Centre for Internet and Society

Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months

praskrishna — 2013-09-27T11:53:51Z

Piles of the thick four volumes of Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia waiting to be picked up by users at the Goa University (GU) will now attain a modern avatar.

The article was published in the Times of India on September 27, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The volumes, work on which was first started by renowned Goan writer and academician late Manoharrai Sardessai at GU, will not only be available in digitized format, but will form the base for a Konkani Wikipedia.

Goa University has become the first varsity in the country to enter into a creative commons licence that will allow data produced and copyrighted by an Indian university available to internet users and open to modification, making GU a champion of sorts of free knowledge. The Konkani Wikipedia is expected to be ready for use within six months, officials said.

The university has signed a three-year memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme, which represents Wikipedia in India, for the Konkani Wikipedia project.

"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," Vishnu Vardhan of the centre said.

The Wikipedia is the fourth most used property on the internet after Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which acts as an internet based encyclopedia where any of the users can upload new information or update or modify an existing chapter. The Konkani Wikipedia too will offer similar privileges to users and GU's Konkani department and the centre will oversee the process from the university campus.

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Shetye said that GU is glad to associate with Wikipedia which has become a global phenomenon and broken the monopoly of publishers and converted distribution of knowledge into a democratic process.

"At present, it takes time for a page with information in a regional language to download because they are usually found in the form of scanned pages, which are accessible as images and not text. The Konkani Wikipedia will make the text accessible as is the case of any English text on the internet," GU registrar Vijayendra Kamat said. tnn

The Konkani vishwakosh was created over a period of 14 years.

Edited by late Manoharrai Sardessai and later Tanaji Halarnkar. GU staffers Ranjan Naik, Kalpana Naik, Kanchan Mordekar, Surekha Naik, Mukesh Thali and Shailendra Mehta contributed to the compilation process.

Contains four large volumes of 3,632 of total pages.

Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia encompasses world information in a nutshell with special emphasis on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc.

Wikipedia is available in 20 Indian languages including Telugu, Assamese, Marathi, but not in Konkani so far.

Students, professors and anyone interested in contributing to the project can do so by enrolling online at bit.ly/konkanivishwakosh before October 5.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-september-27-2013-konkani-wikipedia-from-goa-university-in-six-months

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.


Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

1	धालो	Varsha Kavlekar
2	केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग	Mona Rodrigues
3	देखणी	Fernandes Sandra
4	गोयच्यों परबो	Komal Dhuri
5	जागर्	Cliffa Fernandes
6	गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय	Abigail Dias
7	गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण	Effa Dias
8	चवथ	Shanta Gaundalkar
9	कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ	Dias Neves
10	राणेचे बंड	Fay Fernandes
11	रविंद्र केळेकार	Gaurisha Phal Desai
12	गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ	Safira Ferns
13	शणै गोयबाब	Pratima Fal Desai
14	मांडो	Anisha Gad
15	संगीत	Santoshi Kole
16	म्हणी,ओपारी	Pooja Kavlekar
17	मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर	Sukhada Daikar
18	कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां	Konknni mogi 24
19	कोंकणी लोककाणयो, कोंकणी सिनेमा	Supriya Kankumbikar
20	गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी, कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ	Vaishali Parab
21	कोंकणी नाटक	Darshan Kandolkar
22	विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र	John Noronha

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

1	गोंयचें लोक नाच	Pooja Tople
2	गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था, गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास	Priyanka Kudaskar
3	दिवाळी,शिरगांवची जात्रा	Pritam Barve
4	गोंयची लोकगितां	Rusita Paryekar
5	हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस	Gauri Prabhugaonkar
6	लोकवादय़ा	Suma Parab Gaonkarr
7	गाराणें	Darshana Mandrekar
8	तुळशीलग्न	Heefza
9	बारसो	Nikita Prabhu
10	कोंकणी कथा	Marizma Mascarenhas
11	गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां	Linette Saldanha
12	बेबींक	Frania Pereira
13	तियात्र	Rhakee Santos
14	गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त	Pereira Goreti
15	कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो	Rubiya Komarpant
16	कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप	Savidha Talekar

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
- Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
- Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
- Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?


Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.


				Konkani Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

nitika — 2013-11-30T10:47:20Z

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era and will also feed into building of Konkani Wikipedia.

What is Konkani Vishwakosh?

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work of over 14 years. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. The encyclopaedia is written in Konkani language — a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Konkan belt) — some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Vishwakosh serves as a primary source of information and is one of the most important documented texts for a community of 2,489,015 Konkani speakers spread across India and worldwide.

What does re-releasing under CC mean?

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era.

Goa University is the first varsity to enter into a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that will permit copyrighted produced data by an Indian university accessible to internet users and open to modification (wiki), making Goa University a victory of sorts of free information.

MoU: Goa University and the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)

Goa University has entered into a three year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University will be uploading four volumes of Konkani encyclopaedia under CC licence on Wikimedia projects and CIS will help with scanning and digitization of the Vishwakosh and using it as a foundation for creating articles on Konkani Wikipedia. CIS India has also called out for volunteers to help digitize Konkani Vishwakosh.

Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia), till now available only in hard copy, will now be available for free on the Internet.

Event: Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC

http://bit.ly/17nPMuV

To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access, Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Goa University Conference Hall. The event had a huge attendance including Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice Chancellor of GU), V.P. Kamat (Registrar of GU), T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director CIS-A2K), close kin of Late. Manoharrai Sardesai (writer of the Encyclopaedia), Tanaji Halarnkar (editor of the Encyclopaedia), Goa University’s staff, faculty and students, members of Konkani speaking community and the press.

During the event, GU Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye said, "the Konkani Vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopaedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," he was quoted as having said.

The event was covered by several local and national newspapers:

"Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months", Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013.
Chaudhary, Apurva. "Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia", Medianama, September 30, 2013.
Lobo,Joanna. "For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language", DNA, September 29, 2013.
Prakash, Kamat."Konkani Wikipedia in the Making", The Hindu, September 29, 2013.
"Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months", Times of India, September 27, 2013.
"Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani Encyclopaedia on Wikipedia", Navhind Times, September 27, 2013.
"Konkani Vishwakosh Relaunch Tomorrow". The Hindu, September 25, 2013.
Desouza, Vijay. "Goa University Re-releasing Konkani Encyclopaedia on Sept 26", Times of India, September 24, 2013.

More about the event here: http://bit.ly/1aSufAE

Project: Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

http://bit.ly/183USAg

Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a two month project where CIS-A2K will work with a group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopaedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.

"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani Vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan. Orientation, training, follow-up workshops will also be organised by CIS-A2K. More about the project here: http://bit.ly/HWEMh7

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh could serve as a ready made source of reference for articles on the Konkani Wikipedia, which is in incubation since its inception in 2006. Konkani Wikipedia editors could use content from the Vishwakosh to build articles on Konkani Wikipedia thereby growing Konkani articles not only in numbers but also in its quality.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa

Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T05:53:33Z

The Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Societies Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) will relaunch its four-volume 3,632-page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. to support the movement of open knowledge and open access on Thursday at 10 a.m. at a function at the conference hall of its administrative building at Taleigao plateau.

The re-release is an initiative by the Goa University to strengthen the Konkani community and language. Information from the Vishwakosh will be used to write the articles on Konkani Wikipedia.

This was originally published in the Hindu on September 25, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-september-25-2013-konkani-vishwakosh-relaunch-tomorrow

Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License

nitika — 2013-12-31T12:42:35Z

Upon Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Read the blog post originally published on the Wikipedia page.

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work that took over 14 years to develop. It encompasses the world’s information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. The encyclopedia is written in Konkani, a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighboring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Konkan belt) – some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Vishwakosh serves as a primary source of information and one of the most important documented texts for a community of nearly 2.5 million Konkani speakers spread across India and worldwide.

