Centre for Internet and Society

Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T05:59:07Z

The Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Societie's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is re-releasing its four volume 3632 page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia).

Click to read the original published in the Times of India on September 24, 2013.

This is being done under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0 to support the movement of open knowledge and open access, an official statement said.

The function will be held on September 26, at 10am in the conference hall of the administrative building of the Goa university.

The re-releasing of the Konkani Vishwakosh is an initiative by the Goa University to strengthen the Konkani community and language, the statement said adding that the information from the Vishwakosh will be used to write the articles on Konkani Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-september-24-2013-vijay-desouza-goa-university-re-releasing-konkani-encyclopaedia-on-september-26

Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:44:21Z

The Goa university has entered into a three year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building the Konkani Wikipedia, reports navhindtimes.

This blog post by Apurva Chaudhary was published by Medianama on September 30, 2013.

As part of this partnership, Goa University will be uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia and the Konkani wikipedia is expected to be available in six months. It appears that the partnership with CIS India includes processes such as scanning, digitization, and creating articles as per requirement of Wikipedia. CIS India has also called out for volunteers for a period of three months to help them digitizing the Konkani encyclopedia.

This is quite notable since most of the development in digitizing documents in Indian language did not include Konkani language, which is spoken in western coast of India. Besides, since the university will upload the Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia, it will allow users to search through texts. Most of the digitization projects just scan the books and upload the pages in image format, which makes it difficult to search or perform any kind of data related query.

Last year in May, Wikipedians were digitizing Indian language, out-of-copyright texts online, trying to address the comparative paucity of Indic language texts online. Wikisource is a repository of documents and archived material that serves as a reference source for Wikipedia, and a means of improving access to information sources. Of the 64 languages Wikisource is available in, 8 are Indian: Tamil (stats), Malayalam (stats),Telugu (stats), Kannada (stats), Sanskrit (stats), Marathi (stats), Bengali (stats) and Gujarati (stats). Note that most of these Indian language Wikipedia’s receive active contribution from CIS India under its CIS-A2K program.

Wikipedia had recorded 43.5 million pageviews in Indian language wikis, as of October 2011. In June 2013, the Hindi language Wikipedia had received monthly pageviews of 7.8 million, Tamil language Wikipedia had received 5.2 million pageviews, among others. So there’s clearly a demand to access information in local languages.

That said, while more languages are being added to the list, it should be seen that the articles in these languages do not contain just one or two sentences. According to an analysis by Shijualex.in, many articles posted under Indian language Wikipedia were under 2kb, indicating that it contained only couple of sentences.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/medianama-september-30-2013-apurva-chaudhary-goa-university-partners-cis-to-build-konkani-wikipedia

Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:14:55Z

The Goa University, on Thursday, re-launched the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (Konkani encyclopedia), and announced its ambitious plan to upload the same on Wikipedia – a free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software – so as to build the Konkani Wikipedia.

This article was published in Navhind Times on September 27, 2013. T.Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The university has entered into a 3-year memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), for building up the Konkani Wikipedia.

Vice Chancellor of Goa University Dr Satish Shetye, speaking during the event held at the university said that Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public.

“This platform will bring together Konkani speaking people of the world, besides providing an opportunity to learn about digitisation, and write Konkani of global standard.”

Dr Shetye, who incidentally noticed large number of volumes of the Konkani encyclopedia stacked in the Goa University premises, decided to take them to maximum people through their re-launch and upload on the Wikipedia.

The work for the Konkani encyclopedia project was commissioned during the tenure of vice chancellor Prof B Sheik Ali, and was carried out by various people from Dr Manoharrai Sardesai to Dr Tanaji Halarnakar, with the aid of the Konkani department at the university.

The four volumes of the 3,632 page Konkani encyclopedia are being re-released under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0 to support the movement of open knowledge and open access. The programme director for the Access to Knowledge Programme of the Centre for Internet and Society, Vishnu Vardhan, speaking on the occasion said that the process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia on the Wikipedia would be complete in six months time, and includes processes like scanning, digitisation and creating articles as per the requirement of Wikipedia. He also stressed on the need to rewrite some of the articles in Konkani encyclopedia so as to contemporarise their contents.

Vardhan also informed that relevant training programme would be specially co-designed by the CIS as well as the university to put up the content on the Wikipedia.

Goa University is the first university in the country to re-license copyright of its content, and hence can be termed as the ‘Champion of open knowledge’, he observed. Registrar Prof V P Kamat and head of Konkani department Priyadarshini Tadkodkar were also present on the occasion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/navhindtimes-goa-news-september-27-2013-goa-university-announces-plan-to-upload-konkani-encyclopedia-on-wikipedia

Global Knowledge Can Only Save a Language: Pavanaja

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:09:40Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, a NGO funded by Wikimedia Foundation has started a mission for the revival of Wikipedia sites of Tulu and Konkani under its "Access to Knowledge" project. As a part of it the NGO had organised a demonstration on the use of wikipedia, here on Saturday.

A scanned version of the report of the workshop is reproduced below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-6-2014-global-knowledge-can-only-save-a-language

Global IP Conference 2011, Brochure

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:27:19Z

A brochure of the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/global-ip-conference

Global Congress On IP and Public Interest Adopts Principles for Negotiations

praskrishna — 2014-01-13T08:32:25Z

A recent conference on intellectual property and the public interest concluded with the adoption of public interest principles to guide international trade negotiations and international organisations.

