Centre for Internet and Society

Methodology: Access to Music through the Mobile

maggie — 2014-12-08T16:22:41Z

Like its predecessors the vinyl, the cassette tape, the CD, and the MP3 player, the mobile phone as the most recent musical carrier have been well documented to be a disruptive technology, one which has made earlier carrier technologies virtually obsolete. The mobile phone has transformed the music industry and its supporting infrastructure — dramatically altering the roles of various intermediaries and stakeholders who enable the creation, distribution, and consumption of musical content.

Context

For the first time in 13 years, the music business is growing again, with consumption of musical content at an all time high due to innovations which have provided more affordable and convenient platforms for accessing music than ever before. These include web-based and mobile-based applications which have arisen to compete with piracy through "free", "feels-like-free" and "fermium" business models.[1]

Given the pervasiveness of the mobile phone, especially in India where it is the only mode of access for over 50% of the population [2], these innovations along with expanding broadband and data services seems to be a mark of success in bringing access to music and other media content to those formerly priced out, and geographically excluded from the legal market.

However, Indian web and mobile-based applications such as Gaana and Saavn, and its U.S. counterparts like Spotify and Pandora have continuously operated at a loss, often sustained by venture capitalist funding or a larger corporate backing.[3] Although many online platforms, such as the recently shut down Flyte (funded by Flipkart) cite piracy as the official reason for its closure, industry insiders have allegedly noted exorbitant licensing fees demanded by rights holders as the case.[4]

Research Problems

1. It is uncertain whether legal access to affordable music through the mobile will remain.

As an access issue, this is problematic due to the potential disappearances of these platforms, which have with varying success provided an alternative to unauthorized file sharing while increasing the ease of consumers' access to a larger volume and variety of legal content. Some of these applications provide a "direct-to-fan" platform for musicians to upload their own music online without having to 'break in' to a relatively closed entertainment industry, particularly in the Indian market where the mass majority of music is dominated by the film industry. Access to increased volume and variety is also not a guarantee, particularly in light of some musicians' indignation over the intermediaries' profits from their content, and the little revenue received in return.

2. Numerous stakeholders are entering the technologically advancing, digital music industry resulting in uncertainty of optimal business models and increased complexity of revenue and royalty distribution.
Thus, given evolving business models due to the transitioning physical to digital music industry, no consensus has yet been found on which platforms or revenue models offer an optimal solution for access to, and production of music. The potential for monetization in all levels of the value chain - from production, to content aggregation, to content distribution, and consumption -- has resulted in an increase in the number of intermediaries, further complicating the ecosystem.

All stakeholders fulfill different roles in the industry while expressing the common challenge of 'monetization'.

Web and mobile based content distributors are attempting to find the right price points at which Indian consumers are willing to pay, particularly in a market whose billing model is largely based on mobile credits and cash-on-delivery since only 1% of the population have access to credit. [5] Globally, criticisms for streaming distributors like Spotify are highly publicized, not paying enough royalty to artists despite claims that 70% of their revenue is spent on content licensing.[6]

Content aggregators are attempting to monetize services such as music fingerprinting, meta-data tagging, and other analytics tracking to identify and capitalize on consumer behavior and consumption trends. Meanwhile, telecom companies and mobile phone manufacturers are attempting to provide integrated services and music bundle packages to increase the interoperability of these platforms for a more frictionless experience for consumers.

Content owners - vast majority being music labels -- are attempting to maintain their relevance in the industry through its powerful artist and repertoire marketing role, amidst criticisms that stakeholders like multi-channel networks and self-publishing content distributors (i.e. SoundCloud, Youtube, etc.) will deem it irrelevant. Many distributors globally note the vast ownership of content leading to the potential abuse of bargaining power, as exemplified by the Competition Commission of India's recent ruling that Super Cassette Industries' (or T-Series, who own 70% of Hindi film music) practiced unfair and discriminatory charging practices for a radio broadcasters due to their demand for minimum guarantees.[7]

The content producers -- lyricists, composers, performers, and more are struggling to monetize and finance the production of their music. Down the valuation stream, the contractual agreements between content owners and distributors affect the livelihoods of these artists. India's music industry is particularly unique in that the vast majority of content are film music, which means the common financier of music production are the film industry, rather than music labels or publishing houses. Additionally, given a one-time, work-for-hire agreement was commonplace in the Indian film industry during music production, a contractual agreement stipulating royalty division was slow to materialize.

3. Continued violation of law due to lack of legitimacy of Copyright Board, Copyright societies, and 2012 Copyright Amendment.

The entire music ecosystem is governed by the framework of copyright, which necessitates legal mechanisms to ensure proper regulation and balance between the protection of rights holders and access to content for consumers.

The 2012 Copyright Amendment attempted to address the imbalance of bargaining power through preventing the first author's transfer of right to royalty, amongst others. This amendment was also passed in response to alleged corruption and collusion between the content owners (music labels), various judiciaries, and the former copyright societies (Indian Performing Rights Societies ("IPRS") and the Indian Phonographic Publishing Limited ("PPL")), resulting in an absence of royalty payments to lyricists and composers for many years.[8]

Despite this, the Copyright Amendment have not been as effective in correcting the issues on the ground, and are still allegedly being circumvented via advanced royalties, backdated agreements, and waiver of performance royalty rights.[9] Other inefficiencies cited have been poor transparency of royalty payments, lack of publicly available analytics on web and mobile-based platforms, and untimely responses by the Copyright Board to conduct investigations into the allegations.

Amidst these allegations, some industry analysts also claim the Copyright framework itself needs to catch up with the technological potential that the internet, and these new services provide. This may be an alternative perspective to be explored.

*(Tentative) Research Questions and Methodology

Thus, given uncertainty of the sustainability of affordable, legal access; the increasing complexity of business models and royalty distribution, and the continued violation of Copyright law due to lack of legitimacy, the policy question is:
How can legal and institutional mechanisms ensure an enabling environment for access to, and production of music for all mobile phone users in India?

"Legal mechanisms" - Copyright Act, Copyright Board, licensing mechanisms
"Institutional mechanisms" - Copyright societies, music industry norms, corporate policies
"Access" - equitable, fair, easy access to quality and quantity of music
- Potential barriers to access (to music, through mobile):
- Political: Legal constraints (Goonda Act?), intermediaries prevent copying, licensing bodies
- Economic: Lack of availability of older repertoire, access to mobile device
- Social: Use or access of materials involving loss of privacy, lack of quality production
- Technological: TPMs, compatibility, broadband/data access, payment gateways, geographic barriers, lack of net neutrality

Access necessitates "production" - ability to create content with little entry barriers; balance right of artists to earn, and consumer access

Barriers to production and distribution:
Uncertainty of business models in age of digital music
Ineffectiveness of Copyright regulation: Copyright societies, Copyright board
Controversy surrounding Copyright Act
Lack of finance/income -- intermediaries taking share of pie ?? Inefficiencies in music industry?

"Mobile phone users in India" - smartphone users able to access web and mobile based platforms

How do the stakeholders in the Indian music industry work together to facilitate access to music via the mobile phone?

Who are the stakeholders of the music industry in India?
What are their roles and their objectives?
How have their roles changed given the digital transition of the music industry?

Method: Conduct a stakeholder analysis mapping the physical to digital transition. Secure information via literature review (academic and grey) and expert interviews secured via snowball sampling.

Content Creation

Lyricists/composers (film, non-film)
Performers (film, nom-film)
Film Producer
Sound Producer
Publisher
Self-production (Remix artists, DJs, independents)

Content Aggregation and Distribution
- Content Aggregation:

Music labels (International/film/indie)
Mobile aggregators (VAS companies)
Tech aggregators (back-end for digital platforms: meta-data tagging, analytics, etc.)

Content distribution (digital)

Online stores (e.g. iTunes)

Mobile/Web-based

Webcast/Radio (e.g. MumbaiOne Radio)
Digital Stores (e.g. Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Google Play, Flyte, OKListen, etc.)
Interactive streaming (e.g. 8tracks, Gaana, Hungama, Raaga, Rdio, Spotify, etc.)
Bundled telco-music stores (formerly Nokia MixMusic)

Copyright Board
Copyright societies (e.g. IPRS (Indian Performing Rights Society), PPL (Phonographics Performance Limited, ISRA (Indian Singers Rights Association))
Associations (e.g. MCAI (Music Composers Association of India), SIMCA (South Indian Music Companies Association), IMI (Indian Music Industry - ass. of producers), etc.)

Financiers:
- Venture capitalists
- Brands/advertisers
- Corporate backing
- Multi-channel networks
  - Technical intermediaries
    - Telecom operators
    - Internet service providers
    - Data providers
    - Payment gateway providers

Mobile phone manufacturers

Consumers

Types of music listeners (Ovum research taxonomy)
- Active fans (lean forward/niche)
- Core enthusiasts (lean forward/mainstream)
- Indie followers (lean back/niche)
- Lean-back listeners (lean back/mainstream)
Class distinction / price sensitivity?

What are the current business models for web and mobile-based content distributors? How does this impact each stakeholder in the music industry?

What are the new business models of the digital music industry in India?
- How are the new intermediaries/stakeholders in the web/mobile targeted music industry impacting business models?
- Literature review (media, industry reports) and expert interviews

What is the revenue distribution in the music production value chain for the web/mobile-based platforms in India?
- Method: International comparison of new digital music business models worldwide:
- Online MOOC Course & lectures (Coursera - West Virginia University ; YouTube - Future of Music Coalition[11] )
- Literature review (academic, white, grey, media, industry repots, etc.)
- Method: Replicate FMC's study for Indian context: Music and How Money Flows[12]

Who are the consumers that access music via mobile/web-based platforms in India?

Is there a socio-cultural-economic dimension distinguishing those willing and able to pay? Who actually pays and how much?
- Method: Literature review, expert interviews, surveys??
- Are there different levels of musical engagement which translate to consumer behavior (active fans, core enthusiasts, indie follower, lean back listeners) and subsequent willingness to pay? What percentage of listeners fall in each category in India?
  - Method: Questionnaire to current users of web/mobile-based music distributors supplemented by expert interviews
  - What kind of economic good is digital music in India? Inferior, luxury, normal? Complementary, substitute? Public, merit, private, free?
    - Method: Literature review, theoretical economic analysis supplemented by user survey and expert interviews

Considering the stakeholders in the digital music industry, consumer behavior in India, how should music copyrights be regulated to provide optimal access of music through the mobile to consumers and fair renumeration to first authors?

What role do legal mechanisms currently play in the distribution of royalty revenue in the music industry (on the ground)?
- Method: Mapping of copyright processes and agreements (oral, contractual, or otherwise) between stakeholders in the music industry, noting specifically role of Copyright Board, and (former) Copyright societies; expert interviews
What role do codified laws (2012 Copyright Amendment, case law) stipulate should be the legal mechanisms to distribute royalty in the music industry?
- Method: Legal literature review, expert interviews
- How have the 2012 Copyright Amendment impacted the stakeholders in the music industry? Are the laws effectively enforced? Has the Copyright Amendment been designed/defined/articulated in an optimal way for all stakeholders? Why or why not?
- Method: Literature review
- How should copyright be organized? Who should distribute royalty revenues? What process?
  - Method: Consider stakeholder analysis, context of India music/film industry, consumer demand and price-sensitivity, and conduct cross-jurisdictional comparison
  - What industry norms should be set for a more transparent, efficient supply chain to ensure rights holders receive fair compensation?
    - Method: International comparison of industry norms for copyright organization and distribution

[1].Amba Kak, Fighting Free with Free - The Legal Music Market in India as a Response to the Digital Age (Centre for Internet and Society, to be published.)