Goa University is the first ever Indian University to relicense its copyrighted content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 so that the knowledge that they have painstakingly put together is made available freely to all Konkani speakers across the world through Wikipedia and other digital platforms. By doing this Goa University has set a precedent for other public sector institutions in India — such as universities and government departments — to follow. Citing this instance, the Tamil Wikipedia community has begun a negotiation with the Tamil Nadu government to release the Tamil Encyclopedias under CC license. It should be noted that majority of the knowledge production through the 20th century in Indian languages was mostly funded by the State. This victory with Goa University can bring out much more knowledge in the Indian languages into the open and could significantly benefit the Indic Wikimedia projects. CIS-A2K is also leveraging this instance in getting other public institutions in India to re-release the content under appropriate CC licenses.

To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University (GU) in collaboration with CIS-A2K organized an event on 26th September 2013 at 10am at the Goa University Conference Hall. The event had significant attendance, including Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice Chancellor of GU), Mr. V.P. Kamat (Registrar of GU), Mr. T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director CIS-A2K), close kin of Late. Manoharrai Sardesai (writer of the encyclopedia), Tanaji Halarnkar (editor of the encyclopedia and a long time associate of Konkani Literary movement), Goa University’s staff, faculty and students, members of Konkani speaking community and press. About 250 people attended this event, which received major media attention.

During the event GU Vice-Chancellor Satish Shetye said, “the Konkani Vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia.”

Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director CIS-A2K, Satish Shetye, Goa University Vice Chancellor, V.P. Kamat, Registrar of Goa University during press conference of re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC license (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The event was covered by several local and national newspapers. Here are some links:

“Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months“. Jagran Josh. 30 September 2013.
Chaudhary, Apurva. “Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia” Medianama. 30th September 2013
Lobo,Joanna. “For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa’s official language“. DNA. 29 September 2013.
Prakash, Kamat.”Konkani Wikipedia in the making“. The Hindu. 29 September 2013.
“Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months“. Times of India. 27 September 2013.
“Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia“. Navhind Times. 27 September 2013.
“Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow“. The Hindu. 25 September 2013.
Desouza, Vijay. “Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26“. Times of India. 24 September 2013.

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

More details about the event can be found on the Meta Program Page

CIS-A2K’s Accomplishments

MoU between Goa University and Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)

Goa University has entered into a three year MoU with CIS for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University has re-launched four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia under CC licence and CIS will help scanning and digitizing Vishwakosh and using it as a foundation for creating articles on Konkani Wikipedia.

MoU between Goa University and Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)

Konkani Vishwakosh available on Wikimedia Commons

The 4 volumes of encyclopedia have already been scanned and made available by CIS on Wikimedia Commons. It can be found here:

Project Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

CIS-A2K is currently working with 37 volunteers to digitize Konkani Vishwakosh. Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia), till now available only in hard copy, will now be available for free on the Internet. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.

“Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani Vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments,” said T. Vishnu Vardhan, Program Director of CIS-A2K. Orientation, training and follow-up workshops will also be organised by CIS-A2K.

More about the project can be found on the Meta Program Page

Konkani Wikipedia editors digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

CIS-A2K is encouraging Konkani editors to use Vishwakosh as a ready-made source of reference for articles on Konkani Wikipedia, thereby growing Konkani articles not only in numbers but also in quality.

The incubation for Konkani Wikipedia was initiated in 2006 (it could be one of the few projects in incubation for the longest period). During the past 7 years, little progress can be seen on this incubator project.

By way of initiating KVDP, CIS-A2K is hoping to revive the Konkani Wikipedia editing community and give birth to Konkani Wikipedia as a live Wikimedia project in the next couple of months. CIS-A2K has charted out a methodological work plan to achieve this and more.

Copyright notes: "Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC license", "Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0", "Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project 08" by Nitika Tandon, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-encyclopedia-released-under-free-license

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

nitika — 2013-10-01T12:23:33Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invite you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Click to download the event brochure here

Konkani Vishwakosh

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc.

Goa University has generously approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a 2 month project where we will work with group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner.

We’re calling out for students, professors, faculty, professionals or anyone who is interested to preserve Konkani language and culture!

Help preserve Konkani language
Help preserve Konkani culture
Enroll in the program today and make a difference!

What will you gain out of it?