This article by William New was published in the Intellectual Property Watch on January 6, 2014.

The Open African Innovation Research (Open A.I.R.) conference and the Global Congress on IP & the Public Interest took place in Cape Town, South Africa from 9-13 December. The conference hosted by the University of Cape Town was funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Germany’s Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), among others.

Principles adopted at the conference included transparency, preservation of rights within international agreements such as national flexibilities, protection for internet service providers, strengthening of the public domain, and access to knowledge and to medicines.

The event included a fairly diverse representation, and not all participants necessarily signed on to the principles that emerged from the event.

According to infojustice.org, some 200 people have signed the “Global Congress Declaration on Public Interest Principles for International IP Negotiations,” which is available here.

The declaration calls for “’a positive agenda in international intellectual property law making’ which would include a more open negotiating process, respect for stakeholders’ social and economic welfare, and preserve states’ freedoms to protect access to knowledge goods,” infojustice.org said.

In particular, the declaration took aim at the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) being negotiated by 12 countries led by the United States. It urged negotiators of the TPP and future negotiations to ensure the “ongoing release of proposed legal provisions for public comment and maximize the ability of all interested persons and organizations to observe and participate in negotiation processes.”

Other principles, which echo debates at international organisations in Geneva, include ensuring that nations: retain sovereignty to take actions in their public interest without constraint from intellectual property rights, be able to use anti-circumvention measures without liability, and that IP enforcement measures be “reasonable and proportional.”

Additional principles called for avoiding “the creation of new dispute resolution fora parallel to, and that may conflict with, the multilateral system,” and ensuring that IP agreements are “consistent with international law, including international human rights law and the Convention on Biological Diversity.”

Finally, the declaration said: "We record our serious concerns about the closed and secretive processes being used for current international negotiations while acknowledging the efforts of some countries to promote positive proposals within them."

Statement on Global Fund IP Policy and Generics

Also at the Cape Town event, a statement was adopted raising concern over a policy being considered by the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that would establish tiered pricing for medicines.

“We note with growing concern the weakening of the Global Fund’s support for expanding access to safe, affordable generic medications as the answer to unaffordable essential drugs,” the statement said. “We are extremely concerned about the recent announcement of a ‘blue-ribbon Task Force’ on tiered-pricing of medicines in middle-income countries.”

In addition, the statement raised concern about a new Global Fund partnership with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations on “fake medicines.” It said the effort could create confusion in consumers’ minds about generic medicines. For them, the best approach would be “strong drug regulatory agencies together with effective technology transfer.”

"The Global Fund should retain its public interest focus and disentangle the interests of public health from the interests of those who claim intellectual-property over drugs," it said. "Regressive policy suggestions and public campaigns that undermine generic competition are counter to the Fund’s public mission."

Open A.I.R.

One aspect of the Open A.I.R. project is that the fellows who have been trained over the past few years now will go out and spread the word.

Seble Baraki, legal researcher at the Justice and Legal Systems Research Institute in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told Intellectual Property Watch, “I go and tell people what I’ve learned and see how it is going to help” on issues like health or branding to ensure high quality products.

"By being here, I think I have brought the issue of IP in my government," she said. For instance, they have a conference on law and development with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and she has consistently mentioned that they should include something on development and IP. Now, they have agreed to do it, she said.

From studying in the North (Sweden), she had a certain idea about intellectual property. "Being part of this project helped me to see how to look at how to use IP from a public interest and development perspective.

Now, she said, she plans to go home and look at how it really makes a difference in her city, to see how IP can be used. Being part of this project, she added, "changed how you think about IP."

Other Highlights

The weeklong conference was packed with speakers and activities, and involved many of the leading figures in the public interest movement related to intellectual property rights. It also involved a first-time training on traditional knowledge related to IP rights.

The death of South African leader and “father” Nelson Mandela profoundly impacted the meeting. For example, a participant from Côte d’Ivoire said he was going to “live tweet” a journey through Mandela’s whole life, traveling from country to country.

Separately, Diane Peters, general counsel at Creative Commons, suggested a focus on a positive agenda, not taking away the right of another. There are ways to structure a dialogue so that everyone’s needs are addressed, she said.

“We are all part of some ecosystem,” she said, thinking and learning from the ideas of others. Limitations and exceptions are a right, Peters said. Authors should recognise that they also are re-using others’ ideas, same for the people who re-use and remix. “I’m really happy with how the dialogue-shaping is going,” she said.

Peters also said Creative Commons takes the view that their licences are not an answer to the problems of the copyright system. (CC licences include the version used by Intellectual Property Watch allowing re-use of our content for non-commercial purposes with attribution).

[Update: Creative Commons recently issued a policy statement on copyright reform].

The Struggle for Balance

Discussions during the week showed the diversity of topics and interests in fields affected by intellectual property rights. There were few vocal champions of the IP system, but there also was no blanket condemnation of it. Rather, discussions were attempts to address specific opportunities within IP, or concerns about its effects in certain cases. Not everyone held the same view and there were some debates during the week.

But given the variety and number of advocates from different sectors, such as the access to medicines and access to knowledge movements, there were some rallying cries around certain issues.