[2].Avendus Capital, India’s Mobile Internet: The Revolution Has Begun: An Overview of How Mobile Internet Is Touching the Lives of Millions, Industry (Avendus Capital Private Limited, September 2013), http://www.avendus.com/Files/Fund%20Performance%20PDF/Avendus_Report-India’s_Mobile_Internet-2013.pdf.

[3].Amba Kak, Fighting Free with Free - The Legal Music Market in India as a Response to the Digital Age (Centre for Internet and Society, to be published.)

[4].Nikhil Pahwa, “Why Flipkart Shut Down Flyte Music,” News and Analysis of Digital Media in India, MediaNama, (May 29, 2013), http://www.medianama.com/2013/05/223-why-flipkart-shut-flyte-music/.

[5].Reserve Bank of India, as cited in IFPI, India: Nearing an all-time high http://www.ifpi.org/india.php

[6].James Duffett-Smith, Music Licensing Study: Notice and Request for Public Comment (United States Copyright Office 2014).

[7].Ashok Chawla, M.L. Tayal, and S.L. Bunker, HT Media Limited v. Super Cassettes Industries Limited (Competition Commission of India 2014).

[8].Prashant Reddy, “Did the Big Music Companies on IPRS & PPL Collude to Deny Lyricists and Composers Crores of Rupees in ‘ringtone Royalties’ – An Investigation,” http://spicyip.com/2011/02/did-big-music-companies-on-iprs-ppl.html, SpicyIP, (February 14, 2011)

[9].Anonymous, “Ghost Post: The myriad ways in which the Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 is being circumvented” http://spicyip.com/2014/01/ghost-post-the-myriad-ways-in-which-the-copyright-amendment-act-2012-is-being-circumvented.html, SpicyIP, (January 18, 2014)

[10].https://www.coursera.org/course/gpsmusic

[11]. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL471E012D03E9BA03

[12]. https://futureofmusic.org/blog/2013/06/18/music-and-how-money-flows

Click to download the PDF

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/methodology-access-to-music-through-mobile

Meeting with IP Stakeholders

Admin — 2018-01-01T15:23:18Z

Anubha Sinha attended a DIPP meeting with stakeholders on December 7, 2017 in New Delhi. The meeting was organized by the Government of India.

Anubha made submissions pertaining to CIS' study on lack of compliance and enforcement in respect of filing statements of working of patents:

Large percentage (~ 20%) of patents' Form 27s were found to be missing (dataset of approx 5000 patents);
3% of the patents did not mention status on working of patents;
Almost none of the available Form 27s provided any useful information - patentees did not bother filling out several parts of the Form.

In addition, I sent a brief on the issue drawn from Prof. Contreras' and Rohini's paper, and Rohini's older email to the IPO describing issues with the website.

See the Meeting Circular here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/meeting-with-ip-stakeholders-1

Meet the Newly Born Tulu Wikipedia, the 23rd in a South Asian Language!

subha — 2016-08-30T02:14:13Z

The Tulu language Wikipedia became the latest entrant in the family of 294 world-language Wikipedia projects after the project went live from Wikimedia Incubator earlier this month.

The post was published in Global Voices on August 28, 2016.

The project waited as long as eight years in the Incubator before becoming the 23rd South Asian language Wikipedia. Available at https://tcy.wikipedia.org, the Tulu Wiki space has a total of 1,285 articles contributed by 198 editors, about 5-10 of which are active with over five edits every month.

The announcement about the project going live was made by Katherine Maher, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation during the WikiConference India.

Wikimedia Incubator is a sister project of Wikipedia and before any new language Wikipedia is created, an Incubator project is created and grown by volunteer editors. Once the project gains momentum with more editors developing more content more often, the project goes live as a new Wikipedia project.

The Tulu language is spoken by about three to five million people in the Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala, and there is a sizeable diaspora living in US and the Gulf countries.

Eight years back in 2008, Tulu Wikipedia was created in Incubator with just a handful of editors. But apart from a few sporadic edits every so often, there was little impetus to take the project forward.

A community in a real sense is one that engages in discussion, consensus and collaboration. This never existed for Tulu Wikipedia as individual editors were working in isolation from each other.

There was therefore a need for them to meet and form a strategic plan to grow the community and the Incubator by brining in more active contributors.

In 2014, the need to connect the Tulu Wikipedia editors and foster an interactive editorial group was discussed and a meetup was organized in Mangalore by the Centre for Internet and Society—Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program, a catalytic program funded by the Wikimedia Foundation to support and grow Indian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects in the Indian subcontinent.

As an offshoot of that meeting, more community meetups started to happen. A few workshops were organized in Mangalore to provide hands-on training to participants and the city's St. Aloysius College opened its door to include Wikipedia editing as part of its syllabus.

A Wikipedia Education Program was promptly organized for the undergraduate students in this college where students started editing Wikipedia as a classroom assignment and the faculty was involved both in providing training and evaluating the articles.

Vishwanatha Badikana, assistant professor of the Kannada language department at St. Aloysius College, became an active Tulu Wikipedia editor himself and led outreach activities at the institution. His students have enriched the Tulu Wikipedia with articles across a broad range of topics.

However, what has been achieved so far is still only the tip of the iceberg. The community is still fairly small and has to grow beyond one supporting institution. The larger Tulu language community also has to take ownership and become stewards in growing Tulu Wikipedia.

Despite its long, rich linguistic heritage, Tulu is still struggling in terms of achieving wider usage in written form, especially in its native script. The lack of promotion is also quite evident as the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, an official body set up by the Karnataka government uses Kannada and English for its official portal.

The biggest challenge of all is the lack of Unicode support. Unicode is a global standard for scripts, and the Tigalari script that is used to write in Tulu is not encoded in Unicode. At the moment, all the articles in the Tulu Wikipedia are written in the Kannada script as most of the speakers are based in the state of Karnataka, and speak Kannada as a second language.

The only possibility of using Tigaliri script is tied to standardizing the script on Unicode, releasing a freely licensed typeface so that it can be bundled as a web font to display the script in the case of any mobile or desktop user not having the font installed on their device.Finally the script for existing content must be converted from Kannada to Tigaliri.

There is a series of eight how-to video tutorials that have been created to help new and existing editors to learn more about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, style and the editing process.

“Many students have contributed by creating these tutorials,” says Dr. Badikana.

The current set of editors are doing their best to spread the word about the project while safeguarding the core values of Wikipedia.

In an interview to the media portal Daijiworld, Bharathesha Alasandemajalu, an active editor based in Oman said, “Anyone can write or edit articles on Wikipedia Tulu, but it should not be plagiarised [..] Photos should be one's own or uploaded with valid permission from the owner. This will help the future generation to know more about the language and act as a source of information on Tulu language and culture.”

Dr. Badikana moreover shared in an interview with this author that he is hopeful of seeing more Tulu speakers contributing to Tulu Wikipedia, as he feels that growing language content online, combined with work in conventional classrooms, is the best approach to preserving the language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-voices-august-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-meet-the-newly-born-tulu-wikipedia-the-23-in-south-asian-language

Meet Telugu Wikipedian Surampudi Meena Gayathri – the first South Indian Wikiwoman completing 100Wikidays Challenge

ting — 2017-01-23T11:53:32Z

In December 2016, Ms. Meena Gayathri and her fellow Telugu Wikipedians celebrated the Telugu Wikipedia Day and her accomplishment in the 100Wikidays Challenge – a challenge that requires Wikipedians to create one new article per day for one hundred days in a row. When asked about how it feels to take up the challenge and to become the first South Indian Wikiwoman who completed it, she replied “Like exericing, you would think it is hard to do it every day but if you try, it is really satisfying.” Ms. Meena Gayathri has been one of the few active female Telugu Wikipedians since 2014. Her contribution and passion towards her language and culture have transcended into what she called a “knowledge revolution.”

Ms. Meena Gayathri is an active Telugu Wikipedian who started her 100Wikidays challenge at the end of August 2016. Her motivation came from the support of her family, the satisfaction of creating articles, and her determination to be an inspiration for her fellow Wikipedians. Ms. Meena Gayathri had chosen topics from her interests, including freedom fighters from Andhra Pradesh, wherein articles were present on English Wikipedia but not in Telugu. “I think those are really basic things that Telugu Wikipedia should have but somehow there isn’t” she said. Meena Gayathri reached out to the Telugu community for assistance with MediaWiki’s content translation tools. She also had the support of CIS A2K for books and reference resources. Drawing inspiration from current events and Indian culture, Meena Gayathri also wrote articles on Hindu Goddesses on each the ten days of Dussehra in coordination with the worshiping of a different Goddess on each day of the festival.

The creation of articles on Hindu Goddesses also mark Meena Gayathri’s effort and passion in bridging the Wikipedia gender gap in content coverage. Half way through her challenge, in coordination with the Wikipedia Asian Month in November 2016, she started writing on biographies of Asian women, including female politicians in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. “It’s very interesting” she said, while mentioning her experience in researching and writing about these female figures, “(how) these women, under hard situations… are still securing their positions in the government and in the politics… I want to let people see how they gain and sustain their power as women.” Additionally, Meena Gayathri pioneered a new challenge called “100Women Wikidays Challenge” in which participants would write a woman-related article each day in an endeavor to balance the content gender gap on Wikipedia.

“People said to me that I am the first South India female Wikipedian to complete the 100WikiDays, and the first in the whole world to take up the 100Women Wikidays.”

Her attempt to complete the 100Women Wikidays challenge, however, stopped a few days ago due to the lack of internet connection and time. In fact, this is not the first time that she has faced such difficulty during the completion of her challenges. She described how during a family tour outside of the city, she used to bring a laptop and ensure stable internet connection just so she can wake up as early as possible each day to finish her daily articles for the 100Wikidays. She agrees that women usually seem to be occupied by different responsibilities and activities – family, work, and socializing. She was glad that her family and community have given her full support, materially and mentally, to complete the challenge. When asked about tips on sparing some time for Wikipedia every day, she answered, “The first thing I do in a day… (is to) plan each and every moment of what I need to do in my day. And I maintain a task list in my mind. I will say, just remind yourself twice or thrice a day, remind yourself what you really want to do and you can make some time for Wiki(pedia) too.”

At the end of our conversation, we asked Gayathri to share some advice and encouragement to those who want to take up or are completing the 100Wikidays (or the 100Women Wikidays) Challenge. She answered without hesitation, “I will say, don’t feel afraid, that work you want to do is not that tough after all… It will be satisfying. You are contributing to the knowledge revolution... I think for Telugu, for the online knowledge in our linguistic background, this is going to be history. I will tell them ‘We’re creating a history.’”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/meet-telugu-wikipedian-surampudi-meena-gayathri-2013-the-first-south-indian-wikiwoman-completing-100wikidays-challenge

MediaWiki Training 2017

Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray — 2017-06-07T08:43:57Z

MediaWiki Training 2017 conducted in Bangalore

The third iteration of the MediaWiki Training was conducted on 24-26 February at Bangalore, India (the first and second iterations of MWT was conducted in 2015 and 2016). 16 participants from 9 Indic Wikimedia communities attended the workshop. The following graph shows the participation from different Indic Wikimedia communities.

Malayalam Wikimedian User:Viswaprabha attended the workshop as a resource person. On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, User:Titodutta and User:Ananth_subray were the resource persons.

== Sessions ==

On the first day, the following topics were discussed

=== First day: technical audit ===

Introduction to MediaWiki Training: The first session of the day started with introducing the aims of objectives of MediaWiki Training 2017.

