Expression and Respect for the 'Other’ (organised by Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations project, in cooperation with Jamia Millia Islamia, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 10, 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the session on “Democracy and the Tension between Freedom of Speech and Respect for the Other’s Religion, Culture, Identity, India and Europe”: http://bit.ly/194dtI7.
Fragmentation in a Democracy: The Role of Social Movements and the Media (organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, October 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on “Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance”: http://bit.ly/17e3PZ9.
Internet, Mobile & Digital Economy Conference (IMDEC) 2013 (organised by FICCI, in association with the Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, New Delhi, October 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated as a speaker in the session on "The Internet We Want: A Multistakeholder Approach": http://bit.ly/1b8QHDD.

New and Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Decline in web freedom steepest in India: Report (by Javed Anwer, The Times of India, October 3, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cVOJ99.
Google survey: 37% of urban Indian voters are online (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, October 8, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gtqqDY.
The quest for genuine clout on the internet (by Karthik Subramanian, October 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b8TdKa.
India believes in Complete Freedom of Cyber Space: Kapil Sibal (by Elizabeth Roche, Livemint, October 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fZgwd1.
Location Tracking: Why the Govt-Mobile Manufacturer War Won’t End Soon (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/HkIvF7.
Bouquets & brickbats for Google's new privacy policy (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18Rzkqm.
Bali meet to discuss Internet governance issues (by Moulishree Srivastava, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17I4r3M.
Indian politicians yet to tap voters online: CIS’s Abraham (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17HRV4s.
Beyond the Searchlight (by Debarshi Dasgupta, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17IitlZ.
Nowhere to hide: Govt making your personal details public (by FirstPost editors, FirstPost, October 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dGE6KJ.
Your private data may be online, courtesy govt (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/HpQRMp.
Saving privacy as we knew it (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/16HNYwu.
E-governance hopes rise as India crosses 1 billion transactions (by J Srikant, Economic Times, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cnJIKd.

Digital Humanities

Events Participated In

GFM 2013 (organized by the University of Luneberg, Germany, October 3 – 5, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah participated in a panel discussion with Wendy Chun, Tom Levine and Geert Lovink, around 'The End of Bibliographies: New Media and Research'. Nishant also participated as a panelist in a panel discussion on 'Open Up: Pragmatism and Politics of Open Access': http://bit.ly/1f9LCOH.
Digitalization of Culture (organized by Leuphana University, Luneberg, October 8, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah did an introduction keynote to 1600 undergraduate students. A video of the lecture can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/1enWQPv.
RENEW: The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology (hosted by RIXC Centre for New Media Culture in Riga in partnership with the Art Academy of Latvia, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Danube University’s Center for Image Science, October 8 - 11, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a part of the selection committee for the conference and chaired a session on Network Art on October 9: http://bit.ly/17e41aJ.

Blog Entry

A Hitchhikers Guide to the Cyberspace (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 4, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ga8yfH.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

Modules

World Intellectual Property Organisation (by Anirudh Sridhar and Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2013). WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations which deals with issues related to intellectual property rights throughout the world. Find out more at http://bit.ly/17a8WEk.
An Interview on Internet Governance with Professor Milton Mueller and Jeremy Malcolm (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 31, 2013). Professor Milton Mueller from the Syracuse University School of Information and Jeremy Malcolm, an Information Technology and Intellectual Property Lawyer, spoke about current issues and debates surrounding internet governance: http://bit.ly/17ix3Ro.

About CIS
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k

Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge

E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

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, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin

October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-11-08T11:42:01Z

Welcome to the newsletter of October 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis by Ujwala Uppaluri of the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Super Cassettes v. MySpace, announcement of public call for comments for reports on “Banking and Accessibility in India” and “Making TV Accessible in India”, and updates on Indic languages.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications the posts of Research Manager and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org.

HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of October: Droidcon 2012 (CIS, Bangalore, October 27 – 28, 2012).
Accessibility India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies: Public Call for Comments Banking and Accessibility in India: A Study on Banking Accessibility in India (by Vrinda Maheshwari, October 30, 2012). Making TV Accessible in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 8, 2012). Blog Entries The HathiTrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO (by Rahul Cherian, October 30, 2012). WIPO General Assemblies Approve Road Map on Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Rahul Cherian, October 11, 2012).
Access to Knowledge The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge: Analysis Super Cassettes v. MySpace (by Ujwala Uppaluri, October 31, 2012). Blog Entry ICOMM2012: International Communications and Electronics Fair (by Jadine Lannon, October 31, 2012). Event Organised A Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies" (TERI Southern Regional Centre 4th Main, Domlur II Stage Bangalore, October 27, 2012).
Openness The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Wikipedia Education Programs Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012). Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012). Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Workshops Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012). Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012). Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012). First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Event Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012). Wikipedia Press Coverage Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Team Updates The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for the New Delhi office. Shiju Alex, Program Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.
Internet Governance The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes: Column Rethinking DNA Profiling in India (by Elonnai Hickok, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol - XLVII No. 43, October 27, 2012). Analysis Privacy Perspectives on the 2012 -2013 Goa Beach Shack Policy (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2012). Upcoming IGF Events At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop: National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m). Pranesh Prakash is a panelist in the following workshop: New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m). CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops: Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.). Governing Identity on the Internet (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.). Other Upcoming Event DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012): CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central are jointly organizing the DML Conference 2013 in Chicago. Event organised The Public Voice: Privacy Rights are a Global Challenge (Punta del Este, Uruguay, October 21, 2012): Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at this event. Events Participated 3rd Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit (organised by EastWest Institute in partnership with NASSCOM and FICCI, Federation House, New Delhi, October 30-31, 2012): Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok participated in this event. Fourth Annual Legal Services Conference in India (organised by US India Business Council, New Delhi, October 11, 2012): Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on “Censorship and Content Restrictions: The Future of Internet Speech in India”. Meeting on Lawful Access by Law Enforcement (Brussels, October 3 – 5, 2012): Elonnai Hickok participated in the meeting. Video Arrested for tweeting: Legitimate or Curbing Free Speech? (NDTV, October 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this discussion aired on NDTV along with Shivam Vij, SB Mishra and Sanjay Pinto. Media Coverage On social media, Modi goes soft (by Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, October 26, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Bolstering right to remain private (by Apar Gupta, The Pioneer, October 29, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted. CIS was part of the expert committee even though not explicitly mentioned in these: Panel suggests law to protect individual privacy (Newstrack India, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Business Standard, October 18, 2012), Experts' committee moots law to protect privacy (by Saikat Datta, Daily News & Analysis, October 19, 2012), Govt panel wants curbs on phone taps (The Times of India, October 19, 2012), Privacy Act should not circumscribe RTI: expert group (by Amitabh Sinha, Indian Express, October 19, 2012), Nine-point code set out to safeguard personal information (Hindu Business Line, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Zee News, October 18, 2012). Court’s approval needed to tap phones: Panel (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, October 18, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Could better DNA testing facilities in India have saved the Talwars? (by Pallavi Polanki, October 11, 2012): CIS press statement is mentioned.
Telecom While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum: Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India CIS and Ford Foundation joined hands to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers. The following are the new outputs: Spectrum Management (by Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2012). Cable Television (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 16, 2012). Column in Business Standard The Supreme Court Delivers (by Shyam Ponappa in Business Standard, October 4, 2012 and Organizing India Blogspot, October 11, 2012).
Digital Natives Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South: Newspaper Column The Rules of Engagement (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, October 29, 2012).
Researchers at Work CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Three columns by Nishant Shah arising from these workshops were published in the month of October: Habits of Living: Being Human in a Networked Society (DML, Central, October 22, 2012). Digital Habits: How and Why We Tweet, Share and Like (FirstPost, October 12, 2012). Who’s that Friend? (Indian Express, October 23, 2012).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2012-bulletin

Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Loves Wikipedia

Odia Littérateur Ramakrushna Nanda's 4 Books Now Available Under a Creative Commons License

Video

Odia Language's Presence in Digital Media and Wikipedia's Role

Odia Language Wikipedia Page Grows to 800K Page Views A Month

Odia Language gets a new Unicode Font Converter

Odia Language Classics could Now be Read from Phones, Tablets and of course from Computers!

Odia gets more space in e-world

Odia books now available online

Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0

October 2019 Newsletter

CIS and the News

CIS in the News

Wikipedia

Freedom of Speech & Expression

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