One relatively common area was the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), as concerns are high about raising IP protection levels without the participation of public interest groups. A speaker asserted that the United States is using the TPP to target BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as it did in the negotiations for the 1994 World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

There also were a number of discussions about the meaning of “open,” in issues like open access, open education, and open source. On a related note, Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore, India-based Centre for Internet and Society, said there are different types of open standards, and that using digital signatures instead of biometrics gives a decentralised system that protects human rights.

One speaker said they had been struck during the week by the need for a South-South network. Another asked how developing countries can use IP frameworks that have been predetermined in the North and that are not appropriate.

Participants repeatedly expressed positive attitudes about such a large and high-energy gathering (which the beautiful setting did nothing to diminish), allowing endless networking opportunities. But there was an urgency about the gathering for many, as global efforts to strengthen the IP system are working against their goals.

“We are seeing an assault on pretty much every single level,” one public health advocate said at the closing session. “Even when we win” and are able to advance the cause for access to medicines, the judges have been trained by the North (meaning with a pro-IP slant) and “turn the whole thing over.”

George Washington University Prof. Susan Sell described the “forum-shifting” that occurs with forces seeking to strengthen global intellectual property rules, as they seek international organisations where they can effect change in their favour. She likened it to a “cat and mouse” situation. She also said that IP policy is not an end in itself, but is public policy.

A participant from Jordan said that country did not play “cat-and-mouse” very well as when it signed its bilateral free trade agreement with the United States it took in all the bad aspects of the US copyright law.

Another speaker said the IP system does not encourage innovation for need but rather innovation for profit. He said governments in countries with strong rights holders are “captured,” and that governments need to be recaptured. He said organisations like the Gates and Clinton foundations are promoters of strong IP protection. Developing countries, activists, need to stop being the mouse, he said, and “start becoming the dog that chases the cat.”

“How do we forum-shift to all of the spaces we can win,” another speaker asked later, “[and] push the IP maximalist agenda to where we are not always on the defensive?”

“We are seeing an assault on pretty much every single level,” said a third. “Even when we win and are able to insert an agenda for [access to medicines], the judges have been trained by the North and turn the whole thing over.”

The mood, as Sell characterised it, is that “we can never stop and congratulate ourselves too much, because it just keeps coming.”

The annual event will continue next December, this time in Kuala Lumpur.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ip-watch-january-6-2014-william-new-global-congress-on-ip-and-public-interest-adopts-principles-for-negotiations

Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, 2015

sinha — 2015-06-24T16:45:21Z

We are pleased to announce that the Centre for Internet and Society will be hosting the fourth edition of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest at New Delhi, India, tentatively in the first two weeks of December, 2015. This post seeks your participation and invites your queries and suggestions for the event.

The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS.” We are now inviting applications to participate in the Congress, including session participation and presentations. We are also welcoming proposals for panels and workshops.

The application form is available now at [http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?] Please note that this form is for application purposes, and does not amount to confirmation of participation. The registrations for the plenary sessions, which are open to the public, will open closer to the date of the Global Congress.

Deadlines

August 1st: Priority Deadline for Applications- Applicants will be considered on a rolling basis, with applications made by August 1st being given first consideration. Applications after August 1st to receive travel assistance will be considered only under exceptional circumstances (these details will be collected in a subsequent form).

November 1st: All applications for session participation and paper submissions will close on November 1st.

Application Information

For applications to participate/host: Applications to present or host workshops shall be considered based on the proposals to be submitted in the form.

For applications to attend sessions: Applications to attend sessions as discussants will be considered based on the statement of purpose and/or any other relevant information provided by the applicant.

Limited travel grants to cover accommodation and/or travel to the Congress will be available, with priority to those from developing countries.

Background, Theme and Expected Outcomes

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest is the most significant event on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. By sharing their research and strategies, the network of experts and activists supported by the Global Congress are empowered to put forward a positive agenda for policy reform. The Global Congress began in Washington D.C. in 2011, moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and was held in Cape Town in 2013. The fourth Global Congress will now be held in New Delhi, in December 2015. The event would be the largest convening of public interest-oriented intellectual property practitioners ever held in Asia, and would help link in the world's most populous region to these global debates around how intellectual property policy can best serve the public interest.

The fourth edition of the Global Congress brings research, civil society, industry and regulatory and policy-making communities together for active, intense engagement on key public-interest intellectual property issues. Opportunities for these groups to interact are rare but valuable; and have been proven to lead to successful policy outcomes. The 4^th edition of the Congress, slated to be held in December, 2015 in New Delhi seeks to be one such opportunity.

The theme for the 2015 Congress is Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS-coming at a pivotal time for reflection, revision, and further strategizing. Specifically, the 2015 Congress seeks to produce three outcomes- first, the mobilization of existing scholarly research directly into the hands of civil society advocates, business leaders and policy makers, leading to evidence-based policies and practices; second, the collaborative identification of urgent, global and local research priorities and generation of a joint research/advocacy agenda; and third, the solidification of an inter-disciplinary, cross-sector and global networked community of experts focused on public interest aspects of IP policy and practice.

Participation Opportunities

Discussions at the Global Congress will be carried out in the form of plenary sessions, thematic tracks, cross-track sessions, and the room of scholars. Participation is invited for the thematic track sessions, cross-track sessions and the room of scholars.

The thematic tracks at the Global Congress are: 1) Openness, 2) Access to Medicines, 3) User Rights, 4) IP and Development. Cross-track sessions will feature research that cuts across tracks in order to facilitate engagement between tracks on themes of mutual interest.