Introduction to MediaWiki software and platform: Following this User:Titodutta and User:Viswaprabha discused the MediaWiki software, different extensions, LocalSettings.php and some other important configurations related to MediaWiki.

Wikipedia technical audit: Wikipedia technical audit was the central theme of the day, and the phrase “Wikipedia technical audit” was coined by Rahul Desmukh of IIT Bombay. He suggested that once in a year a Wikimedia community should do its technical audit, when the community would solve issues like deadend pages, orphan pages, uncategorized pages, script errors, infobox errors, reference errors, and other errors and issues related to a Wikimedia project.

On the first day of the MWT workshop we discussed these issues and errors and how to solve these.

== Second day ==

On the second day of third iteration of MWT, we began with problems faced in different languages with respect to Templates and Imfoboxes. And continued with teaching how to create the basic info boxes. Each participant were thought how to add two digits in a single template and creation of LUA templates. Later we had thought them how to create a basic template by adding a label and data, and even localizing of some templates were also done.

After this use of Wikidata was thought and INfoboxes using wikidata.

Post lunch some of the tools and their uses and applications were thought Copyvio, Duplication detector, Google books citation, Citation generator and Hay's tool directory

== Third day ==

On the third day of MWT 2017, the first session started with a session where User:Viswaprabha discussed Wikimedia Labs Quarry (https://quarry.wmflabs.org/)

The major points of the session were:

Introduction to Quarry.
Importance of Quarry
Coding simple quarry.

User:Viswaprabha also showed how to integrate Google spreadsheet with Quarry. He showed a couple of examples where he had the most of it using the tricks.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mediawiki-training-2017

May 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-06-26T01:40:33Z

The Centre for Internet & Society Newsletter for the month of May 2019

Highlights for May 2019

Omidyar Network is investing in in establishing a three-region research alliance co-led by the Institute for Technology & Society, Brazil , the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law, Kenya, and the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), India on appropriate use of Digital Identity. CIS will look at the policy objectives of digital identity projects, how technological policy choices can be thought through to meet the objectives, and how legitimate uses of a digital identity framework may be evaluated. The term Fintech is generally used to describe innovative technology and technological processes being used in the financial services sector. Vipul Kharbanda has presented a detailed analysis of RBI’s Draft Framework on Regulatory Sandbox for Fintech. Centre for Internet & Society's 'Access to Knowledge' wing (CIS-A2K) signed a MoU with PAH Solapur University, Maharashtra to promote content generation in Wikimedia projects among the institutions under University affiliation and develop a platform in the university for outreach programs on digital knowledge, language and technologies, FOSS, unicode, etc. Timely and affordable access to scientific research remains a problem in this digital day and age. Most countries including India, continue to struggle with implementing open access. The latest international initiative (created in Europe) to remedy this problem is Plan S. This has been positioned as a strategy to implement immediate open access to scientific publications from 2021 which India is considering adopting. Anubha Sinha in an article unpacks the disorderly growth of open access in India, and discusses the gap between the Plan's vision and current Indian scenario in some respects Shweta Mohandas was nominated to curate Genderlog's Twitter handle (@genderlogindia). She tweeted about topics related to gender and data, more specifically around AI, big data, privacy and surveillance. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Tim Davies co-authored a chapter titled Open Data and Land Ownership in State of Open Data book which was recently launched at World Bank. The authors have thrown light on how the lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and CIS as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada. Can data ever know who we really are? This is an excerpt from an essay by Zara Rahman, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives.

CIS and the News

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

How privacy fares in the 2019 election manifestos | Opinion (Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon; May 1, 2019).
Democracy, Digital India and Networks (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 1, 2019).
Why the TikTok ban is worrying (Gurshabad Grover; Hindustan Times; May 2, 2019).
Digital Native: Narendra Modi’s interview by Akshay Kumar is a PR masterpiece (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 5, 2019).
Will the WTO Finally Tackle the ‘Trump’ Card of National Security? (Arindrajit Basu; The Wire; May 8, 2019).
Digital Native: Three things we need to realise about what TikTok is doing to us (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 19, 2019).
Open Data and Land Ownership (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; State of Open Data; May 22, 2019).
Can EVM vulnerabilities be used to game the Indian election? (Karan Saini; Kaarana Blog; May 22, 2019).
The Huawei bogey (Gurshabad Grover; Indian Express; May 30, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Cyber criminals hide in the ‘dark web’ to remain anonymous (Tushar Kaushik; Economic Times; May 2, 2019).
BJP outspends Congress, others in social media advertising (Vidhi Choudhary; Hindustan Times; May 3, 2019).
Three emerging market think tanks to collaborate on Good ID recommendations with Omidyar backing (Chris Burt; Biometric Update; May 8, 2019).
"Aadhaar Reduced Agency in Citizens and Empowered Those in Positions of Authority" (Martin Moore; News Click; May 20, 2019).
In Parts of India, Internet Shutdowns Are a Fact of Life (Megha Bahree; Top10VPN; May 21, 2019).
Artificial Intelligence: Consumer Experiences in New Technologies (Consumer International; May 28, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

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

Copyright & Patent

Blog Entry

Should India adopt Plan S to realise Open Access to Public-funded Scientific Research? (Anubha Sinha; May 29, 2019).

Wikipdedia

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

Blog Entries

Wikipedia assignments workshop for Post Graduate students in PAH Solapur University (Subodh Kulkarni; May 3, 2019).
Wikisource Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal (Subodh Kulkarni; May 26, 2019)
MoU between PAH Solapur University & CIS-A2K (Subodh Kulkarni; May 31, 2019).

Jobs

CIS-A2K team is seeking applications for the following posts:

Events

Train-the-Trainer 2019 (Organized by CIS-A2K; Vishakhapatnam; May 31 - June 2, 2019).
Wikimedia Education SAARC conference (Organized by Christ University (Deemed to be University) with the association of CIS-A2K; Christ University; Bangalore; June 20 - June 22, 2019).

Media Coverage

Ahmedabad Wikisource Workshop (Vishwavihar; May 13, 2019).
Youths come forward to augment Assamese Wikisource project (NE Now News; May 17, 2019).
Wikipedia looks to ramp up its Indian language content (Tushar Kaushik; May 28, 2019).
Project Tiger: Wikipedia ropes in locals to contribute articles in Indian languages (Tushar Kaushik; May 29, 2019).

Openness

Publication

Open Data and Land Ownership (State of Open Data; Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 22, 2019).

Internet Governance

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

Digital Identity

Announcement

Announcement of a Three-Region Research Alliance on the Appropriate Use of Digital Identity (Amber Sinha; May 13, 2019).

Event Organized

Picking ‘Wholes’ - Thinking in Systems Workshop (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; May 27 - 28, 2019).

Gender

Blog Entry

Workshop on Feminist Information Infrastructure (Ambika Tandon; edited by Gurshabad Grover and designed by Saumyaa Naidu; May 9, 2019).

Free Speech

Participation in Events

Stockholm Internet Forum 2019 (Organized by Stockholm Internet Forum 2019; Stockholm; May 16 - 17, 2019). Gurshabad Grover was a panelist in the discussion on 'Influencing Internet Governance' co-organised by Article 19.
Consilience 2019 (Organized by the Law and Technology Society; National Law School of India University, Bangalore; May 25, 2019). Gurshabad Grover was a panelist on the discussion on 'Online Content Regulation: Global Perspectives and Solutions'.

Privacy

Research Paper

An Analysis of the RBI’s Draft Framework on Regulatory Sandbox for Fintech (Vipul Kharbanda; May 8, 2019).

Participation in Events

Data Empowerment And Protection Architecture (DEPA) Workshop (Organized by iSPIRT Foundation; May 18, 2019). Pranav Manjesh Bidare attended the workshop.
ABLI Privacy Workshop (Organized by Asian Business Law Institute; Singapore; May 21 - 22, 2019). Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.
HillHacks 2019 (Organized by HillHacks; Bir, Himachal Pradesh; May 24 - 26, 2019). Karan Saini was a speaker.

Artificial Intelligence

Participation in Events

Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face (Organized by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi). Radhika Radhakrishnan attended a roundtable consultation.
AI for Good Workshop (Organized by Swissnex India and Wadhwani AI; Bangalore; May 22, 2019).
MWC19 Shanghai AI and Trust in APAC and China (Organized by Digital Asia Hub; MWC Shanghai; June 27, 2019). Sunil Abraham will be making a presentation at the summit on AI and Trust in APAC and China. Sunil has been invited as a speaker on panel ‘Framing AI for Digital Upstarts’.

Cyber Security

Participation in Event

Shining light into darkness: Encouraging greater transparency of government offensive practices in cyberspace (Organized by Rights Con; Tunis; June 12, 2019). Sunil Abraham will be attending a conversation on encouraging greater transparency of government offensive practices in cyberspace.

Telecom

Article

Democracy, Digital India and Networks (Shyam Ponappa; Organizing India Blogspot; May 1, 2019).

Participation in Event

Live [Closed]: TRAI Open House Discussion on OTT Regulation - Delhi (Organized by TRAI; New Delhi; May 20, 2019). Anubha Sinha attended the event.

Researchers at Work (RAW)

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

Essay

Can data ever know who we really are? (Zara Rahman; May 22, 2019).

Blog Entries

War Driving in Lhasa Vegas (Oxblood Ruffin; May 11, 2019).

#DotBharatAdoption (Dr. Amit Prakash, K.A. Dayanand, Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, Dr. V. Sridhar, and Vivek Pani; May 11, 2019).
#MaterialisingWriting (Dibyadyuti Roy, Indrani Roy, Padmini Ray Murray, and Puthiya Purayil Sneha; May 21, 2019).
The Shadow that Social Media Casts: The Doubled Offlines of Online Sociality (Karandeep Mehra; May 21, 2019).

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

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

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

May 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-06-12T14:03:24Z

CIS newsletter for the month of May 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) has published a collection of stories of the impact of internet shutdowns on people's lives in the country. The stories were provided by 101 Reporters. The project was funded by Facebook and MacArthur Foundation. The report edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah can be accessed here. Anubha Sinha on behalf of CIS participated in the 36th Session of WIPO SCCR at Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018. CIS made statements on Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities, Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Limitations and Exceptions Agenda, and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. CIS was one among the 14 NGOs which circulated a letter that raised concerns about the draft Broadcasting Treaty. India's Department of Telecommunications released a draft new telecom policy, titled ‘Draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018’. Anubha Sinha wrote an analysis on this in the Wire on May 6, 2018. Singapore based Asian Business Law Institute published a compendium on “Regulation of cross-border transfer of personal data in Asia”. The compendium contains 14 detailed reports. The chapter titled Jurisdictional Report India was authored by Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok. The purpose of privacy notices and choice mechanisms is to notify users of the data practices of a system, so they can make informed privacy decisions, wrote Saumyaa Naidu in a blog post which was edited by Elonnai Hickok. Divij Joshi wrote a report that assesses the compliance of the Indian intermediary liability framework with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability, and recommends substantive legislative changes to bring the legal framework in line with the Manila Principles. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah. Data is potentially a toxic asset, if it is not collected, processed, secured and shared in the appropriate way wrote Amber Sinha in an article published in the Economic & Political Weekly. Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha wrote a report titled AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India which seeks to map the present state of use of AI in the banking and financial sector in India. The report was edited by Shyam Ponappa. Mapping was done by Shweta Mohandas. Pranav M Bidare, Sidharth Ray, and Aayush Rathi provided research assistance in preparing this report. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam focuses on updating the list of Indian citizens in the state. Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nazifa Ahmed wrote a research paper that has provided a discourse analysis of media content and user opinions on Facebook, and media responses on the NRC official website. All posts related to this study can be found here.