Learn typing skills: CIS-A2K will organize typing workshops for those who are not comfortable typing in Devanagari. This will be a two-day workshop organized in Panjim, Goa. Brilliant opportunity for you to learn a new skill!
Learn about Konkani Wikipedia: The program will also introduce you to Konkani Wikipedia, how does it work, who edits it, how can you edit etc.
Improve your writing, critical thinking, and research skills: Yes, there is so much that you can learn in our workshop. These skills will help you in personal and professional development.
Help preserve your language and culture: Out of 780 spoken Indian languages, 250 died out in last 50 years. Take the first step to save your language.
Go global: Showcase your work, Konkani language and culture on a global platform. That’s the power of digital era!
Earn while you learn: 30 final selected candidates will be remunerated for their work.

Deliverables

Selected 30 candidates will be assigned 100 pages each of Konkani Vishwakosh that needs to be digitized over a span of 2 months (Oct & Nov 2013). Typing 50 pages a month is surely a cakewalk!

Enroll Today!

Please fill the Application Form latest by October 5, 2013.

Contact Us

If you have any further questions please
Mail us at: nitika@cis-india.org
Twitter: @CISA2K
Visit us at: bitly.com/cis-a2k

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-project

Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia!

subha — 2012-12-04T07:19:54Z

Recently, Access to Knowledge team member Subhashish Panigrahi spent some time with wikipedians in Kolkata. Through this blog post he shares his experience and learning from the interaction. This post explores the journey of three wikipedians — Jayanta Nath, Deepon Saha and Ashwin.

Jayanta Nath and Deepon Saha — Lecture on Bangla Wikipedia

Jayanta is one of the active contributors in Bangla Wikipedia. He has supported community building for Bangla Wikipedia in India. Apart from contributing articles Jayanta supports many wikipedians for fixing technical issues on various language wikis. Deepon is another active wikipedian from Kolkata who contributes mostly to English Wikipedia besides contributing to WikiCommons and Bangla Wikipedia and taking active part in community building in Kolkata and other places. I met both Jayanta and Deepon recently in Kolkata and discussed about Bangla Wikipedia and the role of contributors from India.

Over the last few years Bangla Wikipedia has seen enough growth — growth in number of articles, growth in number of outreach, growth in number of contributors and lot more. However, there is something missing in this list, and that is the growth in number of Bangla editors from India. Sadly, though Bangla speaking people constitute a major part of the intellectual sphere. Bangla Wikipedia has not seen many new faces in the recent past from the Indian subcontinent. "English has become like a mother language of most Bengalis in Kolkata and Bengalis residing in other major cities", expresses Jayanta with grief. "Most of the Bengalis speak and are adhered to Bengali language but the use of language is limited only to speaking. And they no more use Bangla in writing. That is what makes it more difficult to tell them about Bangla Wikipedia", adds Deepon. Bangla Wikipedia in India is facing one more major challenge: media coverage. There is not much coverage about Bangla Wikipedia in Bangla media, especially print media. "I was interviewed by the Times of India, Hindu, Telegraph and few other English newspapers but, surprisingly there was not much coverage in Bangla media. There are almost 12 Bangla newspapers being published from Kolkata and in spite of our efforts the outcome is far below expectation", explains Jayanta. Jayanta feels there is much scope for community building for Bangla Wikipedia in rural West Bengal. Unlike urban Bengal, Bangla is the primary medium of both verbal and written communication.

Computer literacy might be a big hurdle when it comes to spreading words about editing Bangla Wikipedia. But it is difficult to predict about the status of government schools, computer and internet penetration before initiating outreach for rural places. Deepon also suggests about making a small survey in Bangla medium schools in Kolkata to understand the scope for any Bangla education program in those schools. We discussed about the internet penetration to measure and assess the state of Bangla on internet and its public usage. Out of the ten Bangla newspapers only two are available in unicode for their online edition. The state of unicode and online usage of Bangla in unicode is much better in Bangladesh which also explains that Bengalis in Bangladesh are using Bangla to a great extent including reading, writing and upon internet.