The Room of Scholars will feature presentations of research outputs such as draft works or white papers that may not fit directly within the thematic tracks but fall within the overall theme of the Global Congress.

Participation could be in the form of presenting / discussing conference papers or policy briefs, or by conducting workshops where they may share their own work and solicit feedback from peers, during the aforementioned sessions.

The application form for participation is available now at http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?. Please forward this invitation to interested lists and individuals. For more information or questions, you may contact global-congress@cis-india.org.

Organisation

The 4^th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, is being organised in cooperation with National Law University, Delhi, by the American Assembly at Columbia University, the Centre for Internet and Society, Open A.I.R., and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law.

For any clarifications or queries, please contact:

Global Congress organising team: global-congress@cis-india.org

Swaraj Paul Barooah: swaraj.barooah@gmail.com
Shruthi Chandrasekaran: shruthi.chandrasekaran@gmail.com

The planning team also includes:

Anubha Sinha: anubha@cis-india.org
M.P. Nagaraj: nagaraj@cis-india.org
Maggie Huang: maggie@cis-india.org
Pranesh Prakash: pranesh@cis-india.org
Rohini Lakshane: rohini@cis-india.org
Sunil Abraham: sunil@cis-india.org
Nehaa Chaudhari: nehaa@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/2015-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources

Nisha S Kumar — 2016-05-03T02:24:01Z

The 4th edition of the Global Congress 2015 was organized at the National Law School of India University in New Delhi from 15 - 17 December 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Global Congress was jointly organized by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in association with National Law University, Delhi, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was one of the most significant events on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. This year, the discussions included attention to broad perspectives on clarifying the meaning and reality of open collaborative innovation, as well as significant focus on the sub-themes of economic development (innovation and software patents, clean technologies, climate change and green patenting, issues of branding and plain packaging); sustainable development (agriculture and geographic indicators [GI]); policy, law and regulation (role of governments, patenting, compulsory licensing [CL], global institutions [particularly WTO, WIPO and WHO] and national institutions [particularly patent offices]). Trade dominated the discussions across the IP and Dev track, including the TPP and other issues, reflecting the strong global trade agenda.

For a summary of the wrap-up of the IP and Development track click here.


Global Congress participants in one of the sessions.

Presentations by the Pervasive Technologies Team at CIS

Nehaa Chaudhari: The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India
Amba Uttara Kak and Maggie Huang: Rethinking Music Copyright Management in the Age of Digital Distribution: Business Models, Licensing Practices and Copyright Institutions in India
Rohini Lakshané: Patent Landscaping in the sub-$100 Mobile Device Market in India
Anubha Sinha: IP in Mobile Applications Development in India

Interview Series

Job Michael Mathew, an intern at CIS conducted a series of interviews as a lead up to the Global Congress: Mathew conducted interviews with Michael Geist, Zakir Thomas, Susan K. Sell, Shamnad Basheer, and Jayashree Watal.

Photographs

See the photographs from the Global Congress 2015 on Flickr: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 (Conclusion).

Global Civil Society Coalition launches website to promote Access to Knowledge

sinha — 2022-10-12T12:05:03Z

CIS is a part of a global civil society coalition that is working to promote access to, and use of, knowledge - the Access to Knowledge or A2K coalition.

Earlier this week, the coalition launched a website articulating its mission and recommendations to reform copyright systems for the benefit of education, research, and cultural heritage.

Copyright systems pose serious obstacles to quality teaching and learning, researchers’ ability to receive and impart information and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits, and preservation and access of cultural and scientific heritage. The website presents evidence and legal solutions, with a focus on the digital and online dimension to the issues. Three global maps also show the (limited) extent to which copyright limitations and exceptions across the world support online education, text and data mining, and preservation, highlighting the need for global legal eform.

The members of the A2K coalition represent a diverse set of voices such as educators, researchers, students, libraries, archives, museums, other knowledge users and creative communities around the globe. In Asia-pacific, we have ourselves and Open Access India as members presently. We invite organizations who share a similar vision of a fair and balanced copyright system to join the coalition.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-civil-society-coalition-launches-website-to-promote-access-to-knowledge

GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects

subha — 2014-05-27T09:13:42Z

GLAM initiatives work as a gateway to unleash knowledge, decode archived documentation to build modern wonders and also educate people about their past cultural and scientific journey.

This was published in OpenGLAM on May 22, 2014.

In 2012, India celebrated its first GLAM project on Hindi Wikipedia at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, New Delhi. This museum houses a vast majority of Indian crafts - Pattachitra from Odisha, Bidri from Karnataka, colorful and intricate Banarasi sari from northern India and Saura art from indigenous tribes of Eastern India to name a few. It is also a workshop and home to many artisans and folk artists who live, paint, carve, sell, sing, perform and make a living being based in the museum as resident artisans.


A weaver weaving a shawl using handloom (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

For this project, Wikimedia India and the India Program were roped in to plan, design and have the Wikimedia community train staffers on how to document Indian crafts, from royal lineage to folk. This resulted in the creation of many Indian craft-related articles in the Hindi Wikipedia and English Wikipedia as well as images on Wikimedia Commons.