Highlights

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) has published a collection of stories of the impact of internet shutdowns on people's lives in the country. The stories were provided by 101 Reporters. The project was funded by Facebook and MacArthur Foundation. The report edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah can be accessed here.
Anubha Sinha on behalf of CIS participated in the 36th Session of WIPO SCCR at Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018. CIS made statements on Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities, Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Limitations and Exceptions Agenda, and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. CIS was one among the 14 NGOs which circulated a letter that raised concerns about the draft Broadcasting Treaty.
India's Department of Telecommunications released a draft new telecom policy, titled ‘Draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018’. Anubha Sinha wrote an analysis on this in the Wire on May 6, 2018.
Singapore based Asian Business Law Institute published a compendium on “Regulation of cross-border transfer of personal data in Asia”. The compendium contains 14 detailed reports. The chapter titled Jurisdictional Report India was authored by Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok.
The purpose of privacy notices and choice mechanisms is to notify users of the data practices of a system, so they can make informed privacy decisions, wrote Saumyaa Naidu in a blog post which was edited by Elonnai Hickok.
Divij Joshi wrote a report that assesses the compliance of the Indian intermediary liability framework with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability, and recommends substantive legislative changes to bring the legal framework in line with the Manila Principles. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah.
Data is potentially a toxic asset, if it is not collected, processed, secured and shared in the appropriate way wrote Amber Sinha in an article published in the Economic & Political Weekly.
Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha wrote a report titled AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India which seeks to map the present state of use of AI in the banking and financial sector in India. The report was edited by Shyam Ponappa. Mapping was done by Shweta Mohandas. Pranav M Bidare, Sidharth Ray, and Aayush Rathi provided research assistance in preparing this report.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam focuses on updating the list of Indian citizens in the state. Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nazifa Ahmed wrote a research paper that has provided a discourse analysis of media content and user opinions on Facebook, and media responses on the NRC official website. All posts related to this study can be found here.

Articles:

The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).

India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).
India's Data Protection Framework Will Need to Treat Privacy as a Social and Not Just an Individual Good (Amber Sinha; Economic & Political Weekly, Volume 53, Issue No. 18, 05 May, 2018).
Digital Native: Web of Wander (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 20, 2018).

CIS in the News:

India's National ID Project Brings Pain to Those it Aims to Help (Aayush Soni; Ozy.com; May 11, 2018).
Aadhaar Remains an Unending Security Nightmare for a Billion Indians (Karan Saini; Wire; May 11, 2018).
More errors in Aadhaar data in Andhra Pradesh than in voter database (U Sudhakar Reddy; Times of India; May 18, 2018).
Putting women human rights activists on the world map (Sarumathi K.; Hindu; May 19, 2018).
An open data ecosystem can boost India's GDP by $22 B and double farmer income (Sohini Mitter; Your Story; May 23, 2018).
Complying with Europe’s GDPR will be a “matter of survival” for Indian IT firms (Ananya Bhattacharya; Quartz India; May 24, 2018).
Don't blindly forward WhatsApp messages. You could be sued (Rajitha Menon and Surupasree Sarmmah; Deccan Herald; May 29, 2018).
Alexa’s recording leak in US ‘echoes’ privacy issues here (Mugdha Variyar; Economic Times; May 29, 2018).
Election Experiment Proves Facebook Just Doesn't Care About Fake News In India (Visvak; Huffington Post; May 30, 2018).
India Proposes Law to Give Indians Complete Control of their Digital Health Data (Madhur Singh; India Spend; May 31, 2018).
Patanjali's Kimbho swiftly retreats over security scare, ripped on Twitter (Alnoor Peermohamed and Manavi Kapur; Business Standard; May 31, 2018).

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Access to Knowledge
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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.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

CIS participated in the 36th SCCR held in Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018 and made the following statements:

Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2018).
NGOs circulate letter at WIPO SCCR/36 raising serious concerns about draft Broadcasting Treaty (Anubha Sinha; May 29, 2018).
Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
Statement on the Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
Statement on Limitations and Exceptions Agenda (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).

Participation in Event

RightsCon Toronto 2018 (Organized by RightsCon; Beanfield Centre at Exhibition Place, Toronto; May 17, 2018). Maggie Huang, Amba Kak, Rohini Lakshané, Vidushi Marda, Elonnai Hickok and Anubha Sinha were among the speakers at the event. Amber Sinha remotely participated in a private meeting on 'Strategizing Civil Society Roles in the Artificial Intelligence Debate'. Anubha Sinha, Maggie Huang, Rohini Lakshané and Vidushi Marda presented their findings from the Pervasive Technologies project in a panel titled "Cheap and Chipper: IP in India's Affordable Smartphones". Prof Michael Geist moderated the session. Anubha Sinha and Vidushi Marda participated remotely. Elonnai Hickok participated in these sessions: IDRC cyber policy meeting; GNI board meeting; GNI learning session on MLATs; FOC-AN meeting; GNI session on Intermediary Liability.

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

►Privacy

Reports

Methods workshop on researching Future of Work in India (Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi; May 10, 2018).
AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India (Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; May 14, 2018)
Indian Intermediary Liability Regime: Compliance with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability (Divij Joshi; May 20, 2018). The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah.
Jurisdictional Report India (Compendium on Regulation of Cross-Border Transfers of Personal Data in Asia; Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok; May 31, 2018).

Blog Entry

Design Concerns in Creating Privacy Notices (Saumyaa Naidu; May 29, 2018). The blog post was edited by Elonnai Hickok.

Participation in Events

Meeting of Coalition for an Inclusive Approach on the Trafficking Bill (Organized by Alternative Law Forum; Bengaluru; May 3, 2018).
Fairness, Transparency and Accountable AI (Organized by DeepMind; London; May 10, 2018). Amber Sinha participated remotely in the inaugural meeting.
Rootconf 2018 (Organized by HasGeek; Bengaluru; May 11 - 12, 2018). Gurshabad Grover, Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi attended the event.
Inter Movements Open Forum: Trafficking Bill (Organized by Sangram, Naz Foundation, NNSW, Tarshi and VAMP; India International Centre, New Delhi; May 18, 2018).
IETF Indian Community Meetup: RFCs We Love (IoT edition) (Organized by Indian IETF Community; Zoomcar's office; Bengaluru; May 19, 2018). Gurshabad Grover and Sandeep Kumar attended 'RFCs We Love Meetup'.
Emerging Technologies: Issues & Way Forward (Organized by Technology Policy team at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; Bengaluru; May 23 - 24, 2018).
Privacy in the Digital Age: Addressing Common Challenges, Seizing Opportunities (Organized by DG Justice and Consumers and European Union; New Delhi; May 25, 2018).

►Free Speech and Expression

Report

Internet Shutdown Stories (Edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah; Foreword by Sunil Abraham; May 17, 2018). Case studies from the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, West Bengal, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Uttar Pradesh have been highlighted in this compilation.

Blog Entry

DIDP Request #30 - Enquiry about the employee pay structure at ICANN (Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna; May 26, 2018).

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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:

Articles

The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).
India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).

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Researchers at Work
-----------------------------------

Draft Research Paper

Infrastructure as Digital Politics: Media Practices and the Assam NRC Citizen Identification Project (Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nafiza Ahmed; May 15, 2018).

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

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/may-2018-newsletter-1

May 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-06-17T02:46:03Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for May 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS compiled a report that highlighted four government projects run by various government departments that have made sensitive personal financial information and Aadhaar numbers public on the project websites. Article 19 had put out a call for applications for its Internet of Rights Fellowship in February 2017. Vidushi Marda was selected for Internet of Rights Fellowship. CIS gave inputs on a document on implementing digital accessibility to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on May 2, 2017. The 34th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was held in Geneva from May 1 to 5, 2017. Anubha Sinha participated in the event and a summary report is available here. She made statements on behalf of CIS on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment. CIS-A2K’s widely well-regarded flagship skill building program, Train The Trainer and MediaWiki Training was conducted in Kolkata earlier this year. Tito Dutta captured the developments in a blog post. Although it has made the topographic maps or the Open Series Maps available to general public, Survey of India’s (SoI) Nakshe portal will have to go through a variety of litmus test, as the initiative fails to implement the mandates of public sharing of government data using open standards and open license as put forward by the NMP 2005 and NDSAP 2012, said Sumandro Chattapadhyay in an interview with Geospatial World on May 02, 2017. In an interview with nettime.org, Geert Lovink discussed with Ramesh Srinivasan Tech Anthropology Today and "how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins". In an article published in the Business Standard on May 3, 2017, Shyam Ponappa examined whether policies can be better framed to harness the market potential. Why is so much investment flowing into India's securities markets?

CIS in the news:

130 Million Aadhaar Numbers Were Made Public, Says New Report (The Wire; May 1, 2017 and MensXP.com; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar Details Of 13.5 Crore People Available On Government Sites (Mahima Kapoor; Bloomberg Quint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (Press Trust of India; May 2, 2017).
Details of 135 million Aadhaar card holders may have leaked, claims CIS report (Hindustan Times; May 2, 2017).
UIDAI remains silent on #Aadhaarleaks of 13 crore users through government portals (Shruti Menon; Newslaundry; May 2, 2017).
১৩ কোটি আধার তথ্য ফাঁস চার সরকারি পোর্টাল থেকে! বিস্ফোরক দাবি রিপোর্টে (Amar Bazar Patrika; May 2, 2017).
13 crore Aadhaar numbers on four government websites compromised: Report (Akram Mohammed; New Indian Express; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (DNA; May 2, 2017).
Biggest blast on Aadhaar leak so far: govt sites leaked data of 13 crore people (Jikku Varghese Jacob; Manorama; May 2, 2017).
Around 13 crore Aadhaar numbers easily available on government portals, says report (Scroll.in; May 2, 2017).
What privacy? 13 crore Aadhaar numbers accessible on government portals (Anusha Ravi; Oneindia; May 2, 2017).
Govt may have made 135 million Aadhaar numbers public: CIS report (Komal Gupta; Livemint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (The Times of India; May 2, 2017)
Aadhaar data leaks not from UIDAI: Centre (Krishnadas Rajagopal; Hindu; May 3, 2017).
135 MEELLION Indian government payment card details leaked (Richard Chirgwin; The Register; May 3, 2017).
Aadhaar data of over 13 crore people exposed: New report (Indian Express; May 3, 2017).
In The Biggest Data Leak, Info Of 13 Crore Aadhaar Card Holders Has Been Compromised And Is Available Online (Bobins Abraham; The Times of India; May 3, 2017).
Around 130-135M Aadhaar Numbers published on 4 sites alone (Nikhil Pahwa; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar's the largest biometric database globally but it is leaky by design (Rohith Jyotish; Global Voices; May 2, 2017 and Business Standard; May 5, 2017).
Why Aadhaar leaks should worry you, and is biometrics really safe? (Rakesh Mehar; Newsminute; May 4, 2017).
Indian Government says it is still drafting privacy law, but doesn’t give timelines (Vivek Pai; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
आधार नंबर, नाम, पता, बैंक अकाउंट और दूसरी संवेदनशील जानकारियां लीक: CIS रिपोर्ट (Aaj Tak; May 4, 2017).
With digitisation at the forefront, government departments need to be cautious about digital security (Manas Pratap Singh; NDTV; May 4, 2017).
Kashmir: Telecom firms struggle to block 22 banned social media sites (Aijaz Hussain; Livemint; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar data of 130 millions, bank account details leaked from govt websites: Report (India Today; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar: Are a billion identities at risk on India's biometric database (Soutik Biswas; BBC News; May 4, 2017 and Rawlson King; Biometric Update.com; May 5, 2017).
135 million aadhaar details, 100 million bank accounts "leaked" from government websites: Researchers (Counterview; May 5, 2017).
Suicide videos: Facebook beefs up team to monitor content (Kim Arora; The Times of India; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar assurances fail to assuage privacy concerns (Anirban Sen; Livemint; May 5, 2017).
A 13-year-old's rape in TN highlights the major threat online sexual grooming poses to children (Priyanka Thirumurthy; May 6, 2017).
Experts stress on need for enhanced security (New Indian Express; May 6, 2017).
Taking Cognisance of the Deeply Flawed System That Is Aadhaar (Shreyashi Roy; Wire; May 10, 2017).
Plug data leak before imposing Aadhaar (Deccan Herald; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar data leak: Take precautions while sharing info on websites, MEITy tells all depts (Indian Express; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar security: Here's how your private information can be protected (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 11, 2017).
Online Trolls Attack Critics of India's Aadhaar State ID System (Rohith Jyothish; Global Voices; May 31, 2017).
India is building a biometric database for 1.3 billion people — and enrollment is mandatory (Shashank Bengali; Los Angeles Times; May 12, 2017).
Watch: Aadhaar has become a whipping boy: Nandan Nilekani (Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan; Business Standard; May 13, 2017).
Partnership on AI Adds Corporate, NGO Members, Charts Initial Course (Benjamin Romano; Xconomy; May 16, 2017).
WannaCry: ATMs not to shut down, clarifies RBI, but how safe are our machines? (Soumya Chatterjee; May 16, 2017).
Google, Facebook's AI group adds new members (Jens Meyer; Axios; May 16, 2017).
22 companies join Partnership on AI, begin to study AI's impact on work and society (Alison DeNisco; TechRepublic; May 17, 2017).
Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony and others join the grand AI partnership club (CIOL; May 17, 2017).
IT companies in Bengaluru on high alert over WannaCry ransomware (Kiran Parashar K M & Shruthi H M; New Indian Express; May 17, 2017).
Partnership on AI adds new organizations to its network (Madison Moore; Software Development Times; May 17, 2017).
Intel, eBay, SAP, Salesforce y Sony colaborarán en inteligencia artificial (Monica Tilves; Silicon; May 17, 2017).
22 nieuwe leden voor Partnership on AI (Telecom Paper; May 17, 2017).
Provide hacker details, outfit that claimed data leak told (Mahendra Singh; The Times of India; May 18, 2017).
UIDAI asks Centre for Internet & Society to provide hacker details (Mahendra Singh; Economic Times; May 18, 2017).
Hack exposes Zomato's weak protection of customer data, say Cyber experts (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; May 19, 2017).
What’s Hard To Digest About The Zomato Hacking (Aayush Ailawadi; Bloomberg Quint; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI puts posers to CIS over Aadhaar data leak claim (Press Trust of India and Financial Express; May 19, 2017).
Faking it on WhatsApp: How India's favourite messaging app is turning into a rumour mill (Samarth Bansal; Hindustan Times; May 19, 2017).
Debate over #Aadhaar Turns Nasty as Critics Accuse Supporters of Online Trolling (Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprahasta; The Wire; May 19, 2017).
Hacker steals 17 million Zomato users’ data, briefly puts it on dark web (Kim Arora and Digbijay Mishra with inputs from Ranjani Ayyar; The Times of India; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI goes after org that disclosed government departments were releasing Aadhaar data (Nikhil Pahwa; May 19, 2017).
Developer releases WannaCry key-recovery tool for Windows XP (Cirilo Laguardia; Hoyen TV; May 20, 2017).
Will Aadhaar leaks be used as an excuse to shut out scrutiny of welfare schemes? (Anumeha Yadav; Scroll.in; May 20, 2017).
Microsoft says WannaCry ransomware must be a wake-up call for governments (Journaldu Maghreb; May 20, 2017).
Noida cyber cell gives tips on preventing WannaCry attack (Juana McKenzie; World News Journal; May 20, 2017).
Chinese state media says U.S. should take some blame for cyber attack (Ellis Neal; Villages Suntimes; May 21, 2017).
Zomato hack: You need to enhance online security with a password manager (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 23, 2017).
Sharad Sharma Apologises for Trolling Aadhaar Critics; Unmasking Ispirit's Controversial Trolling Program (Shweta Modgil; Inc 42; May 23, 2017).
iSpirt's Sharad Sharma: Sorry, I trolled Aadhaar critics (Shalina Pillai and Anand J; The Times of India; May 24, 2017).
Sharad Sharma's case shows how rampant troll culture has become under Modi (Catch News; May 25, 2017).
Aadhaar Card: One Identity, Multiple Disorders (Gaurav Raj; India Saga; May 25, 2017).
Tweets from the afterlife (Heena Khandelwal; DNA; May 28, 2017).
BBMP faces ire for publishing pourakarmikas' Aadhaar details on website (Bharat Joshi; Economic Times; May 29, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Aadhaar Case: Beyond Privacy, An Issue of Bodily Integrity (Amber Sinha and Aradhya Sethia; Quint; May 1, 2017).
Digital native: Free speech? You must be joking! (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 14, 2017).
Digital native: Look before you (digitally) leap (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 28, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
-------------------------------------
India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

Comments on the draft Policy on IT Accessibility for People with Disabilities (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 19, 2017).

►Copyright

Blog Entries

34th SCCR: A Summary Report (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Proposal for Analysis of Copyright related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).

Participation in Event

Fixing Copyright for Education (SCCR34 Side Event) (Hosted by Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; May 5, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar (Pavan Santhosh; May 1, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics (Subodh Kulkarni; May 1, 2017).
Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District (Subodh Kulkarni; May 4, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; May 10, 2017).
Train The Trainer 2017 (Manasa Rao; May 10, 2017).
Continuing community engagement: Communities of interest and Quarrying (Manasa Rao; May 19, 2017).
Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India (Ting-Yi Chang; May 22, 2017).
MediaWiki Training 2017 (Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray; May 23, 2017).
Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata (Tito Dutta; May 23, 2017).

Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of May.

►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.

Blog Entry

SoI’s Open Series Maps Fails to Implement Public Sharing of Govt Data (Geospatial World; May 4, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was interviewed.

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

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

►Freedom of Speech and Expression

Submission

Comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement (Vidushi Marda with inputs from Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham; May 31, 2017).

Event Organized

Communication Design and Visualising Information (CIS, Bengaluru; May 5, 2017). Saumyaa conducted a session on the broad principles of communication design and visualising information.

Participation in Events

World Press Freedom Day 2017 (UNESCO and the Digital Empowerment Foundation; New Delhi; May 3, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari participated in the event.
Consilience 2017 - A Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (Organized by National Law School of India University; May 20, 2017). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report (Srinivs Kodali and Amber Sinha; May 2, 2017).

Blog Entry

(Updated) Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information (Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali; May 1, 2017).

Events Organized

Stand Shielded of Digital Rights (CIS; New Delhi; May 5, 2017). Amutha Arunachalam gave a talk.
Meeting on Proactive Disclosure and Personal Data (CIS; New Delhi; May 13, 2017).

Participation in Events

4th National Standards Conclave Evolving a Comprehensive National Strategy for Standards Sectoral and Regional Inclusiveness (Organized by Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Industry; May 1 - 2, 2017).
Stockholm Internet Forum 2017 (Organized by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; Stockholm; May 15 to 18, 2017). Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session, "Private sector and civil society collaboration to advance freedom online".
Open house on information breaches (Organized by Has Geek; Bengaluru; May 26, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari was a speaker.
T20 Germany and Beyond: Digital Economy (Organized by GIZ and EPF; May 29 - 30, 2017). Elonnai Hickok participated in a round-table discussion.

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

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:

Newspaper Column

Policies to Sustain India's Market (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 3, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; May 4, 2017).

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Researchers at Work
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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:

Blog Entry

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar (Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan; nettime.org; May 16, 2017).

Participation in Event

Consultative Meeting for a Digital Archive Lab (Organized by Ambedkar University, New Delhi; May 20, 2017). P.P. Sneha participated in the meeting.

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

► 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/may-2017-newsletter

May 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-13T11:51:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fifth issue of its newsletter for 2013. We bring you an overview of our research, report of events held by us and announcement of upcoming ones, events we participated in, and recent media coverage.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
CIS is now 5 years old and we just celebrated this by holding an open exhibition in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, showcasing our work and accomplishments over the period. We had about 170 visitors from the general public coming in to our office. Renowned artists like Tara Kelton, Kiran Subbaiah, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra and Sharath Chandra Ram exhibited their work. The four day event attracted press coverage: Bangalore Mirror (May 18, 2013), DNA (May 19, 2013), Hindu (May 22, 2013), Prajavani (May 23, 2013), Udayavani (May 25, 2013) and Bangalore Mirror (May 31, 2013). Download all posters that were part of the exhibition here.

Google Policy Fellowship
CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India fellow who will be selected by July 1, 2013. The Fellowship focus areas include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and other similar organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Sikkim and Odisha:

The Sikkim Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, May 30, 2013).
The Odisha Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, May 31, 2013).

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

Banking Accessibility

Survey on Banking Accessibility (by Vrinda Maheshwari, May 30, 2013). G3ict is a survey on accessibility of financial services in banks for persons with disabilities around the world. The survey is available here.

Event Organised

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one team member Nitika Tandon who is working from Delhi office. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer has left the organisation. April 24, 2013 was her last working day.

Announcements

Access to Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014): CIS has announced its detailed plan detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.
WMF-A2K Revised Budget (draft) and Utilization (Sept 2012 - Feb 2013): In our effort to increase transparency with the working of CIS-A2K programme, we are sharing with you the A2K Programme Budget along with the Utilization for the period Sept. 2012 to February 2013. The proposed revisions to the budget along with some notes are here.
WMF-A2K Grant Budget and Utilization (Sept 2012 – February 2013): CIS has given an open disclosure of the Access to Knowledge budget to Wikimedia India and the global community.
CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai: has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions.
India Access to Knowledge IRC can be accessed here: May 13, 2013 (All Language Discussion) and May 26, 2013 (Odia Language Discussion).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 11, 2013).
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians (by Nitika Tandon, May 20, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 30, 2013).

Event Organised

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (April 29, 2013, Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led the workshop and gave a talk on Kannada Wikipedia

Event Participated In

Kannada IRC Meet (organised by the Wikipedia Community, May 7, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Upcoming Event

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Press Coverage

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Prajavani (Prajavani, May 23, 2013). Prajavani published a report of Dr. U.B. Pavanja’s talk “From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada”.
CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Udayavani (Udayavani, May 25, 2013). Udayavani published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)
Blog Entry

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit (by Ujwala Uppaluri, May 27, 2013).

Openness
Research Papers

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers (by Subbiah Gunasekharan and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 27, 2013).
Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings (by Madhan Muthu and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 28, 2013).

Comments

Draft ICAR Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, May 28, 2013). The comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Event Hosted

RHoK Global Event (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, June 1 – 2, 2013). A report of the event would be published soon.

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. We began two new projects earlier this year. The first one, with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression and the second one with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto on mapping of cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia:

Cyber Stewards Project
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.