Typing is another challenge to be tackled. DTP operators, government offices where Bangla typing is used normally use a different typing scheme and non-unicode fonts (mostly old ISCII or ASCII fonts). "We could bring many Bangla enthusiasts to Bangla Wiki projects by simplifying the typing solution and making people aware about the available typing tools. Simple video tutorials and smaller help pages with easy-to-understand guidelines will be helpful and these should be linked from other pages so the new editors will find them and make use of them to learn editing", adds Deepon.

The Full Story Began with Loads of Curiosity and a Small [Edit] Button!

Deepon was searching for some information online while he discovered the available information on wikipedia is incorrect. He was searching for a help desk to ask to correct it. Suddenly he discovered the "Edit" button, when he clicked on it a new page opened up with a warning: "You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. Please log in or sign up to have your edits associated with a user name, among other benefits." He clicked, signed up and created a new account and corrected the mistake. That was the first time Deepon made his first edit on Wikipedia and never stopped after that.

Ashwin (User:AshLin): Passion to Contribute to Wikipedia still Flying like Butterflies

There was no book available in the early 80s when Ashwin wanted to know more about Indian butterflies. There was no article on Wikipedia about Indian butterflies and there were very less available resource on Indian butterflies. Ashwin along with Shyamal and other enthusiasts collaborated to start working on this project which brought many other contributors. The other project he was quite involved was about Indian snakes. One of his key motivations for contributing to Wikipedia was making the resource about Indian butterflies available for others.

	Ashwin is one of those active contributors from India who are active for the last few years for bringing more editors onboard to write on articles of Indian context, primarily on English Wikipedia. Out of his own passion Ashwin started contributing to several projects like WikiProject Lepidoptera which brought many wonderful articles on Wikipedia. Ashwin is greatly appreaciate for his participation in projects like WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools, Collaborations of the month. Ashwin extended his help to the Pune community when he was in Pune from organizing outreach events to bringing editors onboard to take leadership for new projects. "There is a lot of scope for regional language wikipedians to learn from the English Wikipedia projects. Projects on English Wikipedia involves more people and the lessons would be helpful for other regional language wikipedians and English wikipedians in India are always interested to help", expresses Ashwin. Currently he is in a small wikibreak and will be back soon!

Ashwin is one of those active contributors from India who are active for the last few years for bringing more editors onboard to write on articles of Indian context, primarily on English Wikipedia. Out of his own passion Ashwin started contributing to several projects like WikiProject Lepidoptera which brought many wonderful articles on Wikipedia. Ashwin is greatly appreaciate for his participation in projects like WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools, Collaborations of the month. Ashwin extended his help to the Pune community when he was in Pune from organizing outreach events to bringing editors onboard to take leadership for new projects. "There is a lot of scope for regional language wikipedians to learn from the English Wikipedia projects. Projects on English Wikipedia involves more people and the lessons would be helpful for other regional language wikipedians and English wikipedians in India are always interested to help", expresses Ashwin. Currently he is in a small wikibreak and will be back soon!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia

Knowledge Sharing through GLAM at Bangalore

praskrishna — 2013-02-18T05:37:46Z

A seminar for GLAM institutions (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) will be held in Bangalore on February 25, 2013, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The program is supported by Wikimedia, Creative Commons and the Centre for Internet & Society.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables users to share their knowledge and creativity through free legal tools. They develop, support, and steward legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

Copyright laws were developed in a previous era where in protection was given to artists, authors, and other creators as a default. In this situation sharing requires a deliberate prior permission. In the internet era, so much of sharing of digital media is happening online, and these require tools that ensure prior permission, and control the level of use. The legal tools of Creative Commons enable controlled sharing.

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable users to modify their copyright terms to best suit their needs.

What will users learn?

In this part of the seminar users will learn about:

Creative Commons as an organization
How the Creative Commons licenses work
How they relate to Open GLAM, and Wikimedia
What are the tools? How to choose them and use them
How can people selectively retain rights, while releasing some of it for free public use
Examples of how GLAM institutions are using CC
New business models and online communities
Other applications of CC

The speakers from Creative Commons have a long experience of discussing CC with GLAM institutions.