Based upon my first hand experience of working closely with the staffers and the Wikimedia community during this project, I would like to share a few tips that might help you while planning and implementing a GLAM project:

1. Show what is it in for them

Large, public entities like museums, archives and libraries can be hesitant to open their doors for free public access. While discussing the potential of a GLAM project, it is wise to explain how the project will bring popularity, highlight the work that institutes are doing and will in turn benefit the government in preserving the state’s culture. Give examples of other such GLAM institutions which have gained public attention by adopting open strategies or by holding public events.

2. Show the institutions the big picture

Institutions often see their success in terms of number of visitors, number of media mentions or the number of sales (if they have some publications or a sales desk selling handicrafts or postcards for example). Tell them how an online presence could bring them local, national as well as international visitors, especially when they have an online presence in popular sites like Wikipedia or Wikitravel.

3. Push beyond your limits

Institutions operate in their own ways and often you might feel like you get stuck. Working with new staffers in a new institution is a big challenge and the pace of work cannot be smooth. What really matters is how much you impart your knowledge among the staffers and educate them about things that will be beneficial for the institution for continuing more GLAM projects in the future.

4. Track work-in-progress

It is always crucial to have smart trackers. These could be as simple as a spreadsheet (Excel, Google, …) or a wiki table for a team’s online tracking. You can of course always design your own. A database containing participant details with different colours for indicating progress in a project is a great way for assigning work, knowing strengths and learning about areas for improvement. Evaluating work internally by making use of smart charts and keeping deadlines is a must when there is a set of activities to be done.

5. Start with claps, swags in the middle, award at the end

Mobilizing volunteer contributors, especially government staffers, is always challenging. Outreach coordinators play a key role in keeping a group motivated enough to work collaboratively for a GLAM project. Participating staff members need to be given special attention during In real life meetups and gatherings, as well as specific guidance during training sessions. Fun games and activities that engage people help breaking communication barriers and build friendship. Swags also excite people to join. When a project starts rolling, keep different levels of excitement by giving different kinds of customized swags like caps, pens, stickers and buttons etc. Printed handouts that work like cheat-sheets are also useful. Creating levels to achieve and awarding the best achievers is another way of keeping people excited. Recognition drives!


Staff being trained by GLAM coordinators (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

6. Bring media attention towards the middle of the project

When a significant amount of work is done, break it to the media. Regional and national media coverage and few blog posts covering a project gives a lot of visibility to the institution and the people involved. This is in fact the best way to get internal administration level support for implementing a project. Interview some of the achievers, put them up on the project page and blogs and show those posts to them. Many people love to see audio-visual and printed news, and showing the participants their video interviews and published blogs is another way of letting them know about their great contribution.

7. Fail fast, think long term

If a GLAM project does not result in substantial success or sustains for long, it is essential to realize the fact that it is not an easy task to make changes to the system that is set over centuries. It takes time to mobilize and be brave to admit the failure. But it is also never really a failure when there is plenty of learning which others could benefit from before starting similar projects. Starting a new GLAM project is always an investment for the future. Milestones and even scars caused during the course of mobilizing an institution to open up its treasures for the public count and they, over time become parameters others consider.

8. Exit with a few leaders and chuck out way forwards

While working with a group of people, seek out for people who could lead a group and do specific work. This will not just reduce your workload, but will help to have a more decentralized focused work.

9. Document the flow

It is really really essential to document the work in a human manner. If resources permit, bring a professional to take candid shots, shoot a few interviews and B-rolls. You can also be frugal or hire a professional from the open source community for free and do the same. Documentation of learning, challenges and tips for others are essential things that you, as a good samaritan-community member could bring other GLAMers.

10. Empathy is the key

Over and above, empathy is the only key while dealing with real people in a real space. Connect to every person in a group, put yourself in their shoes and try being one of them: nothing works better in implementing a huge project. Knowledge transfer is a subset of the process of building a cordial relationship. Not all GLAM institutions have a system in place to educate their staff about technical aspects of archiving or renovating or developing skill-sets in general. Your presence should leverage the learning and knowledge that you would acquire from multiple levels.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-glam-may-22-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-glam-in-india-10-tips-for-successful-glam-projects

GI-tagged products to get Wiki pages

praskrishna — 2016-01-27T16:33:47Z

Ever realised that the famous, red hot Naga Mirchi (a special variety of chilli from Nagaland) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page?

The article by S. Anandan was published in the Hindu on January 26, 2016.

And that Cannanore Home Furnishings — textile home furnishings from Kannur — is a brand with geographical indication (GI) registration? Wiki, which is an open and free repository of knowledge on the Internet, does not have pages, in English and other recognised Indian languages, on most GI-tagged Indian products.

The Centre for Internet and Society-Access to Knowledge — popular as CIS-A2K— which is a not-for-profit movement to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development, launched an India Edit-a-thon for seven days from January 25 to generate Wikimedia pages in English and Indian languages on Indian products recognised by the GI Registry of India.

“Kerala alone boasts 23 products, mostly agricultural, with the GI tag. But Malayalam Wiki doesn’t have information on all of them. Besides the Aranmula Kannadi, none of the other GI-tagged products from Kerala have Wiki pages in English. Nationally, there are about 213 GI-tagged products and we know nothing of most of them. There isn’t a single article on many of them even in English. It’s in this context that the Edit-a-thon becomes extremely relevant. It’s being held to celebrate the Republic Day,” says Wiki activist Manoj Karingamadathil.