Video Interview

An Interview with Christopher Soghoian (May 28, 2013).

Upcoming Event

The Geopolitics of Information Controls: A Presentation by Masashi Crete-Nishihata (TERI, Bangalore, June 19, 2013).

Privacy

Comparative Analysis of DNA Profiling Legislations from Across the World (by Srinivas Atreya, May 23, 2013).

Events Co-organised

3rd Privacy Round Table meeting (co-organised with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Data Security Council of India, Chennai, May 18, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event and gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations.
Consilience – 2013 (co-organised with the Law and Technology Committee of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 25, 2013).

Events Participated In

ICT, Law and Innovation: Recent Developments, Challenges and Lessons Learned (organised by Bilgi University, Istanbul, May 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker on the Internet Governance panel at Towards a Global Network of Internet and Society Centres.
India’s Politics of Free Expression (co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Centre, Free Speech Debate, the Oxford India Society and Ideas for India Oxbridge Exchange, May 31, 2013 at Nissan Lecture Theatre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Lectures on 'India's Politics of Free Expression'.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, Mumbai (Mayfair Banquets, Mumbai, June 15, 2013).

Blog Entry

The Surveillance Industry in India: At Least 76 Companies Aiding Our Watchers! (by Maria Xynou, May 2, 2013).

Media Coverage

Sex on-the-go (by Anand Holla, Mumbai Mirror, May 4, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
CIS anniversary (Hindu Business Line, May 5, 2013).
Central Monitoring System to make government privy to phone calls, text messages and social media conversations (by Indu Nandakumar, May 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Messaging apps find another foe in India’s market regulator (Quartz, May 8, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
India's Rs 400-crore Central Monitoring System to snoop on all communication (Tech 2, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is India's government becoming Big Brother? (by Talia Ralph and Jason Overdorf, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Worldwide Playground (Telegraph, May 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
NGO invites public to peruse its accounts (by Vandana Kamath, May 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham (by Anirban Sen, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
A lifetime of five years on the internet (by Subir Ghosh, DNA, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
CIS highlights changes ushered in by the Internet (Hindu, May 22, 2013).
Burma to host first Internet freedom forum (by Chan Myae Khine, Asian Correspondent, May 22, 2013).
INET Bangkok to Explore Internet’s Impact on Thailand’s Economy and Society (BusinessWire, May 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is participating in this conference.
Shooting cyber cafes before they die (by Bangalore Mirror, May 31, 2013). CIS’s film on Cyber Cafes is mentioned in this article.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project on Internet Access. It covers the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access and will touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). The agenda for the event has been finalised.

The following unit was published recently:

Network Connections and Modes of Access (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, May 30, 2013).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility of 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:

Newspaper Column

Configuring a 'Non-Toothless' Regulator (TRAI) (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 9, 2013 and Organizing India Blogspot, May 10, 2013).

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

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://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

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/may-2013-bulletin

May 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:59:29Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of May 2012! In the current issue, we bring to you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, and media coverage:

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:

Copyright Amendment Bill

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012
Pranesh Prakash
There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era. The analysis was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012.

Op-ed in Indian Express

Copyright Madness (Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala, Indian Express, May 22, 2012): India’s Copyright Act allows owners of content the right to prevent infringement through the use of injunctions, but these injunctions have to be narrowly construed and applied only to specific instances of infringement. This is to say, take down the infringing video, not the whole website, and don’t intimidate the host. When injunctions threaten freedom of speech and expression, then free speech should necessarily trump copyright claims — and the courts cannot be used as convenient shopping forums for maladies that don’t exist.

Call for Participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Event Participated

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles (Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany, May 14 and 15, 2012). The event was organised by the University of Minnesota and Max Planck Institute. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

News & Media

Will the Copyright Law Help the Starving Artist?:(by Margherita Stancati, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2012): "The singers and producers of...unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars."
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers? (FirstPost, May 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article.

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:

Blog Entries

Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled by Rahul Cherian.
An FAQ on the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2012, for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities by Dr. Sam Taraporevala and Rahul Cherian.

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:

Article in the Indian Express

Cancel the Subscription (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Indian Express, May 8, 2012): It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available... In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

Event Organised

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi (National Museum, New Delhi, April 20, 2012): The event was organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society. Sunil Abraham was a panelist and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation.

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications: CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012. The focus areas for the present fellowship programme include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. The duration of the fellowship will be for about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

Events Participated

Internet at Liberty 2012: Promoting Progress and Freedom (Newseum, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest Washington, D.C., May 23 – 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a speaker in Plenary IV, Debate 3: In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?
Meeting on Internet Governance (Conference Hall No. 4009, Dept. of Electronics & Information Technology, CGO Complex, New Delhi, May 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in this meeting.

Op-ed in Down to Earth

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures (Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, May 31, 2012): The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Columns by Nishant Shah

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You! (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, May 22, 2012): When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.
The Private Eye (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 14, 2012): As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online.

Video

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet: Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012. The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV and featured on YouTube.

Letter

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in ITU’s WCIT (by Center for Democracy and Technology): Academics and civil society groups wrote to the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications process.

Blog Entry

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom (by Sunil Abraham): This blog entry is based on a presentation made in the Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Media Coverage

Why this blocking di? (by R Krishna, Daily News & Analysis, May 27, 2012): “Unlike the Calcutta High Court order in March this year, which specified the 104 websites that should be blocked, a John Doe order doesn’t mention any specific website. In some cases, the websites are being blocked without any evidence (of copyright infringement). Courts need to be informed of what people with John Doe orders are doing. We need to be specific about what can be blocked and what can’t be.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Daily News & Analysis

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Urges PM To Withdraw India’s Proposal For UN Committee On Internet-Policy (by Anupam Saxena, Medianama, May 16, 2012): An interview that Medianama had with Pranesh Prakash is cited in this blog post.
MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions (Times of India, May 18, 2012): “The IT minister has promised to hold consultations but the ideal way to do so would have been to scrap the rules and start from scratch... It's not only about language in these rules. There is a problem with provisions like the one that empowers intermediaries to remove content without notifying the user who had uploaded the content or giving users a chance to explain themselves.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Times of India.

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, May 18, 2012): “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Legally India.

Vimeo Ban: More Web Censorship (by Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012): “Shutting websites merely on the basis of suspicion amounts to private crackdown on free speech of the web...Why didn’t the telecom ministry repeal or object to the move, knowing that the court didn’t spell out the websites to be blocked?”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Wall Street Journal.
Taming the Web, are we? (by Javed Anwer, Economic Times, May 13, 2012): "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery."
Sunil Abraham quoted in the Economic Times.

Cordon tightens: Rajya Sabha nod to harsh IT rules (Anil Sharma and Aishhwariya Subramanian, Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2012): "The trouble with Indian government's proposal to address issues such as network neutrality, privacy and freedom of expression, is top-down. Unlike other countries where internet policies have always been developed with consultation with other stakeholders, here the government imposes its will."
Sunil Abraham quoted in Daily News & Analysis.
"It is an ironical situation where India is not following domestically what it is proposing internationally." Pranesh Prakash quoted in the same article in Daily News & Analysis.

Empires: Individuals in Search of Society (Marc Lafia, Huffington Post, May 18, 2012).
Cyber Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru (Deccan Herald, May 9, 2012): “The state IT secretary has passed more than 80 orders. They include both cases of phishing and orders against cyber cafes for not adhering to rules under the IT Act. The Adjudicator has held that ‘section 43 of IT Act is not applicable to a body or Corporate’, after the amended IT Act came into force in 2008.” Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Deccan Herald.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and 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:

Columns by Nishant Shah

Digitally Analogue (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 27, 2012): While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option.
We Are All Cyborgs (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 29, 2012): The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Citizen Action

Resisting Revolutions: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Development, Volume 55, Issue 2, May 2012): In this peer reviewed journal article, Nishant Shah looks into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action that have emerged in the last few years. He seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State–Citizen–Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status quo rather than radically undermining it. He examines a campaign against corruption in India to see how the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present is produced in citizen action.

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:

Course

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India: Ford Foundation has given a grant of $200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India over a period of two years. The project involves creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience, organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues and using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Column in Business Standard

The Coming Telecom Monopoly (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 3, 2012): “The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.”

Event Organised

3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at NLSIU, Bangalore (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 27, 2012): Organised by CIS in association with the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. Professor Rohan Samarajiva delivered a lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia.
The Awesome Contracts Project (Geekup @ CIS, May 18, 2012): CIS co-organised the event with Has Geek. Vivek Durai, co-founder at Awesome Contracts gave a public lecture. Amith Narayan participated through Skype.

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. Over the last four years our 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. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for 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, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

CIS is an accredited NGO 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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Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2012-bulletin

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and 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 want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 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.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2011-bulletin

May 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:00:54Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and information on our events in this bulletin of May 2010

News Updates

India slowly gets to grips with ecommerce
Growth in computer use and Internet penetration will help e-commerce.
http://cis-india.org/news/India-gets-to-grips-with-ecommerce
World Wide Web Consortium for All
Indian web designers have long ignored needs of people with different disabilities but a new dedicated wiki aspires to change that, writes Malvika Tegta
http://cis-india.org/news/www-for-all
Biometry Is Watching
In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.
http://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching
What Women Want: The ability debates
In this article published in the Hindu, Deepa Alexander argues that the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (1957) are restrictive and discriminatory.
http://cis-india.org/news/what-women-want
CIS – Internet is neither good nor bad
This post is also available in: French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil)
http://cis-india.org/news/Internet-not-good-not-bad
Right to Read event in Brussels
A 'Right to Read' event is being held at the European Parliament, Brussels on 4 May 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/right-to-read-brussels
Mapping the things that affect us
'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India
http://cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things
'UID is being forced'
CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced
ID programme faces first challenge over privacy, data
The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor
http://cis-india.org/news/id-programe-faces-challenge
Their India has no borders
Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know
http://cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders
Scrap UID project, say people's organisations
The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction.
http://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project
UID info can be misused
Public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens feel UID may become an easy database for anti-social elements.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-info-can-be-misused
UID project draws flak from civil rights activists
The unique identification project is drawing a flak from civil rights activists.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-project-draws-flak
Citizens' forums want UID project scrapped
Citizens' forums and groups have stepped up their attack on the Unique Identification Project calling for the complete scrapping of the project.
http://cis-india.org/news/citizens-forums-want-UID-scrapped
Disability rights groups oppose changes to Copyright Act
Disability rights groups are up in arms against a Bill proposing an amendment to the Copyright Act, 1952, reports Aarti Dhar in an article published in the Hindu on April 23, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/disability-groups-oppose-copyright-amendments
Centre for Study of Culture and Society seeks Programme Associate
The Higher Education Cell, Centre for Study of Culture and Society is looking for a Programme Associate to help develop e-content and conduct training programmes for projects under its Social Justice and Networked Higher Education Initiatives.
http://cis-india.org/news/position-announcement

Research

Digital Natives at Republica 2010
Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet and Society, made a presentation at the Re:Publica 2010, in Berlin, about its collaborative project (with Hivos, Netherlands) "Digital Natives with a Cause?" The video for the presentation, along with an extensive abstract is online.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrepub

Accessibility

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report
The European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue supported an event sponsored by seven MEPs in the European Parliament to discuss the way forward for EU to support the Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled which has been proposed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-europe

Intellectual Property

The 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/2010-special-301

Exceptions and Limitations in Indian Copyright Law for Education: An Assessment
This paper examines the nature of exceptions and limitations in copyright law for the purposes of the use of copyrighted materials for education. It looks at the existing national and international regime, and argues for why there is a need for greater exceptions and limitations to address the needs of developing countries. The paper contextualizes the debate by looking at the high costs of learning materials and the impediment caused to e-learning and distance education by strong copyright regimes.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/exceptions-and-limitations

Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/tpm-copyright-amendment

Telecom

China Club instead of Bombay Club?
Emulate China's coordinated policies for strategic sectors, and we'll rely less on commodity exports, says Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard on May 13, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/China-club-Bombay-club

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2010-bulletin

March 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-07-18T02:14:11Z

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

Highlights for March 2019

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

Jobs

CIS is hiring:

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

CIS and the News

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

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

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

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

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

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

Access to Knowledge

Copyright and Patent

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

Submission

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

Wikipdedia

Blog Entries

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

Event Organized

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

Openness

Event Organized

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

Internet Governance

Cyber Security

Research Paper

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

Privacy

Research Paper

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

Participation in Events

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

Free Speech and Expression

Event

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

Participation in Event

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

Artificial Intelligence, ICT and IoT

Participation in Events

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

Researchers at Work (RAW)

Blog Entries

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

Participation in Event

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

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

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Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
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E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2019-newsletter

March 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T12:47:11Z

Welcome to March 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS submitted comments on the draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules for the consideration of the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Government of India. Anubha Sinha in a blog post has identified the various kinds of IP in an app and explained the protections available under Indian IPR law. CIS-A2K is conducting a Wiki internship project for students of New Law College, Pune under the guidance of Prof.Dr.Mukund Sarda, Dean and Principal of New Law College. In an Op-ed published in the Hindu, Sunil Abraham has stated that though biometrics may be appropriate for targeted surveillance by the state, it is wholly inappropriate for everyday transactions between state and law abiding citizens. CIS has published a survey that draws upon a range of literature including news articles, academic articles, and presentations and seeks to disaggregate the potential benefits and harms of big data, organising them into several broad categories that reflect the existing scholarly literature. CIS submitted comments on the Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules, 2017. The comments were in response to the Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules 2017. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a consultation paper which called for developing a framework for security of digital wallets operating in the country. Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster have co-authored a paper that presents exploratory research into “data-intensive development” that seeks to inductively identify issues and conceptual frameworks of relevance to big data in developing countries.

CIS in the news:

The 12-digit conundrum (Richa Mishra; Hindu Businessline; March 13, 2017)
EVMs: How transparent is the Indian election process? (Smriti Sharma Vasudeva; The Statesman; March 14, 2017).
Nasscom chief saying full data protection isn’t possible should wake us from our digital slumber (First Post; March 16, 2017).
Privacy concerns multiply for Aadhaar, India’s national biometric identity registry (One World Identity; March 17, 2017).
No ID, no benefits: thousands could lose lifeline under India’s biometric scheme (Guardian; March 21, 2017).
Why We Should All Worry About The Mandatory Imposition Of Aadhaar (Rimin Dutt and Ivan Mehta; Huffington Post; March 24, 2017).
India’s biometric ID scans make sci-fi a reality (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; March 27, 2017).
क्‍या आधार पर जल्दबाज़ी में है सरकार? (NDTV; March 27, 2017).
Get an Aadhaar card if you don't have one (Priya Nair and Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; March 27, 2017).
The Aadhaar of all things (Shriya Mohan; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Digital native: Lie Me a River (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; March 19, 2017).
It’s the technology, stupid (Sunil Abraham; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).
How Aadhaar compromises privacy? And how to fix it? (Sunil Abraham; Hindu; March 31, 2017).

Submission

Comments on the draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules (Nirmita Narasimhan; March 29, 2017).

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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.

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entry

Intellectual Property Rights and Mobile Apps (Anubha Sinha; March 6, 2017).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

"Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din" celebrations in Maharashtra (Manasa Rao; March 7, 2017).
Women’s History Month: Sambad collaborates with Odia Wikipedia for a Two Day Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik; March 16, 2017).
Wikisource:Internship Project at New Law College, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; March 28, 2017).

Events Organized

Women's Day Edit-a-thon (Co-organized by Sterlite Tech Foundation, Jnana Prabhodhini, and CIS-A2K; Pune; March 10, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was one of the trainers.
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Environment Management (Organized by CSIBER College and CIS-A2K; Kolhapur; March 30, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was a trainer.

►Openness

Participation in Events

National Consultation on OER for Higher Education (Organized by Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia; New Delhi; March 3, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
Open Development Book - Authors' Workshop (Organized by International Development Research Centre and Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching; University of Cape Town, South Africa; March 11 - 12, 2017). The workshop gathered the contributers to an upcoming book by IDRC on open development. Elonnai Hickok, Gus Hosein from Privacy International and Sumandro Chattapadhyay are writing a chapter for this book.
Indo - French Perspectives on Digital Studies (Organized by Digital Studies Group; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; March 15, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

Blog Entries

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

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

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules, 2017 (Udbhav Tiwari, Pranesh Prakash, Abhay Rana, Amber Sinha and Sunil Abraham; March 23, 2017).

Participation in Events

WISER Lecture : Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Deregulation by Code (Organized by the University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg; March 8, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay gave a talk.
Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse (Organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana; March 16 - 17, 2017). Japreet Grewal was a speaker.
State of Digital Rights in India (Organized by Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi and the Internet Freedom Foundation, in association with Access Now; India International Centre, New Delhi; March 24, 2017). Japreet Grewal and Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in panel discussions.
Hangout on Technology and Jobs (Organized by Google; March 24, 2017). Vanya Rakesh was a speaker.

Blog Entry

Analysis of Key Provisions of the Aadhaar Act Regulations (Amber Sinha and edited by Elonnai Hickok; March 31, 2017).

►Cyber Security

Upcoming Event

Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations (CIS; New Delhi; April 7, 2017). IPS officer Dr. Madan M. Oberoi will give a talk.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Benefits, Harms, Rights and Regulation: A Survey of Literature on Big Data (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh, Vidushi Marda and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; edited by Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Leilah Elmokadem; March 23, 2017).

Participation in Event

The Fintech Disruption - Innovation, Regulation, and Transformation (Organized by Carnegie India; March 28, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay attended the event.

►Freedom of Expression

Event Organized

Essentials of building internet tools for inclusion (Valencia, Spain; March 6, 2017). A talk jointly proposed by Chinmayi SK and Rohini Lakshané was selected for the Internet Freedom Festival.

Participation in Events

From Virtual to Reliable: Exploring Freedom and Facts in the World of WWW (World Wide Web) (Organized by Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands and Adaan Foundation; March 21, 2017). Saikat Datta and Amber Sinha were panelists.
Internet Freedom Festival 2017 (Organized by IFF; Valencia, Spain; March 6 - 10, 2017). Vidushi Marda participated in the event. Vidushi also attended these sessions: Data Protection Law and its Different Manifestations; Using the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index for Advocacy & Research; The identity we can't change: a new wave of biometric policies around the world and Enabling free speech online by legal defence: the need for skilled lawyers to secure the free flow of information online: Vidushi channeled a discussion about Shreya Singhal v. Union of India as an important case study in understanding how legal defence has been used to secure rights online.

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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:

Newspaper Column

Organisational Hurdles in Telecom (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 1, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; March 2, 2017)

Research Paper

Exploring Big Data for Development: An Electricity Sector Case Study from India (Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster; Global Development Institute, University of Manchester; March 29, 2017).

Blog Entry

Evaluating Safety Buttons on Mobile Devices: Preview (Rohini Lakshané and Chinmayi S.K.; March 27, 2017).

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

► 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/march-2017-newsletter

March 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-05-12T01:36:18Z

Newsletter for the month of March.

We are happy to share with you the third issue of the CIS newsletter (March 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

In a landmark judgement upholding the freedom of expression, the Supreme Court of India on March 24, 2015 struck down a provision (Section 66 A of the IT Act) which provided the power to arrest anyone for posting offensive comments online. Geetha Hariharan in her blog post captures the happenings which led to the court ruling.

CIS in partnership with Privacy International is doing the GSMA project that seeks to understand different legal and regulatory aspects of security and surveillance in India. The research outputs published thus far are now online in a consolidated blog post.
CIS as part of its RAW programme is inviting abstracts for essays that explore what it means to study Internet(s) in India today.
CIS is pleased to announce that the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is supporting a new collaborative publishing project led by T.A.J. Residency / SKE Projects and or-bits.com. The first volume of the series titled 'Silicon Plateau' will feature contributions by a group of well-known artists, researchers, and writers.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay's paper titled 'Whose Open Data Community is it? Reflections on the Open Data Ecosystem in India' has been accepted for presentation at the Open Data Research Symposium to be held during the 3rd International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, on May 28-29 2015.
CIS has been invited to contribute two sections to the Asia Internet History - Third Decade (2001 - 2010) book edited by Dr. Kilnam Chon. The sections will discuss the activities and experiences of civil society organisations in Asia and India, respectively, in national, regional, and global Internet governance processes. Draft outlines of the sections are shared here . Comments and suggestions are invited.

CIS has prepared an open proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation to support its annual plan with USD 208,603.
CIS has prepared a draft work plan for the period July 2015 to June 2016 . This work plan consists of 18 programs across 6 verticals.
On December 24, 2015, Bharti Airtel, one of India's largest telecom players, announced the introduction of a new 'VOIP' usage policy for its mobile users. Tarun Krishnakumar analyses the developments in a blog post.

In his monthly column published in the Business Standard on March 4, 2015, Shyam Ponappa writes "systems and methods for access through elements that provide connectivity - spectrum, fibre-optic cable, coaxial cable, or "twisted-pairs" for ADSL - must be devised in an integrated manner and made available at low cost.
NVDA team as part of its project on developing text-to-speech software in 15 Indian languages has published key updates ofBengali and Assamese language testing.
In the year 2013 Nehaa Chaudhari had worked on a module on IP Rights for UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum. The module was published recently and is available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO license.

Rohini Lakshané in a blog post chronicles information about big-ticket lawsuits pertaining to mobile technology patents filed in India.

► Vacancies at CIS

CIS is seeking applications for these posts:

Assistant Project Manager : To assist the Project Manager on all tasks relating to the organization of the Fourth Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, which will take place in New Delhi from December 15-17, 2015.
Internship : CIS is providing opportunities for students enrolled in graduate programmes to undertake internship at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi. Eligible candidates are welcome to participate in our internship programme.

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

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

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

Language Testing Reports

Assamese Language (Nirmita Narasimhan; March 23, 2015).
Bengali Language (Nirmita Narasimhan; March 24, 2015).

Event Organized

Report on Training on the Use of eSpeak in Hindi with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Dr. Shakuntala Mishra National Rehabilitation University, Lucknow; March 16 - 29, 2015).

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

►Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Rohini Lakshané has written a blog entry that chronicles information on big-ticket lawsuits pertaining to mobile technology patents filed in India. As part of broader Access to Knowledge work UNESCO published a module on Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright and Alternative to a Strict Copyright Regime.

Module Units

Intellectual Property Rights - Open Access for Researchers (Nehaa Chaudhari; March 19, 2015, UNESCO). Nehaa worked on a module on Intellectual Property Rights for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s Open Access Curriculum (Curriculum for Researchers) as part of a project for the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia. UNESCO published the module this year. Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga were among the Module preparation team. Nehaa Chaudhari was the writer for Units 1, 2 and 3: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright and Alternative to a Strict Copyright Regime.