CC licensing also works for many other applications such as music, video, writing, and many other creative works. Open Education Resources, and Public Data are also some of the domains. The focus of the presentation will be on GLAM. However, people interested in other applications may also be able to take the opportunity to have discussions after the main presentation.

Who should attend the seminar?

The seminar would be of interests to:

Administrators of Public policy
Administrators of GLAM institutions
Art historians, Artists, Photographers, and Sculptors
Legal professionals
Bloggers, Authors, Editors, and Publishers.

Admission:

Admission is free to the public who register. Please bring a print copy of this registration page for admission.

Please visit the link to register: http://bit.ly/VZ8yIE

Location map of venue: http://goo.gl/maps/sYsxI

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/knowledge-sharing-through-glam

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Sakshi

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T11:31:57Z

Sakshi covered the Vijaywada event on June 25, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik gave their inputs.

Given below is a scanned version of the coverage published in the district edition:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/coverage-of-event-in-vijaywada-june-25-2014-sakshi

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Enadu

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T11:32:16Z

Eenadu covered the event on June 25, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik are quoted.

A scanned version of the event published in the district edition is below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/eenadu-june-25-2014-coverage-of-vijaywada-event

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T11:28:34Z

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team invite you to a two-day national workshop on knowledge and openness in the digital era.

Instructions for Participants

Each participant attending the Workshop should register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by June 22, 2014. Please note that you will not be able to register more than 5 Usernames from a single IP address within 24 hours (a security feature of Wikipedia). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia http://sh.st/r9zc (click on this link).
Once registered the participants must enroll here http://bit.ly/U4Zxhp using an on-line registration form.
All the participants are expected to do take part in production sprints on Wikipedia. We will choose Telugu Language Wikipedia as a site to do some editing.

For this workshop each participant should come with three full-fledged articles (at least of 1200 words each) in Telugu. This should be typed and be available in a soft copy form and could be carried in a thumb drive or any other storage media which should be easily accessible to them during the training programme. Please check www.te.wikipedia.org to see if an article already exists on the topic that you are planning to write. You can even choose the expand the existing article on Telugu Wikipedia with your knowledge.

Suggested topics: a) Concepts/topics that you teach often; b) A famous theorist/thinker in your discipline; c) Any other notable topic that you feel should be in your language Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/knowledge-and-openness-in-digital-era

KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T09:57:50Z

Centre for Internet and Society is a Bangalore based Non profit organization which works primarily in the broader domains ofinternet and policy research, accessibility, open knowledge and open education.

The blog post was published by India Education Diary.com on January 20, 2014.

Its Access To Knowledge program is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and works in fostering the volunteer Wikimedia community that contributes in enhancing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Its primary mandate is upbringing Wikipedia editors by outreach, creating primary resources for sources of reference in multiple ways that lead to enrich Wikipedia.

From a technical institution, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology has grown to a multidisciplinary world class University. KIIT University is a world class university spread over 25 sq. km. of land accommodating 20 sprawling wi-fi campuses with 10 million sq.ft. built up area. The university has 25 constituent schools offering more than 100 programmes. Being accredited by NAAC of UGC and NBA of AICTE, KIIT has 20,000 students pursuing under graduate and post graduate studies in the fields of Engineering, Computer Application, Management, Rural Management, Law, Biotechnology, MBBS, M.D., BDS, Nursing, Fashion Technology, Cinema & Media Studies and Languages. KIIT stands out as one of the finest universities in India declared under section 3 of the UGC Act of 1956. KIIT educational conglomerate is unique in offering a wide spectrum of academic programmes from kindergarten to postgraduate level, earning it a place in the Limca Book of Records.

Wikipedia has a critical stand in academia when it comes to peer academic research. But on the other side students ofter access and use Wikipedia for their assignment work despite of the non acceptance of Wikipedia content by the teacher community. The primary reason of Wikipedia's factual errors in many Indic related articles being Wikipedia's low contribution from the global south needs more contribution. Academicians and subject experts who are in charge of building the infrastructure of providing free knowledge to everyone often were stuck because of this setback.