13 pages already

The campaign, launched on Monday, has evoked enthusiastic response from Wiki activists who have begun to create pages on most of these products. At the time of going to press, 13 GI-tagged Kerala products have got Wiki pages and editors are at work to generate content for these products in English.

Apart from existing Wiki editors, freshers may also be part of the campaign. “All they have to do is to create a Wiki account before sending in researched content,” points out Mr. Manoj. The campaign will be on till January 31.

Seven-day India Edit-a-thon begins; Wiki activists begin creating pages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-hindu-s-anandan-january-26-2016-gi-tagged-products-to-get-wiki-pages

Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon

praskrishna — 2016-01-26T15:19:56Z

Between 25 January and 31 January 2016, CIS-A2K is organizing an edit-a-thon to celebrate India's republic day. The goal of this edit-a-thon is to create and improve Geographical Indications articles.

Expectations

We expect that if you participate in this edit-a-thon, you'll create or expand at least 3 articles. However you may work on as many as articles you want.

Rules

For an article to be considered as part of this Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon, it must adhere to the following rules

The new article must be created between 0:00 UTC on 25 January 2016 and 23:59 UTC on 31 January 2016.
Creation/Expansion rule: If you are creating a new article the new article must have a size of at least 3,500 bytes and a minimum length of roughly 300 words (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.), If you are expanding an existing article, you need to expand this article by at least 3000 bytes, (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.)
The articles should not copyvio content and should follow verifiability and other important policies of Wikipedia.
The articles should have decent references;
The article must not be purely machine translated.
There should not be any maintenance tags in the articles
The article must have a direct relation to Geographical Indications in India (see Proposed articles).

Participants

Please add your username below. If you can not find your community name, please add a section using level 3 header (eg. === Ukrainian Wikipedia ===). We also encourage you to start an event page on your Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/geographical-indications-in-india-edit-a-thon

Gender Equality in the Workplace

Admin — 2017-11-26T03:12:49Z

The workshop was conducted by Samvada at the Centre for Internet & Society's office in Bengaluru on November 15, 2017.

Why is it important for a workshop on sexual harassment to address the larger question of gender equality in the workplace? And how does an understanding of equality help prevent and address sexual harassment?

At this moment in time, we are witnessing an unprecedented “outing” of incidents of sexual harassment and the men who are responsible for them. The worlds of filmmaking and academia are reverberating with discussions on the nature of the workplace and what women have had to suffer in silence because of the ways in which power is distributed between genders.

Now more than ever it’s important for us to understand what sexual harassment is, the structures that support it, the experiences that surround it, and ways of addressing it within our workplaces, so that we don’t lose ourselves in the following: a) a flattened and ahistorical idea of how power functions within our daily work; b) polarisations between men and women that denies all dialogue and self-reflection; and c) purely legalistic ideas on what harassment is and how to deal with it. The 1-day workshop will do the following:

Encourage the staff of CIS to understand how power functions in relationships within the organisation
Offer historical, social and legal understandings of sexual harassment at the workplace
Set up participatory discussion on the experiences of both men and women within the workplace
Help carve out a way forward in both prevention and redressal of SH

The sessions will take the form of participatory discussions and activities, that will draw on the experiences, opinions and histories of the CIS staff.

Anita Ratnam is the Founder and Executive Director of Samvada (Bangalore), an organisation that has been working with youth on issues of social justice and sustainability since 1990. The organisation runs 6 Youth Resource Centres/Yuva Samvada Kendras in different parts of Karnataka, and also established Baduku Community College in Bangalore in 2007, as an effort to build alternative livelihoods for youth. She is also Co-founder and Partner at Anekataa, an organisation that works on gender diversity at the corporate workplace. In the last 30 years she has written and taught on a range of issues related to youth rights, gender justice, crafts and traditional occupations, communalism and pluralism, and sustainable development. Her publications include “Traditional occupations in a modern world: Career Guidance, Livelihood Planning, and Crafts in the Context of Globalization”, in Handbook of Career Development: International Perpsectives (eds. Gideon Arulmani, Anuradha J Bakshi, Frederick TL Leong and AG Watts) and a host of media publications on issues ranging from garment industries, caste and development, the ban on night shift work for women, sex education, racism and rape, and gender and religion. She has also contributed to and helped shape the emergence of many organisations that work on human rights-related issues in Karnataka and elsewhere in India.

Nitya Vasudevan is currently working at Baduku Community College (Samvada) as Convener of Centre for Wellness and Justice. She also co-coordinates the project on “Strengthening Gender and Sexuality Education” (AJWS) within Samvada, and conducts workshops with students on gender, marriage, relationships and sexuality. Her publications include “The State of Desire and other flights of fantasy: Sexuality, Pornography, Technology”, in Law Like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law (co-authored with Namita Aavriti, eds. Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta), “’Public Women’ and the ‘Obscene’ Body: An Exploration of Abolition Debates in India”, in The Sexual History of the Global South: Sexual Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America (eds Saskia Wieringa and Horacio Sivori), “Between Ooru, Area and Pettai: The Terms of the Local in Tamil Cinema of the 21^st Century”, in the journal Positions (Rice University, upcoming issue); and a set of columns for TimeOut Bengaluru. She is also a co-organiser of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival along with a team of eight others who work on the festival simply out of a mad love for good cinema, performance and art.