Blog Entries

Mobile App Developer Series: Terms of Agreement - Part IV (Samantha Cassar; March 23, 2015).
Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India (Rohini Lakshané; March 15, 2015).
Interviews with App Developers: Open Source, Community, and Contradictions - Part III (Samantha Cassar; March 24, 2015).
Interviews with App Developers: Name of the Game - Part IV (Samantha Cassar; March 24, 2015).

Participation in Events

Conference on Standards Setting Organisations (SSOs) and FRAND (Organized by MHRD Chair on Intellectual Property Rights, Centre for Intellectual Property Rights and Advocacy (CIPRA), National Law School of India University, Bangalore, in association with Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd.; Bangalore; March 21-22, 2015). Rohini Lakshané participated in this event.
4th IPR Researchers Confluence (Organized by Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai and National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai with support from Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi; March 27 - 28, 2015). Maggie Huang presented intermediary findings of the research entitled "India's Music Copyright Management in the Age of Music Streaming".

Media Coverage

The perils of not protecting intellectual property for new ventures (Evelyn Fok and Shonali Advani; Economic Times; March 20, 2015). Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

►Wikipedia

Announcements

Open Proposal for Funding : CIS has prepared an open proposal for funding for about USD 208,603 from the Wikimedia Foundation. CIS is inviting comments on the proposal. CIS is proposing to contribute to the qualitative and quantitative growth of 12 Wikimedia projects across 9 Indian languages and associated communities, in addition to providing need based support to other Indic communities.
Access to Knowledge Work Plan : CIS has prepared the India Access to Knowledge work plan (July 2015 to June 2016). The work plan consists of 18 programs across 6 verticals. These include eight programs in five language areas, two community strengthening initiatives, five stand-alone Wikimedia projects, creating movement resources, publicity, research and documentation, and general support and service to the movement.

Event Organized

Train the Trainer Program (CEO Centre; Dodda Gubbi; Bangalore; February 26 - March 1; 2015).

Blog Entry

Hindustani Language: We Are Wikipedia (Syed Muzamiluddin; March 27, 2015).

Participation in Event

2nd National Language Conference, Bhubaneswar (Organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research; Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar; March 30 - April 2, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi presented a paper in Odia language in this conference as part of a panel discussion related to Odia language computing.

News and Media Coverage

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

Train the Trainer (Udayavani; March 2, 2015).
More articles for Tulu Wikipedia (The Hindu; March 10, 2015).
GoI body National Mission for Manuscripts has digitised 3 million manuscripts (Sneha Johari; Medianama; March 13, 2015).
Bangla Wiki turns 10 (Sudeshna Banerjee, Showli Chakraborty and Abhinanda Datta; The Telegraph; March 29, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Women's History Month - India (Organized by CIS-A2K and Wikimedia India; India, March 2015). March 8 is International Women's Day, and to celebrate this women in India organized edit-a-thons and meetups to create and expand articles of importance to women in Wikipedia in English and various Indian languages. Online events were organized for these Wikipedias: Bengali , Punjabi , Odia , Marathi , Kannada and Malayalam .

►Openness

Media Coverage

India backs open source software for e-governance projects (originally published by IDG News Service was mirrored on the website ofCIO and PC World; March 29, 2015). Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

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

►Freedom of Expression

India's Apex Court in a landmark decision struck down section 66A of the IT Act. The judgment provided great relief for advocates of freedom of speech on the Internet. The development attracted lots of media coverage to which CIS gave its inputs:

Articles

Internet censorship will continue in opaque fashion (Sunil Abraham; The Times of India; March 25, 2015).
Historic day for freedom of speech and expression in India (Vidushi Marda; Bangalore Mirror; March 25, 2015).
India's Supreme Court Axes Online Censorship Law, But Challenges Remain (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices Online; March 25, 2015).
Big win for freedom of speech. Really? (Sunil Abraham; Bangalore Mirror; March 29, 2015).
Three reasons why 66A verdict is momentous (Pranesh Prakash; The Times of India; March 29, 2015).

Blog Entries

What Does Facebook's Transparency Report Tell Us About the Indian Government's Record on Free Expression & Privacy? (Pranesh Prakash; March 17, 2015).
No more 66A! (Geetha Hariharan; March 24, 2015).

· Requests to ICANN: CIS sent ICANN six requests to ICANN regarding ICANN's expenditure on travels and meetings, granular revenue, cyber-attacks on ICANN, ICANN's implementation of the NETmundial principles, complaints under the Ombudsman process, and information regarding revenues received from gTLD auctions. These were prepared by Geetha Hariharan:DIDP Request #7: Globalisation Advisory Groups and DIDP Request #8: ICANN Organogram.

Participation in Events

Tech Law Form @ NALSAR (Organized by NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad; March 7 and 8, 2015). Geetha Hariharan participated as a speaker.
Roundtable on ICANN Accountability (Organized by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), National Internet Exchange of India and Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi; March 13, 2015).

►Privacy

Research Outputs

CIS in collaboration with Privacy International, UK as part of GSMA project is conducting research to understand different legal and regulatory aspects of security and surveillance in India. The following outputs have been published: Indian Law and the Necessary Proportionate Principles (Elonnai Hickok), Security, Surveillance and Data Sharing Schemes and Bodies in India (Maria Xynou and Elonnai Hickok), Export and Import of Security Technologies in India: QA (Elonnai Hickok), Regulation of CCTV's in India (Elonnai Hickok), Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) and Cross Border Sharing of Information in India (Maria Xynou and Elonnai Hickok), Composition of Service Providers in India (Lovisha Aggarwal), The Surveillance and Security Industry in India - An Analysis of Indian Security Expos (Divij Joshi), An Analysis of News Items and Cases on Surveillance and Digital Evidence in India (Lovisha Aggarwal), Policy Recommendations for Surveillance Law in India and an Analysis of Legal Provisions on Surveillance in India and the Necessary & Proportionate Principles (Maria Xynou), The Surveillance Industry in India (Maria Xynou), and State of Cyber Security and Surveillance in India: A Review of the Legal Landscape (Elonnai Hickok).

Event Organized

Cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (Organized by US Consulate Chennai, Cyber Security & Privacy Foundation and CIS; Hotel Atria, Palace Road, Bangalore; March 19, 2015).

Participation in Events

CONNECTing the Dots: Options for Future Action (Organized by UNESCO; March 3 - 4, 2015; Paris). Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.
Vox Pol Workshop on the Role of Social Media and Internet Companies in Responding to Violent Online Extremism (Organized by VOX-Pol network; March 5-6, 2015).

---------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Uploaded and blocked, a daylong battle rages on the web over BBC documentary (Kim Arora; The Times of India; March 6, 2015).
India tops list of content restrictions requests, says Facebook (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; March 17, 2015).
If you thought India is a country where freedom of speech and expression are fundamental rights, think twice! (Business Insider; March 17, 2015).
Live Chat: Aadhaar: An identity crisis? (Hindu; March 17, 2015).
Delhi Govt Sets Up WiFi Task Force (Originally published by Press Trust of India; TeleAnalysis; March 18, 2015).
India's plan to offer citizens digital lockers poses a privacy threat, say experts (Scroll.in; March 19, 2015).
Internet becomes vernacular with relaunch of e-bhasha (Ankita Lahiri; Governance Now; March 23, 2015).
Indian Supreme Court Overturns Law Barring 'Offensive Messages' Online (Niharika Mandhana; Wall Street Journal; March 24, 2015).
Supreme Court Strikes Down Section 66A Of IT Act (Indrani Basu and Betwa Sharma; Huffington Post; March 24, 2015).
India's section 66A scrapped: Win for free speech (Prasanto K. Roy; BBC; March 24, 2015).
India's Online Freedom Advocates Hail Court Ruling on Free Speech (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; March 24, 2015).
Live Chat: Win for Free Speech (Hindu; March 24, 2015). Geetha Hariharan participated in the live chat.
India's Supreme Court strikes down law that led to Facebook arrests (Annie Gowen; Washington Post; March 24, 2015).
Netizens Rejoice Over SC Ruling to Keep the Net Free (Parina Dhilla; New Indian Express; March 25, 2015).
'A safe Internet and a free Internet can co-exist' (Hindu; March 25, 2015).
India High Court: No Takedown Requests On Social Sites Without Court, Gov't Order (Madhur Singh; Bloomberg BNA; March 25, 2015).
India's Supreme Court strikes down law that led to arrests over Facebook posts (Annie Gowen; Star.com; March 25, 2015).
What the experts said on live chat (Hindu; March 25, 2015). Geetha Hariharan was one of the panelists.
Indian Court Strikes Down Section of Law Punishing Offensive Posts (Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj; NDTV; March 25, 2015).
IT Leaders, Lawyers Welcome SC Ruling on 66A of the IT Act (Cio.in; March 25, 2015).
I dare you, I double dare you: Social media celebrates Sec 66A verdict (Vishakha Saxena; Hindustan Times; March 25, 2015).
Ruling in India shields Web posts (Originally published by Washington Post and mirrored in Boston Globe; March 25, 2015).
The noose tightens on freedom of speech on the Internet (Gabey Goh; Digital New Asia; March 26, 2015). This was also mirrored in Malaymail Online.
SECTION 66A: DELETE (Kumar Anshuman; Open Magazine; March 27, 2015).
SC has set a high threshold for tolerance: Lawrence Liang (Dhamini Ratnam; Livemint; March 28, 2015).
66A DEAD. LONG LIVE 66A! (Soni Mishra; The Week; March 28, 2015).
India's landmark online speech ruling is step toward greater press freedom (Sumit Galhotra; CPJ; March 28, 2015).
You can still get into trouble for online posts: Digital law experts (Kim Arora; The Times of India; March 30, 2015).
'Smack' the Trolls! (Marianne De Nazareth; Citizen; March 31, 2015).

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

Announcements

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India : CIS is inviting abstracts for essays that explore what it means to study Internet(s) in India today, the many experiences of Internet(s) in India; its histories and archaeologies; how we use it to read, write, create, relate, learn, and share. Please send abstracts (200 words) to raw@cis-india.org.
Announcing Silicon Plateau #01 : The RAW programme is supporting a new collaborative publishing project led by T.A.J. Residency / SKE Projects and or-bits.com. The first volume of the series titled 'Silicon Plateau' will feature contributions by a group of artists, researchers, and writers, including IOCOSE, Tara Kelton, Anil Menon, Sunita Prasad, Achal Prabhala and Sreshta Rit Premnath, along with contextual writing and documentation material. Here is an excerpt from the editorial note written by Marialaura Ghidini, the co-editor of the volume.
Whose Open Data Community is it? - Accepted Abstract (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 31, 2015). The paper 'Whose Open Data Community is it? Reflections on the Open Data Ecosystem in India' has been accepted for presentation at the Open Data Research Symposium to be held during the 3rd International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, on May 28-29 2015.

Event Organized

Digital Activism in Asia Reader (Organized by CIS; Bangalore; March 6-7, 2015). The project is a collaborative effort of CIS and the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany, which aims to bring together local knowledge, debates and conversations around Digital Activism in Asia. The Digital Activism in Asia Reader is expected to be published by the Hybrid Publishing Lab in mid-2015.

Blog Entries

Figures of Learning: The Reader (P.P.Sneha; March 24, 2015).
Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia and India - Section Outlines : CIS has been invited to contribute two sections to the Asia Internet History - Third Decade (2001-2010) book edited by Dr. Kilnam Chon.

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

Op-ed

Railway Takeaways for Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; March 4, 2015).

Blog Entry

TRAI-ing Times: The Story So Far (Tarun Krishnakumar; March 19, 2015).

---------------------------------
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. 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/march-bulletin-2015