This led to an conjugation of subject experts and Wikimedia contributor communities to set up a system called Wikipedia Education Program (WEP) where editing, correcting and enhancing Wikipedia articles become part of the curriculum.

To begin with the students in different schools at KIIT University the local Wikipedia community with the support from CIS-A2K is going to conduct classroom Wikipedia workshops to pilot Wikipedia contribution. KIIT University would be one of world's few universities to pilot student Wikipedia contribution as part oftheir curricula in any regional language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-education-diary-january-20-2014-kiit-university-to-lead-building-free-knowledge-repository-initiative

KEI Seminar on "Appraising the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and its Implications on Access to Culture"

Admin — 2018-10-31T01:53:27Z

Anubha Sinha participated in a seminar organized by KEI on October 3 and 4, 2018 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Anubha spoke on the panel titled "Rationale, Beneficiaries and Scope (of the Treaty)".

Links to the webcast can be found here:

October 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYcvaeyS04k

October 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC5AdokTF2o

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kei-seminar-on-appraising-the-wipo-broadcast-treaty-and-its-implications-on-access-to-culture

Karnataka Goondas Act - A note on Legislative Competence

nehaa — 2014-09-06T04:47:33Z

A couple of weeks ago, we had an insightful guest post by Nehaa Chaudhari on amendments to Karnataka's Goondas Act, a draconian legislation which seeks to allow preventive detention for some types of copyright violations. Today, we have a follow up post on that, that argues that the recent amendments are unconstitutional.

This was published in Spicy IP on August 28, 2014. This post is authored by Nehaa Chaudhari and Amulya Purushothama. Nehaa works on intellectual property/openness law and policy and the Centre for Internet and Society, while Amulya is a fifth year law student at Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad.

The recent amendments to the Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum Gamblers Act, 1985 (“the Karnataka Goondas Act”/ “the Act”/ “the Goondas Act”) bring within the ambit of the Act offences under the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 and the Information Technology Act, 2000. Digital offenders and audio and video pirates, can now be punished and can be preventively detained under the new Act seemingly in order to protect public order. [See previous post examining this here]

Without prejudice to other concerns with this legislation including inter alia the use of preventive detention itself, provisions dealing with ‘expulsion from areas’ and the wide range of ‘offences’ that the Act seeks to cover, this article argues that those recent amendments that make audio and video piracy offences under the Act are unconstitutional, for want of legislative competence.

Union and State Lists

Article 246 of the Constitution empowers the Parliament and State Legislatures to legislate. Categories on which the Parliament may legislate have been laid out in List I (Union List) of the Seventh Schedule; on which the State Legislatures may formulate laws have been laid out in List II (State List) of the Seventh Schedule and on which either may legislate have been enumerated in List III (Concurrent List) of the Seventh Schedule. The power of the Parliament to formulate laws on matters in the Union List is exclusive and notwithstanding the powers of the Parliament itself and of the State Legislature with reference to the Concurrent List and of the State Legislature with reference to the State List. This exclusive power of the Parliament was also upheld in the now famous Hoechst Pharma Case.

Public Order is set out as a subject matter upon which the State Legislature can enact laws under Entry 1 of the State List. Entry 49 of the Union List enumerates Patents, Inventions and Designs; Copyright; Trademarks and Merchandise Works as matters upon which the Parliament can exclusively legislate.

Pith and Substance and Incidental Encroachment

The competence of any legislature to formulate laws is adjudged on the basis of what is known as the pith and substance doctrine. In this instance it means checking whether the substance or the essence of the Goondas Act has to deal with maintaining of public order. If this were to be the case, the incidental trenching upon matters beyond its competence as Kartar Singh put it (in this instance provisions dealing with audio and video piracy) is not all together forbidden.

However, this argument doesn’t stand. As required by the Hoechst Pharma Case, the infringement/encroachment has to be necessarily incidental to effective legislation by the state with respect to matters under List II. The newly introduced offences dealing with audio and video pirates are not necessarily incidental to pursuing the intention behind the Goondas Act as a whole (proceeding with the assumption that this intention is justified), which is to maintain public order and to provide for preventive detention of persons (bootleggers, drug offenders, gamblers, goondas, immoral traffic offenders) who are recognized by the Act as antisocial elements, particularly since there is no logical link between these particular offences and the maintenance of public order.