Together, both have coordinate and conducted (along with other Samvada staff) a series of workshops at all the offices of Greenpeace India International, on “Gender Sensitivity and Diversity at the Workplace” (2016).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/gender-equality-in-the-workplace

GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session

Spadika Jayaraj — 2015-12-17T15:54:31Z

The 2015 Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest kicked off with its inaugural plenary session, on 14th December, 2015. With over 400 registered participants, ranging from established academics to activists to students gathered in the auditorium in National Law University, Delhi, Phet Sayo, a Senior Fellow at IDRC and a panelist at the session rightly observed that if a bomb were to go off at this venue, "there goes IP activism".

The story first appeared in Spicy IP on December 14, 2015. Click here to view this post on SpicyIP and leave a comment.

The inaugural session began with Dr. Ranbir Singh, the Vice-Chancellor of NLU-Delhi addressing the audience about NLU-D's meteoric rise in the field of legal education in India. This was followed by Phet Sayo's humorous and thought-provoking address on the importance of data in today's world- he remarked that in some cases, data and meta-data about material objects is attached more value than the objects themselves.

The session then saw Mr. Sean Flynn neatly summarising the history of public interest in the realm of IP, and how the Global Congress tied into this movement. He traced the predecessors of the Global Congress to the Bellagio Global Dialogues and the Doha Declaration meetings, both of which saw a similar confluence of minds devoted to discussing how IP can serve the public interest. He also mentioned how the Public Interest movement of the 90's and early 2000's led to a counter-movement in which ACTA and the larger enforcement agenda gained prominence. With this, he urged the attendees of the Global Congress to learn from each other and reorient their energies towards a positive agenda focusing on IP and Public Interest.

The next speaker was Professor Michael Geist from the University of Ottawa, who began by remarking that the new government in Canada appears to have ushered in a new era of openness and transparency, with the Ministerial Mandate Letters being released into the public domain. At the same time, he highlighted the proliferation of IP into other realms of law and policy with the TRIPS and the TPP being the most prominent examples of this proliferation. He pointed out the ramifications of this- that IP is now being framed and shaped in realms such as trade, privacy and internet governance. The challenge for the next twenty years, he urged, is for civil society to keep up and adapt to this change. Hong Xue, Director of the Institute for Internet Policy and Law at Beijing Normal University (BNU) expanded on this theme, highlighting the backsliding of Open Access norms with developments in international trade. With the growth of giant, cross-border ecommerce entities like Alibaba, multilateral trade treaties are attempting to normalise IP maximalism. Provisions such as Art. 60 of TRIPS, the de minimis exception, are being brushed under the carpet in this wave.

Zakir Thomas then debunked some popular IP narratives- the first being that stronger IP protection is necessary for investment in a country and the second being that copyright protection is necessary for content creation. With respect to the first, he highlighted the (underplayed) role of public funding in pharmaceutical R&D, and the various economic and other reasons unrelated to innovation that motivate the actions of Big Pharma. With respect to copyright, he spoke of social media and the open source movement. The takeaway from his address was that innovation happens in a complex environment with several stakeholders- the "one line approach" advocated by popular narratives should be regarded carefully for this reason.

The final address was by Nagla Rizk, founding director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center in Cairo on the different normative conceptions of openness and how the tensions between different conceptions can reflect in growth paradigms. She especially pointed to how the economic growth rhetoric adopted by several national governments ignore the intricacies in open policies. She remarked that we need to examine how openness can aid the public interest by paying attention to the context and realities on the ground.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip2015-notes-from-the-inaugural-session

GCIP15 Day 2: Fixing the problems in Trade Negotiations

Kartik Chawla — 2015-12-17T16:37:23Z

This post documents the interesting discussions that took place in the Trade Negotiations Panel at day 2 of the GCIP 2015.

The post was published by SpicyIP on December 17, 2015. The panel was conducted under the Chatham House rules, and hence no attribution has been made for the content herein.

One of the oft-repeated propositions in various panels in the GCIP, and even outside it, has been that the international trade negotiation process, particularly those leading up to agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (‘TPP’), are broken. They are broken in many ways – they are overbroad, undemocratic, negotiated in secrecy, the list goes on. The theme discussed by this Panel was therefore how can the civil society fix this? (Check our Twitter feed for some of the most interesting bits of the conversation!). The behemoth of trade negotiations has, from the ACTA days, grown even bigger, and this conversation is part of figuring out how to deal with it.

Trade agreements, their name would imply, should deal with ‘trade’. But the first speaker noted that international trade negotiations nowadays involve far more than ‘trade’ alone. They spread into issues we would rarely have associated with ‘trade’ earlier, with new – and surprising – issues being included in every new trade agreement that comes to light. Moreover, trade agreements and their negotiations are becoming less inclusive, with their negotiation processes being shrouded in increasing levels of confidentiality.

The speaker attributes these failures of international trade negotiations to multiple causes, at both the domestic and geopolitical levels. The national level causes include the disconnection between trade agencies from other countries, a tendency to mission creep, revolving door policies and policy laundering. At the global level, causes include post-War architectures of global governance and international negotiations, the limitations of the options available to the US due to the actions of BRICS.

The speaker proposed multiple ideas to deal with these issues, including using governments’ own documents, statements, and promises, and holding them accountable when they breach these promises with trade agreements, or the creation of international standards to regulate such activities. The standards under the latter could require higher transparency and institute standards for participation in negotiation, or could be addressed in a white paper detailing the problems with trade negotiations. Other recommendations along this line included tabling alternative proposals for global rulemaking from organisations such as the IGF, human right impact assessments of trade agreements, and non-binding human rights based recommendations.