It would be worthwhile here to understand what exactly is meant by public order in the State List. The phrase was properly defined in the case of Indrajit Barua where the Delhi High Court held that for an illegal activity to qualify as threatening the public order, it must affect the community or the public at large. It was held that there was a difference between law and order and public order and that this difference was rooted in the degree and extent of … impact upon society. The Bombay High Court in the Nathwani case held that public order is the absence of public disorder involving breaches of local significance in contradistinction to national upheavals , such as revolution civil war… . The Supreme Court in Ramlila Maidan incident even held that if public order is disturbed it must lead to public disorder… whereas every breach of peace might not always lead to public disorder.

It is therefore, patently clear that offences under the Copyright Act, 1957 do not affect public order as understood in the legal sense simply because these offences while unlawful would not cause public disorder as has been envisioned by the court. Ergo, it follows that the true character of these amendments to the law, is not to preserve public order.

Even if it could somehow be proven that the offences added to the Act were a matter of public order, as held by the cases of Prof. Yashpal and Kerala State Electricity Board, when an entry is in general terms in List II (Entry 1- Public Order) and in more specific terms in List I (Entry 49 Patents, Copyright et al.), the entry in List I takes effect regardless of the entry in List II.

Furthermore, in this instance, the infringement on a matter under the Union List is not merely incidental, as the purpose sought by the Goondas Act, and the methods it adopts (preventive detention), stand in direct contradiction to the purpose of the Copyright Act, 1957. Copyright laws were enacted to incentivize innovation and to protect the intellectual property rights of individuals. In furtherance of this, offences under the Copyright Act, 1957 are punishable with imprisonment up to 3 years, the police have the power to seize infringing copies, the courts have the power to order the destruction of these copies. And there also exist fair-dealing provisions that need to be accounted for. A provision that allows preventive detention for copyright infringement is therefore not only disproportionate, but also incongruous in this context, leading to absurdities defeating the purpose of the legislation. Furthermore, this amendment amounts to an addition to the Copyright Act, 1957 in an indirect manner. Therefore in the guise of an incidental provision, the state legislature has altered the nature of the Act, and therefore engaged in a colourable exercise of power.

Therefore, subject to other reservations that one has with this legislation, due to a lack of legislative competence, at the very least, the amendments dealing with audio and video piracy should be repealed, applying the doctrine of severability expounded in Abdul Quader , R.M.D Chamarbaugwala and KihotoHollohan.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/spicy-ip-nehaa-chaudhari-august-28-2014-karnataka-goondas-act-a-note-on-legislative-competence

Centre for Internet and Society

Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

Introduction

Highlights of the Workshop

Articles and Participants

Media Coverage

Learnings

Challenges

Acknowledgements

What's Next?

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

What is Konkani Vishwakosh?

What does re-releasing under CC mean?

MoU: Goa University and the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)

Event: Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC

Project: Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow

Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License

CIS-A2K’s Accomplishments

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

Konkani Vishwakosh

Digitization Project

What will you gain out of it?

Deliverables

Enroll Today!

Contact Us

Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia!

Jayanta Nath and Deepon Saha — Lecture on Bangla Wikipedia

The Full Story Began with Loads of Curiosity and a Small [Edit] Button!

Ashwin (User:AshLin): Passion to Contribute to Wikipedia still Flying like Butterflies

Knowledge Sharing through GLAM at Bangalore

Sponsors

What is GLAM and what does it have to do with Wikimedia and Creative Commons?

Why contribute?

How to contribute?

How does it help the GLAM institution?

Creative Commons

What will users learn?

Who should attend the seminar?

Admission:

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Sakshi

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Enadu

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era

Instructions for Participants

KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative

KEI Seminar on "Appraising the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and its Implications on Access to Culture"

Karnataka Goondas Act - A note on Legislative Competence

Union and State Lists

Pith and Substance and Incidental Encroachment