The most interesting idea, though, was that of ‘Idea Rating Sheets’, to be used to propose, comment on, and of course ‘rate’ ideas to facilitate collaboration among civil society participants.

Finally, the speaker argued that the civil society cannot deal with this issue alone, but needs the support of authoritative global institutions. The civil society has the tools it needs, but needs to apply them in effective ways.

Taking the point forward, the second speaker noted aptly the movement from the awe at the ‘democratising’ effect of the internet that captured the world’s imagination early in its life to today, where we create ‘artificial barriers’ in access to information on the internet. This, I would note, ironically results in position where the internet was more conducive to providing information to more people when it had far less information and was far less pervasive than than it is today.

The speaker called the TPP a sophisticated method of blocking and criminalising ‘access’ at all levels. If you’re on the list of the limited negotiators that pluri-lateral treaties have nowadays, it is negotiated with the mindset of ‘if you sign this agreement, you can gain all of ‘this’’, but if you don’t sign or if you aren’t on the list, you will suffer.

Secrecy of Negotiations

And these negotiations are, of course, secret. This ‘secrecy by default’ issue puts civil society in a weaker position, with big gaps in the information that they receive. On the issue of secrecy, the speaker raised some very interesting questions. Specifically, how limited is the civil society’s access that not only can we not access the proceedings, but even what the negotiators are basing their positions on? Moreover, how does a trade negotiator has more access than the Parliament itself? Where are the checks and balances on the Executive here? And while secrecy seems to be paramount, corporations do have access.

The next speaker, in very crucial contrast, spoke of why it is that negotiators engage in such secrecy. The speaker first pointed out that some documents as old as even the Uruguay rounds are still kept confidential, even though they are stored on obsolete media and are possibly being corrupted.

The speaker stated that international trade negotiations are different from other negotiations on one crucial count – these negotiations, more than the others, are about dollars and cents. If a State has everything to lose and nothing to gain, it will simply walk away. But, clearly, they stay because they have enough to gain. Moreover, reaching a consesus is really very, very difficult – and ‘consensus’ is a requirement for WTO agreements. Every country in a negotiation has some bottom line/red line that they won’t cross, and they, of course, don’t want to show them, just as in a game of poker. So, the speaker explains, secrecy becomes paramount.

Interestingly enough, it was pointed out that this secrecy is actually more important for smaller countries, as while you can kind of guess the bottom lines with the US or the EU, the red liens of smaller players are unpredictable.

Thus, and this was widened to cover all negotiations, while live, transparent coverage of such negotiations might be ideal from the perspective of the civil society, that is not going to happen. Most of the time, simply because the governments don’t want you to see what they’re doing, and negotiations become much more difficult if they’re open for everyone to comment on.

Whom Should Civil Society Target?

The speaker stated that the best way out for civil society would be to influence the key players, the few governments who actually make a difference, who can and will take as stand. In a democracy, that should be entirely possible.

This, however, was highly contested in the discussion following the panel. The example of WIPO was brought up in this context, with a speaker noting that even though it started off as a closed, hostile organisation, it is now one of the most open, transparent organisations we have.

It was also argued that for a good negotiator, transparency is key, even though they don’t share what their final decision or thoughts on the topic are. Countering the speakers argument, it was stated while it’s true that everybody sits to gain something, it’s not necessary that they sit down to gain what they are supposed to gain – which might be the cause for the lack of transparency.

The next speakers stated that in order to influence trade negotiations at all, you absolutely and persistently have to be there, have to be present. The modus operandi of the industry is that comes with lots of reports, numbers – their approach is not necessarily right, but it is appealing. Plus, as was discussed in the questions sessions, the ease-of-access of visual aids means that they are taken up quickly by multiple people engaged with the process, and slowly become ubiquitous. As compared to that, for the civil society, you raise your concerns once, twice, but then you don’t have anything new, and the people you are trying to convince lose interest. And that is what the civil society has to learn to compete with. Finally, the speaker noted – very validly, if I might add – that FTAs are the reality of international rulemaking, and we have to find a way to live with that.

Need to Obtain Relevant Information

The final speaker disagreed with the previous speaker to a certain extent, stating that the solution lies in remote monitoring of activities and crowdsourcing movements. The speaker noted that the civil society is usually called in at 4AM, after the deals are made and the fat cats are fed.

The second speaker stated that we need to figure start by asking the right questions – ‘who (is involved), when (is any event happening, to prepare in advance), what are their interests?’, and so on. The speaker recommended that we map relations beyond trade talks alone, involving journalists, coordinating regionally. The street-level politics that worked with ACTA are no longer enough – we need to overwhelm the systems of the government and negotiators and ask them about all the information that we can.

Moreover, the speaker stressed the importance and necessity of whistleblowers, noting that the few things we know and the scandals that have been caused have been caused by whistleblowers. When there is a leak, a journalism-friendly report should be released within 24 hours. Finally, the speaker stressed the idea of strategic and creative litigation to bring these issue up in the Courts.

In the final discussions, the participants noted the importance of multiple levels of awareness and engagement. One participant specifically noted that it is important to engage with parliamentarians and legislators – but we must first figure out who has the right levels of access – and journalists.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip15-day-2-fixing-the-problems-in-trade-negotiations